Are you ready for another Manteca City Council election?

Councilman Steve DeBrum’s election as mayor creates a vacancy on the council as he has two years remaining on his current term.

The new council being seated at the Dec. 2 meeting will have 45 days to either call a special election or appoint someone to the position.

The last time the same scenario happened was in 2002 when then council member Willie Weatherford was elected mayor midway through his four-year council term. In that instance, the council opted to appoint former council member Jack Snyder to finish out Weatherford’s term.

Ben Cantu, who lost to DeBrum in the two-man race for mayor, said he didn’t know what he would do if he were on the council but indicated he saw four options.

“If I were Steve (DeBrum) and I was concerned about the builders in the community I’d appoint Vince (Hernandez) to keep things as they are,” Cantu said. “They could appoint me . . . someone else or have a special election.”

Cantu added if he was asked to serve as an appointed council member he isn’t too sure whether he would accept it. The retired city planner noted that since he did not prevail in Tuesday’s election he would start campaigning for one of the two council seats in the 2016 election.

DeBrum said that he hadn’t given much thought to how he’d like to see the council act on filling the council seat he is vacating.

DeBrum said there were a lot of factors to weigh including the cost of the special election that could run between $40,000 and $60,000.

He did note that philosophically there wasn’t a wide gap between Hernandez and the two newcomers that won election to the council — Richard Silverman and Mike Morowit.