Gary Beam with wife Olethia celebrate election victory.
Beam said he will begin immediately the process of working with current Mayor Frank Lee Cox and City employees to assure a smooth transition. He also said he looks forward to working with the new City Council members who will take office at the same time.
The uncertain economic situation will be Beam's first and biggest concern as he prepares to take over the City's reins. He is no stranger to the municipal budgeting process having served five years as city clerk. "We will have to look at the revenues and compare the numbers with the requests presented by the various departments," he said. He said he will also begin working almost immediately on trying to recruit new businesses to the city. "I won't to follow up on several contacts that were established by the City's retail recruitment group that just returned today from a retail business meeting in Atlanta."
Beam, who turned 60 on October 5th, has worked for the past five years as a machinist at Lektron, Inc. He had taken a leave of absence from Lektron to campaign and will be resigning to devote full time to the mayor's position. He ran unsuccessfully for the mayor position three times, losing once by only five votes. He and councilwoman Dianne Prestridge found themselves in a run-off after none of the five candidates in the primary received a majority of the votes. Beam said he was appreciative of the campaign that Prestridge ran.
A testimony to the hard work of the two candidates was the fact that more people voted in the run-off than in the primaries with five candidates. In the August 26th balloting 2,154 voters turned out to support their choice for the office. In Tuesday's election a total of 2,301 voters cast a ballot. Only one ballot, an absentee ballot, was cast as a provisional vote. Beam led with 55% of the votes to Prestridge's 45%. He and the other city council members will take office on November 3rd.
Councilwoman Dianne Prestridge said she was disappointed by the outcome but wanted to congratulate Beam on his victory. "I am disappointed but I believe we did everything we could to get our message out," Prestridge said in a phone interview after meeting with her supporters. "It has been a long campaign and I want to congratulate Gary and wish Gary and the new council the best." "We wanted to run a clean campaign and I believe we accomplished that," she added.
Prestridge said she was disappointed that "with four new council members and a new mayor there will have to be a lot of on-the-job training that will have to be paid with taxpayer dollars but that is the choice the people have made."
She expressed her appreciation to those who voted for her and offered encouragement over the past months. "I also want to thank my family for their support and hard work," she added.
Prestridge said she will return to selling real estate and enjoying her grandbaby.
