Final city council spot too close to call

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In a hotly-contested race between five individuals running for four slots on the Washington C.H. City Council, the race cannot be officially called due to nearly 60 provisional ballots and 19 outstanding absentee ballots that still have to be added into the general election total.

Unofficially, the four top vote-getters were incumbent Dale Lynch with 1,359 votes, Stephen Shiltz with 1,346, Caleb Johnson with 1,275, and incumbent Ted Hawk with 1,259. Incumbent city council member Kim Bonnell, who tallied 1,229 votes, is only 30 votes behind Hawk and 46 behind Johnson.

The Fayette County Board of Elections is expected to certify the election results on Tuesday, Nov. 21.

Two shoo-ins for city council are the the two top vote-getters, Lynch and Shiltz.

Lynch, who will serve his fourth term on city council, said he is truly appreciative to the community for their great support.

“I’m thankful for the support I get from the community,” he said. “Hopefully this means they think I’m doing a pretty good job for the people of the community. I look forward to working with members of city council for another four years.”

Lynch said economic development continues to be a high priority for himself and the rest of city council.

“One of the biggest problems we’ve had of course is having enough people to fill jobs,” said Lynch. “Part of that comes from the drug issue we have, which I’m working on quite a bit with our Faith In Recovery group, but we also need to get people to want to fill the jobs we have and then continue to look for new ones. We are working toward finding new businesses. I think we’ve made pretty good progress downtown but we want to continue to improve the downtown area.”

Shiltz, a newcomer to the city council, also thanked the citizens for supporting him in this election.

“I can’t wait to get started,” he said. “I feel it’s a privilege to work for the citizens of Washington Court House. I have some great ideas on the downtown and how to make it more pedestrian-friendly. I want to get started on that as soon as possible. We live in a great city and we want to keep it safe and secure together, so we can live here, raise our children here and someday retire here.”

Shiltz said he worked hard for every vote.

“I was out there knocking on doors, talking to people,” he said. “My whole family lives here in Washington Court House and we all are sociable people. I think I’m a good listener and that also helps.”

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Lynch, Shiltz top vote-getters in race

By Ryan Carter

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Reach Ryan Carter at 740-313-0352 or on Twitter @rywica

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