PAWLET — John Malcolm, Rich Hulett and Jessica Van Oort have won seats on the Pawlet Selectboard.
Malcolm, an incumbent, was the top vote-getter with 379 votes, winning a one-year term. Malcolm was a state representative for 10 years, and has served for three years on the selectboard, most recently as vice chair.
Two other board members, Edgar Cleveland and Charles Weeden, declined to run again, leaving two seats open.
Van Oort, with 243 votes, will fill the second one-year seat. She’s chair of the Pawlet Planning Commission and said she’s eager to engage with the town’s younger voters.
Hulett, who received 323 votes, won the three-year seat.
Among the seven candidates who competed for the remaining three seats on the board this Town Meeting Day was Daniel Banyai, the owner of Slate Ridge, a firearms training facility in West Pawlet. Banyai ran for both a three-year seat and a one-year seat, and came in last place for both. He received 4 votes and 18 votes respectively.
Slate Ridge has fueled a controversy that has received national attention in the small town of about 1,300 residents. On the facility’s Facebook page, Banyai has posted a number of threats against selectboard members and people who live nearby.
Had Banyai won a seat, he would have joined a board that has pursued legal action against him. In environmental court, a judge recently issued a preliminary injunction, requiring Slate Ridge, which bills itself as a training facility, to temporarily stop training. The town argued that the facility was an improper use of land in a residential zone.
Van Oort said she was relieved that Banyai didn’t get many votes.
“I’m very proud of us for standing up to a bully,” she said.
Hulett lives a five-minute walk from Slate Ridge and has been at the center of some of Banyai’s threatening posts, including one that showed “Hulett Trucking” written in marker on a car door that was shot up during a training held at the facility. A judge recently granted his wife, Mandy Hulett, a no-stalking order against Banyai.
Hulett said he’d been thinking about a run for the board for years.
“The town has spoken,” he said about Banyai’s loss. “I look forward to working with the board to keep the town running efficiently and address both existing and future matters, whatever they may be.”
Estella Leach, who served on the board in 2007, ran for both seats and received 133 votes for the one-year term and 34 votes for the three-year term. Martin Kravitt, a local architect, also ran for both seats and received 69 votes for the one-year term and 18 votes for the three-year term.
Maureen Brown was the second-highest vote-getter for the three-year term with 104 votes. Brown and Van Oort ran a campaign together.
