The city of Selma has a finance director.

At Wednesday night’s council meeting the council voted by number on who they wanted for the positions of finance director and city clerk/treasurer. Council members Rita Sims Franklin, Jean Martin, Sam Randolph, Bennie Ruth Crenshaw and President George Evans voted to give the position of finance director to an unnamed woman.

Names of the applicants have been kept secret for fear their current employers would discover the applicants’ plans and terminate them. Instead of names, numbers have been used to distinguish the applicants.

Personnel Director Valeria Jones didn’t know as of Wednesday night when those names would be released.

Previous to the vote, Martin said that she wanted to discuss combining the positions of city clerk and treasurer.

Councilwoman Nancy Sewell proposed that applicants numbers one and three become city treasurer and clerk, respectively, and that number two, the applicant who received the position of finance director, get that position.

Applicants one and three currently work in city hall.

Councilman Glenn Sexton, however, said he wanted to wait until the city’s audit has been completed before a vote was made.

Councilman James Durry agreed with Sewell and added that the three positions work as a group anyway.

Franklin suggested that before a vote on who would gain the positions could occur that a vote on how many positions should exist would have to happen first.

Sexton, though, made a motion to wait on the matter until the auditor’s report has been made.

The motion, however, failed with only Sexton, Sewell and Councilman B.L. Tucker voting in favor of it.

Sewell then tried several times to make a motion that number two become the city clerk/treasurer, but Evans wouldn’t allow the motion.

He said that the council hadn’t reached a point where they could vote on specific applicants for particular positions.

Franklin then made a motion to vote on which applicants were hired for the positions by number. The motion passed with Franklin, Randolph, Martin, Evans and Crenshaw voting in favor of it.

Number two then received five votes granting her the position of finance director.