TYRONE — Tyrone Borough Council on Monday elected a new member — who’s also an old member.

Former Councilman Terry Richardson filled the seat that was left vacant in May when Councilman Bill Latchford became mayor, filling a seat left vacant three months earlier when Bill Fink resigned.

Richardson was the only candidate who applied for the seat in time, although he had to wait an additional month, after not attending August’s meeting because of a date change.

Council on Monday was scheduled to interview Richardson in open session but voted to forego the interview, mainly because there were no other candidates, and also because Richardson served a four-year elected term beginning in 2012 and is on this year’s general-election ballot.

Another would-be candidate approached Latchford on Monday, but the would-be candidate was long past the application deadline, Latchford said.

While Richardson didn’t answer council questions, he spoke before the 6-0 vote to seat him.

He plans to do more listening than speaking until he gets reacclimated, he said after the meeting.

“(But) there’s a lot of stuff I want to see done,” he said.

Among those things is to increase the number of recreation opportunities for young people, he said.

“When I grew up, there were four playgrounds,” he said. Now, there’s only one, on Park Avenue.

He’d like to see the former Lincoln Elementary School site developed for recreation — maybe even a YMCA or a borough-owned recreation center, he said.

He considers it unfortunate that many of the borough’s youth leave Tyrone for the Northern Blair County Recreation Center.

“Keep our money here,” he said.

One of his reasons for coming forward was encouragement from residents, he said.

He laughed and said he thinks many of those residents want to see someone older on council.

He’s 62, recently retired from Save-A-Lot, after a long career in Penn State’s maintenance department.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.