6 vie for 3 Village Council seats

By Lauren Heaton

Electoral races are on for the three Village Council seats and the two school board seats that are up for local elections on Nov. 6. By the filing deadline at the end of August, six candidates had signed up for the Council race and five candidates had registered for the school board race. Several other uncontested seats for Village and Miami Township offices will also appear on the ballot for village and township residents.

Running for the two four-year terms and one two-year term on Council are Lori Askeland, John Booth, Brian Chase, Brian Harris, Jerome Sutton and incumbent Kathryn Van der Heiden.

Lori Askeland is associate professor of English at Wittenberg University and director of the women’s studies program. Prior to moving to Yellow Springs with her husband, Frank Doden, and two adopted children nine years ago, she was a member of the PTO in Lawrence, Kan.

John Booth, a teacher at Northridge High School in Dayton, is a member of the Village Human Relations Commission. He lives in Yellow Springs with his wife, Maria, and their two young children. Brian Chase is running for one of the Council seats currently occupied by his wife, Kathryn Chase. Brian Chase is a software engineer at MacAulay-Brown, and he has served as a local Cub Scout leader. He has four children and has lived in the village for 14 years.

An Ohio native, Brian Harris has lived in Yellow Springs since 1995 and spent most of his career as a chef and manager of restaurants and hotel facilities. He is a former member of the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce. Jerome Sutton retired as the executive director of Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. In Yellow Springs, he has served on the Yellow Springs Community Council and the Community Information Project, among other groups. He is married to Sandy McHugh.

Incumbent Kathryn Van der Heiden ran for Council in 2005, and though she was not elected, in January 2007 she was appointed to fill the seat of former Council President Jocelyn Hardman, who resigned. Van der Heiden, a practicing clinical counselor and business mediation consultant, has lived in Yellow Springs since 1985. She has served most recently as secretary for the Yellow Springs Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and as development chair of the Glen Helen Ecology Institute Board.

The Council candidates are running for the three seats currently held by Bruce Rickenbach, Kathryn Chase and Kathryn Van der Heiden. The two recipients of the highest votes will be elected to four-year terms, and the third highest vote-getter will serve a two-year term. Current Council members Judith Hempfling and Karen Wintrow will continue to serve two more years of their four-year terms.

Running for the school board’s two four-year terms are Sean Creighton, Judy Parker, David Triplett, David Turner and incumbent Richard Lapedes.

Sean Creighton has lived in town for 10 years and is the father of a toddler and two children who attend Mills Lawn. He is the executive director of the Southwest Ohio Council for Higher Education, and has served on three local school levy committees as well as the Children’s Center Board of Trustees for six years, the last two of them as president.

Judy Parker was raised in Yellow Springs and graduated from the high school in 1974. She and her husband and two daughters spent 14 years in Tennessee, where she was president of the school’s PTA, before returning to Yellow Springs last year.

David Triplett works as a physician’s assistant in Xenia and has lived in Yellow Springs for seven years with his wife and daughter, who attends McKinney Middle School. He has served on a music-in-the-schools committee, on the 4th of July parade committee, as a member of the board of directors for Sowelo and as an assistant Little League coach.

David Turner, formerly a YSI, Inc. employee-owner and trustee, now works as a self-employed computer repairman. A 25-year resident of the village with his wife and two boys, Turner has served on the McKinney/YSHS PTO for five years and has worked with the high school’s student review board for the past three years.

Richard Lapedes, up for his second consecutive term, has been active in community affairs for 18 years as a founding member of the Yellow Springs Endowment for Education, a co-chairman of the former superintendent search committee and of several former school levy committees, and a former trustee of Antioch University and director of YSI, Inc. He retired three years ago as the president of Lion Apparel in Dayton.

These five candidates are contesting seats currently held by Lapedes and Rich Bullock, who is not seeking re-election.

Mayor Dave Foubert has filed to run for his ninth term in that office. For the Township, current Miami Township Trustee Chris Mucher is running for his fourth consecutive term as trustee, while incumbent clerk Margaret Silliman is running for her third consecutive term as Township clerk. The mayor serves two-year terms, while trustees and the clerk serve four-year terms.

Also appearing on the November ballot for Yellow Springs voters will be the Village Charter Amendment #1 and the Greene County Joint Vocational School levy. The charter amendment includes minor changes Village Council members are making to bring the charter into alignment with current county and state regulations. This is a routine 10-year review of the Village charter, which has not been amended since the early 1990s, according to Village Clerk Deborah Benning.

The vocational school levy is a five-year permanent improvement levy renewal for 0.75 mills to begin in 2007.

Profiles of each candidate will appear in a 2007 election series in the Yellow Springs News in October, as well as the Election Guide, scheduled to run in the Oct. 25 edition of the News.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com