By Corey Everitt
Brett Owen and Collin Ross have retained their seats on the Cardinia Shire Council once again.
The counts for Beacon Hills and Central Wards are complete, showing a dominant win for both with three-quarters of their electorate voting for their return.
Both faced only a single opponent in this election and each took 76 per cent of the vote.
Owen received 6036 first preference votes over opponent Kylie Wagstaff who drew 1856 votes.
Ross held a firm with 5519 votes over opponent Rekha Devda Naidu’s 1685 votes.
This will be Owen’s sixth consecutive term with next year marking two decades as a councillor.
Ross has achieved his fifth consecutive term.
With the departure of Graeme Moore, they will be the only current sitting councillors to have served on the council for more than a decade.
This week, residents are set to know the full slate of councillors for the next four years.
On the back of the Melbourne Cup , the VEC continued the count on Wednesday 6 November.
‘Group A’ ballots – the majority of overall votes, being the ones that came in by 6pm on 25 October – had their first preferences counted last week revealing the front runners in each ward.
Over Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7 November, the VEC plans to count ‘Group B’, approximately a thousand remaining votes for each ward, to finalise the full first preference standings.
Doing four wards each day in alphabetical order, Beacon Hills, Bunyip, Central and Henty Wards will have their Group B ballots counted on Wednesday and Officer, Ranges, Toomuc and Westerport Wards will be counted on Thursday.
As many of the wards only have two candidates, the final first preference tally will confirm the winner for five out of the eight wards up for grabs.
The councillors for Bunyip, Officer and Westernport Wards will likely be known by Thursday afternoon.
On Friday, the VEC will count down the ballots for Henty, Ranges and Toomuc Wards where these close races will be decided in the distribution of preferences.
Star News will report on the results as they are revealed throughout the week and readers can follow the coverage online at pakenhamnews.starcommunity.com.au
