Three votes likely chose winner for council

GONZALES — Three votes appear to be the difference in Saturday’s Parish Council District 4 runoff between Ascension Parish Planning and Zoning Commissioner Daniel “Doc” Satterlee and Pat Bell, the incumbent council chairman closely aligned with the parish administration.

Complete but unofficial results show that Satterlee edged Bell 812 to 809 votes in an election that Satterlee tried to make into a race about how parish government has improperly managed growth.

Turnout was 25 percent for the all-Republican battle in the northern Prairieville district, one of the fastest-growing parts of Ascension in the past decade.

On Tuesday morning, parish and state election officials plan to open voting machines to check runoff and other election results, said Bridget Hanna, chief deputy clerk of court. The check is a key step before results become official.

Bell led the three-man Oct. 22 primary and was ahead of Satterlee by 120 votes, 794 to 674.

Third-place finisher Michael “Mikey” Braud, a Republican who won 578 votes on Oct. 22, did not publicly endorse either man in the runoff.

Bell, who was seeking a second four-year term and has been council chairman his entire first term, did not return messages Monday.

Satterlee, an LSU professor emeritus in poultry science, was appointed to the Planning and Zoning Commission in November 2010 by the Parish Council. He became part of a majority that has taken a tougher line on development and, at times, has been critical of the parish administration.

During the campaign, he promised infrastructure-guided growth with fiscal accountability and was one of several challengers to the incumbent parish leadership.

On Monday, Councilman-elect Satterlee said he will try to restore the public’s trust in parish government. He said he has not heard from Bell about the election.

Satterlee has taken fire, however, for his stances on development. This summer, he was the focus of shakedown allegations by the owner of Houmas Plantation and Gardens when that project came before the commission. Satterlee and another commissioner, also accused, were cleared of criminal wrongdoing. They denied the claims and threatened a defamation suit in response.

On Monday, Houmas House owner Kevin Kelly confirmed he paid for an election flier about that dispute that went to so-called chronic voters in District 4 on Wednesday.

The flier backed Bell and accused Satterlee of being “against Ascension Parish job growth and expansion.” Kelly said the flier was independent of Bell’s campaign.

Satterlee speculated that a tennis court project proposed by Rein Rod LLC in Precinct 1 was “a lightning rod” for Bell. He asserted residents were not happy with the parish’s response during a community meeting Nov. 3.

At that meeting, residents expressed concerns but also showed interest in a special kind of zoning that parish officials proposed to lock in what the project would be.

Satterlee opposed a rezoning for the project in July as a commissioner. Bell was less certain in his opposition to the still-pending project, but promised at the meeting that traffic to the tennis courts would not use neighborhood roads.

Satterlee won Precinct 1, his home precinct, by 108 votes, 276 to 168. Satterlee won Precinct 1 by 31 votes in the three-man primary on Oct. 22, unofficial results show.

In the runoff, Bell took the other three precincts in the district and won early voting, but with Braud out of the race, Satterlee was able to pick up votes and keep Bell’s margin of victory tight.