Silt voters have elected Keith Richel to a second term and retained recently appointed Trustee Kenneth T.J. Tucker, while also electing newcomer Dina Prieto to a third open seat on the town board.

Unofficial results in the mail ballot election that concluded Tuesday had Tucker as the top vote getter with 231 votes. Prieto came in second in the balloting with 225, and Richel had 219.

A fourth candidate in the race, former trustee Paul Taylor, had 192 votes to round out the balloting.

“Just because I had the most votes doesn’t take anything away from the other candidates,” Tucker told the Post Independent. “I was in good company in this election.

“I’m excited to continue with the good work we as a board have been doing for the town,” Tucker, who works in the oil and gas industry for XTO Energy, said. “We have a lot of irons in the fire to make Silt a little better than it is now.”

Chief among them, he and Richel said, are the efforts to work with the town’s urban renewal authority to attract a grocery store and other retail enterprises.

“I look forward to serving the town of Silt for another four years,” Richel, a sales representative for a beer distributor who was first elected to the board in 2012, said. “We have a lot of good things happening on the horizon, and hopefully we can get some of these projects done.”

Prieto has been involved in local government as an employee working with the Basalt and Carbondale police departments for several years, but this is her first elected position in her home town of 11 years.

“I guess I’m a little nervous, but at the same time very excited,” she said. “I’m happy for the opportunity to serve the people in the town where I live.”

Silt Town Clerk Sheila McIntyre said the election results will remain unofficial until at least April 15 when the votes will be canvassed. Several military ballots have yet to be returned, and though the numbers may change slightly the outcome is likely to stick.