LOCAL ELECTIONS / BURBANK : Newcomers Win Council, Board of Education Seats

In a race dominated by debates on how best to attract businesses to revitalize the local economy, Burbank voters Tuesday elected a small business owner, a financial systems manager and a former executive with a national mortgage company to serve on the City Council.

They picked a newcomer, Denise Wilcox, over an eight-year incumbent, Vivian Kaufman, for an open seat on the Board of Education.

Voter turnout was light.

Dave Golonski, Bill Wiggins and Susan Spanos were the top vote-getters in the race for three seats on the five-member City Council. All of the newly elected council members are newcomers to City Hall; there were no incumbents in the race.

Golonski, 34, a financial systems manager who ran unsuccessfully for a council seat two years ago, was the top vote-getter.

Wiggins, 43, owner of Automation Plating, a Glendale metal-plating company, was the top vote-getter in the primary and placed second in Tuesday’s balloting.

Throughout the campaign, Wiggins stressed the idea of running city government in a business-like fashion, particularly given the city’s “ever-tighter financial constraints.”

“I face a directly analogous situation each day as owner of a 70-employee firm,” Wiggins said. “To stay competitive, I must work closely and continually with my employees to discover ways of providing the same or a higher quality of services to our customers at a proportionally lower cost.”

Spanos, 29, a charity organizer who was once an account executive with a national mortgage company, was the only woman candidate, and only the third woman in the history of Burbank to win a seat on the City Council.