Unalaska, AK – The Unalaska City Council voted unanimously at last night's special meeting to appoint Zoya Johnson to the council's open seat.

The move was an abrupt reversal of last week's proceedings, in which three of the four present council members voted to appoint recently unseated council member Kris Flanagan to the seat that Rocky Caldero vacated in October.

Johnson is the director of the Museum of the Aleutians and co-owns the Prime Alaska Seafoods processing plant. She said this morning that one of her main goals on the council is to bring more economic stability to Unalaska, looking at ways the city can be more fiscally responsible and diversify its revenue streams so it wouldn't be crippled by a downturn in the fishing industry.

"As a historian, I know that over the past 200 years the community has gone through resource-related ups and downs," she said. "We very much depend on our marine resources, so how are we going to do if those resources cease to exist for us? Are we going to follow the fate of the lost villages of Unalaska?"

Roger Rowland, who put forward the motion appointing Johnson, was unavailable for comment this afternoon.

In a change from past council appointments, council members Katherine McGlashan and Dick Peck used last night's meeting to ask questions of the four present candidates for the job. Peck asked each of them whether they would be more inclined to cut city staff or raise taxes to solve the city's retirement system funding woes. Some of the candidates ducked the question, but Johnson did answer it, saying that while she didn't want to lay off employees she would be willing to look at attrition when people retired or quit. She said any solution to the city's fiscal problems would probably involve a combination of actions, possibly including higher taxes. But she said today that belt-tightening, if necessary, wouldn't be easy.

"I would hate to see losing any of the services that the city is providing," she said. "We can complain about the amount of money spent, but we like driving on well-maintained roads, we like to see the PCR working, we like to go to our pool."

Johnson will serve out the rest of Caldero's term, which ends next October. The seat will be up for grabs again in next fall's election.