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Central Point awaits write-in count Contender wants planning with growth By DAVID PRESZLER CENTRAL POINT -- A write-in effort for a seat no one appeared to want may have given slow-growth proponents an instant majority on the city council. No candidates were listed on the ballot for the Ward 2 seat in Tuesday's general election, but Bill Stults filed a financial organizational statement with the city recorder as a write-in after the filing deadline. Stults, manager of The Meadows retirement community, says Bill Walton -- who appears on his way to winning the mayor's race in a contest against incumbent Rusty McGrath -- approached him about running when no one filed for the seat. Like Walton, Stults says he's concerned about how fast the city is growing. "It seems like whoever wants to come in, can come in," he says. With slow-growth advocates holding substantial leads in the mayor's race and two city council contests, the tenor of the council seems likely to change. If Stults takes the Ward 2 seat, the slow-growth contingent could hold three of the six council positions and the mayor's post. But whether Stults will be part of the change will not be clear until next week, when hand-counted write-in votes are expected to be tallied. A write-in candidate need only a majority of the votes cast to win -- there is no minimum. But Stults may not be the only Ward 2 write-in. Steve Osborne, a mortgage broker, sent letters to Ward 2 residents asking them to write him in. Osborne could not be reached Wednesday. Stults says he ran a quiet campaign aimed at the 450 voters in The Meadows and is confident that many will write him in. He admits part of the reason he took a low-key approach was to avoid inspiring someone to run against him. Dr. David Gilmour appears a lock to win the Ward 3 seat, having gotten 62.5 percent of the polling-place votes. No other candidate got more than 15 percent. Walton holds a commanding lead in the mayor's race, getting 60.6 percent of the vote to McGrath's 39.4. Donna Higgenbotham is the likely winner in Ward 1, having gotten 49.2 percent to incumbent Barry Fronek's 27.7 and David Martin's 23.1. Walton, Gilmour and Higgenbotham all favor system development charges, known as SDCs, as a way to pay for infrastructure needed to support growth. Stults is also a proponent of SDCs. "There needs to be something in place," he says. "We are already in the hole with our streets, we need repairs for our streets." Walton says the idea isn't to stymie or control growth. "It's not so much controlled growth as it is appropriate planning," he says. "It's just putting in the right infrastructure. Sometimes it does slow it down, but it's just to have it done right the first time." The infusion of a new mayor and four new council members dedicated to easing the city's growth is just the kind of radical change Gilmour says he hoped for. "Basically, the goal was to take over city government," he says. "That was the intent. We just had to get the pieces to fall together. It wasn't an organized conspiracy or anything." While the group is loosely affiliated, Walton says the idea isn't to create a new regime. "I don't want agreement," he says. "I want differences of opinion. I encourage complete independence." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA