2012 ELECTION: Miller, Whiston claim commissioners’ seats; Obama re-elected

By Randa Wagner –

Mor­row County vot­ers have elected Richard Miller and Tom Whis­ton to fill the two con­tested com­mis­sion­ers’ posts.

Unof­fi­cial final results at 10:30 p.m. Tues­day show Miller secured just over 60% of the votes; Glenda Wil­son had 39% and write in can­di­date Roger Meyer came in with less than 1%.

Com­mis­sioner Tom Whis­ton retained his seat with 8,614 votes against John Gersper, with 5,703.

Of 24,766 reg­is­tered vot­ers in Mor­row County, 15,969 turned out to vote (64.48%), with 194 out­stand­ing absen­tees and 423 out­stand­ing pro­vi­sion­als.
Issue 1 and Issue 2 were both defeated by Ohio vot­ers. Nation­ally, Nov. 7 results (97% counted) show Pres­i­dent Barack Obama lead­ing Mitt Rom­ney with 59,725,134 votes to Romney’s 57,098,650 votes.

Vot­ers turned down the Roads and Bridges Vehi­cle License Tax 12,008/3,430; Mor­row County Board of Devel­op­men­tal Disabilities/Whetstone Indus­tries Replace­ment and Increase levies 8,680/6,727; Cardington-Lincoln Local Schools Addi­tional levy 1667 /884; Mor­row County Health Depart­ment 8,292/7,040; Mor­row County Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices 8,841/6,510; Sheriff’s Office Oper­at­ing, Main­te­nance, and Repair levy 9,020/6,299; Edi­son Vil­lage Cur­rent Expenses Renewal levy 99/97; and Gilead Twp Fire Pro­tec­tion Addi­tional levy 1,335/1,198 and Ceme­ter­ies Addi­tional levy 1,768/929.

Vot­ers approved Chester­ville Vil­lage Replace­ment levy 59/27; Edi­son Vil­lage Streets Renewal levy 115/82; Sparta Vil­lage Cur­rent Expenses Renewal levy 35/22; Card­ing­ton Vil­lage and Card­ing­ton Twp Ceme­ter­ies Renewal levy 646/598; Franklin Twp Roads Renewal levy 433/285 and Fire Pro­tec­tion Renewal levy 465/252; Perry-Congress Twp Fire Pro­tec­tion Renewal levy 1.278/689; S Bloom­field Twp Fire Pro­tec­tion Renewal levy 523/313; Troy Twp Local Option Beer, Wine, Mixed Bev­er­ages, Spir­i­tu­ous Liquor 322/239 and Sun­day Sales 295/262.

Demo­c­rat Sher­rod Brown retained his seat with 2,091,082 votes against Josh Mandel’s 1,906,060 votes.

12th Dis­trict Rep. Con­gress­man Pat Tiberi won a sec­ond term with 183,370 votes against Jim Reese with 112,777 votes.

The fail­ure of the Devel­op­men­tal Dis­abil­i­ties levy will prove to be a real chal­lenge for the Whet­stone Board. Super­in­ten­dent Nancy Foglesong offered this state­ment regard­ing the levy’s defeat:

First, on behalf of the Mor­row County Board of DD, I want to express our sin­cere appre­ci­a­tion to our sup­port­ers, who have vol­un­teered count­less hours and donated per­sonal money to spread how great the need is in Mor­row County for cit­i­zens with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties. Most impor­tantly, I want to address these indi­vid­u­als, both those cur­rently receiv­ing ser­vices which are threat­ened by inad­e­quate local fund­ing, and those who con­tinue to wait for ser­vices. We do not want them to take this loss per­son­ally or to lose hope, but sadly our board faces some very dif­fi­cult chal­lenges in the imme­di­ate future and as a county we con­tinue a grave injus­tice to those who des­per­ately need these services.

We still have much work to do to increase aware­ness within Mor­row County. With the loss of renewal options on the levies we had in place over 10 years ago, the Board’s only option is to request new funds through a replace­ment or addi­tional levy, and per­haps vot­ers just do not under­stand. No one wants to increase taxes, but the tax rev­enue Whet­stone receives is sig­nif­i­cantly less than what we had in place over ten years ago. This local fund­ing is nec­es­sary as match to secure fed­eral and state fund­ing and when the fed­eral par­tic­i­pa­tion per­cent­age is reduced, our fed­eral rev­enue is imme­di­ately reduced, effec­tively increas­ing the local match that is required. Just imag­ine after cut­ting your per­sonal bud­get in half, find­ing out that your pay­check has been reduced sud­denly by 10% with no option to increase your income elsewhere!

