The Westminster Mayor and Common Council on Monday unanimously adopted Resolution No. 26-14, honoring former Mayor Kenneth "Ken" Yowan, who died Aug. 10 in Port Orange, Florida, at 84, according to his obituary, surrounded by his family.
City Attorney Ramsay Whitworth introduced the resolution near the top of the council’s regular meeting, describing it as honoring "the life and legacy of Kenneth Allen Yowan, 84, May 3rd, 1942 to August 10th, 2026, who served as the Westminster mayor from 1994 to 2001."
Council President Tony Chiavacci said the council would not read the lengthy resolution aloud, noting it had already been signed in advance because members expected to pass it. Yowan's grandson, Mike Yowan, and his wife, Sarah, attended the meeting from the audience.
A physicist who came to City Hall
According to the resolution and Yowan's obituary, Yowan was a physicist who spent four decades working on national defense programs, starting at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in 1962 and moving to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 1966, where he worked until his retirement, specializing in inertial navigation and shipboard weapon systems for the Navy's Polaris, Poseidon and Trident programs. He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1974 and moved to Westminster with his wife, Joy, in 1975.
The resolution states that, soon after arriving, Yowan joined a committee advocating for the expansion of Carroll County General Hospital. He ran unsuccessfully for a Common Council seat in 1979, losing by a narrow margin against three incumbents, and served as chairman of the city's Zoning Board of Appeals from 1979 to 1983. He was elected to the council in 1983, serving as the council's liaison to the Planning and Zoning Commission and chairing its Public Improvements Committee until 1986, when he was assigned to the Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii and resigned his council seat.
Yowan returned to Westminster in 1989 and chaired a task force on downtown revitalization the following year. He was re-elected to the council in 1991, chaired its Public Safety Committee, and was elected council president pro tem, then succeeded Bill Haifley as council president in 1994. He became mayor that November when Mayor Ben Brown won a seat on the Carroll County Board of County Commissioners and left the mayor's office, according to the resolution. Yowan was re-elected mayor in 1997 and retired from office in 2001.
"A sea change" on the council
Council President Pro Tem Gregory Pecoraro, who took over Yowan's council seat when Yowan was elevated to mayor, described the same succession from the podium Monday, saying Yowan "was elevated to being mayor" after "then-mayor Brown" won a county commissioner seat.
Pecoraro also said Westminster's city government looked very different before Yowan's years in office: he recalled that only about 300 people were registered to vote in city elections at the time, since residents had to register separately from state elections, until a change in state law created universal registration and drew a new group of candidates, Yowan among them, onto the council. "I think that that really set the city on an entirely different path," Pecoraro said, calling Yowan "a friend and a mentor as well as a colleague."
Councilman Thomas Beyard, who worked as the city's planning and public works director while Yowan served as a council member, council president and mayor, said Yowan pushed for what became the Carroll Arts Center, a downtown parking plan, and an upgrade to the city's wastewater treatment plant that Yowan's obituary credits with protecting the Little Pipe Creek watershed and the Chesapeake Bay.
Beyard also said Yowan pushed the city to set up its first email server in the 1990s, at one point housed in the building's old jail cell in the basement, and would call him after midnight to ask him to come to City Hall and restart it when email went down. Beyard said Yowan "brought some harmony" to a council that had been divided in the late 1980s.
Councilman Kevin Dayhoff said Yowan operated on what Dayhoff called "a 24-hour clock," often calling him after midnight with an idea for solving a problem, and pushed department heads to avoid binary, either/or thinking. "He would say, 'Dayhoff, I want you to come up with five solutions to this problem,'" Dayhoff said. "He must have had a genius-level IQ."
Mayor Mona Becker, who said she did not know Yowan personally, thanked Mike Yowan for reaching out to let her know of his grandfather's death so the council could act on the resolution. Chiavacci, who also said he had not known Yowan, noted that flags around the city had been flown at half-staff ahead of Monday's meeting.
Mike Yowan told the council he spent time at City Hall as a child while his grandfather was in office, including visits to the building's old jail cell and attending the groundbreaking for the downtown parking garage. "What I didn't know at the time is that he was making a better community for myself and my family," he said.
In accordance with his wishes, no formal services were held, according to Yowan's obituary.
Photo: via obiturary on lohmanfuneralhomes.com.