By ANTHONY GUERRERO
Hays Post
The Victoria USD 432 school board race ended Tuesday night with four new members being added to the board of education.
Four spots were up for election on Tuesday with Mathew Orr, Brenton Hoffman, Haley Gagnon and Terry Dinkel securing the highest number of votes.
Mathew Orr, vice president of Operations for Hess Services, received 188 votes. Orr is a Victoria City Council member and is hopeful to help the Victoria area.
“ I took the opportunity to step over in an area where I think I can best benefit the community,” he said. “I don't particularly have any larger and grander aspirations other than helping our kids in the school district and keeping our community strong.”
Brenton Hoffman collected 184 votes.
Haley Gagnon, event coordinator and accounting assistant at Smoky Hills PBS, received 168 votes.
Terry Dinkel, small business owner, received 155 votes. Dinkel said he looks forward to establishing himself on the board in order to strengthen Victoria.
Hoffman could not be reached for comment. Gagnon said she wanted to hold off on making a comment until she could look at the results.
The Ellis County canvas will be at 8 a.m. Tuesday. At that time the county canvas board will consider provisional ballots and any mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day.
Bobbi Dreiling, Ellis County Clerk, said there were about 50 provisional ballots received across the county on Election Day.
Other candidates who ran in the Victoria school board race included Janea Dinkel, Jake Hunter, Douglas Kuhn, Tammy Lichter, Morgan Pfeifer, Gregory Sander and Tammy Lee Schumacher.