Vogel, Richardson elected to Skiff Board

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Lois Vogel and Gary Richardson will join the Skiff Medical Center Board of Trustees after receiving the most votes in the city election on Tuesday.

Vogel led the six candidates for the two open hospital board seats with 1,249 votes and Richardson followed with 767, earning the second seat on the board. The other candidates totaled, in order:

• Larry DeCook — 667 votes

• Bill Ward — 383 votes

• Lonnie White ­— 349 votes

• Linda Ross — 305 votes

In the contested at-large Newton City Council race, Jeremy Heaberlin won with 1,312 votes to 453 for Harold Martin. Other city council candidates Mike Hansen (Ward 2), Dennis Julius (At-large) and Steve Mullan (Ward 4) were all unopposed and won re-election handily.
Vogel said she was happy with the strong support she received.

“I’m very excited about being elected and the overwhelming support. I want to thank everybody who voted for me,” she said this morning.

“I’m just eager now to get on board. I understand that I will be able to sit in on the CEO interviews coming up, and I just hope I can give support to the new CEO and the board to get things back on track at Skiff.”

Gary Richardson was pleased with the outcome as well.

“I’m obviously very happy, and I appreciate the support the voters gave me and Lois. Hopefully I’ll be able to bring about some changes at Skiff,” he said. “I think we’ll help start restoring some morale because we both pledged to do away with the secrecy and I think that has a lot to do with morale.”

Jeremy Heaberlin was pleased to be returning to council.

“I am surprised and humbled by everyone’s support. I want to thank everyone for their help and hard work I could not have done this without them,” he said. “Newton has always been good to me and now it is time for me to return that. Newton is defiantly a jewel of the Midwest and I see good things happening.”

Voter turnout in Newton was 17.42 percent, a total Jasper County Auditor Dennis Parrott believed was buoyed by strong interest in the hospital board election.

“Turnout was probably a little higher than the average city race just because of the interest in the hospital board race,” Parrott said. “17 and a half percent isn’t a good turnout by any stretch of the imagination but if it had been a normal race you’re looking at somewhere around 10 percent.”