Collegian Week in Review: September 24, 2026

I'm Alessia, and today I'm talking with City News Assistant Editor Ethan Savka.

Ethan, you wrote a story about Mayor Scott Sessions' recommendation of himself for the Board of Public Utilities Board of Directors.

Can you tell us a little bit about what happened at the meeting today?

Yeah, so at the council meeting this past Monday, about 40-ish minutes in, they arrived to the spot on the agenda where Sessions had, I believe, nominated himself for the position.

And he announced that.

As mayor, of course, he's running the meeting, so he announces that.

And then he moves to recuse himself from the discussion of his position.

nomination.

After that, the council moved forward from that.

They debated the recusal, ultimately approved the recusal after deciding that he could still discuss the nomination while recused.

Then they had a discussion on it that lasted probably 20-ish minutes.

There was a lot of different intricacies.

There was a long back and forth between Councilman Bentley and the city lawyer about a law that Bentley had Googled during the meeting and they discussed that and ultimately the council tabled the motion I believe by a vote of five to two with Bentley kind of leading the charge.

So why is there a vacancy on the BPU board and why did Sessions nominate himself?

Yeah, former BPU board member Mike Prince stepped down the Tuesday before the meeting.

So not this past Tuesday, but the Tuesday before.

And I believe it was because he has a new job and he just doesn't have the bandwidth to continue.

That's my understanding.

They referenced that during the meeting.

I think Dave Mackey referenced it during the meeting.

That opened up a position, I believe, the Thursday following that Tuesday.

Sessions announced that he wanted the position.

Nobody else, I believe, announced at the time.

And so it's just him appointing himself to this position, or asking the council, of course, to appoint him.

And Bentley saw that as...