Preliminary election results are in after thousands of Kenai Peninsula residents voted in yesterday’s municipal elections. The results won’t be official until certified by the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly or city councils in the case of city elections. Results also don’t include absentee or questioned ballots, which will be reviewed in the coming days.
Borough Clerk Michele Turner says there are still more than 2,000 ballots to be counted, of which about 1,700 are absentee ballots.
Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly
The borough assembly will seat five new faces next week after new candidates and challengers triumphed in races for five of the group’s nine seats.
Lenora Niesen ran unopposed for the Nikiski seat currently held by Peter Ribbens and Michael Hicks ran unopposed for the Central seat held by Brent Johnson.
Leslie Morton failed to hold off a challenge from Dale Eicher for the Sterling/Funny River seat. Eicher will serve for one year, the remainder of the term formerly served by Bill Elam who was elected to the state legislature last year.
Sergeant Truesdell holds a hefty lead over the two other candidates for the assembly’s Soldotna seat. Truesdell will replace outgoing assembly member Tyson Cox, who hit his term limit.
And Scott Griebel received more than half of the votes cast in the three-way race for the assembly’s Kalifornsky seat. Griebel will serve for two years left in former assembly member James Baisden’s term. Baisden resigned earlier this year.
Kenai Peninsula Borough School District
The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s Board of Education is also on track to seat three new members. On the eastern Kenai Peninsula, Mica VanBuskirk ran unopposed to replace outgoing board member Virginia Morgan.
On the southern peninsula, Ash-Lee Waddell received almost two-thirds of votes cast. She carries a several hundred vote margin over candidate Gayle Claus. Waddell will replace outgoing board member and current Board President Zen Kelly.
It’s a tight race for the school board’s Kalifornsky seat, but newcomer Shelby Oden carries a five-vote lead over incumbent Patti Truesdell. And a third candidate in that race, Donna Anderson, is just nine votes behind Truesdell.
Ballot propositions
On ballot propositions, a majority of voters came down against hand-counting local ballots, against creating a recreation service area in Ninilchik and against tying the borough’s sales tax cap to inflation. Voters came down in favor of increasing the borough’s residential property tax exemption and aligning state and local election days.
City of Soldotna
In Soldotna, unopposed incumbent city council candidates Lisa Parker and Dave Carey each won three more years on the body.
And voters appear poised to kill a city effort to annex two-and-a-half square miles of land into city limits. A majority of city voters support annexation, but a majority of voters in the areas proposed for annexation oppose the initiative. Majority support from both voter pools is required for annexation to pass.
Soldotna City Clerk Johni Blankenship says there are 145 ballots the city still needs to count. More than 100 of those are absentee ballots that were cast in-person.
City of Kenai
The City of Kenai appears to have a new mayor in Henry Knackstedt, who leads candidate Alex Douthit by 135 votes. Knackstedt will replace outgoing mayor Brian Gabriel, who did not seek reelection.
Also in Kenai, city council candidate Victoria Askin will return for three more years. Newcomer Bridget Grieme was the second-highest vote getter and will also join the council.
Kenai City Clerk Shellie Saner says her office still has to count 185 additional ballots, nearly all of which are absentee ballots cast by voters in person.
Unofficial election results are available on the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s election website and on cities’ websites.