Con­trol­ling our local oper­at­ing bud­get is just a small part of our chal­lenge. We are required to ensure the health and safety of indi­vid­u­als receiv­ing res­i­den­tial ser­vices and these costs steadily increase as our pop­u­la­tion ages and needs addi­tional med­ical ser­vices. There are no good options for con­sid­er­a­tion. The only ser­vices we have to reduce are adult day ser­vices and trans­porta­tion, which the pub­lic has con­sis­tently indi­cated they want us to con­tinue, how­ever our three-year rev­enue pro­jec­tion does not meet this oblig­a­tion. We have so many aging adults who do not have liv­ing rel­a­tives or have aging or med­ically frag­ile care­tak­ers and they rely on their neigh­bors to help them. It is often said that the mea­sure of a com­mu­nity is judged by how it takes care of those who need help; we must change Mor­row County’s image and stand­ing as the low­est voted sup­port in the State of Ohio. No one knows when a fam­ily mem­ber may sud­denly need our ser­vices, but it should not take an unfor­tu­nate per­sonal expe­ri­ence to real­ize the impor­tance of these ser­vices. It is a sad day for so many cit­i­zens in Mor­row County who just need a help­ing hand.”

Mor­row County Unof­fi­cial Results
Reg­is­tered Vot­ers 24,774
Par­tic­i­pat­ing Vot­ers 15,969

Office, Can­di­dates and # of votes

Obama/Biden 5780 36.47%
Romney/Ryan 9662 60.97%
Alexander/Mendoza 22 0.14%
Duncan/Johnson 69 0.44%
Goode/Clymer 37 0.23%
Johnson/Gray 166 1.05%
Stein/Honkala 77 0.49%
Daniels/Veneskey 0 0.00%
Keyton/Jennelle 0 0.00%
Reed/Cary 0 0.00%
Robertson/Fall 0 0.00%
Terry/Lewis 0 0.00%
Vargo/Angeletti 2 0.01%

U.S. Sen­a­tor
Total Votes 15676
Sher­rod Brown 5400 34.45%
Josh Man­del  9203 58.71%
Scott A. Rupert 1073 6.84%

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Con­gress (12th Dis­trict)
Total Votes 15405
Jim Reese 4780 31.03%
Pat Tiberi 10625 68.97%

State Sen­a­tor (26th Dis­trict)
Total Votes 14696
Tanyce J. Addi­son 5211 35.46%
Dave Burke 9485 64.54%

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (87th Dis­trict)
Total Votes 14506
Jef­frey Lehart 5051 34.82%
Jeff McClain 9455 65.18%

County Com­mis­sioner (Full Term Com­menc­ing 1–2-13)
Total Votes 11139
Tom E. Harden 11139 100.00%

County Com­mis­sioner (Full Term Com­menc­ing 1–3-13)
Total Votes 14182
Richard J. Miller 8543 60.24%
Glenda G. Wil­son 5493 38.73%
Roger L. Meyer 95 0.67%

County Com­mis­sioner (Unex­pired Term End­ing 12–31-14)
Total Votes 14317
John P. Gersper 5703 39.83%
Thomas E. Whis­ton 8614 60.17%

Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney
Charles S. How­land 11020 100.00%

Clerk of Court of Com­mon Pleas
Vanessa K. Mills 10984 100.00%

County Sher­iff
Steven R. Bren­ne­man 11829 100.00%

County Recorder
Dixie L. Shin­aberry 11381 100.00%

County Trea­surer
Tim­o­thy D. Garry 10789 100.00%

County Engi­neer
L. Randy Bush 9820 100.00%

County Coro­ner
Matthew A. Hintz 11316 100.00%

1st State Board of Edu­ca­tion
Total Votes 11245
Stan­ley Jack­son 5237 46.57%
Ann E. Jacobs 6008 53.43%

Jus­tice of the Supreme Court
(Full Term Com­menc­ing 1–1-13)
Total Votes 11878
Ter­rence O’Donnell 8667 72.97%
Mike Skindell 3211 27.03%

Jus­tice of the Supreme Court
(Full Term Com­menc­ing 1–2-13)
Total Votes 11893
Robert R. Cupp 6521 54.83%
William M. O’Neill 5372 45.17%

Jus­tice of the Supreme Court
(Unex­pired Term End­ing 12–31-14)
Total Votes 11905
Yvette McGee Brown 4174 35.06%
Sharon L. Kennedy 7731 64.94%

Judge Court of Appeals 5th Dist (Full
Term Com­menc­ing 2–9-13)
John W. Wise 9583 100.00%

Judge Court of Appeals 5th Dist
(Full Term Com­menc­ing 2–10-13)
Scott Gwin 8650 100.00%

Judge Court of Appeals 5th Dist
(Full Term Com­menc­ing 2–11-13)
Total Votes 10649
Patri­cia A. Delaney 6758 63.46%
Jeanette Moll 3891 36.54%

