Both Idyllwild and Pine Cove water districts will have summer campaigns to fill seats on their boards.
As of the Friday, May 29, deadline, five people — Jim Billman, Dean Lattin, Steven Kunkle, Warren Monroe and June Rockwell — have qualified for the August mail-in ballot. Three seats are available.
Billman, the board president, Lattin and Monroe are incumbent directors. Kunkle retired from the water district in December. Rockwell is a local business manager.
Closer to the election, the Town Crier will sponsor an election forum for voters to meet and question the candidates.
Pine Cove Water District also will have competition for two seats from among three candidates as of Friday. However, the deadline for filing candidacy papers for the PCWD race was extended to 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 3. This is the result of current board President Michael Esnard choosing not to run for re-election.
Three people, including Director Diana Eskew, who was appointed in July 2013, are running for the two four-year term seats. The other candidates are Sharon Kaffen, a retired teacher, known locally as Sharon Cassen, and Timothy Lange, a retired school psychologist.
The races for two Fern Valley Water District and two Idyllwild Fire Protection District seats are settled. No one other than incumbents Trisha Clark and Richard Schnetzer, who was appointed in October to fill Ron Korman’s term, applied for the Fern Valley positions.
No one challenged incumbents Jerry Buchanan and Larry Donahoo for the Idyllwild Fire commission. This is the first election since 2005 that IFPD did not need residents’ votes to determine the winners.
There will be no need for either Fern Valley or Idyllwild Fire to conduct an August election. These elections are over and the incumbents have earned another term.