At tonight’s meeting, the Novato City Council appointed Mayor Pro Tem Eric Lucan as the new Mayor, and Councilmember Susan Wernick as Mayor Pro Tem. Each will serve in that capacity for one year.

Outgoing Mayor Pat Eklund passed the Mayoral Gavel to Mayor Pro Tem Eric Lucan during the Council’s virtual reorganization meeting.

“As a Novato native, it really is an incredible honor to serve as Mayor, and I want to thank my Council colleagues for giving me this opportunity again,” stated Mayor Lucan. “Our residents are looking for local government to solve issues not just talk about them, to make things simpler not more complicated, and I think we have an opportunity continue to restore faith in local government as we all continue to work together.”

This will be Lucan’s third time serving as Mayor of Novato.

Novato is a “general law” city, which means its governance structure is specified by state law, and its Council selects the Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem for one-year terms. The Mayor signs official documents, presides at Council meetings and acts as the official head of the City at public and ceremonial occasions, but has no additional power on the Council.

“I’m grateful to my colleagues for having the confidence to nominate and appoint me as Mayor Pro Tem,” said Mayor Pro Tem Wernick. “I look forward to learning more and having a good year.”

Completing her seventh term as Mayor, outgoing Mayor Pat Eklund stated, “I want to thank all of the councilmembers for the honor of serving as Mayor this past year. Looking back over this past year, I think this Council has worked better together as a team which has allowed us to accomplish a lot. I look forward to continuing to work with all the councilmembers and our new mayor and mayor pro tem. I know if we continue this strong connection that we’ve developed, there’s nothing that we can’t accomplish together.” 

The next meeting of the Novato City Council will be January 11, 2022.

Video of the reorganization will be available at novato.org/watchmeetings.

For more information about the City Council, please visit novato.org/citycouncil.