{"id":87259,"date":"2017-05-03T07:50:41","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T12:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=87259"},"modified":"2017-05-04T08:37:13","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T13:37:13","slug":"voters-down-income-tax-hike-hangartner-gets-gop-nod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2017\/05\/03\/voters-down-income-tax-hike-hangartner-gets-gop-nod\/","title":{"rendered":"Voters defeat city income tax increase"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether it was the weather, confusion, or just plain apathy, a historically low primary vote narrowly defeated the City of Van Wert\u2019s proposed 0.28-percent income tax increase, while incumbent City Treasurer Don Hangartner earned the Republican nomination for a second term over challenger Neil Straley.<\/p>\n

\"ElectionThe city tax increase, the first in more than a decade, was defeated 537 (47.82 percent) to 586 (52.18 percent). Of Van Wert\u2019s 15 precincts, the tax increase passed in only five, with the measure going down in every precinct in First and Second wards. All four precincts in Third Ward approved the tax, as well as Precinct 4D, which is the largest precinct in the city.<\/p>\n

Van Wert Mayor Jerry Mazur blamed the narrow loss on a failure by his administration to get the message out clearly about the city\u2019s financial need.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to sit down and talk about why we think we failed and make a plan for how we\u2019re going to go forward in November,\u201d the mayor said. \u201cUltimately, what we\u2019re saying about the budget is going to come to fruition \u2026 and we\u2019re going to run out of funds somewhere down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hangartner, who is serving his first term in the part-time city treasurer\u2019s position, outpolled Straley 451 (54.53 percent) to 376 (45.47 percent) to earn the Republican nod for the November general election.<\/p>\n

Hangartner won two of the three First Ward precincts, losing by two votes (12-14) in Precinct 1A. Straley won three of the four Second Ward precincts, losing only Precinct 2D. Each candidate won two of the four Third Ward precincts, with Hangartner earning wins in Precincts 3B and 3D and Straley winning 3A and 3C. Hangartner had his largest plurality in Precinct 4D, winning there by 44 votes (111-67). Straley\u2019s largest plurality was a 10-vote margin in Precinct 2B (30-20).<\/p>\n

Van Wert County Elections Director Linda Stutz called Tuesday\u2019s 1,370-vote countywide turnout \u201cthe lowest I\u2019ve seen in my 27 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Van Wert, First Ward had the lowest voter turnout, while Precinct 1B was the lowest of all, with only 7.07 percent of its 467 registered voters actually voting in this election. Precinct 1A was next, with 7.65 percent of its 510 registered voters going to the polls, while the third First Ward precinct, 1D, had 9.09 percent of its 429 voters cast a ballot in May.<\/p>\n

Precinct 4D had the highest total — and highest percentage — voter turnout, with 222 of its 716 registered voters casting ballots (31.01 percent).<\/p>\n

One Delphos precinct (3C) had only 4.22 percent of its voters cast ballot in the election, with just 19 of 450 registered voters turning out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor Whether it was the weather, confusion, or just plain apathy, a historically low primary vote narrowly defeated the City of Van Wert\u2019s proposed 0.28-percent income tax increase, while incumbent City Treasurer Don Hangartner earned the Republican nomination for a second term over challenger Neil Straley. The city tax increase, the first in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 11:01:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}