Incumbent Hightstown Borough Council members Joseph Cicalese, Cristina Fowler and Jeet Gulati will return to the governing body, based on certified vote tallies following the Nov. 7 general election.
Fowler was the top vote-getter with 721 votes, followed by Cicalese, who earned 666 votes. Michael Bollentin, who challenged the two Democrats, received 215 votes. He was not running as a Democrat or Republican. The term is for three years.
Gulati was elected to fill out a one-year unexpired term on the Hightstown Borough Council by earning 739 votes. The Democratic Party candidate was running unopposed.
The vote tallies were certified by Mercer County officials Nov. 22. The tallies included early voting, mail-in ballots, Election Day voting and provisional ballots.
Cicalese was seeking his second full term on the Borough Council. He was appointed to fill an unexpired term in 2019. He was elected to a full term in 2020.
Cicalese said he wanted to run for another term because he wanted to continue to work with his colleagues on the Borough Council, Mayor Susan Bluth and the borough administrative team.
“All of us on Borough Council are invested in the community, personally, as Hightstown is our home and our families depend on us to treat it with enough care to make it a good one,” he said.
He pledged to make Hightstown Borough to be the best home it can be for everyone who lives in the town.
Fowler also was seeking a second term on the Borough Council.
Fowler said she carried out two promises that she made when she ran for Borough Council in 2020 – “to increase communications and to bring more vitality to the downtown area.”
She created and implemented a Facebook page for Hightstown, and also worked to bring back the Hightstown Memorial Day parade and the Hightstown Harvest Fair. The two events bring people to town, she said.
She said she would like to explore creating a business improvement district or forming an economic development committee to further enhance the downtown.
Gulati could not be reached for comment.
