HATFIELD — Cindy A. Doty will fill this town’s third Select Board seat after taking nearly 56 percent of the vote in Tuesday night’s annual elections.
According to preliminary vote tallies, Doty, currently the town’s director of emergency management, earned 396 votes to Francis Gougeon’s 299 — meaning she will fill out the three-member board.
A third candidate, Gerald Gower, garnered 16 votes. Gower may have lost by a wide margin, but he did earn six write-in votes to join the Redevelopment Authority, a position for which no one filed.
Town Clerk Lydia Szych said turnout was 724 out of a checklist of 2,571, or 28 percent.
Throughout her campaign, Doty emphasized reassessing Hatfield’s membership in the Hampshire Council of Governments, which she argued was not living up to its mission of helping towns save money by pooling resources.
She also campaigned on “researching” the possibility of lowering Hatfield’s Community Preservation Act tax rate, which is currently at its maximum of 3 percent.
Doty also wants to renegotiate technology contracts and to see if strengthening the town administrator’s powers when it comes to hiring-and-firing decisions and employee evaluations is the best course of action.
She could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.
Gougeon, who currently sits on the Finance Committee, has also served on the Capital Improvement Planning Committee, Personnel Committee and several search committees for high-profile town positions like fire chief and police chief.
He has also served on the School Committee and served two stints as the district’s superintendent, most recently on an interim basis in 2009.
He said after the results rolled in Tuesday night his career in town politics is effectively over now that his terms on the finance and capital improvement committees are expired.
“I’ll be a spectator and viewing things from somewhat of a distance,” he said.
Gougeon thanked his supporters and said it was a “fair” race.
“I’m not disappointed in the outcome,” he said. “I’ve known Cindy for a long time and I have a great deal of respect for her.”
Gougeon also said he was pleased a woman would be joining the board, adding “another dimension” to the panel, in which two men — Brian Moriarty and Edmund Jaworski — currently serve. Doty ran to fill the remaining two years on the term of Marcus J. Boyle, who resigned in February for personal reasons.
There were a few other contested races on Tuesday’s ballot. Among them was a two-year term on the Board of Assessors, in which incumbent Scott McCoy beat back a challenge from former assessor Christopher Smith, who campaigned on encouraging more transparency in the office.
McCoy earned 492 votes to Smith’s 175.
The other contested race was for town collector and treasurer, two separate offices both held by Laura Lee Drouin-Bertram. Michael Paszek challenged her on both fronts, but lost after Drouin-Bertram won more than 400 votes for both offices, compared to Paszek, who earned 156 and 160 votes respectively.
Candidates did not file for two positions, a five-year term on the Redevelopment Authority and a four-year term on the Planning Board. If the top write-in vote-earners so choose, they will earn a seat on their respective panels.
Besides Gower earning a spot on the Redevelopment Authority, Richard Bertram garnered eight write-in votes to land a position on the Planning Board, Szych said.
Jack Suntrup can be reached at jsuntrup@gazettenet.com.