Pismo Beach mayor retains seat by narrow margin

November 15, 2014
Mayor Shelly Higginbotham

Mayor Shelly Higginbotham

In an unofficial count, Pismo Beach Mayor Shelly Higginbotham held onto her seat by a narrow two vote margin against challenger Kevin Kreowski.

In Paso Robles, Councilman John Hamon and newcomer Jim Reed won the two open seats. Reed finished with a 14 vote lead against current Mayor Duane Picanco, who was termed out of his mayoral seat.

With all the checked votes counted, write-in candidate names are leading incumbent Arroyo Grande Mayor Tony Ferrara by 121 votes. Then, the names will be checked to determine how many are for write in candidate Jim Hill. This will likely help Ferrara.

However, almost a 1,000 votes where no box was checked will have to be read to determine how many voters have Jim Hill written in though they forgot to check the box. These votes can only go to Hill.


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Paso_citizen

says:

11/17/2014 at 9:58 am


Stand back a little and look at this whole affair from a wider perspective.


The voters of Arroyo Grande should be given a huge round-of-applause for the election

results (assuming things remain as now – and Ferrara is beaten by Hill). Even the

Tribune should award them a big bouquet (but probably won’t). What they have shown

is that voters can take responsibility for their city and when pi**ed off enough with the

underhanded actions of their city government, actions will be taken.


Now the hoped for result of the Arroyo Grande vote will be that voters in other cities

in SLO county will realize that their city officials have misled (trying to be a little nice)

them on many occasions and issues and will soon take similar actions to loudly say –

enough is enough. Paso Robles, Atascadero, and San Luis Obispo come to mind as

excellent examples of city governments that need cleaning for reasons that would take

way too long to enumerate.


Actually, just maybe some signs of this are happening. The mayor of Paso, running for

city council, may have lost his job (hopefully). Another council member decided not to

even run. Maybe, just maybe, voters don’t like the shenanigans with Lisa, bike paths,

sewer plants, water treatment, costly 21st street improvements , etc., etc.


May all be a small glimmer in a huge blackness – but maybe changes are coming.


Why does this take so long?


Do you really have to ask that considering the highly compensated government employees doing the work. Count five ballots, take a break, come back from break and start over because they forgot to document the count, then the supervisor reviews the work and then the two employees discuss the results then they start counting another five, and one of those has an out of place tick mark, now they have to go back to the original five and recount to look for tick marks, now that it has become so complicated they need to call in additional help….could be a good skit for Saturday night live


“With all the checked votes counted, write-in candidate names are leading incumbent Arroyo Grande Mayor Tony Ferrara by 121 votes. Then, the names will be checked to determine how many are for write in candidate Mickey Mouse. This will likely help Ferrara.


There I fixed that for you, No problem.


Which only leads to the conclusion that a vote for Mickey Mouse ends up being a vote for Ferrara.


Seems like a stretch to say a vote for Mickey Mouse is a vote for Ferrara, a reasonable person would say if a person wanted to vote for Ferrara then just vote for him. Thankfully more voted for someone else and after today’s checked we hope that someone else is Jim Hill. If someone voted for Mickey Mouse my thought there something more going on with that person than thinking they wanted to vote for the old AG mayor.


Good grief…a two vote mandate.


Could be worse. Could be a one-vote “mandate.”