After Friday’s counts, city races clear up

WASILLA — Things began to clear up Friday as canvass boards counted outstanding ballots from Tuesday’s local elections.

The closest local race after the polls closed Tuesday night was in Palmer, where incumbent city councilman Richard Best had tied with challenger Kenni Linden for the second of two available seats. After the board of canvass met Friday, Best will likely head back to the city council after pulling 31 votes out of the absentee, early, special needs, and questioned ballots to Linden’s 23. The new total avoids for now the specter of a coin-toss decision to decide the election.

City councils in Palmer, Wasilla and Houston will certify election results in separate meetings Monday evening.

A marijuana initiative in Palmer widened its margin by three votes to make the city the first Mat-Su municipality to officially exercise its local option to ban commercial marijuana.

In the race for a Houston City Council seat, Chris Johnson added to his lead over Dawnita Brunswick and incumbent Alma Hartley after that city’s canvass board met Friday. Johnson — who led Brunswick by eight votes on Wednesday morning — finished with 89 votes, Brunswick got 78 and Hartley tallied 65.

The city also became the first Mat-Su electorate to reject a local option prohibiting commercial marijuana by 23 votes. A rejection of a proposed 1 percent increase in the city sales tax also failed.

In Wasilla, Tim Burney will unseat incumbent city councilman Alvah Buswell after getting 61.3 percent of the vote.

Wasilla voters also rejected a sales tax rate extension, meaning consumers will see a decrease to 2 percent.

Wasilla is the only municipality in the borough without a property tax.

The Mat-Su Borough board of canvass also completed a double check of the election night results, but likely will not post any updates to the latest figures until absentee, questioned, and other ballots have been counted. Clerk Lonnie McKechnie said she anticipated that might not happen until late next week at the earliest.

In the meantime, individual precincts reported minor changes, the most significant being that a recording error from a total reported for a Trunk Road precinct incorrectly reported 54 votes for mayoral candidate Vern Halter instead of 64 in the preliminary results. That widened Halter’s lead over incumbent Larry DeVilbiss to 189 votes, though more than 1,300 absentee, question, and other ballots remain outstanding.

Final election certification for the borough elections will be at a special borough assembly meeting Oct. 20.

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.