ELECTION RECAP: Talbot won't seek recount
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By ELIZABETH HOCHSTEDLER elizabeth.hochstedler@lee.net
Friday, April 4, 2008 10:05 PM CDT
Tuesday’s election answered many questions, such as a former village board member ousting a sitting current board member in Lake Hallie.
But it also raised some questions, such as the extremely close vote for mayor in the city of Cornell, which had one candidate pondering whether to pursue a recount.
Cornell
In election results from Tuesday for Cornell mayor, Mark Nodolf edged incumbent Judith Talbot 138-134, with two votes for write-in candidates.
Considering Nodolf and Talbot were separated by only four votes out of 274 cast (that’s a difference of less than 1.5 percent), Talbot certainly had enough reason to request a recount.
After giving it some thought, she said Friday that she had decided against pursuing a recount, explaining that she had no doubt the results were accurate.
“It’s all done electronically,” Talbot said Friday. “How bad can electronics be screwed up?”
Nodolf had served as mayor in 1999, but was forced to resign when his job took him on the road for a considerable amount of time.
When Mark Larson resigned last August as mayor, both Talbot and Nodolf applied for the position, with the council choosing Talbot.
“It’s okay. It’s alright,” she said of her brief term as mayor coming to an end. “I can be proud of what I did.”
Now that the results are final, Talbot said she’s not certain if she will consider running again.
“I have to think about that,” she said. “It depends on which direction the city goes.”
Lake Hallie
Nodolf wasn’t the only former public official to return to office Tuesday. Wayne Walkoviak is back on the Lake Hallie Village Board.
He and incumbent Mark Perry took the two seats up for grabs Tuesday, leaving incumbent Sally Butcher on the sidelines.
Perry was the top vote-getter for the two-year terms, receiving 422 votes (41.9 percent), to 315 for Walkoviak (31.3 percent) and 270 for Butcher (26.8 percent).
Walkoviak said he expected to win, but was hoping it would be by a larger margin.
“I had walked around Hallie a little bit and people were pretty receptive to what I was saying,” he said.
Walkoviak, who served on the board for six years in 2000-2006, had lost to Butcher two years ago.
He said he’s eager to start his next term, and knows it should be an easy transition given his experience with the board.
“I need to get back involved in it and see where everything is at,” he said. “It won’t take me much time to get involved again.”
His biggest priority is the village’s taxes.
“My goal is to keep our taxes as low as I can,” he said.
He believes that is what the voters want and why he received more votes than Butcher.
“Whenever I brought up the tax issue, (residents) definitely liked that,” he said. “I didn’t think that it was a good idea that Ms. Butcher said she was going to raise taxes.”
Butcher had said that she would consider raising taxes yearly to prevent a large tax hike in the future.
“We just can’t say we’re going to lower your taxes,” she said. “With a growing village, that’s irresponsible.”
Butcher, who lost a 2007 bid to unseat board president Pete Lehmann, said she will continue to be involved in village matters by attending Planning Commission and Building Committee meetings. She will also keep a close eye on village board meetings.
“I wish Wayne all the luck in the world. However I will be right there,” she said. “I’m not gone by any means of the word.”
Butcher said she’s disappointed that all of the members of the village board live in the same area in the village. In fact, Perry, Walkoviak and Dennis Sykora (and Lehmann) all live on 46th Avenue.
For that reason, she believes that dividing the village into wards would provide better representation.
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