The $140 million school district referendum was voted down for the 2nd time, with a wider margin than the first: 695 votes on election night, 3966 NOs to 3271 YESes. As of Wednesday morning, 4/5/23, the County Clerk’s office said there were just 813 vote-by-mail ballots outstanding. By Thursday early afternoon, the count was 4028 NOs to 3329 YESes, a 699 point margin of victory. The NOs have won.
It looks like the teachers union’s candidates (Gonzalez-Thomas, Sligar, and Arulandu) have won the School Board race. If you had any doubt the union dominates the School Board contests, current School Board President Cathy Dremel came in last, after having been one of the top vote-getters in her previous elections every 4 years since 2011. This year she was not among the 3 who were union-endorsed.
Bell and Larson won Park Board seats.
Batavians for Responsible Government 
I wish the no voters would have taken a look at the candidates backed by the union. I believe they were supported by those that wanted a yes vote.
We tried. We put the information out there. In the last week, there were over 1300 visits to our website, but only 102 views of our post, “April 4 Ballot” (https://b4rg.org/2023/03/18/april-4-ballot/ ) which included the sentence, “If you are curious where the School Board candidates stand on the school referendum, an indication, perhaps, is the first 4 candidates on the ballot (Gonzalez-Thomas, Sligar, Arulandu, and Dremel) all had “Vote Yes” signs in front of their houses when the questionnaires were delivered; the last 3 (Ekstrom, Rayman, and Fender) did not have any signs in their yards.” We had 388 views of the “Candidate Questionnaires” which showed candidates Ekstrom and Fender were favorable to the NO vote. The information was there, just not accessed.
Just proof that most Batavia voters are morons. Vote down the referendum then elect people who were FOR the referendum. Dumb.
You will notice that the highest vote-getters among the Board candidates had less votes than even the “Yes” results. That means more people came out to vote for the referendum than for the candidates.
The teachers union has an effective way of communicating candidate endorsements to their members. The candidates who favored the “NO” position were not so effective at communicating their position, nor did it seem like they wanted the referendum to be their main focus.
The union always has the advantage. In districts where serious opposition to the union candidates arise, you will see huge campaign expenses, in the tens of thousands of dollars. It takes a considerable amount of money to advertise effectively to 22,000 registered voters—for an unpaid, volunteer position. The 3 candidates at the bottom of the list had respectable returns, considering they had no mailers or websites to define their positions.
Maybe if all the no voters would have actually voted for people who had a plan outside the referendum and not just went to vote no to save tax money and leave the rest blank. While I agree the referendum wasn’t the best plan, it was at least a plan. Now we have people in place whos plan was the referendum passing. So what’s coming next? Either another referendum that’ll get shot down, or nothing. Which leaves our kids in a bad place. No plan moving forward. Perfect.