Skagway municipal elections are complete, here are the official winners

 

Skagway officials named the winners in this year’s municipal election on Thursday night. It was the year of the incumbent as the mayor, two assembly seats and two school board seats all went in favor of returning candidates. 

On Thursday night incumbent Mayor Andrew Cremata was announced as the winner of Skagway’s mayoral race. He received 63% of the vote against Christy Murphy, a local businesswoman. KHNS’ Mike Swasey caught up to him for his reaction. 

Cremata – I’m honored that the community has put their trust in me for the third time, and I take that very seriously. And I am going to do my best. I also see that there was a number of people who voted for my opponent, and I’m here to listen to them too. So if somebody feels like they’ve been disenfranchised or not listened to, I really encourage them to come and talk to me.

Swasey – what are the most important, key factors moving forward to you?

Cremata – Port transition is something that obviously we’ve been dealing with for well before my tenure. We had a failed lease extension with White Pass and that led to really the situation we’re in today. So the transition includes things like ore basin remediation, it includes how we figure out how we’re going to deal with the transition from White Pass managing the Ore dock, the Broadway dock, and the uplands, and how the municipality’s going to do that.

(The) second most important thing is a lot of the work that I’ve been doing to ensure that we’re going to be able to get cruise ships next year, one. And that the tour operators are going to be able to get across the border into Canada.

 

Jay Burnham received the most votes of any assembly candidate with 75% of the votes going his way, outpacing the third-place challenger William Lockette II, who received 29%. He told KHNS he’s humbled to have been re-elected for the third time and he’s excited to continue working on his top priorities.

Burnham – The cleanup of the harbor, the municipality running their own port, and of course, a swimming pool after we get that taken care of. These next three years, I am actually going to be trying to move forward with getting some sort of a recreational pool that we can actually learn to swim in here in town.

Swasey – Anything you’d like to say to the people who voted?

Burnham – I’m always available to talk to you if you want to talk about any of the issues or if you just want to complain or have a great idea for the municipality, let me know.

 

Deb Potter won the other assembly seat with 69% of the vote and she explained what it meant to win her first election after being appointed to the assembly earlier this summer.

Potter – I got appointed three months ago it was July 2, my first assembly meeting was a week or two after that I think. You know kind of the bulk of the day I would be fine, and then right about five o’clock, I would just get all kinds of butterflies in my stomach. And so I was wondering if today was going to feel any different, being you know, the first time that now I’m officially elected. And it was, I didn’t get the butterflies until like 5:30 instead of 5:00.

Swasey – Is there anything you’d like to say to the voters?

Potter – First of all, thank you very much for voting. It was a really good turnout. The support means a lot and I do want to give a lot of credit to the two other candidates. Because even if, you know, they might not have won, they did start a dialogue that needed to be started and will continue.

The two school board seats were won by unopposed incumbents John Hischer and Cory Thole, they will each serve three-year terms. The newly elected officials will start their terms on October 11. In total 542 of Skagway’s 1,234 registered voters cast a ballot this year for a 44% voter turnout. That was approximately the same percentage as those who voted in last year’s local election.