Brighton voters had an early gift for Mayor Greg Mills Dec. 7, returning him to office in a run-off election.
Mills collected 2,751 votes — 54% of the total votes cast — in the run-off to hold on to his seat as Brighton Mayor, compared to 2,340 votes for Laurie Lozano Maier. Mills will swear his oath of office for the next term at the council’s Jan. 4 meeting.
The announcement came just prior to 10 p.m. during the City Council’s Dec. 7 meeting from City Clerk Natalie Hoel while councilors were discussing Adams County’s replacement for Tri-County Health. Mills said he was temporarily speechless and promised to make a comment later in the meeting.
Later in the meeting, Mills thanked voters for doing their civic duty and turning out to vote, before discussing his schedule for the rest of the year.
“It’s going to be a good month,” Mill said.
Mills and Maier were the top vote-getters in Brighton’s Nov. 2 ballot. Incumbent Mills wound up with just short of half the votes cast in the Nov. 2 ballot, with 3,599 votes out of the 7,618 cast, according to the state’s election site. Maier was next, with 2,682 votes – about 35% of the vote.
Wayne Scott, the third candidate on the Nov. 2 ballot, had 1,337 votes. That’s about 17.6 percent of the total votes cast.
In all, 7,618 Brighton voters cast a ballot in the November mayoral race. Hoel said runoff ballots were mailed to all registered Brighton voters, just shy of 24,000 ballots, and 5,091 were returned.