PROVINCETOWN — Erik Borg, 38, and Austin Miller, 32, were both elected to the Provincetown Select Board at the town’s annual election on May 9. They will replace Bobby Anthony and Louise Venden, each of whom decided not to seek another three-year term on the board.
Borg, a co-owner of the Provincetown Brewing Company, has served on the visitor services board and the zoning board of appeals; Miller works remotely on financial compliance and served on both of Provincetown’s housing committees.
Borg won 668 votes, or 72 percent of the total votes cast, while Miller won 602 votes, or 65 percent of the 933 people who voted. Because two seats were up for election at the same time, voters could pick two candidates from among the four who were running.
Austin Knight came in third with 299 votes and Gordon Siegel got 128. One hundred sixty-three people left one of their ballot lines blank, while eight people wrote in a candidate.
Turnout was actually down somewhat from recent elections, at least when measured as a percentage of the electorate. There are currently 3,502 registered voters here, so 933 voters is 27 percent. In the 2019 and 2020 elections, the turnout was just over 30 percent, while in the hotly contested race between Leslie Sandberg, Oriana Conklin, and the incumbent select board member Lise King in 2021, turnout was 42 percent of the electorate, or 1,354 voters.
The 2022 election for select board was uncontested, and only 19 percent of Provincetown’s voters cast a ballot that year.
Fundraising numbers were also lower than in the 2021 election, based on the disclosure forms the candidates must file with the town clerk’s office eight days before election day. Borg reported $5,570 in fundraising on his pre-election form, Knight reported $2,150, and Miller reported $1,250. Siegel’s documents were not posted online because he had raised less than $1,000 by that time; town clerk Liz Paine said that his pre-election disclosure form reported zero dollars of fundraising.
These totals indicate that Miller and Knight raised amounts that would have been relatively typical for candidates in 2019; Borg’s total is closer to the numbers raised in 2021. By the time final disclosure forms were filed, the 2021 election reached $33,315 in fundraising; the current total for this year is less than a third of that.
Miller attributed the slightly muted numbers to the overall civility of the race.
“I don’t think this election was particularly flashy or catchy in the headlines, because all of the candidates were very collegial towards each other,” Miller said. He said he had focused on issues and his own strengths, and he thought other candidates had done the same.
Borg said that he had come to respect and appreciate all the candidates running, and that they had agreed on many of the major issues. “I think everyone’s heart was in the right place,” Borg said, “and people conducted themselves admirably.”
All four candidates campaigned on housing as the town’s most urgent issue.
There were several uncontested races further down the ballot. Galen Malicoat was elected to a seat on the school committee; Joan Prugh and Burt Grossman were elected to two seats on the library board of trustees; and Frances Coco and Arlene Weston were elected to two seats on the housing authority.
Nobody filed to run for a seat on the charter compliance commission. John Keith was elected with six write-in votes.
Overrides
The town’s two override questions, each of which passed overwhelmingly at town meeting, also cleared the majority-vote requirement at the ballot on Tuesday.
Question 1, which authorized $1.7 million for a water line replacement project at MacMillan Pier, passed with 695 votes, or 74 percent of the vote.
Question 2, which authorized a permanent expansion of the budget by $1,058,476 per year to pay for nine full-time positions in the town’s fire and emergency medical services dept., passed with 739 votes, or 79 percent of the vote.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on May 11, misspelled the last name of write-in winner John Keith in the charter compliance commission election.
