CHAPEL HILL - The timing of Town Council member Bill Strom's resignation will extend the contentious political season well past election day.

The liberal majority on the council will have to weigh the town's tradition of ensuring at least one African American member against the wishes of a large moderate constituency that almost made maverick Matt Czajkowski mayor.

"People will look to this particular appointment ... and get somewhat of a feel for this council," said incumbent Laurin Easthom, returning for a second term.

On Tuesday the voters re-elected two incumbents, elected two new council members and made current member Mark Kleinschmidt mayor-elect.

They did not return 2008-appointee Jim Merritt, meaning once the new council is installed next month it will face a dilemma it's faced before: If it doesn't appoint a black person to finish the two years left on Strom's term, the council will not have an African-American member. The black community makes up 11 percent of the town population.

On the other hand, many voters Tuesday called for change, as evidenced by Democrat Kleinschmidt's 99-vote victory over Czajkowski in which Kleinschmidt captured only 48.6 percent of the votes. Czajkowski said he probably would have won if Republicans Augustus Cho and Kevin Wolff hadn't siphoned off more than 300 moderate and conservative voters.

Unaffiliated with either national party, Czajkowski may have created enough momentum for lower taxes and aggressive economic development to help businessman Gene Pease, also unaffiliated, get elected. Pease finished fourth in the eight-person field.

Thirty-four-year-old investment adviser Matt Pohlman, also unaffiliated, rode Czajkowski's coattails to capture 3,593 votes - or 42 percent of ballots cast - enough to place fifth in the race for four seats. He said his youth and his finance skills would help to round out the current council.

"The citizens are looking for a variety of voices," he said. "They genuinely are looking for a balance."

In September, Czajkowski had urged the council to commit to appointing the fifth-place finisher to Strom's seat, but his colleagues rejected his call. Czajkowski had argued the move would restore trust after Strom resigned too late to put his seat on the ballot. But Kleinschmidt argued the fifth-place finisher might not be eligible if he or she hadn't applied for the job.

As it turned out, incumbents Ed Harrison, Laurin Easthom and Jim Merritt did not apply. They finished second, third and sixth, respectively. But Pohlman did apply and says appointing him is the right thing to do.

"There's pretty much nothing more straightforward about voters owning an election than vote count," he said.

The complication is Merritt's loss. It leaves the council potentially without a black member for the first time since 1953.

"It's striking," said Harrison. "I don't think it's a simple appointment.

"There's a whole lot of history going back to the early '50s," he said. "The public [is] going to have a lot to say about this."

Before the election, Public Policy Polling asked likely voters whether it was important to have an African American on the council; 57 percent said yes, 28 percent no.

Pohlman is among the dissenters.

"Surely in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by all means a very progressive town, we have progressed beyond making an appointment based upon the color of someone's skin, or for that matter their sexual orientation, their gender or their age," he said. "I trust the newly elected council to make the appropriate decision."

Two black Democrats living in Northside, Aaron Shah and Donna Bell, have applied for the appointment. They offer divergent priorities. Shah wants to end panhandling; Bell doesn't think it's a big problem. Shah favors growth; Bell wants to preserve Chapel Hill's environmental values while providing more affordable housing and commercial development.

On the question of appointing the fifth-place finisher, voters polled were evenly split with 38 percent on either side and 24 percent unsure.

Easthom doesn't think Pohlman's fifth-place finish should hold sway.

"The election is over," she said. "The citizens of Chapel Hill chose four individuals. Now a council of eight is going to decide who the ninth person will be for two years. I'm going to evaluate each and every [applicant] on their merits."

The town has had trouble maintaining minority representation on town boards. The Sustainable Community Visioning Task Force, charged with plotting the town's growth, had to recruit Bell, two other African Americans and two Latinos after realizing they weren't a very diverse group..

A social worker, Bell, 38, served on the town's Planning Board and on the board of directors for affordable-housing agency EmPOWERment in 2004-05 before starting a master of social work program through Smith College. She has lived in Chapel Hill off and on since arriving from New Bern in 1989 to attend UNC. She is married with an 11-month-old daughter and a 10-year-old stepson.

In 2002, she moved back here and bought a home on Whitaker Street, "a neighborhood that at the time no one else wanted to move into," she said. "I don't want Chapel Hill to become a place where people like me can't afford to live here."

Shah, 44, recently quit his job as a computer analyst at UNC to care for his 4-year-old twin son, who is recovering from H1N1 flu. He moved to Chapel Hill from Charlotte in 2003 to study at the university. For the past three years, he's lived with his children and stepchildren in a Habitat for Humanity/Orange Community Home Trust house on Nunn Street, a few doors down from the Northside police substation.

"Nunn Street was a monster before I moved there," he said. "I've got little kids, and I don't want my kids growing up thinking this is a normal practice for people to deal drugs on the corner or stand out on the street and harass people for money. ... We turned it into a very vibrant, fun street."

Shah said supporting the police department and keeping teenagers from loitering on Franklin Street after dark are two of his priorities. Three others are eliminating panhandling, holding down the budget and promoting local businesses - centerpieces of Czajkowski's mayoral campaign.

"There are taxpayers in this town who can't even walk on Franklin Street because they're being harassed," said Shah. "It's ridiculous."

Bell has a different perspective on panhandling. "For me, it is a sign that I still live someplace where we don't provide enough protection for vulnerable folks," she said. "If this isn't a good place for everyone to live, then it's not a good place for me, and it's not a good place for my children."

Unlike some of his Northside neighbors, Shah likes the 10-story Greenbridge project rising on Rosemary Street.

"That corner was people standing around with unhealthy, illegal practices, and I'm glad that's gone," he said. "I'm glad we're doing something positive with it."

Bell supports dense developments like Greenbridge as long as their impact on property values is offset by affordable housing. She said town staff need to explore ways to provide affordable housing for middle-income earners caught between subsidized homes at around $100,000 and market-rate homes above $300,000.

Shah said the council should appoint an African American to Strom's seat. "It's only fair that we represent everyone," he said.

Bell said rhetoric supporting the fifth-place finisher undervalued the contributions of appointed council members over the years. Finishing fifth in a four-way race, she said, doesn't necessarily indicate any greater public support than any other potential appointee might have.

Having no black council member could be a problem, she said, in a town "that has had a history of not listening to certain voices and those voices not being heard."