I respect the intent of City Commissioner A. Wayne Bennett’s proposal that they put the names of all 10 potential appointees to the city commission into a hat Monday night and draw one out. That would have been even-handed. It would have given everyone an equal chance.

But I don’t think it would have been legal, and I doubt that the four commissioners could have possibly been evenly split in 10 different ways in their opinions on who would do the best job on the city commission.

They were filling the seat because Tim Turkelson resigned from the commission last month — to avoid a conflict of interest — as his law partner, fellow attorney Mike Nolan, was appointed as the city attorney.

Certainly there were many highly qualified people on the “replacement” list, but I think each commissioner must have been able to narrow the field down in his or her own mind to at least a favorite two or three.

City commissioners are elected to make decisions. Sometimes their decisions might be unpopular to some. But decide they must. In public. In front of any and all affected parties who choose to show up.

A lottery also would have had the potential to cut the mayor out of one of the few opportunities that he has to vote. If the now four-member commission had deadlocked, 2-2, the mayor would have been called on to break the deadlock. (By charter the mayor only votes if there’s a tie. The rest of the time, he just chairs the meeting and voices his opinion.)

Commissioners did it right. Selecting someone to sit on the city commission required a decision, and not simply a roll of the dice or the luck of the draw.

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