Rich Veitengruber and Tom Whalen will not be returning to the council. However, Kevin Huette and Jim Finnegan won their races to retain their council seats.
Bloomington aldermen have taken criticism in the last year because the council voted to build a $37 million downtown arena after residents voted down the proposal by a 2-to-1 margin in a nonbinding referendum. Also, the council has taken a lot of heat after voting to leave Metcom, the countywide emergency dispatching center.
The election saw 5,441 of the city's 41,937 registered voters, or about 13 percent, turn out for Tuesday's election.
Challenger Allen Gibson defeated Veitengruber in the city's Ward 1 race. Veitengruber, president of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 197, earned 228 votes, or 44 percent, to Gibson's 296 votes, or 56 percent. Gibson is retired from the Bloomington Housing Authority.
In the city's Ward 7, Steve Purcell squared off against Whalen, who served on the council for 16 years.
Purcell, an employee at Mitsubishi Motors North America, garnered 465 votes to Whalen's 389 votes. That gave Purcell 54 percent of the vote, while Whalen, an employee at the Illinois Department of Transportation, received 46 percent of the vote.
Shortly after filing for election in December, Purcell challenged the validity of the signatures on Whalen's petition. After a hearing by the Bloomington Election Commission and an appeal in court, Whalen's petition was allowed to stand but with fewer names.
In Ward 3, Huette earned 55 percent of the ballots cast. He had 803 votes, while Greg Kennett's had 665 votes, about 45 percent.
Huette, vice president of Nu-Way Transportation Services Inc., was one of 10 people who stepped forward in 2003 seeking the appointment to replace Alderman Jim Fruin.
Huette and Kennett, the men's tennis coach at Illinois State University, received the most votes in a four-way primary race in February.
In what appeared to be the most amicable race in the city, Finnegan, who is retired from State Farm Insurance Cos., defeated newcomer Grant Holloway for the city's Ward 5 seat on the council.
Finnegan earned 301 votes, or about 66 percent of the total cast in the race. Holloway, who works for Connectivity U Inc., received 156 votes, or 34 percent of the ballots.
Copyright © 2005, Pantagraph Publishing Co. All rights reserved.
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