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Incumbent Bruce Williams triumphed over challenger Roger Schlegel to reclaim the mayoral office in the closely contested Takoma Park elections Tuesday. Williams totaled 960 votes to Schlegel's 630.

"I'd always like to do better, but I look forward to the next few years working with my colleagues on the council and residents in the community," Williams said, adding he wouldn't mind working with Schlegel in the future, as well. "I think he ran a real good campaign, he had a lot of help and he had a lot of good ideas ... I look forward to working with him; how that plays out, we'll have to see."

Schlegel was also optimistic about his showing and was already looking at the future in the minutes following the preliminary announcements.

"I'm very, very, pleased with how the issues that I talked about in my campaign really started to come through in other council members' and Mayor Williams' comments," he said, expressing his satisfaction that the issues he campaigned will not go unaddressed. "Now everybody has to roll up their sleeves and bring everybody into the process and see how we're going to handle the fiscal situation."

In the other contested races, incumbent Councilman Terry Seamens was re-elected to his Ward 4 seat with 182 votes, his opponent, Eric Mendoza, was a write-in candidate so his total votes had not been tallied as of Tuesday, but Seamens won the clear majority. Finally, Frederick Schultz defeated Navid Nasr for the Ward 6 council position with 125 votes to Nasr's 56, filling the seat that will be left vacant when temporary Councilwoman Donna Victoria's term expires Nov. 16.

A total of 1,728 residents voted in this election, including 89 citizens who voted by absentee ballot before the 8 p.m. deadline.

Many speculated that the contest between Williams and Schlegel accounted for the spike. Williams ran unopposed in 2007, and that election only totaled 1,010 votes, while the 2005 election, which featured three mayoral candidates, brought in more than 2,000, saidCity Clerk Jessie Carpenter.

For many residents, including Sonya Mallinoff, the mayoral race was decided largely by the candidates' platforms on the city's financial situation. Takoma Park suffered a massive $577,000 cut to its budget due to the state trying to make up for its own massive budget deficit, and further cuts are on the way in the next two weeks.

"I debated about voting for new blood for mayor as opposed to the incumbent, but I decided to just stick with the known quantity," she said after casting her vote. "Roger Schlegel's really young, and he didn't seem to have enough experience in my opinion."

Despite the fact that this year's turnout did not quite eclipse the 2005 numbers, Chief Election Judge Anne Sergeant said the volume of voters this year was still daunting at times.

"We usually have a big burst in the morning, and then we have ups and downs throughout the day, but today it's been pretty steady all day," she said. "It's a double-edged sword; on one hand it's like, 'great! Thanks for coming out!' and on the other hand it's just ... whew!"

Council members Josh Wright, Colleen Clay, Dan Robinson and Reuben Snipper, wards 1, 2, 3 and 5, respectively, ran officially unopposed in this year's election and have won re-election in their respective wards.

Of the roughly 18,000 residents of Takoma Park, only about 11,000 were registered to vote as of Election Day, according to Carpenter. Elections are held every two years in Takoma Park, and candidates are all unregistered independents.

A total of 26 provisional ballots remain to be counted, but the totals are not sufficient to alter the results. Ballots are marked as "provisional" if the person who cast the vote might not be a resident of the city or if that person is unregistered, according to Carpenter.

A total of 1,728 Takoma Parkians voted in the November 2009 election by ward:

Ward 1 - 468

Ward 2 - 274

Ward 3 - 483

Ward 4 - 215

Ward 5 - 86

Ward 6 - 202