Incumbents Roger Haut and Diane Hanson were reelected to the Jamestown Public School Tuesday in unofficial results, while Gayle Nelson was elected to serve her first four-year term on the board. Also elected to his first term was Aaron Roberts for the rural seat, defeating incumbent Steve Veldkamp.
"I just appreciate the confidence the voters have in themselves to put through to another term," Haut said. "I think that the people are wanting their voice heard so they were definitely sending their ballots. I would just like to thank everybody for sending their votes in this year."
According to the unofficial election results, Nelson led the field tallying 25.48% of the votes while Hanson recorded 25.33%. Of those who voted Tuesday, 24.84% voted for Haut. Newcomer Jamie Bear collected support from 24.11% of voters.
Unofficially there were 9,336 ballots cast for the school board's city seats. There were 2,379 ballots cast for Nelson and 2,365 for Hanson unofficially. Haut, previous JPS school board president, racked up 2,319 ballots. Bear had 2,251 votes. There were 22 total write-ins to make up 0.24% of the total voting numbers.
Roberts earned 59.61% of the 3,112 votes cast for the rural seat, with 40.1% of voters seeking to keep Veldkamp on the board. Roberts collected 1,855 votes while Veldkamp had 1,248 votes. There were nine total write-ins.
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Attempts to reach other candidates for comment Tuesday evening were unsuccessful.
"I think that a board needs to be diversified to be a good board," Haut said. "The more that we have - the more opinions and thoughts involved in decision making - we come up with the right answers."
