Page 8 - 3-27-15 Friday's Edition

Local
New City Council Winner
The City Of Tampa Black
Chosen By Close Margin
History Committee, Inc. Offers
BY IRIS B. HOLTON Sentinel City Editor
On Tuesday, Tampa resi- dents decided the winner of the City Council District 6 runoff election. With 14.09% of the eligible voters partici- pating, Guido Maniscalco beat his opponent by a mar- gin of less than 200 votes.
According to the unoffi- cial results from the Hills- borough County Supervisor of Elections Office, the final vote tally was 3,731 ballots cast for Maniscalco and 3,580 for Ms. Jackie Toledo.
Currently, there are 51,964 eligible voters living in the District 6. Of that number, a total of 7,320 vot- ers took part in the election.
The majority of the votes, (4,476) were cast by mail. A total of 573 took advantage of the seven-day early voting period, and 1,886 voters waited to cast ballots on
GUIDO MANISCALCO ... Won the election by 2% margin
Election Day.
Ms. Gerri Kramer,
spokesperson for the Hills- borough County Supervisor of Elections Office, “The can- didate must win by less than one half of a percentage point to trigger a recount. In this election, Mr. Manis- calco won by about 2%. We still have less than 10 provi- sional ballots to count, but that won’t change the out-
JACKIE TOLEDO
... Lost the election by 151 votes
come of the election.”
When contacted by the
Sentinel, Maniscalco said, “It still seems so sur- real. I don’t think it has hit me yet. At one point, we were behind and then we came back. So, it was a nail bitter.”
A jeweler by trade, Man- iscalco said he decided to run for the office because he wanted to make a change in the community.
“I looked around at the community and saw that there was a lot of need for improvement. We need to improve the roads, there is a lack of sidewalks, we need more bicycle lanes, and I just want to make the neighbor- hoods and community safer and to improve the quality of life.”
Maniscalco also cred- ited his volunteers for help- ing him to walk through the various neighborhoods. “I had excellent volunteers and we walked through all of the neighborhoods because this is a very diverse district.”
During the General Elec- tion that took place on March 3rd, Thomas Castel- lano, Guido Maniscalco, and Ms. Jackie Toledo all ran for the District 6 seat, which did not have an in- cumbent.
Ms. Toledo, who won 3,719 votes or 46.02%, and Maniscalco, who earned 2,348 votes or 29.06%, were the top vote getters. But nei- ther candidate was able to win 50% of the votes and that resulted in the runoff election.
Maniscalco, 30, will of- ficially be sworn into office on April 1st, along with Mayor Bob Buckhorn, and returning City Council members Yoli Capin, Harry Cohen, Charlie Miranda, and Mike Suarez.
City Council member Lisa Montelione and Frank Reddick did not have opponents in the elec- tion.
Over the past 27 years the City of Tampa Black History Committee, Inc. has given fi- nancial support to some of Tampa’s African-American graduating high school sen- iors. More than $107,000 in scholarships has been awarded to students in the City of Tampa/Hillsborough County Area and this year the effort continues.
The committee’s overall goal is to assist youth in ob- taining the goal of pursuing a higher education. The schol- arships that are being offered this year (2015) will be awarded to graduating African American high schools students in the Hills- borough County School Dis- trict.
The following scholar- ships will be offered: The Bobby L. Bowden Scholarship is for a graduating high school student attending Florida Agricultural & Me- chanical University (FAMU); the Greater Bethel Missionary Baptist Church Scholarship is for an active member attend- ing Greater Bethel Missionary Baptist Church; the Janett Martin Scholarship, and the
REGINA LOCK-DE PASS ...City of Tampa Black History Committee, Inc. Education/Scholarship Chairperson
Presidential Scholarship will be awarded to high school students in Hillsborough County as well. Lastly, the Vo- cational Rehabilitation Schol- arship will be awarded to a student that is attending a vo- cational/technical school in Hillsborough County.
Visit the website www.cotbhc.org for more in- formation. The deadline for the scholarship appli- cation is Wednesday, April 15, 2015.
For questions please call Regina Lock at 813-274- 5737 or email Regina.Lock@tampagov.net.
College Scholarships
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