At Tuesday’s election, Harvard voters approved a $500,000 expenditure to study and design renovations at Hildreth Elementary School, and they elected Libby Levison of Old Shirley Road to a three-year term on the Board of Health. Measures to create a nine-member charter commission and change the office of town clerk from an elected to an appointed position passed easily.
The vote for the Board of Health seat held by incumbent Lorin Johnson was a close one. Johnson had served on the board for nine years. Both had predicted a close race, but it was Levison, a public health consultant, who won the contest by a dozen votes, 381 to 369.
While the vote to alter the position of town clerk passed easily by 405 to 339, votes in favor of the elementary school borrowing and the charter commission passed by even wider margins, 604 to 158 and 571 to 191, respectively.
In addition to creating a charter commission, voters chose its nine members from a slate of 15 candidates on the ballot. The elected commissioners are Paul Cohen, Rick Maiore, Sharon McCarthy, George McKenna, Stephanie Opalka, Ron Ostberg, Charles Redinger, Cindy Russo, and Peter Warren.
The write-in campaigns of Frank Culmone, Didi Chadran, and Christian Billodeau to fill open positions on the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Community Preservation Committee, as well as the office of tree warden, were all successful.
According to Town Clerk Janet Vellante, 800 voters, or 20 percent of Harvard’s registered electorate, took part in the election. It rained during the morning and at midday, and voter turnout was low during those hours, but toward evening the skies cleared, and the number of voters increased with the sunshine. Last year’s turnout was roughly identical, with 802 voters, or 21 percent of the electorate, casting ballots.
Complete election results are shown below.
| TOWN ELECTION, April 12, 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total votes cast: 800 (20% of 3,957 registered voters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
