Difficult on to vote on Mike, I'd say appoint from the options, but another option may be apply!
In SAAS all volunteer appointment are now carried out by our HR department, which includes an advertisement, and full application process which involves a review of the application letter, CV, then an interview which has a Management Rep, in regional areas a community rep and a rep from the team. This has been studied to make it an equitable process.
I'd like to see something similar, I know this may be time consuming, but could cut out a lot of the current problems. I would appoint Senior FF's though, to enable succession planning and offer experience to others!