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| Tim Clark, Lucy Wallace, and Ken Ashe greet voters in front of Bromfield on a rainy Tuesday. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz) |
By a margin of 43 of the 1,554 votes cast for Board of Selectmen in Tuesday’s town election, Lucy Wallace, of Orchard Hill, defeated Rhonda Sprague, of Prospect Hill Road. Wallace will be returning to the board she left in 2010 after serving 12 years.
According to results from Town Clerk Janet Vellante, Wallace received 790 votes to Sprague’s 747. The Town Clerk classified three votes as “scatterings” and reported 14 were left blank.
“It was a close race, and I had a sense it was becoming a close race, based on some emails and the like that were going around [as Tuesday approached,]” Wallace told the Press Wednesday morning. “…Obviously, I’m delighted that the majority of voters decided I deserved a fifth term on the Board of Selectmen.”
Sprague, a local real estate broker and member of the Historical Commission and Community Preservation Committee, told the Press Wednesday she was too busy to comment.
Now a veteran of several successful campaigns, Wallace said she was struck by how much more expensive campaigning has become than it used to be. Campaigning in Harvard used to mean holding signs at the dump and passing out photocopied flyers, she said. Now, supporters post and hold signs throughout the town for several weeks and mail glossy fliers townwide, “which means you’re out there spending a lot of time fundraising,” Wallace said.
From feedback she received during this campaign, Wallace said, she also learned that many town residents have become annoyed by the sign holders who surround the entrance to the school parking lots and by receiving campaign emails from people they don’t know. Wallace said she directed her team not to do either of those things after she became aware they were bothering people.
“They got tired of a lot of the inundation and lots of multiple mailings, and I think that’s something to think about,” Wallace said. “…I think we need to be mindful of overusing some of the tools we use now.”
As the Board of Selectmen resumes its work, with Wallace replacing Peter Warren, who did not seek reelection, Wallace said the board’s priorities should include proceeding with the renovation of Town Hall and working with the Master Plan Steering Committee (of which Wallace was a member) to determine the town’s position on the disposition of Devens.
An article to spend $100,000 to complete updating the 2002 Master Plan passed at Annual Town Meeting Saturday without discussion, save a presentation from the steering committee. The steering committee says it will use a large portion of that money to study the impact of the different disposition scenarios on Harvard and to educate Harvard residents on the results of that study.
Other election results
In the only other contested race on the ballot Tuesday, Sharon McCarthy, of East Bare Hill Road, won a seat on the Board of Health over John Rizzo, of Oak Hill Road, 930 to 460 with 164 left blank.
In a race of write-in candidates, incumbent Tom Aciukewicz (56 votes) and Brian Schimpf (36 votes) won three-year terms as Warner Free Lecture Society trustees over Michele Girard (30 votes) and Fred Hinchliffe (17 votes). Tim Borton won a two-year term with 32 votes over Girard’s seven.
Although she had announced in April that she was dropping out of the race, Sharon Cronin, of Slough Road, still received 586 votes for School Committee, good enough for third against incumbent Patricia Wenger, of Westcott Road (810 votes), and Robert Sullebarger, of Simon Atherton Row (682 votes). Sullebarger will replace Piali De, who did not seek reelection.
Both Proposition 2½ debt exclusion ballot questions passed. Those votes were 755 to 736 for the Town Hall building project (see related story), and 827 to 624 for the reconstruction of Littleton County Road.
| 2012 ANNUAL TOWN ELECTION | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total votes cast: 1,554 (41% of 3,795 registered voters) |
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