It’s official: Procter, Gherardi and
Crosswhite new City Council members
November 28, 2014
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
As of Monday it was official: John Procter, Ginger Gherardi and Jenny Crosswhite will take the Oath of Office Monday as new members of the City Council.
Although the three had maintained a wide lead since first results were released shortly after the polls closed November 4, it took several weeks for later arriving vote-by-mail and provisional ballots to be counted and finalized.
Procter, who served on the City Council from 2000 to 2008, was the top vote getter with 2,418 votes, 19.19 percent.
Gherardi, who retired after 17 years as executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission and was a former Simi Valley councilmember and mayor, retained second place, with 2,364 votes, 18.76 percent of the vote.
Newcomer Jenny Crosswhite, a pastor and community activist who also works in marketing and graphic arts design, ranked third with 2,245 votes, or 17.82 percent.
The three will replace incumbents Ralph Fernandez and Bob Gonzales, who lost their bids for a third-term. John Demers finished sixth in the race for three seats that occurred when Mayor Rick Cook declined to run for another council term.
The fourth-place Fernandez, an architect and college instructor, had 2,059 votes, 16.34 percent.
Gonzales, the city’s former police chief who ranked fifth in the race finished with 1,999 votes, 15.87 percent.
Demers, serving his first term on the council appointed Planning Commission, remained sixth in the race with 1,493 votes, 11.85 percent. There were 20 write-in votes, 0.16 percent.
In all there were 12,598 votes cast for council candidates, with each voter having the opportunity to choose three candidates.
Public safety 1 percent sales tax Measure F, which required a two-thirds majority to pass, failed with 2,931 yes votes, 57.66 percent and 2,152 no vote, 42.34 percent. The measure drew 5,083 total votes.
Based on the total votes for Measure F, if each voter had cast votes for three council hopefuls it would have totaled 15,249 candidate selections; 2,651 of those that did vote in the council election only selected one or two candidates.
Countywide, the turnout for the November 4 General Election was 47.06 percent; of the 433,064 registered voters 203,783 cast ballots and about 60 percent utilized the vote-by-mail ballots. The turnout was higher than expected and outnumbered state and national averages.
The results released Monday by the Ventura County Elections Division are the final, certified numbers submitted to the state, which were due by December 2.
