Incumbents among top vote-getters for Washington County school board, Hagerstown council

Most of the incumbents running for re-election were leading in local elections for Washington County Board of Education and Hagerstown City Council, according to unofficial and incomplete results on Wednesday morning.

School board member Pieter Bickford (9,238 votes) and fellow incumbents Stan Stouffer (8,315) and Melissa Williams (7,655) were leading, with the top eight vote-getters of the 11 candidates moving onto the General Election.

Former Washington County Commissioner Charles A. Burkett was running fourth for school board with 6,940 votes, followed by another challenger, Victoria "Tori" Beachley, with 5,821 votes.

School board member April Ann Zentmeyer was running sixth with 5,762 votes, with many mail-in ballots and provisional ballots still to be counted.

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Hagerstown City Council members Kristin Aleshire (2,331 votes), Tiara R. Burnett (1,789), Matthew J. Schindler (1,460) and Peter E. Perini Sr. (1,409) were leading in the council race, with Sean Flaherty running fifth with 1,333 votes, according to unofficial and incomplete results.

There are five City Council seats, and Councilwoman Shelley McIntire is not running for re-election.

The top 10 vote-getters in the City Council race move onto the General Election.

Washington County Board of Education results so far

Bickford and Stouffer are seeking third terms, while Williams is pursuing a fourth term on the school board.

Four of the seven school board seats are up for election this year. School board members serve four-year terms.

Bickford used to be a news anchorman for WHAG-TV and was editor-in-chief of a local event guide. He is a marketing executive for High Rock Studios.

Stouffer, 77, who lives near Funkstown, and Williams, 73, of Smithsburg, are retired Washington County Public Schools educators. Stouffer also was a coach and athletic director. Williams also did educational consulting work.

Burkett, 57, who lives near Hagerstown, is a ministry support coordinator and elder/board member at Calvary Chapel of the Cumberland Valley. He said he served as a substitute at several public schools to see what was going on in the schools.

Beachley, 33, of Hagerstown, has two young children who aren't old enough to attend public schools yet, but she said her youngest uses birth to kindergarten services provided through the school system. Beachley said she has experience in finances and supply chain operations management, having worked for JLG for several years. She and her husband, Ryan, own Sixth Avenue Custom furniture in Hagerstown and Carriage Hill Custom Cabinets in Frederick, Md.

Zentmeyer, 72, of Hagerstown, is a retired teacher and school administrator for WCPS.

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The other two school board candidates among the top eight vote-getters so far are Ashley McCusker and Robin Merchant Spickler.

McCusker, who has two children in Washington County Public Schools, lives in Hancock. She was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that was filed after the Maryland State Board of Elections rejected the Hancock Town Hall as the second of three early voting centers proposed by the Washington County Board of Elections and approved by the county commissioners.

Spickler, 69, of Hagerstown, retired in 2020 after teaching for WCPS for 44 years. She taught kindergarten during most of her career. She said she now works at Children's Village, teaching fire and personal safety to second graders who visit the nonprofit.

The other candidates for school board are retired state correctional officer Michael P. Keifer, 72, of Hagerstown, with 4,510 votes; Nancy Lee Evans, 78, of Williamsport, with 3,709 votes; and financial advisor Ethan Loewen, 48, of Hagerstown, with 2,554 votes. Evans said she taught math in a Baltimore Catholic school and worked in information technology.

The results counted as of Tuesday included all 46 Election Day precincts, early voting and 6,509 mail-in ballots containing the school board race. That's out of a total of 12,496 mail-in ballots sent out that included the school board race, according to a May 13 mail-in ballot report. The last day for canvassing eligible mail-in ballots, postmarked by Election Day, is May 24.

Hagerstown mayoral results so far

Both Hagerstown mayoral candidates, Bill McIntire and Stephen S. Schutte, will move onto the General Election in the nonpartisan race.

McIntire was leading the voting in the primary with 2,326 votes, or 1,010 more votes than Schutte's 1,316, according to unofficial and incomplete results.

That was with early voting, 1,388 mail-in ballots, and all nine city precincts reporting. A Monday mail-in ballot report listed 2,873 mail-in ballots sent out that included city races.

Current Mayor Tekesha Martinez is not running for re-election as mayor. She filed as a Democratic candidate for the 6th Congressional District and was running fourth in that race.

The mayor and City Council members serve four-year terms.

Hagerstown City Council results so far

The top 10 vote-getters of the 11 City Council candidates will move on to the General Election in another nonpartisan race.

After Aleshire, Burnett, Schindler, Perini and Flaherty, the next top vote-getters so far are Erika Bell (1,224 votes), Stacy L. Michael (1,221), Caroline Anderson (1,083), Mark Bell (1,034) and Rich Owens (979), according to unofficial and incomplete results.

The other candidate running for City Council is Journie Martinez, who had 643 votes.

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The mayor is paid $28,000 a year, while council members get $8,000 a year, according to city spokesperson Wes Decker.

"The council has expressed interest in deliberating the possibility of an increase in those salaries and will determine whether that will happen over the next  few months," Decker said in an email.

A raise goes into effect for the school board seats filled in this fall's General Election. Members will be paid $13,500 a year, while the board president will make $14,000 a year, school system spokeswoman Erin Anderson confirmed.

City races not on ballots at precincts outside the city

Several people showed up at the Washington County Board of Elections headquarters on Tuesday to vote, thinking it was still a voting place for any voter in the county.

With early voting over, the Virginia Avenue headquarters in Halfway became a polling place for a specific district on Election Day, Elections Director Barry Jackson said. Folks from outside that voting precinct could cast a provisional ballot at election headquarters, but those ballots did not include city of Hagerstown races for mayor and City Council, Jackson said.

If registered voters in the city wanted to vote for city races, they had to go to their polling place or to a polling place within Hagerstown to get a provisional ballot that lists the city races, Jackson said. Any provisional ballots provided at Washington County polling places outside the city would not contain city election races.

Provisional ballots are provided to voters for a variety of reasons, including that they did not go to their designated polling place or if that person had requested a mail-in ballot. Those ballots will be researched before the votes are officially counted to ensure the voter didn't already submit a mail-in ballot and there are no other issues, Jackson said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Primary results for Washington County school board, Hagerstown races