Math teacher wins Willits Council seat by 5 votes
WILLITS, CA., 12/4/24 — Willits High School math teacher Matthew Alaniz works with numbers every day, but the number 17 was one that seemed to count against him on Nov. 5.
That was how many votes he was losing by when the election night vote count was tallied.
But when all the mail-in votes were tabulated, Alaniz had turned a 17 vote deficit into a five-vote winner, thus taking third place and the last open seat on the Willits City Council 663-658. In another twist, he beat out fellow teacher Robin Leier. Leier is retired from full-time teaching at Willits High and working as a substitute teacher.
“I had already resigned myself to having lost,” Alaniz said in a Tuesday interview. “I had accepted it, and this came as a pleasant surprise. But by the narrowest of possible margins.”
Final results in all Mendocino County’s elections were released and certified Tuesday, Dec. 3, with Alaniz’s win the only reversal of the results announced by Katrina Bartolomie, head of county elections, at the close of election night. A total of 39,837 of 54,640 registered voters cast ballots for a turnout of 72.91%. Bartolomie was surprised by the lower-than-expected turnout. That number was lower than either of the last two presidential elections. The presidential election turnout in 2020 was 82.26% and in 2016 it was 75.89%, she said.
“We were so busy with so many people throughout the entire election day,” Bartolomie said. “The final turnout number amazed me. It seemed like much higher turnout was happening while the election was going on.”
To Bartolomie, the election process takes too long under the current system. She would like to see the state improve the process to make it less expensive and less confusing so that votes can be counted in a shorter amount of time. Dec. 3 was the soonest the county could certify the vote under the current system. She thinks having polling places again would be preferable to having a ballot mailed to every voter. People show up at the small number of polling places to vote, only to face delays and confusion if they didn’t bring their ballot with them.
“The process needs some rethinking,” Bartolomie said.
In Mendocino County Donald Trump got 34 percent of the vote for president and Kamala Harris earned 64 percent of the vote.
The final election results show county residents voted on all the ballot measures and candidates. There were 14 councils and boards on the ballot.
Willits City Council winners and losers
Incumbent Gerardo “Gerry” Gonzalez and “newcomer” (at least to the council) and former Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman were the top two vote-getters in the Willits City Council race for three seats. Alaniz, who has lived in Willits for eight years, said he was the first candidate to file papers. He did so because he was distressed by the lack of choice both locally and on the national scene. He was pleasantly surprised when the others joined in, including the well-known Allman. Alaniz said Willits voters had great choices for city leadership. He has been attending council meetings for more than a year and says he has no specific list of changes to make. “My main goal is to get myself into the rhythm of things,” he said, though he did talk about the need for more housing. His wife is Tamara Alaniz, general manager of Brooktrails.
Alaniz said all the candidates were on the “same team.” Alaniz was friends with Leier before the election and said he planned to reach out to her. “There are no hard feelings there, all of us were about giving people a choice,” he said.
In another interview, Leier agreed. She has made two previous runs for the council and says she is fine with the narrow loss and won’t be requesting a recount. She said the city and the council are going in a much more positive direction now than in the past. In her campaign, she knocked on hundreds of doors and in the process learned a huge amount about her city. “I found several great projects for me to work on,” she said.
Fifth place in the race went to Saprina Rodriguez, incumbent and present mayor of Willits. Incumbent Madge Strong chose not to run for reelection.
Only three ballot measures got sufficient votes to become law, two in Fort Bragg and one in Point Arena.
Fort Bragg sales tax measures T and U passed with over 78 percent of the vote. That means Fort Bragg will get to collect higher sales and hotel taxes. Point Arena voters also approved a new sales tax by a similar margin.
Two measures to fund fire services, Measure V in Ukiah Valley and Measure S for Albion-Little River, got majority votes but failed to reach the two-thirds threshold needed to pass. The Measure V vote was close on election night, but hopes for passage with the required 66 percent were dashed. The only local ballot measure to get a majority no vote was Ukiah’s effort to increase its own hotel or Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT).
Looking to make sense of the election?
The League of Women Voters of Mendocino County Dec.15 meeting from 3-5 p.m. at the Community Center of Mendocino offers a program on the results of the Nov. 5 election and what county residents can expect in the future. This will be a hybrid meeting; in person attendance is welcome (coffee and tea provided), and a Zoom link will be available from the League’s website https://my.lwv.org/california/mendocino-county. The Community Center is located at 998 School St. in Mendocino. For more information, call 707-937-4952.
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