City Council - Special Meeting

All right. Let's call the order, the special Spark City Council meeting of June 18th with the roll call.

Mayor Lawson. Here. Council members Abbott.

Here.

Vanderwell. Here. Anderson. Here. Baby. Here. Rodriguez. Here. Acting City Attorney Sendall.

Here.

Assistant City Manager McCormick. Here. We do have a quorum. Thank you.

All right. Madam Clerk, you lead us in the pledge. Okay. Public comment. Do we have any public comment, Madam Clerk? We only got one public here. Agenda. Looking for an approval of the agenda. Ms. VanderWaal.

I move to approve the agenda as submitted. Mr. Anderson. Second.

We got a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Motion carries unanimously. Moving on to 6.1, consideration discussion and canvas of the votes, the declaration of results of the 2026 primary election and confirmation of the candidates for the 2026 general election.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. I'm Lisa Hunterman, your city clerk for the record. As the title implies, we are here today to canvas the results of the 2026 primary election and then confirm the candidates that will be moving on to the general election. Pursuant to NRS, the results of the election are required to be canvassed within 10 days of the election. And this meeting satisfies that requirement. The city accepted declarations of candidacy for municipal court judge department one from January 5th through January 16th of this year, and for mayor and city council members in wards two and four from March 2nd to March 13th of this year. 13 candidates filed across all four races, and those candidates are displayed on the screen. The primary election was conducted on June 9th, 2026 by the Washoe County Registrar of Voters pursuant to interlocal agreement that was approved by city council in November of 2025 and the ordinance 2660, which was approved in December of 2025. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge city clerk staff, specifically Michelle Harper and Julie Torres, who combined with myself put upwards of 70 hours into the Washoe County election process, facilitating all aspects of the election. We took a very hands-on approach, and this is a significant commitment of staff time and reflects our dedication to the process. Now I will move on to the results. The voter turnout this year was significantly low for our primary election. The next couple slides just kind of outline what our registered voters are for the county, for the city of Sparks, and for the wards specifically. So as you can see in Washoe County, we do have a total registration of 321,409 voters. And of that, we only had a 30.75% turnout. For the City of Sparks, it was a little lower. With 69,369 registered voters, we only had 28.5% turnout. Drilling down a little further, in Ward 2, there is 10,515 registered voters with a 23.89% turnout. And in Ward 4, 18,081 registered voters, which is a 37.51% turnout. They were by far the highest turnout. So the voting results are as follows. Just for clarification, where it says undervotes and overvotes, an undervote is anybody who cast a ballot within Washoe County but did not vote on a specific race. And then an overvote is anybody who voted for multiple people in one specific race. So for instance, in this case, This race of mayor, there were 13 overvotes, so 13 people voted for more than one person in that race, and 532 people did not vote at all. The results were Bybee received 19.1% of the vote, Lawson received 34.82% of the vote, Mackey 19.25% of the vote, and Rawson 26.84% of the vote. Moving to Ward 2, we had Goulet with 10.44% of the vote, O'Connell with 31.07% of the vote, Rand with 28.49% of the vote, and VanderWaal with 30.01% of the vote. And then in Ward 4, we had Harrell with 7.87% of the vote, Mayberry with 54.35% of the vote, McCaffrey with 28.62% of the vote, and Thomas with 9.16% of the vote. There are a few provisions from charter that apply during this election. Specifically, Municipal Court Judge for Department One, Cheryl Eiding, she ran unopposed and so she will be confirmed elected after the November election. And then Adam Mayberry for Sparks City Council, Ward 4, he received more than 50% of the vote and so he will automatically be confirmed elected and there will be no election in the general for that specific ward. SO MOVING ON AND ADVANCING TO THE NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION WILL BE FOR MAYOR ED LAWSON AND WENDY ROSSEN AND FOR SPARK CITY COUNCIL WARD TWO IT WILL BE JAMIE O'CONNELL AND DIANE VANDERWALLE AND AGAIN CONFIRMED AND DECLARED ELECTED AT THE FIRST MEETING FOLLOWING THE GENERAL ELECTION WILL BE CHERYL AND ADAM MAYBERRY. AND THAT CONCLUDES MY PRESENTATION. I AM HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

QUESTIONS FROM THE COUNCIL? So for everyone that thinks that we're not doing this correctly, can you give us some insight into your observations and the time that you spent there?

Absolutely. To be honest with you, this year is one of, in my opinion, one of the best years. And I think that Julie would agree that the election has been run. It was very smooth. There is a very long process that a ballot goes through, especially when it comes in by mail. It gets sorted by precinct. They verify signatures before they even open the ballot. They do have automated signature verification as well as manual signature verification. So it goes through multiple processes. Once the ballot is opened, then it gets separated by precincts and then put through the scanning machine to count the votes. Also, if you voted in person this year, you realized something very different from previous years, and that was that the voting tabulators now spit out your ballot for you so that you can actually look at it and check it before you cast it in the machine. And that machine, the scanner inside of that machine is the same scanner that they use for mail-in ballots at the Registrar of Voters Office. And then they just drop in there at the bottom so that they have all of the records still.

Cool. We hear a lot about this. There's a lot of eyes watching these elections, so it's heartening to know that you feel good about it.

Yes, absolutely.

All right. Well, with that, then I am looking for a motion. Mr. Abbott.

I move to declare the results of the 2026 primary election official and confirm the candidates for the 2026 general election.

Mr. Anderson. I'll second the motion. A motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please vote. Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you.

Any public comment, Madam Clerk? Any announcements from the council or the acting city manager? We are adjourned.

Thank you.