Bass wins second term as mayor
NEW MILFORD — Mayor Pete Bass will serve another term in the top office.
Bass, a Republican, defeated Democrat Tom O’Brien in Tuesday’s election. All of the results were not available by deadline, but Bass had a big enough margin to secure him another two years as mayor.
“I’d like to thank the people for their overwhelming allowing me to serve another two years, as well as my team,” Bass said.
Bass ran on a platform of fighting the opioid crisis in town and repairing the town’s infrastructure. O’Brien focused on increasing funding for education and making the town more affordable.
“It feels wonderful,” Bass said of his reelection.
O’Brien could not be reached for comment.
It was too close to call the nine Town Council seats by press time with the seventh precinct still out, but Bass will most likely be joined by Republicans Thomas V. Esposito, Katy Francis, Michael Gold, Chris Cosgrove, Douglas Skelly and Michael Nahom, all of whom currently serve as council members.
The Democrats running are Megan Byrd, David Lawson, Jeffrey Winter, Walter Bayer, Mary Jane Lundgren, Gale M. Alexander, Hilary Ram, Michele Shakelford and Lisa Hida, who ran a writein campaign.
The writeins are only presented as a total number Tuesday night and the names will be determined in the coming days. It’s unlikely Hida got enough votes though to keep her seat because the listed candidates each had more votes than the entire number of writeins, as of 10 p.m.
The current makeup is three Democrats and six Republicans.
This year’s race had a higher than usual turnout with some districts seeing about 50 percent of the registered voters coming out to vote. There were also more writeins than usual.
Please visit www.newstimes.com to see the results for the other races in New Milford.