The correct answer is A. Were
Step-by-step explanation:
Verbs should agree with the subject (person or entity doing the action) and they should be in the correct tense (present, past, or future). In this context, the section "Last year" indicates the action of the sentence occurred in the past, and therefore the verb should be in the past. Moreover, in this sentence, the subject is "the council members", which is a plural subject. This means an appropriate verb for this sentence should be in past and plural form. According to this, the only correct option is "were" because this is the past form of the verb to be, it is used for plural subjects, and it creates a coherent sentence.