Judge of the Court of Com­mon Pleas
(Full Term Com­menc­ing 1–1-13)
Robert C. Hick­son Jr 10441 100.00%

State Issue 1
Total Votes 14626
YES 2942 20.11%
NO 11684 79.89%

State Issue 2
Total Votes 14442
YES 3104 21.49%
NO 11338 78.51%

Chester­ville Vil­lage
(Replace­ment Cur­rent Exp 5 Years 3 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 59 68.60%
Against The Tax Levy 27 31.40%

Edi­son Vil­lage (Renewal Roads 5 Years 2 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 115 58.38%
Against The Tax Levy 82 41.62%

Edi­son Vil­lage ( Renewal Cur­rent Exp 5 Years 1 Mill)
For The Tax Levy 97 49.49%
Against The Tax Levy 99 50.51%

Edi­son Vil­lage (Replace­ment Fire 5 Years 1.5 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 101 51.27%
Against The Tax Levy 96 48.73%

Sparta Vil­lage (Renewal Cur­rent Exp 5 Years 3.4 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 35 61.40%
Against The Tax Levy 22 38.60%

Card­ing­ton TWP (Renewal Ceme­ter­ies 3 Years 2.6 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 646 51.93%
Against The Tax Levy 598 48.07%

Franklin TWP (Renewal Roads 3 Years 2.5 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 433 60.31%
Against The Tax Levy 285 39.69%

Franklin TWP (Renewal Fire 5 Years 0.5 Mill)
For The Tax Levy 465 64.85%
Against The Tax Levy 252 35.15%

Gilead TWP (Addi­tional Fire 5 Years 1 Mill)
For The Tax Levy 1198 47.30%
Against The Tax Levy 1335 52.70%

Gilead TWP (Addi­tional Ceme­ter­ies 5 Years 1 Mill)
For The Tax Levy 929 34.45%
Against The Tax Levy 1768 65.55%

Perry-Congress TWP (Renewal Fire 3 Years 1 Mill)
For The Tax Levy 1278 64.97%
Against The Tax Levy 689 35.03%

S Bloom­filed TWP (Renewal Fire 5 Years 2.75 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 523 62.56%
Against The Tax Levy 313 37.44%

Troy TWP (Local Option Liquor License)
YES 322 57.40%
NO 239 42.60%

Troy TWP (Local Option Sun­day Sales)
YES 295 52.96%
NO 262 47.04%

Elm Val­ley Joint Fire (Addi­tional 30 Years .97 Mill)
For The Tax Levy 571 47.31%
Against The Tax Levy 636 52.69%

Card­ing­ton Lin­coln Local School
(Addi­tional Cur­rent Exp 5 Years .75%)
For The Tax 884 34.65%
Against The Tax 1667 65.35%

Fred­er­ick­town Recre­ation (Renewal 3 Years 1.5 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 0 0.00%
Against The Tax Levy 1 100.00%

Galion City Schools (Addi­tional Cur­rent Exp 5 Years 8 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 25 23.15%
Against The Tax Levy 83 76.85%
Over­all Total votes 5,313
For the tax levy 1,742
Against the tax levy 3,571

River Val­ley Schools (Renewal Emer­gency 5 Years 2.9 Mills)
For The Tax Levy 123 49.60%
Against The Tax Levy 125 50.40%
Over­all Total votes
For the tax levy 3,115
Against the tax levy 2,578

Tri-Rivers Voca­tional (Addi­tional Improving/Rebuilding 10 Years 0.5 Mill)
For The Tax Levy 3563 31.78%
Against The Tax Levy 7648 68.22%
Over­all Total votes
For the tax levy 10,640
Against the tax levy 15,088

Mor­row County Engi­neer (Addi­tional Roads and Bridges $10.00 BMV Tax)
Total Votes 15438
YES 3430 22.22%
NO 12008 77.78%

Mor­row County Health Dept (Replace­ment 10 Years 0.5 Mill)
Total Votes 15332
For The Tax Levy 7040 45.92%
Against The Tax Levy 8292 54.08%

Mor­row County Sher­iff Office (Addi­tional, Oper­at­ing Exp., Con­tin­u­ing
Total Votes 15319
For The Tax Levy 6299 41.12%
Against The Tax Levy 9020 58.88%

Mor­row County Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices
(Addi­tional 10 Years 0.5 Mill) Total
Total Votes 15351
For The Tax Levy 6510 42.41%
Against The Tax Levy 8841 57.59%

Mor­row County Whet­stone Indus­tries
(Replace+Increase Con­tin­u­ing 2.5 Mills)
Total Votes 15407
For The Tax Levy 6727 43.66%
Against The Tax Levy  8680 56.34%

Posted by Randa Wagner on Nov 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.