REGIONAL – The recent trend for lower turnouts and no surprises continued this week as results from school board elections and budget votes rolled in Tuesday night.

In Ellenville, where the only race was run for contested school board seats, all incumbents won again. Out of the six candidates seeking to fill four seats on the board of education, the top three vote-getters who will now serve three-year terms were incumbents Raymond Matthews with 586 votes, Jody Little with 568 votes and Julius Collins with 490 votes; the fourth-place finisher, who will serve for one year, was recently-appointed incumbent Willie Bruce Jr. with 414 votes.

Also running in Ellenville was parent Cassie Spoor, who came in with 302 votes, and Francis Gurgui with 117 votes.

In Pine Bush, where there were four candidates for four seats, a fifth candidate who dropped out two weeks ago, Jeffrey Weisman, still came in with 71 votes. The breakdown in voting was new candidate Dori Johnson with 1,019 votes, Matthew Watkins of Shawangunk, another new candidate, with 912 votes, and incumbents Gretchen Meier and Lloyd Greer, the current PBSD board president, with 1,065 and 1,015 votes, respectively.

In Rondout Valley, where the three school board candidates were also uncontested for three-year terms, newcomer Dawn VanKleeck received 661 votes, Michael Baden received 622 votes, and incumbent board trustee David O'Halloran got 609 votes.

In terms of budgets, an item which has seen little controversy, or dangers of being voted down, since the state set mandated tax caps several years ago, all spending plans passed, with all tax levies in the one percent or lower levels.

In Ellenville, school district residents voted 542-144 in favor of a $48.2 million budget for 2016-17. The budget is about 0.8 percent smaller than the district's 2015-16 spending plan and increases the property tax levy by 0.88 percent, to $23,286,191.

In Pine Bush, the budget passed 989 to 311 with a zero increase in taxes and the biggest no votes coming from Crawford/Montgomery with 101 and Walker Valley at 90.

In Rondout Valley school district residents on Tuesday voted 711-221 in favor of a $61.72 million 2016-17 budget carrying a 1.67 percent increase of $1.02 million. Under the plan there will be a $22.77 million property tax levy that is unchanged from the current budget and keeps the district within the state limit for increases.