LAKESIDE - One day after the City Council accepted the resignation of one of its members, a second councilor announced his decision to resign.

During a 45-minute meeting Thursday night at city hall before an audience of 19 people, Mayor Ed Gowan and councilors Jim Brown, Clarence "Fed" Grisham, Bert Guin and Donald Lund voted unanimously to accept Benny Henry's decision to resign after seven years in office. Henry, who was appointed to his seat in 1996 and twice won re-election, informed the city of his decision in a letter dated Oct. 15. Councilor Nick Johnson was absent.

The council also voted to accept Gowan's nomination of Guin as the new council president, replacing the 65-year-old Henry.

On Friday, Nick Johnson, a five-year council veteran who moved to Lakeside from Seattle in 1997, announced his resignation in a letter to city hall, according to City Administrator Susan Chauncey. Johnson on Sunday night confirmed his decision to step down but declined to comment on his reason for quitting.

Chauncey has said the city will place advertisements in the city seeking candidates for the vacant seats, with a decision possible at the council's December meeting.

Also Thursday, by unanimous vote, the council accepted the resignation of Planning Commissioner Derik Anderson, who is moving to Idaho.

The council also heard a presentation from Tom Corso, a local amateur radio operator who called on the city to provide about $5,000 to identify and prepare a site for a transmitter to fortify what he described as spotty and unreliable emergency communications in the city.

In remote areas such as Lakeside, Corso told the council, ham radio provides an important channel for emergency calls because of inadequate cell-phone coverage and overcrowded police-radio channels. He offered to donate the use of two 100-watt transmitters if the city provides electrical connections to the highest-elevation land parcel in town to make it suitable as a transmission site.

"I just want a site to put the equipment at and the money to put the equipment in," he said. "... Amateur radio, with backup power, is always on the air."

In reply, councilors told Corso the Lakeside Rural Fire Protection District, not the city, is responsible for funding safety equipment and that no new federal funds currently are available. (The Lakeside fire district was not included in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's most recent round of grant allocations, the 20th this year.)

"We support what you're doing," Gowan said, "but as for any financial help ...," he shrugged.

In other business, the City Council:

€ passed Resolution 03-25 supporting the Tenmile Lakes Basin Partnership's application for federal funds to improve water quality and combat high microcystis levels. The application must be recommended by the state to the Environmental Protection Agency, which then will decide whether to release the funds.

€ and voted to approve the city's inclusion in a non-taxing public transportation district. Formation of such a district is meant to make the Coos County Area Transit bus service eligible for the lower insurance premiums charged to county-owned bodies.

In 2002, the insurer for the South Coast Business Employment Corporation, which operates CCAT, raised the annual premium from about $4,000 to the private-sector rate of $42,000, putting the transit service's future in doubt. The SCBEC has given Coos County until the end of November to take over the bus system.