Four Chelsea city council candidates were officially certified as winners during the City Council meeting on Tuesday after running unopposed in the Aug. 26 municipal election.
The four candidates — Johnna Barnes (Place 1), Scott Weygand (Place 2), Chris Grace (Place 3), and Casey Morris (Place 5) — were declared elected without opposition and will begin new terms this fall. Three are returning incumbents: Weygand, Grace and Morris. Barnes, a lifelong Chelsea resident and Chelsea High School alumna, will join the council for the first time.
In their candidate questionnaires submitted to 280 Living, the unopposed winners outlined priorities they plan to focus on when their new terms begin.
Barnes said improving communication and fostering more opportunities for public input are among her top priorities. “The leaders of the community must be proactive when giving updates and also offer real opportunities for community input,” she wrote. “Clear and consistent communication builds trust.”
Weygand, a small business owner and member of the Chelsea Kiwanis Club who has served on the council since 2016, said he wants to see city services grow and improve alongside Chelsea’s development. “In the next four years I want to see the city grow the services it offers,” he said. “It needs to become more organized and structured. This is something that I am planning to work on.”
Grace, appointed to the council in 2019 and elected to a full term in 2020, is a civil engineer who has advised cities across the Southeast. He said Chelsea’s growth has outpaced its infrastructure and that the city needs to slow its growth rate to allow services to catch up and maintain quality of life.
“We have reached critical mass in a relatively short span,” Grace said. “It is time for us to slow our pace and allow services and infrastructure to catch up. We need to make smart decisions so that we can maintain a high quality of life and keep Chelsea a desirable place to live.”
Morris, a two-term incumbent first elected in 2016, emphasized these priorities in his next term: "Managing growth responsibly and enhancing parks and greenways, improving roadways and drainage, and ensuring our city services meet the needs of a growing population."
The city’s contested races — including the race for mayor between Cody Sumners and Mike Rochester, and a competitive race for Council Place 4 — will be decided by voters on Tuesday, Aug. 26. You can read more about the mayor’s race here.
For information about how and where to vote in Chelsea, visit our voting guide.
More in-depth coverage of the contested races will be published online in the coming weeks, and the full Voter Guide will appear in the August print edition of 280 Living.
