[K]ristine Lott was elected mayor of Winooski on Tuesday.
Also approved on the Town Meeting Day ballot were a $9.7 million bond vote to build a parking garage on Abenaki Way, a $3.7 million bond vote for the construction of wastewater infrastructure under Hickock Street and a 1 percent local option sales tax.
An upbeat Lott said Tuesday she was excited by her mayoral victory, noting she was the first woman to win the post and that it happened during Women’s History Month.
Lott defeated Eric Covey 650-478 in a race where the two agreed to campaign without criticizing each other. Both served on the City Council. Covey will keep his position there.
“I’m really excited. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I had a pretty positive feeling, but you don’t know,” Lott said in an interview.
Lott is a business analyst who campaigned on keeping Winooski affordable — with a focus both on low-income housing and affordable housing for the middle class. She said one of her goals was to increase home ownership in Winooski, which she noted has a large number of rental units.
Seth Leonard, the previous mayor, stepped down early this year. Lott will serve the remaining two years of the three-year term. The job is a volunteer position, with a $3,000 a year stipend. The race was not party affiliated.
With voters passing two major projects at town meeting, including a $9.7 million, 300-vehicle downtown parking garage, Lott said the city will have a “full plate” of work to implement.
“The staff will be very busy and the community busy adjusting to the changes,” she said.
One Winooski voter, Valerie Visconti, said that both candidates campaigned in very different ways with Covey, the chief of staff for Secretary of State Jim Condos, opting for fewer in-person meetings and more mailings along with a large presence on the internet forum Front Porch Forum.
Visconti said Lott had more a more traditional way of reaching voters by having meet-and-greets at clubs and at people’s homes.
Meanwhile, though the new parking garage measure won approval, multiple voters, early in the day at the polling station, said they did not support the ballot initiative for the project.
Covey said it has been a challenge making people understand that the project will not make people’s property taxes go up and that this may be why there is opposition to the ballot measure. The garage will be fully paid for by its users, and will not come at an additional cost for Winooski taxpayers.
“I voted down on that because we’ve already got a parking garage,” Justin Beebe, who works in construction, said. “I feel like there’s ample parking around you know, especially for the downtown area. There’s areas you can park that you don’t have to pay for metered parking.”
Sandy Senica and her husband, Dave, also voted against the measure. Sandy Senica said that as senior citizens making sure Winooski stays affordable is very important and that this project would bloat in cost and the taxpayers would be left to foot the bill.
“We’re senior citizens, and we’re on a fixed income and when they start taxing us to the point that we are getting taxed out of our homes, that’s not cool,” Dave Senica, Sandy’s husband said.
The town also elected two city councilors, James Duncan and Amy Lafayette, for two-year terms, and a third, Michael Myers, to serve the remaining one year of the two-year term.
Voters also approved the $7.3 million town budget, mostly paid for by property taxes, an $18 million school budget and a $2.4 million expenditure for compensatory education and special programs. Matthew Macneil and Margaret Bass were elected as school trustees.
The ballot’s bond votes to pay for wastewater infrastructure and a parking garage passed with 85 percent and 63 percent of the vote, respectively.
Winooski had 1,186 total votes cast — a voter turnout of about 16 percent.
