Steady turnout for hospital/museum elections
Updated: This story has been updated to include the ballots that were missed while counting Newcastle's votes for the Weston County Hospital District. According to Denice Pisciotti, executive assistant at Weston County Health Services, about a hundred ballots were not counted Tuesday evening. The vote counts for the hospital district now listed below are the official numbers as reported by Pisciotti on May 4.
The results of Tuesday’s special district election in Weston County will see three newcomers joining the hospital district board. Tuesday’s elections for both the Weston County Hospital District board of trustees and the Weston County Museum District board of trustees saw a steady turn out according to various election judges, but only unofficial results from the hospital district elections were made available to the News Letter Journal prior to press time.
There were three seats available on that board for full four-year terms, and they had belonged to George Materi, Jeff Virchow and Mike Ratigan, none of whom sought reelection. According to the unofficial tally provided to the NLJ by Weston County Health Services, the individuals taking the most votes in the race for hospital district were Ann Slagle with 318 votes, Nick Johnson with 316 votes. Karen (Kari) Drost captured the third available four-year seat with 305 total votes.
The two other candidates, Bob Hartley and R. Ian Thurgood, received 185 and 129 votes respectively.
There was one additional seat on on the ballot for the hospital board, and incumbent Jamie Farnsworth, who was appointed to the board last year, will fulfill the final two years of the unexpired term she was appointed to fill after she received 367 votes, edging out competitor Loa Dickinson, who finished with 100 votes.
Unofficial results of Tuesday’s Museum District Board elections were provided to the News Letter Journal by Museum Director Cindy Dysart, and the winners for three available board seats — two (2) four-year terms and one (1) two-year term — have been chosen.
Linda Nessul secured the most votes for the one of the two four-year terms available on the Weston County Museum District board with 322 votes. Harriet Birkley was able to secure 80 votes in a last minutes write-in campaign begun late last week, which was enough to claim the second four-year seat over Shirley Harder, who also appeared as a write-in candidate and received 34 votes.
Kasey Keeler, the only candidate who filed for election to the two-year seat, received a total of 393 votes to round out the new additions to the board.
