Steamboat Today: Brian Kelly wins School Board seat

Archive for Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Brian Kelly, left, defeated Bill Kennedy on Tuesday night for the District 1 seat on the Steamboat Springs School Board.

By Jack Weinstein Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Visit www.steamboatpilot.com/election2009 for complete coverage of this year's races and issues.

Brian Kelly

Bill Kennedy

Connelly wins uncontested 4-year seat

Denise Connelly won an uncontested race for her District 3 School Board seat Tuesday and will serve a second term. She received 2,749 votes.

Connelly, who taught English and Spanish for 28 years of her 29-year teaching career in Steamboat, said she sought re-election to help the district address future challenges.

"Obviously, the biggest is going to be how the economy and state deficit affects school funding," she said. "Our biggest challenge will be providing kids with the best education with possible limited resources."

She said the School Board would have to see what programs could be cut that wouldn't affect students. Connelly said her goals for her next four years on the board would be to continue the district's accountability measures and engage the community.

Steamboat Springs — Brian Kelly won another chance to give back to the education community.

Kelly received 2,174 votes in Tuesday's election to challenger Bill Kennedy's 1,546, taking the District 1 seat on the Steamboat Springs School Board. That amounts to a 58 to 42 percent vote.

"The work starts shortly," Kelly said. "There's a lot of challenges in front of us."

Kelly was a member of the committee that pushed for a half-cent sales tax for education in 1993. The sales tax passed, and he was twice a member of the Education Fund Board, which determines how revenue from that tax will be used for schools. Kelly also was named a district Friend of Education in 1993 and 1995.

Kelly replaces education veteran John DeVincentis, a former longtime Strawberry Park Elementary School teacher, on the School Board. When he decided not to seek a second term, DeVincentis said his School Board tenure capped a 39-year career in education and that was enough for him.

The man Kelly beat was also a 39-year education veteran from New York state.

Kennedy said he decided to run because at the time, no one else had expressed interest. Kennedy said he thought he could offer his expertise after a career spent in education and that he wanted to give back to the community.

"Experience to me speaks tons," he said when reached by phone on vacation in Australia. "Obviously, experience wasn't a big enough factor. That's OK. That's the way it is. People will elect who they want, and that's fine."

Kelly, who will serve a four-year term, said he thought his time spent in Steamboat, including his work in the education community, contributed to his election to the School Board. Kelly ran unsuccessfully against Jeff Troeger for the District 2 School Board seat in 2003.

Kelly, 55, moved to Steamboat permanently in 1989 after living in Steamboat on and off since 1972.

Kelly's son, Blake, is a sophomore at Steamboat Springs High School. His stepdaughter, Samantha, is a 2003 graduate of the school. He and his wife, Judy, own BTK Surveys.

Neither Kelly nor Kennedy cited a platform on which they were running.

Kelly said some of the challenges facing the district include the Northwest Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services' overspending its budget last year and increasing the cost of the services it will provide districts this year. He said the state financial challenges also could affect K-12 education. Kelly said the goal would be to maintain quality education despite those challenges.

Kennedy said he was pleased with the support he received from the community, even though he hasn't lived in Steamboat long. He said the best part of his campaign was meeting new people to discuss education issues. Kennedy said he never rules anything out but didn't think he would run for School Board again.

Kelly will be sworn in at the next School Board meeting, Nov. 16.