Although he will give up his four-year seat on the Ironton Board of Education, B.

Wednesday, November 03, 1999

Although he will give up his four-year seat on the Ironton Board of Education, B.J. Hannon will still be a board member.

Hannon beat Cecil Townsend 1,476 to 1,258 for the full term currently held by Kathy Kratzenberg. Mrs. Kratzenberg decided instead to run for the unexpired board term, which begins Jan. 1. She was unsuccessful in her bid for one of the three open seats.

"I’m anxiously looking forward to serving two more years on the board of education," Hannon said. "I’m looking forward to the possibility of getting more funds from the state, and I will continue to concentrate on the academics. I have several ideas I will be working on to try to improve the school system."

And with new board members Robert Pleasant and Gary Neal joining the team, Hannon is looking forward to an interesting and fulfilling next two years.

"Mr. Pleasant and Mr. Neal, I know both of them, and, hopefully, we’ll be able to work together for the betterment of the system itself," Hannon said.

Although Neal will be a new face, Pleasant has a long history of cooperating with the board, Hannon said.

"Pleasant seems to be an outstanding representative of the city here and he will be a nice addition to the board," he said.

This November’s election was a tough one to call, but the results were not too surprising, Hannon said.

"There were a highly unusual number of candidates running, and when you get that many, it spreads the vote out," he said. "In some cases, that probably hurt some of the candidates, but we had a lot of interesting people who wanted to be on the board, and, hopefully, the will of the people has been met."