Four in council race

CITY HALL — Restaurant owner and Traffic and Transportation Board member Gary Bric leads the pack of four candidates who will advance to the general election in April for two open City Council seats.

The Primary Nominating election vote count on Tuesday put Bric in first place with 4277 votes, 43% of the vote.

Attorney and Realtor Anja Reinke finished behind Bric with 3900, about 39% of the vote.

Burbank couple Carolyn and Philip Berlin will also advance, finishing about 300 votes apart in third and fourth place, with 3,258, 33% and 2,946, 30% of the vote, respectively.

Bric missed out capturing a simple majority, which would have won him the a seat outright, by about 1,500 votes.

"My congratulations to Anja, Carolyn and Phil and, most importantly, to the other three candidates, Whit Prouty, Vahe Hovanessian and Margaret Sorthun, for coming forward and running a good clean campaign," Bric said.

"Unfortunately only four people can move forward and I wouldn't be surprised if those three stepped up and ran again in 2009."

Reinke said she owed her strong finish to the voters who identified with her campaign message of a fair and logical approach to civic affairs.

"I'm quite pleased with coming in second, considering I've never run for office before," she said. "I'm very pleased that my message got out to the voters and had a positive impact."

Philip and Carolyn Berlin's victory on Tuesday came in the midst of criticism during the campaign that a married couple would establish a voting block on the council.

"I think the voters were affected by that — it created a controversy around our candidacy — but I think that the positive thing is that the voters identified enough with what our message is to vote for us," Carolyn Berlin said.

"Our message is something that the City Council and the community should deal with and needs to understand."

Of the candidates who will not advance to the general election, residential Realtor Prouty won 2,741 votes; attorney Vahe Hovanessian finished with 1,194 votes and Margaret Sorthun, a member of the Blue Ribbon Task force on Fences, Walls and Hedges, received 357 votes.

The three candidates running for three open Burbank Unified School Board seats — Roberta Reynolds, Ted Bunch and Dave Kemp — all won a simple majority, meaning that voting for those seats will not carry over to the general election ballot.

CITY COUNCIL ELECTION RESULTS

Carolyn Berlin... 3258

Philip Berlin...2946

Gary Bric ...4277

Vahe Hovanessian ...1194

Whit Prouty ...2741

Anja Reinke ...3900

Margaret Sorthun ...357

Results from 10,006 ballots cast. Names in bold refer to candidates who go through to the April City Council election.

SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION RESULTS

Ted Bunch... 5964

Dave Kemp... 6404

Roberta Reynolds... 5594