Four men and one woman will be interviewed – and one will be appointed – by the San Jose City Council for the interim council position for District 3 on January 28.

The five were selected from 11 men and women who applied earlier this month, in secret voting last week by the current council members and Mayor Matt Mahan. Any applicant who received five votes in that ballot qualified as a finalist. The results of the secret email ballot were reported in a Jan. 16 memo to the mayor and council and posted online the next day by City Clerk Toni Taber.

The District 3 council chair has been empty since Oct. 1, when former Councilmember Omar Torres went into seclusion after revelations of sexual impropriety in a police affidavit related to a search warrant. Torres was arrested Nov. 5 on felony child molestation charges, hours after submitting his resignation to city officials, effective Nov. 27.

The nine council members were each asked to vote for five of the 11 people who applied for the appointment, which will take effect Feb. 2 and continue until the results of an April 8 special election – or until after June 24, if a runoff is required.

The rules for the appointed position, as recommended by Taber and approved by the council, said that only individuals who received votes from five council members would be interviewed at the Jan. 28 council meeting.

The five people who will be interviewed by the interim position are:

• Danielle Marie Christian, retired deputy policy director of former County Supervisor Joe Simitian;
• Balthazar Lopez, government and community affairs officer for CalTrain;
• Carl Eugene Salas, engineer and founder of Salas O’Brien engineering;
• Robert Staedler, principal at Silicon Valley Synergy, a San Jose-based land use and development consulting firm, whose projects include Google’s Downtown West and Plaza de San Jose;
• Jahmal Williams, director of DEI Partnerships and university-community liaison at San Jose State University.

Seven candidates qualified as candidates for the April special election. The council had decided that no person could seek election to the coveted downtown council seat if they also sought appointment to the interim seat. The winner of the special election will serve the remainder of the District 3 term through 2026.

In her memo to the council, Taber said the council vote on Jan. 28 will come after the applicants are interviewed in a group, seated before the council, with the questions asked in a rotating order.

In her memo, Tabor listed these procedures for the group interview.

• Each applicant will provide an opening statement of up to three minutes.
• After the opening statement, each council member and the mayor will have the opportunity to ask the applicant one question.
• Each applicant will be asked the same questions by the same council members.
• Each question will be completed within three minutes, including the question and answer.
• After all applicants have made their statements and answered each question, the mayor will open public comment.
• After public comment, each council member will have the opportunity to ask a single follow-up question that may arise based on the initial round of questioning and the public comment.
• Each follow-up question and answer will be completed within two minutes.
• The final appointments shall require the vote of eight council members council for approval.
• If no candidate receives eight votes, the candidate with the least number of votes will be dropped and the voting process will repeat until one member receives eight votes. The council will have the option to lower the threshold to a simple majority if no candidate receives eight votes.

Taber said that her email instructions to the mayor and council members are a matter of public record, “but their responses to me with their selections are protected according to the city attorney, who said council member votes of interest for applicants are exempt from disclosure because they reveal the deliberations of government officials.”