By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Peabody incumbent Larry Larsen retained his mayoral position with 93 votes, besting Rose’s 61 votes.

It was the second time Rose failed to garner enough votes to supplant Larsen as mayor, losing a prior race in 2015.

Peabody-Burns USD 398 seats were won by Tiana Gaines with 207 votes, Shayla Clark with 192 votes, and Julia Ensminger with 165 votes. Coming in last was Hope Reynolds with 118 votes.

The Florence mayoral race remained undecided. Incumbent Bob Gayle was the only official candidate on the ballot and received 88 votes.

However, former councilman Dan Ludwig waged a write-in campaign to unseat Gayle, and write-in votes, which have to be hand-counted, were not tallied Tuesday.

Kenneth Hoffman edged out John Branson 42-30 for Florence city council ward 1, and Matt Williams handily beat out Natasha Brenzikofer-Craig 57-6 in ward 2. Brenzikofer-Craig recently moved to Burns and would have been ineligible to serve.

Voters gave a thumbs-down to hiring a county administrator, with 1,192 voting no and 962 voting yes.

Asked for comment on the administrator question, county commission chair Randy Dallke would only say, “The voters have spoken.”

In other contested races, Lou Thurston was a runaway winner for Hillsboro mayor Tuesday, taking 520 votes over Charlotte Kennedy Takahashi’s 200 votes.

Evan Esau, with 66 votes, and Duane Adrian, with 58 votes, nudged out Michael Jost’s 40 votes for Goessel city council.

Four of Ramona city council’s five positions will go to Mark Lockhart with 26 votes, Arthur Stroda with 25 votes, Billy Alcorn with 25 votes, and Benjamin Calvert with 19 votes. Rohani Alcorn and Jayme Brunner tied with 18 votes each for the remaining one position.

Election results are unofficial until county commissioners canvass the votes Monday.