Hetherington retains seat on memorial district

Half of the incumbents vying for spots on their respective special district seats failed to win the support of their voters Tuesday.

Incumbent Thomas D. Hetherington was one of three seat holders who was able to nudge out his opponent, police officer Don R. Dowling in the Porterville race. He did it with 61 votes (51 percent), retaining his place in seat two with the Porterville Memorial District — which supervises the Veterans Memorial Building on West Olive Avenue.

The number of Porterville residents who cast their votes in the Nov. 3 election was small, reflective of the lone ballot measure race for the veteran-oriented memorial district.

Voter turn out did not affect the students who volunteered at the Porterville College polling site.

They are part of instructor Jeff Keele’s American Government class, wherein students write essays based on their selections from a myriad of assignments—one of which is working the election polls.

The interactive project is geared towards having the students understand the strengths and weaknesses of the electoral process, according to Keele.

“The class in general, and this assignment, has gotten me a lot more interested in politics,” student Mitchell Hernandez said.

Elections like this year’s tend to draw fewer voters than those with more popular races.

“It’s really, really slow today,” Keele said.

Porterville resident Nicole Edwards was one of the about 40 people who voted at Porterville College. She said she tries to come out for every election.

“I think it’s important,” she said.

In total, there were five other special districts in the Porterville area that had contested races, including irrigation districts based in Terra Bella, Lindsay and Tipton, in addition to the Earlimart Public Utility District.

Each of newly elected residents will serve in oversight roles for the local governments agencies that deliver public services to their specific areas.

With 52 percent of the 315 votes, school administrator David De Paoli beat out 30 year incumbent James C. Oxford for the position of director of division four for the Lindmore Irrigation District. The district provides water drawn from the Friant-Kern Canal to about 26,000 acres in Lindsay.

In Earlimart, where sewer and water lines are filled to near-capacity, incumbents Norberto Gonzalez (seat one) and Jose R. Villalobos (seat two) on the public utility board of directors lost to newcomers Hershey Washington and Silvestre Torres Vargas, respectively.

Both winners, Director of Seat 1 Washington (who won by 59 percent) and Director of Seat 2 Vargas (who won by 54 percent), have similar goals of getting the infrastructure taken care of so that new residential and business development can occur.

President of the Lower Tule River Irrigation District Board of Directors Tony Simonich will retain his division one seat, edging out his opponent Alexander Garcia with 56 percent of the votes. As one of the largest irrigation districts in the State of California, the district supplies water drawn from the Tule River, Friant-Kern Canal and Cross Valley to more than 100,000 acres that are served by Deer Creek, the Tule River Authority, Poplar Ditch Company and several dairy industries.

In Terra Bella, incumbent Edwin L. Wheaton earned the vast majority of voter support (83 percent) to beat opponent Reza Rasekh for a director’s seat for Division 3.

-- Contact Jenna Chandler at 740-5000, Ext. 1050, or jchandler@portervillerecorder.com.