TUSTIN : 8 Have Hats in Ring for 3 Council Seats
Eight residents will be seeking three seats on the City Council in the April 10 election.
Five candidates are seeking two four-year positions. John Kelly, 28, is the only incumbent seeking re-election; Ursula E. Kennedy chose not to run again. Running against Kelly are accountant Carole Bryant, 41; construction supervisor Dennis Pedersen, 42; business owner and planning commissioner Leslie Pontious, 44; and salesman and former planning commissioner Charles Puckett, 46.
Three candidates--John Norman Butler, Berklee Maughan and Jim Potts--are seeking the two-year seat vacated by the resignation of Ronald B. Hoesterey. Butler, 33, is a real-estate broker; Maughan, 52, is a retired chief financial officer; and Potts, 36, is a supervisor for the Irvine Public Safety Department and co-owner of a manufacturing company.
On the eve of Tuesday’s filing deadline, council members were still bickering about whether an April municipal election would be better than a November election.
The council majority voted in November, before Hoesterey’s resignation, to move the city elections to April. Councilmen Earl J. Prescott and Kelly disagreed with that decision. Prescott and Kelly filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against Hoesterey, claiming he was not a legal resident at the time of the vote.
The case was dismissed last month after the judge ruled that the complaint should have been handled by the state attorney general’s office.
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