The Town of Hastings in St. Johns County, which was founded in 1890, will be dissolved.
An overwhelming 83.42 percent of those that cast ballots voted yes on the proposition to dissolve the town.
Just 17.58% voted against the measure. The total vote was 136 for and 29 against.
The vote largely rendered the race for Town Commissioner Seat 3 meaningless but Kim Lewis Felder won that contest with 52.53%, or 83 votes. Chris Stanton received 75 votes, which amounted to 45.47%.
Related: St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections - Hastings election results
Forty-one percent of the registered voters in Hastings took part in the general election.
Hastings commissioners will now have about three months to work on a transition plan to turn control over to St. Johns County.
“We do have failing infrastructure,” Hastings Mayor Tom Ward told WJCT News in July. “The county has the means and funding to address them much easier than we can,” Ward said.
About 600 people live in Hastings, which will become part of unincorporated St. Johns County.
Hastings is perhaps best known for the tagline, the “Potato Capital of Florida.”
Potatoes were a major industry at one point in the town’s history, with 43,000 bushels of Irish potatoes and 23,000 bushels of sweet potatoes shipped in 1901, according to hastings-fl.com.
Bill Bortzfield can be reached at bbortzfield@wjct.org, 904-358-6349 or on Twitter at @BortzInJax.
