A slate of three candidates promising a more open, transparent Evergreen Fire/Rescue board of directors handily defeated the incumbents in the May 3 election.
Stacey Ballinger, Julie Ann Courim and John Putt, all who are involved in the fire department’s Community Wildfire Protection and Implementation Plans, will join the board at its May 10 meeting.
They defeated incumbents Jeff deDisse and Mike Gregory, plus retired EFR firefighters Kenny Erhardt and Wayne Hazeldine.
In unofficial results, Putt received 967 votes, Courim 929 votes and Ballinger 864 votes. They are followed by deDisse with 555 votes, Erhardt with 535 votes, Gregory with 492 votes and Hazeldine with 252 votes.
Courim and Putt were successful recently in procuring a grant to mitigate 14.5 miles of evacuation routes in the western part of the fire district. Ballinger owns a business and previously was a dispatcher for EFR.
All three have expressed their concern over the way EFR has handled wildfire mitigation issues, in particular applying for grants to mitigate evacuation routes; over volunteer firefighters leaving the department and a new recruitment process they say hasn’t had much transparency; and over the fire district’s plan to rebuild Station 1, saying information about the plan has been kept in the shadows.