by Frank Schroth — updated 9:10AM

David Burnes has a seat on the Board of Selectmen. In what has been a trend in recent Selectmen’s races, he upset the incumbent Denis Keohane. It was Mr. Keohane who 3 years ago upset John Michael Shields.

Mr. Burnes will take a seat at the table tomorrow night about an hour after getting sworn in.

Discussing his win at the MATV election show, Mr. Burnes said, “I deeply care about this town and working with Tom and Katie as a real team . . . I am really excited about it.”

In conceding on the program, Denis Keohane said, “I want to thank David Burnes. They ran a good race. Everybody worked hard. In the end the people spoke.”

Burnes won handily, receiving ~64% of the votes cast. Why?

Here some frank thoughts on that.

First, you can never underestimate the power of a candidate from, as one resident put it, “deep Milton.” Mr. Burnes was born and raised here. He had benefit of a network of relationships and family that go back at least a generation (Kevin Donahue is another example of this). You couple that with demographic strength – a relatively young guy with kids in the school system and a spouse who is actively engaged in that system. He had balanced support. He lives in Precinct 2 in the west side of town but had key backing from East Milton (for example Representative Timilty). It is not insignificant that  he came out of the gate early, put his foot on the campaign gas, and didn’t take it off until 8:00pm yesterday evening. And lastly . . . he is a fresh, young voice. Clearly, the criticism that he did not hold previous elected office simply didn’t matter for a majority of voters. The voters wanted a change. And this is the monkey in the wrench.

As James Mullen pointed out during last night’s MATV election night show, an incumbent hasn’t won since 2000, unless, as Tom Hurley did a couple years ago, he ran unopposed.  Kathy Fagan upset James Mullen, and Bob Sweeney would later upset Ms. Fagan. Denis Keohane upset incumbent John Michael Shields, and Katie Conlon upset incumbent Bob Sweeney. What is that all about? Conlon, like Burnes, won by a substantial margin. Selectmen incumbents don’t seem to have much of an advantage here. Keohane is not alone in this result.

Are voters being impatient? What is the change that voters want? What are they unhappy about? One answer might be that voters don’t see anything happening. The fact is that the Board is most effective when the three act as one. This is hard to achieve and something we have not seen much of. There will always be disagreements and healthy debate is to be wished for, but on important issues the board should pull together, set a course of action, communicate it effectively, and execute. Mr. Burnes said he is committed to working with the other members. Good. While we would not expect him to compromise what he believes in, we also think that only by working together will the board be able to demonstrate leadership.

In other races, Kevin Donahue and Sheila Egan Varela took the open School Committee seats. Herb Voigt was re-elected to the Library Board of Trustees. He will be joined by Andrea Gordon who topped the ticket and Paul Hays. Bob Kelly will be the new Park Commissioner.

The question to support an override to fund the health care of an injured firefighter passed, but not by a lot. It was mentioned by folks at MATV’s election night program that the closeness of the result might indicate that any operational override for 2016 could be a challenge. Marvin Gordon pointed out that thorough education about the reasons for the override request would need to start soon.

All candidates should be commended. They all gave a lot. And we hope that we have not seen the last of them.

The Town Clerk reports the turn out to be 26.4%. It had been hoped that the turnout would top 30%. It did in precincts 6, 7, 8, and 9. However precincts 1 & 10 were only 13% and 16% respectively. You can find voter turnout statistics here.

You can find the town clerk’s unoffical results here. You can find MyTownMatters version which sorts the town meeting member race results here. Note: we amended Precinct 7 figures to align with what is on the Clerk’s site. Those results changed slightly from what was originally announced.