Lompoc Votes for New Mayor
Lompoc City Councilman and Mayor-elect Bob Lingl says he’s eager to get to work after getting 58% of the vote according to the Santa Barbara County Elections Office.
“It was a hard fought campaign, I’m glad its over”, Lingl says, “I’m very pleased with the results.”
Lingl says voters wanted a change from current mayor John Linn.
“They saw a management style that John was projecting”, Lingl says, “he’s a small businessman and he feels like he must do everything himself.”
“We have a team, we have a fantastic team”, Lingl adds, “we’ve got city administrators, we’ve got economic development directors, public safety officials and John was not allowing the team to do their job, it was really hindering.”
“I would have to disagree with that”, Mayor Linn says defending his record of achievement in office, “we have continuous increases in our sales here in town, we have new businesses opening, we have jobs being added, we are a very business friendly city, we’re going in all the right directions, we have a great new city administrator.”
Linn says voters appear to have been swayed by Lingl’s negative campaign against him.
“We chose to run a very straightforward campaign talking about what we have accomplished and the issues going forward, our opponent chose to run a more negative campaign and that appears to have paid off”, Linn says, “he (Lingl) kept saying he was going to do exactly what I did except he was going to do it differently, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see and six months from now maybe he can answer that question.”
“We have a lot of potential right now and I believe that now I’m going to allow the city staff to do their job”, Lingl says, “we’ll be working with them, the City Council is going to be working with them, I’m going to allow the professionals to do their job and that’s why I believe they (the voters) gravitated towards me.”
The City Council must now decide on either holding a special election or appointing someone to fill the remaining two years of Ling’s four-term on the council.
