Newark Elects First New Mayor In 33 Years
NEWARK (CBS SF) -- Veteran City Councilman Alan Nagy will be Newark's first new mayor in 33 years, easily winning a three-candidate contest to replace David Smith, who announced earlier this year that he would not seek re-election.
Nagy received 46.2 percent of the vote, City Councilwoman Ana Apodaca received 32.5 percent and school board member Ray Rodriguez got 21.4 percent.
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Nagy, 70, has served on the City Council since 1980, which was two years after Smith was first elected.
He said financial stability, public safety and quality of life are the issues he will stress as mayor.
Longtime Newark resident and business owner Maria "Sucy" Collazo topped the five-candidate race for two seats on the City Council, getting 32.9 percent of the vote, and incumbent Luis Freitas kept his post by finishing a close second with 32.3 percent.
Mike Bucci finished third with 15.4 percent, Jack Dane was fourth with 10.6 percent, and Richard Bensco was fifth with 8.7 percent.
Newark voters narrowly approved Measure G, a $63 million bond measure to upgrade the city's aging schools.
The measure got 55.8 percent of the vote, just above the 55 percent total needed for approval, according to unofficial numbers.
In Livermore, City Councilman John Marchand was the top vote-getter, with 47.8 percent of the vote, compared to 46 percent for community activist Barbara Hickman.
But the race is too close to call because Marchand only leads Hickman by 225 votes and Alameda County Registrar of Voters Dave Macdonald said about 1,000 mail-in ballot still have to be counted.
College student Minuete McKernan finished a distant third with 6.2 percent of the vote.
Livermore parks district board member Laureen Turner and former Fire Chief Stu Gary were elected to the City Council, with 28 percent and 26.5 percent of the vote, respectively.
Air Force veteran and credit union marketing officer Bobby Burger finished third with 23.2 percent and outgoing Mayor Marshall Kamena finished fourth with 22.2 percent.
In Emeryville, University of California at Berkeley lecturer and first-time candidate Jacqueline Asher topped a five-candidate field running for three seats with 27 percent of the vote.
Incumbents Nora Davis and Ruth Atkin were re-elected with 25.3 percent and 25 percent, respectively.
However, veteran City Councilman Ken Bukowski, who was fined by the state for misusing campaign funds, finished out of the money in fourth place with only 13.2 percent of the vote. Commercial real estate attorney Michael Webber finished fifth with 9.5 percent.
Emeryville voters also overwhelmingly rejected a measure supported by Bukowski, Measure F, which would have called for the city to contract out for legal services instead of having a city attorney.
The City Council's four other members all opposed the measure and it lost by a margin of 65.3 percent opposed and 34.7 percent in favor.
However, Emeryville voters approved two measures that will slightly increase the city's revenues from business license fees.
Measure C, which will increase the tax rate from 0.08 percent of gross receipts to 0.10 percent, won with 81 percent in favor and 19 percent against.
The measure also will require Pixar Studios to once again pay the tax, which it had stopped doing after Disney acquired it in 2006.
Measure D, which will increase the annual cap on the business tax from $117,000 to $300,000, was approved by a margin of 79.4 percent to 20.6 percent.
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