by Dennis Dalman
news@thenewsleaders.com
Political newcomer Amy Braig-Lindstrom and incumbent Steve Hennes were elected to the Sartell City Council in Tuesday’s election.
Council incumbent Sandra Cordie and challenger Mike “Spike” Piotrowski failed in their bid for seats on the council.
Braig-Lindstrom received 4,076 votes; Hennes garnered 3,750 votes; Cordie had 3,009 votes; and Piotrowski had 1,471 votes.
Hennes has served on the Sartell City Council since he was first elected in 2006. Now retired, Hennes served for more than 30 years as director of the Whitney Senior Center in St. Cloud. Braig-Lindstrom, a relative newcomer to Sartell, is the founder of the farmers’ market in the city. She is also a potter.
The Sartell-St. Stephen School Board now has four new members: Krista Laurich Durrwachter,
Michelle Meyer, Jason Nies and Pam Raden.
Laurich Durrwachter, Nies and Raden were elected to four-year terms on the board; Meyer, who has served on the board previously, was elected to a two-year term. The two recent appointees to the school board, Chris Gross and Gary L. Schnellert, were defeated in the Tuesday election. They had been appointed toward the end of this year to fill in for two members who resigned – Julie Zupfer Anderson and Patrick Jacobson-Schulte.
Throughout this year, controversy has raged around the school board, with many questioning the board’s decisions and what has been perceived as its members’ lack of communication with one another and the public. The board’s decisions to end spring break, its methods of appointing members and the way it went about renewing the superintendent’s contract caused divisions on the board and among the public.
After Tuesday’s election, the only original members left on the board from this year are Mary McCabe and Dan Riordan, the board’s chairman.
The following are the vote totals for each of the 10 candidates: Four-year terms: Pam Raden: 3,885; Krsta Laurich Durrwachter: 3,666; Jason Nies: 3,524; Molly Vogt: 2,658; Dan Goetz: 1,958; Keith Yapp: 1,912; Chris Gross: 1,320; and Christopher Condon: 967.
Two-year term: Michelle Meyer: 6,079 and Gary L. Schnellert: 1,526.