Mayors survive challenges in Lake Elmo and Hugo

Lake Elmo Mayor Dean Johnston was reelected Tuesday, beating Steve DeLapp in a race that focused on how best to manage growth in the small east metro suburb.

With Lake Elmo on a verge of a population explosion, Johnston and DeLapp had been at odds over how to manage the growth in the small city, which is expected to triple in size over the next 20 years.

DeLapp, a City Council member, had said that he would represent the interests of residents and that Johnston would back the interests of business owners and developers.

Johnston, saying that he could work with people and groups to get results, had argued that his opponent would stop change.

And in Hugo, incumbent Fran Miron beat Mike McAllister, a former Hugo mayor and City Council member.

McAllister, 64, is a charter member of a citizens' group called We the People, which has called for a state audit of the city's finances and has been outspoken in its criticism of the current City Council's policies.

"Hugo has been either the beneficiary or the victim of manufactured development," McAllister has said. "We've seen western Hugo develop in a period of five or six years to a development that was never planned," McAllister has said. Miron, 54, also is a former council member and served as mayor from 1994 to 1999. He ran again in 2001, and has been mayor since.

"The market has slowed, and that type of development is not something you force," he has said. "You try to encourage it. That's a real focus of mine and of the current council, and I'd like to see that through as the market comes back."

In Woodbury, City Council members Amy Scoggins and Paul Rebholz, both completing their first terms on the five-member council, were reelected from a field of six candidates for two seats.

In Lino Lakes, voters overwhelming decided to maintain control over road reconstruction projects.

Under the city's charter, road proposals that require a special tax assessment on homeowners is subject to a public referendum. Because of that, residents have approved just one road in the past 26 years.

Those who wanted to change the charter said that city officials should have the right to build roads as needed.