The Boston City Council is setting out on a new two-year term with a new council president at the helm.

City Councilor Liz Breadon, who represents District 9, won the gavel on a 7-6 contested vote, cobbling together her candidacy just hours before the council was set to vote.

“An opportunity presented itself and I took it,” Breadon said. “We’re in a very critical time, given politics, and I really feel that in this moment, we need to set steady leadership, and really to bring the council together.”

The process apparently including backroom conversations and late-night meetings as City Councilors Gabriella Coletta Zapata and Brian Worrell both pushed to become the next council president.

Breadon spoke on why support waned for her two colleagues.

“I think they had support that was moving,” said Breadon. “It was moving back and forward, it hadn’t solidified solidly in one place. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the moment.”

Political commentator Sue O’Connell talks about the last-minute maneuvering before the upset vote and what it says about Mayor Michelle Wu’s influence.

Some speculated that Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration was lobbying for a compromise candidate after Coletta Zapata dropped out of the race. Breadon disputes the mayor’s involvement.

“I would say not,” said Breadon. “I wasn’t in conversation with the mayor about any of this.”

Beyond the election, Breadon took a look ahead to how she will lead the body. Controversy has been known to crop up at City Hall, most recently when former District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges tied to a kickback scheme involving taxpayer dollars.

Breadon said it’s critical to stay calm and allow the facts to come out in those situations.

“I feel that it’s very important to be very deliberative in how we handle these things and not to sort of shoot from the hip and have a knee-jerk reaction to what’s happening,” said Breadon.

Tune in Sunday at 9:30 am for our extended @Issue Sitdown with Breadon, when we dig deeper into how her candidacy came together, the priorities she’ll pursue in the role and which colleagues she’ll place in key council positions.

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A Boston nightclub where a woman collapsed on the dance floor and died last month will have its entertainment license reinstated after the Boston Licensing Board found no violations Thursday.

Anastaiya Colon, 27, was at ICON, a nightclub in Boston’s Theater District, in the early hours of Dec. 21 when she suffered a fatal medical episode. Following the incident, her loved ones insisted that the club’s staff did not respond professionally and failed to control crowds.

City regulators suspended ICON’s entertainment license pending an assessment of any potential violations. During a hearing Tuesday, they heard from attorneys representing the club and people who were with Colon the night she died.

As EMTs attempted to respond, crowds inside the club failed to comply with demands to give them space, prompting police to shut down the club, according to a police report of the incident. However, the club and its representatives were adamant that staff handled their response and crowd control efforts properly.

Kevin Montgomery, the club’s head of security, testified that the crowd did not impede police or EMTs and that he waited to evacuate the club because doing so would have created a bottleneck at the entrance. Additionally, a bouncer and a bartender both testified that they interacted with Colon, who ordered one drink before collapsing, and did not see any signs of intoxication.

Angelica Morales, Colon’s sister, submitted a video taken on her phone to the board for them to review. Morales testified Tuesday that the video disproves some of the board’s claims and shows that ICON did not immediately respond to the emergency.

“I ran to the DJ booth, literally bombarded everybody that was in my way to get to the DJ booth, told them to cut the music off,” Morales said. “On my way back, the music was cut off for a minute or two, maybe less, and they cut the music back on.”

Shanice Monteiro, a friend who was with Colon and Morales, said she went outside to flag down police officers. She testified that their response, along with the crowd’s, was inadequate.

“I struggled to get outside,” Monteiro said. “Once I got outside, everybody was still partying, there was no type of urgency. Nobody stopped.”

These factors, along with video evidence provided by ICON, did not substantiate any violations on the club’s part, prompting the licensing board to reinstate their entertainment license at a subsequent hearing Thursday.

“Based on the evidence presented at the hearing from the licensed premise and the spoken testimony and video evidence shared with us from Ms. Colon’s family, I’m not able to find a violation in this case,” Kathleen Joyce, the board’s chairwoman, said at the hearing.

However, Joyce further stated that she “was not able to resolve certain questions” about exactly when or why the club turned off the music or turned on the lights. As a result, the board will require ICON to submit an emergency management plan to prevent future incidents and put organized safety measures in place.

“This plan should outline detailed operational procedures in the event of a medical or any other emergency, including protocols for police and ambulance notification, crowd control and dispersal, and procedures regarding lighting and music during an emergency response,” Joyce said.

Though the club will reopen without facing any violations, Joyce noted that there were “lessons left to be learned” from the incident.

“This tragedy has shaken the public confidence in nightlife in this area, and restoring that confidence is a shared obligation,” she said. “People should feel safe going out at night. They should feel safe going to a club in this area, and they should feel safe getting home.”

Keeana Saxon, one of three commissioners on the licensing board, further emphasized the distinction Joyce made between entertainment-related matters and those that pertained to licensing. Essentially, the deciding factor in the board’s decision was the separation of the club’s response from any accountability they may have had by serving Colon liquor.

“I hope that the family does understand that there are separate procedures for both the entertainment and the licensing, just to make sure that on the licensing side, that we understand that she was only served one drink and that it was absolutely unforeseeable for that one drink to then lead to some kind of emergency such as this one,” Saxon said.