April 6, 2023 at 2:57 p.m.
Election roundup: New town chairs in Newbold, Crescent, Stella
Election roundup: New town chairs in Newbold, Crescent, Stella
By River News Staff-
The April 4 election saw chairperson changes for a few towns with contested races in the Northwoods River News coverage area.
Newbold is of those town boards with a new look town board coming out of the April election.
Town supervisor Dan Hess ran unopposed for town chairman and will take over for Dave Kroll, who decided not to run for another term.
There were four candidates for two of the four town supervisor seats.
Petra Pietrzak received the most votes with 485 while Scott Ridderbusch placed second with 404. Bradley White finished third with 368 votes and Steve Macheichok had 259.
Crescent
Former Oneida County supervisor Robb Jensen managed to unseat town chairman Joel Knutson, 445 votes to 421.
Incumbent Crescent town supervisors Kyla Waksmonski and Michael Pazdernik were re-elected. Pazdernik defeated Steve Brich 455-314 for seat No. 2 on the town board. Waksmonski retained the other seat, running unopposed.
Stella
There's a change in town leadership in Stella as well as incumbent town chairman Dave Brunette came up short in his re-election bid.
Kristen Hanneman defeated Brunette, 113 votes to 109.
With town supervisor Bob Goodin not running for re-election, the new town supervisor is Jerome Pokorny, who finished with 133 votes.
The other incumbent town supervisor, Rich Hirman also, like Pokorny, basically ran unopposed and finished with 178 votes.
Monico
In Monico, there were three candidates for two town supervisor seats. Ben Briggs finished in first place with 79 votes while Nancy Fisher had 41. Third-place finisher Catherine Fisher had 35 votes.
Woodboro
Bill Rudis retained his seat on the town board, garnering the most votes among three candidates vying for two seats.
Rudis gathered 174 votes and will be joined on the board by Amanda Pontell, who outpaced Jeff Otto 158-104 for the second seat, which was vacated by Jim Engman who was not on the ballot.
Uncontested races
Three current members of the School District of Rhinelander Board of Education won re-election on Tuesday as Duane Frey, Mike Roberts and Merlin Van Buren retained their seats. They were the only three running for the three seats up for grabs on the board. Roberts led the trio with 3,757 votes, Frey had 3,500 votes and Van Buren had 3,318. There were 107 write-in votes cast.
Elsewhere, Patty Francoeur (Cassian), George DeMet (Lake Tomahawk), Robert Briggs (Monico), David Hollands (Pelican), Jim Flory (Pine Lake), Scott Holewinski (Sugar Camp) and Phil Kriesel (Woodboro) won town chair races unopposed.
Richard Herman and John Schaub (Cassian), Stephanie Sowatzka and Lenore Lopez (Lake Tomahawk), James Cates andâWalter Dahlquist Jr. (Pelican), Jennifer Cordy and Brian Gehrig (Pine Lake), and Paul Sowinski and Chris Rhode (Sugar Camp) took town supervisor roles in races were there were as many declared candidates as available seats.
Voter turnout
In Oneida County, 26,309 were registered to vote in the spring election. County clerk Tracy Hartman said 13,097, or 49.78%, voted Tuesday.
That number, she said, includes absentees.
"That's a pretty decent turnout," Hartman told the River News Wednesday. "We had some towns that had higher turnout and some that had lower."
She said by comparison in Oneida County, turnout in last year's spring election was 30% and in 2021, was 26%. In April, 2020, Oneida County's turnout total was 47%.
"For an April election, Tuesday was a pretty good turnout for the county," Hartman said.
Lakeland Times News Director Brian Jopek contributed to this report from Minocqua.
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