Council seat undecided
by Lenny Roberts

Disappointed yet optimistic. That's how Ojai City Council candidate Bruce Roland summed it up the day after he finished fourth out of six contestants for the three available seats on Ojai's governing board.
"I guess I'm not going to Disneyland," he said.
But is he really out of the race? Only time will tell - specifically the time it takes for the Ventura Registrar of Voters Office to count absentee and provisional ballots, which they have set at Nov. 26.
Roland garnered 1,016 votes, or 17.2 percent of those who cast their ballots in Tuesday's general election, 235 votes behind front-runner Mayor Pro Tem Joe Devito, 190 behind Councilman David Bury, and a scant 10 votes, or .2 percent, in back of first-time candidate Carol Smith, a registered nurse and supporter of defeated Measure C, the traffic initiative, and opponent of the city's approval of the Los Arboles condominium project.
Roland's disappointment comes not from finishing in fourth place, but for the voters not associating his candidacy with his opposition to Measure C. His optimism stems from the delay in counting approximately 400 absentee ballots that may or may not have been received by Tuesday's 8 p.m. deadline.
"I am optimistic, just because so many people have told me that they voted for me on an absentee ballot," he said.
He said if he is indeed a fourth-place finisher in this election, he doubts he would run again, because, "I don't know if there are enough people in the city who are ready for brutal honesty."
Nellie Kamradt, deputy clerk in the Registrar of Voters Office, said out of the 820 absentee ballots requested, 455 were counted as part of the voting total. No one, however, actually knows how many of the remaining 365 that were requested made it to the government center by Tuesday's deadline. The majority of the outstanding ballots, which will be counted sometime before the county's official certification Nov. 26, may have been requested by those in the military or college, according to Carlon Strobel, Ojai City clerk.
"As long as the absentee ballots were received by the county on time, they will count," Strobel said. But since they won't be certified by the county until the 26th, I have recommended that the council be dark on 26th. Dec. 10 would be the first meeting with the new members."
The City Council then has option of accepting or challenging the county's certification.
Kamradt explained that all absentee ballots that were received were counted through Saturday and included in the voting tabulation.
"As of this morning, we have 30,000 left to be counted, which includes the provisional ballots, meaning, among other things, that if someone moved within the county without re-registering, we allow them to vote, and if verified, we will count that vote," Kamradt said, adding that there should be an update with new numbers released Monday.
Taking time from his job as an auto mechanic, Roland, who finished third behind Council members Sue Horgan and Rae Hanstad when he last ran in 2000, said jokingly, "I called Rae last night and told her to stay away from where they were counting the votes, because last time, I went to bed in the lead. Someone said I was leading this time until the 8th precinct weighed in. Either way, I knew I'd be at work today breaking my knuckles."
He questions the reasoning behind taking so much time to count the absentee ballots, inasmuch as there is a lot at stake.
"They probably don't count them ahead of time so that the information doesn't leak out. But for the sake of running the city, they need to know. Three weeks seems like a little long. Give 'em to me and Carol (Smith); we'll count 'em now."
Ojai fared well in overall voting, where 2,515, or 52.8 percent of its 4,767 registered voters turned out, as compared to 35.9 percent countywide.

© 2002 The Ojai Valley News

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