Unalaska's Accu-Vote machine tallies absentee ballots Friday morning. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)

Yudelka Leclere has officially won a seat on Unalaska’s city council, with 52 percent of the vote. As KUCB’s Annie Ropeik reports, she’s unseated a veteran incumbent -- and left him with some unfinished business.

When the city’s canvass committee counted the final votes from the election Friday morning, not too many people came out to watch. There was just Zoya Johnson, who ran unopposed to keep her city council seat -- and Yudelka Leclere, who was waiting for confirmation that she’d beaten a four-term incumbent councilor.

City clerk Cat Hazen had to struggle a little with the Accu-Vote machine:

Hazen: I’m supposed to hold these two buttons down at the same time, and then do it. ... There we go! [sound of machine printing]

And then, she read out the final totals: 227 votes for Leclere, and 200 for Robinson.

Leclere was pretty calm after the announcement. But in the City Hall lobby, she said she was shocked she’d won.

"It’s my first time in this adventure," Leclere says. "It’s good to see that the community came out and voted. So it’s exciting."

She thinks she got support as a first-time candidate because she’s an active volunteer and fundraiser with city schools and nonprofits.

"A lot of people were saying that they know I’m a person that -- if I say I’m going to do something, they know my word is golden," she says. "Because they’ve already seen me working with kids. They’ve already seen me out in the community."

As for Dennis Robinson, he wasn’t in the room when the results were read. And he puts his loss down to his own lack of campaigning. He says he didn’t publicize the election enough among his supporters -- the long-term residents he’s always focused on as a councilor.

"The population that I represented was my children’s children -- people that are going to be affected 50 years-plus," he says. "And I don’t think there currently is anybody on the council that would represent those residents with the tenacity that I did."

Robinson spoke or asked questions at nearly every meeting during his time in office -- sometimes sparking internal debates. He’d grown critical of the city’s approach to contracting in recent years. And he called repeatedly for the city to facilitate more permanent housing.

He says he’ll still speak up at meetings on Unalaska’s housing shortage as a private citizen.

And he hasn’t ruled out running again for council or even mayor in future. Robinson’s taken long breaks from public office in the past -- he served two consecutive terms on council, and waited about 15 years before running again in 2008.

As Leclere faces her first term in office, she says she’s not building an agenda just yet:

"I really don’t want to start prioritizing. I want to be open to everything that’s happening and tackle one thing at a time," she says. "When you put too many things on the same table, things tend to fall through the cracks. So you have to give each item 100 percent of your attention."

Leclere will have some time to get ready. City council is meeting Friday at 6:15 p.m. to certify the election results, but they won’t have a quorum for a regular meeting for at least a couple of weeks.

2014 Municipal Election Results (435 ballots cast)

• City Council Seat B: Yudelka Leclere (227 votes)
• City Council Seat E: Zoya Johnson (297 votes)
• School Board Seat B: Cathy Jordan (350 votes)
• School Board Seat D: Denise Rankin (332 votes)
• School Board Seat E: Fernando Barrera (356 votes)