LAKEPORT, Calif. – After a month of counting and careful checking, the Lake County Registrar of Voters Office completed its work of finalizing the Nov. 8 election results.
Registrar Diane Fridley and her staff were working to finish the official canvass right up until the 5 p.m. deadline on Tuesday.
The final counts she produced offered no significant changes from the preliminary results posted in the early morning hours of Nov. 9.
In the close race for District 1 supervisor, Jose “Moke” Simon III retained his 5-percent lead over Monica Rosenthal to win the seat.
The final count was 2,560 votes, or 52.5 percent, for Simon, with Rosenthal receiving 2,316 votes, or 47.5 percent.
In the race for District 4 supervisor, Tina Scott's lead over Martin Scheel narrowed by only a percentage point, but she still ended with a sizable 19.6 percent lead to win.
The final tally for Scott was 3,232 votes, or 59.6 percent, versus 2,170 votes, or 40.2 percent, for Scheel.
In the very close city council races, placement orders also remained the same, with the top three vote-getters in both the Clearlake and Lakeport fields winning seats.
In Clearlake, Nick Bennett topped the field with 1,895 votes or 23.7 percent, followed by Joyce Overton, with 1,699 votes or 21.2 percent, and Phil Harris, with 1,679 votes or 21 percent.
Finishing out of the running were Joey Luiz, 1,171 votes or 14.6 percent, followed by Bill Shields, with 1,135 votes or 14.2 percent, and Jeremy Mayfield, 424 votes or 5.3 percent.
In Lakeport, Kenny Parlet led a six-person field with 974 votes or 22.5 percent, followed by Tim Barnes, with 875 votes or 20.2 percent, and George Spurr, with 775 votes or 17.9 percent.
The remaining candidates included Ted Mandrones, 763 votes or 17.6 percent; Michael S. Green, 497 votes or 11.5 percent; and Nathan Maxman, 449 votes or 10.4 percent.
Bennett, Overton and Harris will take their oaths of office at the Clearlake City Council meeting on Thursday, Dec. 8.
Parlet, Barnes and Spurr will be sworn in at the Lakeport City Council's last meeting of the year on Tuesday, Dec. 20.
In the Middletown Unified School District, where two board seats were on the ballot, Sandy Tucker and Misha Grothe were elected.
Tucker received 1,844 votes, or 34.4 percent, while Grothe received 1,779 votes, or 33.1 percent.
The race's two remaining candidates were Sean Millerick, with 1,137 votes or 21.2 percent, and Helena Welsh, with 607 votes or 11.3 percent.
Measure V passage hailed as turning point by Clearlake officials
There were a total of nine local ballot measures this year – not all of them appearing countywide – and all but one passed.
The big news was the passage of Measure V, Clearlake's one-cent road sales tax.
The city of Clearlake had tried several times previously to get passed dedicated sales taxes that usually were divided up among various uses, such as roads, code enforcement and animal control.
However, in order to pass a specific tax, which cannot be spent on other uses, a specific tax must receive a supermajority of 66.7 percent of yes votes, which the city had found was a difficult target to reach.
However, this time around, Measure V was crafted for roads only, in response to what polling had indicated would be supported by the community, according to Councilman Bruno Sabatier.
The preliminary results released in November had Measure V with a 67.3 yes vote, compared to 32.7 percent of voters who said no.
By the time the final results were in on Tuesday, Measure V's approval level his risen to a more than two-to-one approval ratio.
The final count gave the measure a yes vote of 68.8 percent, or 2,684 ballots cast in its favor, versus 31.2 percent against it, or 1,219 no votes.
Sabatier, who served as a member of the volunteer committee that advocated for the measure, was ecstatic when he received word of the final results Tuesday evening.
“Were just so excited,” he said.
He added, “I love that the numbers went up instead of down. That invigorates me even more.”
He called the measure's passage “a turning point” for the city, and said he believes in the years to come the community will look back on Measure V's passage as the time when things started to change.
“This is the best thing we could do,” he said.
He lauded the committee – which he said was very well-rounded, with citizens from all walks of life – as well as City Manager Greg Folsom.
While city staff and council members cannot be involved with such political efforts in their official capacities, they can take part in their own time.
Sabatier said Folsom, in the role of a private citizen and Clearlake resident, volunteered his time to work on the effort to get the measure passed.
Folsom, reached at his office Tuesday evening, said he also was excited that voters decided to invest in the city's future by passing Measure V.
“Measure V is going to be the catalyst to not only improve our roads, but to improve the overall quality of life in the city of Clearlake,” he said. “I would like to thank the voters of Clearlake and we are looking forward to taking Clearlake to the next level!”
The only local ballot measure that failed was Measure X, which proposed changing the Clearlake city treasurer post from an elected to appointed job. That post hasn't had anyone run to fill it in nearly a decade and the job duties now are handled by Folsom.
City voters declined to make the change to the job by a narrow margin, with no votes totaling 1,865, or 50.5 percent, versus 1,829 yes votes, or 49.5 percent.
Measure W, which similarly asked to change the Clearlake city clerk from elected to appointed, passed with 1,864 yes votes, or 50.6 percent, versus 1,817 no votes, or 49.4 percent.
Regarding the rest of the November ballot measures, the breakdown is as follows:
• Measure A, Lucerne's school bond: yes, 801 votes, 71.2 percent; no, 324 votes, 28.8 percent.
• Measure B, the South Lake County Fire Protection District's appropriations limit increase: yes, 3,194 votes, 70.7 percent; no, 1,323 votes, 29.3 percent.
• Measure C, the county's cannabis use tax: yes, 14,806 votes, 62.7 percent; no, 8,810 votes, 37.3 percent.
• Measure Q, Yuba Community College bond reauthorization: yes, 6,513 votes, 61.5 percent; no, 4,076 votes, 38.5 percent.
• Measure Y, Konocti Unified School District bond: yes, 4,750 votes, 69.2 percent; no, 2,119 votes, 30.8 percent.
• Measure Z, the city of Lakeport's one-cent sales tax for public safety, roads and public facilities maintenance: yes, 1,247 votes, 61.9 percent; no, 766 votes, 38.1 percent.
Overall, voter turnout was strong, as it has tended to be in presidential election years.
Lake County has 34,707 registered voters, with 25,085 of them casting ballots in this year's election, for an overall voter turnout rate of 72 percent. That's compared to 67.8 percent in November 2012 and 73.6 percent in November 2008, based on Registrar of Voters records.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
