Every January, the Palo Alto City Council conducts what amounts to a popularity contest among its members to select its new mayor and vice mayor.

The process typically follows an established pattern, with the vice mayor nearly always ascending to the mayor's chair. Selection of the vice mayor, however, is often subject to intrigue, backdoor negotiations, political expediency and the occasional power tussle, injecting an element of tension and surprise into what is otherwise a tightly scripted and ceremonial first meeting of the year.

Council member Alison Cormack, who is now concluding her four-year term on the council, knows what it's like to be on the wrong end of such a tussle better than most. After winning the council election in 2018 with more votes than any other candidate, she found herself on a council dominated by its more slow-growth wing. In 2020, with the council deadlocked 4-4 over the next vice mayor (with council member Greg Tanaka refusing to vote), she broke the stalemate by throwing her support to Tom DuBois, who took the position instead. With the "residentialist" majority expanding that year, that was as close as she'd get to a vice mayoral position.

Now on her way out, Cormack is hoping to change the system into one that's more predictable and less intriguing — a rotation based on seniority. Earlier this month, Cormack proposed at a meeting of the Policy and Services Committee that the council adopt a new policy in its handbook specifying that the mayor position "shall rotate based on consecutive years served and ranked by votes received in the general election."

The full council discussed the proposal on Dec. 19, its final meeting of the year, and agreed that the decision on whether to make the change should fall to the next council, which will see three seats turnover. Some members indicated during the discussion, however, that they are not ready to let go of the current practice.

Rotating the mayor's position based on seniority is a fairly common practice, with Mountain View and Menlo Park both following that rule. San Mateo has also traditionally based its mayoral rotation on seniority, though that did not prevent a political crisis earlier this month when two newly elected candidates refused to support Amourence Lee for mayor — a position that left the city without a mayor for a week and that prompted widespread condemnation from residents and council observers (Lee was ultimately elected mayor on Dec. 12).

The San Mateo example notwithstanding, Cormack argued that having a set rotation would take some of the politics out of the annual process of electing a mayor and vice mayor and reduce uncertainty.

"I'm aware of multiyear agreements, of trades that have been made and I don't think they're democratic," Cormack said at the Dec. 13 meeting of the Policy and Services Committee. "I think any one of us elected is capable of serving as mayor and I think the politics that gets involved … is unlikely to get better in the future.

Not every member is eager to make the change. Pat Burt, who is now serving as mayor for the third time, and council members Tom DuBois and Greer Stone all argued in favor of retaining the status quo, which incidentally favors those in the council's dominant political camp (to which all three belong).

"Different cities do it in different ways, but this has served us pretty well," Burt said of the current practice of having council members pick their mayor and vice mayor. "There are arguments on either side of this, but I think for our city this would be a significant break from policy and practice for a long while."

DuBois also made the case for having council members continue to elect a mayor, which is a one-year position that empowers its occupant to run meetings, shape the agenda, designate committee assignments and perform various ceremonial and diplomatic functions.

"It's not necessary that all council members may be suited to run the meeting," DuBois said.

Stone, who joined the council in 2020 and who is likely to ascend to vice mayor on Jan. 9, also argued against making the change. As a member of the Policy and Services Committee, he voted against Cormack's proposal, which nevertheless advanced 2-1, with Cormack and Tanaka supporting it. Stone reiterated his opposition at the council's Dec. 19 meeting.

"I always felt that a mayor should be based on merit, not on the amount of time that you served," Stone said. "To me, it's not a kindergarten class where we're trying to preserve everybody's feelings and making sure everyone has time to play mayor."

The proposed policy is part of a package of revisions to the council handbook that will be further vetted in the coming months by the new council. Another proposal from Cormack would restrict the ability of outgoing council members to submit "colleagues' memos" with nonurgent policy proposals during the lame-duck period between the November election and January, when new members begin their terms. The council considered one such proposal on Dec. 12, when it discussed a memo from DuBois (who is leaving the council this year), Vice Mayor Lydia Kou and Stone (who will both remain) relating to regulations of short-term rentals.

Cormack suggested that taking important policy proposals out of the hands of lame-duck council members would "reduce the political temperature" in the two months before the election and the council transition.

"We have worked really hard, carefully and politely and neutrally, together to move things out of this time frame that could seem political," Cormack said at the Dec. 13 committee meeting.

This proposal, however, also ran into opposition, with several of her colleagues describing the proposal as precisely the kind of thing that the policy change seeks to eliminate: a last-minute policy change proposed by an outgoing council member.

"I do find it a little ironic that this is a recommendation with this idea that current council members should not be making substantive policy changes and yet here we are in the 11th hour, our last meeting," Stone said.

Burt also called the proposed policy change "internally contradictory" given its significance and the timing of its introduction. The change proposed by Cormack, he argued, would be more appropriate for a colleagues' memo, not as something introduced just days before the final meeting.

"I just find those approaches to be contradictory and not good policy to be making major policy decisions at this time on things that weren't truly agendized," Burt said at the Dec. 19 meeting.

Cormack noted that the council has been talking about revising its policies for years and has delegated much of the work to the Policy and Service Committee, which is tasked with conducting annual reviews. The city has fallen far behind in this effort, she argued, and should not delay the changes any longer. She said she was "super disappointed" that the changes were not considered earlier in the year.

"I think it's incumbent on us to do as much as we can to set the stage so that the future council can work together in a collaborative environment," Cormack said.