In a bitter split, the Palo Alto City Council voted Nov. 2 to give its outgoing members the opportunity to appoint commissioners to key city boards just weeks before their terms expire.

By a 4-3 vote, with Vice Mayor Tom DuBois and council members Eric Filseth and Lydia Kou dissenting, the council decided on Monday to select new members for the Planning and Transportation Commission, the Architectural Review Board, the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Historic Resources Board on Dec. 14. The vote means that the council's more pro-growth majority of Mayor Adrian Fine and council members Liz Kniss, Alison Cormack and Greg Tanaka will get to pick new commissioners just before new council members, dominated by the more slow-growth faction, is sworn in.

The controversial decision came just a week after the council agreed unanimously to shift appointments to the spring, precisely to avoid the politicization of the commission appointment. While some appointments, including those to the Parks and Recreation Commission and Historic Resources Board, tend to be bipartisan and relatively noncontroversial, the council routinely splits 4-3 among partisan lines in selecting members to the influential Planning and Transportation Commission.

The council agreed to extend the application process for the Planning and Transportation Commission, which has received only two applications for the two seats currently filled by commissioners Ed Lauing and Doria Summa. The only applicants thus far are Summa and Kevin Ma, though the extension will allow Lauing to reapply for his seat. As of Friday morning, Lauing was in fifth place in a 10-candidate race for four council seats, trailing Greer Stone by 611 votes, according to unofficial results from the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.

While the council's vote took place before Tuesday's general election, the three members in the minority denounced the decision to make the appointments in December rather than to wait for the new council to be sworn in. The four council members in the majority noted that because the new rules hadn't yet been adopted, it is perfectly reasonable for them to make the appointments.

Kniss made a motion, which Cormack seconded, to accept the submitted applications to the Architectural Review Board and the Parks and Recreation Commission but to extend the recruitment period for the Planning and Transportation and the Historic Resources Board, which has three open seats and three applications. All current applications are from incumbent members: Martin Bernstein, Michael Makinen and Margaret Wimmer.

The motion also called for the council to complete interviews for all the commission applicants by Dec. 7 and to make the appointments by Dec. 14. Cormack acknowledged that the council has a deep disagreement about lame-duck appointments but argued that council members should continue with their work until the end of the year. This includes choosing commissioners.

"We have two more months of work we should be doing," Cormack said.

Fine alluded to October 2016, when the outgoing council, which at that time enjoyed a small "residentialist" majority, voted to move ahead with new appointments to the planning commission. Both Fine and Tanaka were former planning commissioners who were elected to council that year.

"Until we change those rules, I intend to follow them and — as council member Cormack said — do the work," Fine said.

The three dissenting council members argued that the decision runs completely counter to the spirit of its recent effort to make the appointments less political. Filseth called the move to schedule appointments in mid-December "wildly inappropriate."

"We all said last week that we think these lame-duck appointments is not something we should do and we should move away from," Filseth said. "I didn't realize we were speaking about future councils, not this one."

DuBois also criticized those in the majority for keeping the new council from making the appointments.

"You guys are ramming this through," DuBois said. "You're going to have people not appointed by a new council. And if you insist on doing this, people are going to remember. It's going to be a shame. It's going to be by the slimmest majority possible."

Fine was not swayed.

"We're a political body. Sometimes we make those choices," Fine said. "In terms of bad governance, sometimes it cuts both ways."

The vote came a day before an election that saw candidates affiliated with the council's residentialist wing win a majority of seats. The reelection of Kou and the election of Greer Stone — who are poised to finish second and fourth — means that DuBois and Filseth will see their position strengthened next year. Former Mayor Pat Burt, who finished first among the 10 candidates, has historically been a centrist figure on the council, though he has often voted with the slow-growth members and criticized decisions made by the more pro-growth camp, including its recent push to allow offices to fill space designated for ground-floor retail.

Meanwhile, the reelection of Greg Tanaka means that the more pro-growth wing will see its membership dwindle from four seats to two occupied by himself and Cormack.