Slippery Rock Borough Council is accepting letters of interest for its vacant council seat until Friday.

Council expects to discuss applicants on Feb. 1 and is to vote on adding the new member on Feb. 8. Shawn Pugh, borough manager, said he had received three letters of interest as of Tuesday evening.

“We’re hoping for someone who is willing to serve their community. Someone who’s willing to be a leader and a voice. Someone that would like to sit on council committees,” Pugh said.

The seat is open because the Nov. 2 election winner moved out of the borough prior to election day, but he was not removed from the ballot.

The council officially declared the seat vacant on Jan. 11.

According to Aaron Sheasley, director of the Butler County Bureau of Elections, when a situation like this happens in a municipality, leadership has options as to how they fill a vacant seat.

“There are options up to the discretion of the municipalities. Some spell it out in their charter; some don’t include it at all,” Sheasley said. “Option one, they can look at the next person. Another option is they can appoint someone, or they can accept submissions of paperwork for the position.”

Sheasley said once the results of an election are certified, the municipality takes over how the situation is addressed.

“The final decision rests on the municipalities,” he said. “They have to fill that vacant seat on their own.”

Vacancy in municipality leadership is not an oddity, Sheasley added.

“Vacancies happen all the time. This is not a weird circumstance,” he said of Slippery Rock. “Municipal vacancies in smaller municipalities happen all the time.”

The next meeting for Slippery Rock Borough Council is Feb. 1 at the borough’s building, 306 East Water St.