In Oxford Twp., incumbent candidate for the open township trustee position Kate Rousmaniere defeated Glenn Ellerbe with nearly 75% of the vote. Ellerbe has served on Oxford City Council for the past eight years and was term-limited.
For Rousmaniere, Tuesday was an exciting day, and not just for her personal reelection.
“I’m also happy about other local and state elections,” Rousmaniere said. “Election Day is one of my favorite days.”
Tuesday’s turnout and ballot initiatives show that “democracy is working” and signals that elected officials need to pay attention to their constituents, Rousmaniere said. Locally, a ballot initiative on election aggregation passed in Oxford Township, so Rousmaniere said she and the other trustees will now work to purchase electrical services for citizens at a cheaper rate.
Rousmaniere is also a member of Oxford’s Coalition for a Healthy Community. She said one of her priorities over the next term is to improve health and wellness in rural areas and combat drug and alcohol addiction.
For Snavely, Tuesday’s results were humbling, especially given the strength of each candidate, whom he encouraged to run again in the future.
“We had four good candidates running for three spots,” he said. “It’s a difficult decision in many ways.”
Snavely said his next four years in government may be his last. In that time, he hopes to make more progress on the council’s three big goals of climate action, housing for all and economic development.
Beyond that, Snavely is passionate about providing better funding for the city’s fire department.
“It’s at a crisis stage right now,” Snavely said, “and we need to take a hard look at what kind of support we can get.”
Bracken echoed Snavely’s concerns about the fire department. In his next four years on council, he plans to continue prioritizing climate initiatives to limit Oxford’s carbon emissions, including by placing a solar farm on the city’s closed landfill and by getting local residents involved.
“We’re doing stuff to educate, reach out and work with the public,” Bracken said. “We’ve had initiatives for pollinator gardens in people’s yards. We have composting that we collect with the people of our community.”
While Bracken was happy to be reelected, he said the biggest wins for voters on Tuesday were in the ballot initiatives to protect reproductive rights in the Ohio constitution and legalize marijuana across the state.
Smith will now return to local government after previously serving on city council for eight years from 2013 until 2021, including as mayor for his last two years. He plans to focus on affordable housing over his next term.
While affordable housing projects sometimes receive pushback from the community, including at the most recent city council meeting, Smith said local elected officials can engage with their communities on a personal level to change minds.
“It’s easy to just sit back and complain about things,” Smith said. “But I realized over my previous two terms … that people will really engage me, especially when they have a problem or concern, so I can really do the community some good by helping people out when they have a problem.”
Smith said he was encouraged to run for office once again by those same constituents who he engaged with when he was last in office.
“I was just starting to enjoy some free time,” Smith said, “but I was encouraged by a lot of people in town [who] asked if I would run again.”
Oxford’s current city council has one meeting left on Nov. 21, and then the new council will meet on Nov. 27 to swear everyone in and determine a new mayor and vice-mayor.
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