Galion wants mayor back, other election results

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

The pre­lim­i­nary results of the 2012 elec­tion for Craw­ford County were released at 11:30 on elec­tion night. For the pres­i­den­tial race, Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney had a major lead over Demo­c­rat Bar­rack Obama with 11,561 (60 per­cent) votes to Obama’s 7,207 (37 per­cent). A total of 19,229 votes, includ­ing early and absen­tee bal­lots, were counted.

In local issues, Galion vot­ers decided they wanted a dif­fer­ent form of city gov­ern­ment. Issue 5 to abol­ish the City Char­ter was a close race as early elec­tion results came in, but votes for abol­ish­ment pulled ahead. Out of 3,988 votes cast for Issue 5, 2,267 (56 per­cent) were for and 1,721 (43 per­cent) were against. This means Galion’s cur­rent Charter/City Man­ager form of gov­ern­ment will revert back to a May­oral form.

No one from the City of Galion was present at the County Cour­t­house, where the vot­ing results were released. Galion res­i­dent Paula Durbin, who has been an out­spo­ken sup­porter of abol­ish­ing the Char­ter, was present. When results for 38 out of 41 precincts were released, she com­mented that she was very happy Issue 5 pulled ahead by 13 per­cent­age points.

“[The move­ment for abol­ish­ing the Char­ter] came together in a short period of time. The cit­i­zens have spo­ken,” Durbin said, adding that she looks for­ward to the change.

On May 7, 2013, a pri­mary elec­tion will be held to vote for a mayor, which Galion has not had in more than 25 years, when the Char­ter was established.

Galion City Schools had an income tax levy on the bal­lot, which failed by a wide mar­gin. Out of 5,313 votes cast, 3,571 (67 per­cent) were against the levy, with 1,742 (32 per­cent) for it.

Super­in­ten­dent Kathy Jen­ney and Trea­surer Terri Day were at the Cour­t­house that evening to await results. Jen­ney thanked the vot­ers who did sup­port the school and also com­mented that this year was the first time Galion City Schools put a levy on the bal­lot in a long time. She cited the effects of last spring’s staff reduc­tions as well as last month’s release of the prop­erty reap­praisals as major fac­tors in why the levy did not pass.

Although there may have been a short­age of man­power in adver­tis­ing this time around, Jen­ney was con­fi­dent that the admin­is­tra­tion would be bet­ter pre­pared for adver­tis­ing when it puts the levy on the bal­lot for May’s elec­tion. “In the spring, we’ll be able to get the word out bet­ter,” Jen­ney said. “When peo­ple have a chance to really learn about why it’s needed, once they bet­ter under­stand, I think they’ll sup­port it.”

In the mean­time, the Board of Edu­ca­tion will ana­lyze the results and look for feed­back from the com­mu­nity to deter­mine if they need to change aspects of the levy.

If the levy does not pass in the May elec­tion, Jen­ney stated that the dis­trict will be forced to work closely with the State on fur­ther cuts that will need to be made.

At the county level, there were two races for Craw­ford County Com­mis­sioner. For the Com­mis­sioner term com­menc­ing Jan. 2, 2013, Steve Rein­hard won with 9,979 votes (54 per­cent), beat­ing Floyd Rein­hart who gar­nered 5,539 votes (30 per­cent) and inde­pen­dent can­di­date John Ross­ing­ton, who had 2,631 votes (14 percent).

For Com­mis­sioner term com­menc­ing Jan. 3, 2013, incum­bent Doug Weise­nauer will get a sec­ond term with 9,867 votes (54 per­cent) over Gary Miller’s 8,235 votes (45 percent).

For county pros­e­cu­tor, Matthew Crall won with 11,792 votes (64 per­cent), over Jack Fel­gen­hauer with 6,367 votes (35 percent).

Pro­vi­sional bal­lots will not be counted until Nov. 20.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Nov 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.