By JIM BUTLER

GAEDA’s executive director is urging the City Council to fish or cut bait regarding three essentially vacant seats on the economic development panel.

Angela Varnado writes in a letter to Council President Cynthia Perry that the vacancies impair the seven-member Authority’s ability to operate.

The ordinance that provides for each City Council member to nominate a GAEDA member has no provisions about how to proceed when a member fails or refuses to act regarding a successor nominee.

Varnado asks the Council to within 30 days of her July 16 letter “restore full participation and operational stability to the board.”

Seats held by nominees of Council members Lizzie Felter, Chuck Fowler and Jim Villard are those in question.

Varnado writes she is not criticizing failure to fill what are functionally vacant seats but is “highlighting structural gap that demands Council attention and leadership.”

She asks that the Council adopt a resolution acknowledging inaction of the three appointing members and declaring intent to proceed with appointments under the principal of constructive waiver.

(That is the intentional relinquishment of a known right or implicit through conduct. Another way of saying it — inaction or silence when there was a duty to act or speak.) Varnado asks the Council then to nominate and confirm appointments to the three seats in question and to consider amending the GAEDA enabling ordinance to define a specific time frame for nomination after a vacancy, along with fall-back procedure if no nomination action is taken.