Parker C. Agelasto is ready to leave his seat on Richmond City Council nine months after he and his family moved their residence outside the 5th District he was first elected to serve in 2012.

Bowing to a demand from Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring and facing the prospect of mounting legal bills, Mr. Agelasto reluctantly issued written notice Tuesday that he would resign his seat effective Nov. 30 in a bid to avoid the “prospect of expensive legal action.”

His action came as he took part in City Council deliberations to prepare a balanced budget and deal with the mayor’s proposal to impose a cigarette tax and increase the tax on real estate to raise new revenue.

Giving up his effort to serve through the end of his second term in December 2020, Mr. Agelasto said his action, announced in an email sent to constituents and his colleagues, enables his council colleagues to request that the Richmond Circuit Court set a special election to fill the seat. It also opens the door for potential candidates to consider entering the race to succeed him.

Mr. Agelasto, who also serves as executive director of a Richmond area land conservation group, urged his colleagues to request that the special election coincide with the Nov. 5 general election.

In issuing his notice of his resignation, Mr. Agelasto essentially accepted a deal from Mr. Herring, who sought to ensure a smooth transition and to avoid filing his own legal action with Richmond Circuit Court to have Mr. Agelasto removed from office based on his failure to comply with a requirement in the Virginia Constitution and a state statute that local and state elected officials live in and be eligible to vote in the district they serve.

However, any hope Mr. Agelasto might have harbored that his delayed resignation would satisfy two former council members who have filed separate legal actions seeking his removal in the same court were quickly dashed. Both lawsuits remain in process. No trial date has been set for either one.

“This is preposterous,” Sa’ad El-Amin, a former 6th District councilman, said of the announcement. “How can you resign a seat you have already abandoned? There is no way he can be allowed to continue to serve when he does not live in the district,” Mr. El-Amin said, vowing also to continue his legal action.

Upset that Mr. Herring has been willing to allow Mr. Agelasto to remain in office through the end of the year, Mr. El-Amin earlier this month filed for a special writ in Richmond Circuit Court to have Mr. Agelasto removed. Judge W. Reilly Marchant has been assigned to the case, he said.

In his email, Mr. Agelasto bemoaned the cost and disruption he would face in having to defend himself against the action, calling it “senseless litigation” that amounts to “a vendetta being pursued by a self-interested, former city councilman who resigned when sentenced to serve time in federal prison in 2003 after misrepresenting a legal client and defrauding the government.”

Mr. El-Amin’s filing came on the heels of a separate case brought by former 5th District Councilman Henry W. “Chuck” Richardson in January and updated in February asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment that Mr. Agelasto has vacated the seat. A judge has yet to be assigned, Mr. Richardson said, while Mr. Agelasto has asked the court to throw the case out.

Mr. Richardson, who also said he has no intention of dropping his lawsuit, called Mr. Agelasto’s refusal to leave office immediately “unacceptable.”

“It is unconscionable to have a person who has acknowledged he has violated the law decide when he is to accept his punishment,” Mr. Richardson said. “That is the very essence of privilege.”

Mr. Richardson called it improper for the city to have paid — and continue to pay — Mr. Agelasto’s $25,000 annual City Council salary while knowing he is not a legitimate council member. Mr. Richardson also raised concerns about the legality of the votes Mr. Agelasto has cast and will cast since moving out of the district last July.

In his email to constituents, Mr. Agelasto described Mr. Richardson’s lawsuit “as grandstanding,” in complaining that Mr. Richardson had declined to compromise.

Both Mr. Richardson and Mr. El-Amin dismissed Mr. Agelasto’s criticisms as the sour grapes of a scofflaw.

The issue of Mr. Agelasto’s residence burst into public view in November, just before it was made public by his campaign consultant, Michael G. Brown, a 5th District resident who served as head of the state Department of Elections in the early 1990s.

Mr. Agelasto acknowledged then that he and his family had moved during the summer into a larger home in the city’s 1st District and he said he would not seek re-election after completing his term in office in December 2020.

Mr. Brown also has campaigned to get Mr. Agelasto removed from office, but was halted initially when city Voter Registrar Kirk Showalter determined she had been stripped by the state legislature of authority to consider the voting eligibility of Mr. Agelasto so long as he lived within the city’s boundaries.

After several City Council members sought to bring up the issue, the council ducked the issued based on advice from City Attorney Allen L. Jackson that the residency of members was not a matter for the governing body to consider.

“I appreciate Mr. Herring’s efforts. He has gotten Mr. Agelasto to acknowledge he does not live in the district,” Mr. Brown said on Wednesday. However, Mr. Brown said he and others concerned about Mr. Agelasto’s residency would continue efforts to force him to step down or be removed before November.

“We cannot allow him to stay for another seven months now that he has admitted that he does not live in the district,” said Mr. Brown, who has acknowledged that Mr. Agelasto has broad support in the district and that only a handful of people have openly considered his lack of residency in the district a problem.

As Mr. Agelasto noted, other council members have maintained sham district residences while living elsewhere, although none have faced lawsuits to remove them from office.

A few years ago, former 9th District Councilman Douglas Conner lost his bid for re-election after it was found that he maintained his home in Chesterfield County while listing a separate Richmond address.

In his message, Mr. Agelasto insisted that his intent had been to maintain his legal residence for political purposes at his former home on Floyd Avenue in the 5th District. He said he had “zero intent to flout the law” in moving to a home on West Franklin Street in the 1st District.

He blamed bad legal advice from Mr. Jackson, who never issued a formal legal opinion. Based on what he was told, Mr. Agelasto shaped his narrative for keeping his seat on a 2014 attorney general’s opinion regarding an elected county official who took a temporary job for a few months outside his district but never gave up his residence or leased it to others, unlike Mr. Agelasto, who has rented out his Floyd Avenue property.

In his emailed statement, Mr. Agelasto told constituents he has “faithfully tried to serve your interests and the city’s broader interests” since first taking office in 2013.

He cited legislative achievements, including his efforts to start a welding program for ex-offenders to gain employment and his work to help “vulnerable populations … receive the care and attention they deserved.”

He noted his support for removing from city applications the box asking if the applicant had ever been convicted of a felony. He also noted his support to provide equal benefits to married same-sex couples, calling those examples of the “socially progressive causes” he has sought to advance while at the same time promoting fiscal prudence.