With the July 7 deadline in the books, 12 City Council candidates have successfully gathered the required 500 petition signatures to qualify for the ballot.
The City Clerk’s office posted the final numbers Thursday morning, showing that a dozen candidates have each verified over 500 signatures, securing their spots for the November 4 election.
District 1
Ahren Griego (729 verified signatures) and Daniel Leiva (873) both easily reached the required 500 signatures to qualify.
Joshua Neal made a late push to get 545 verified signatures and qualify.
Stephanie Telles fell just short with 493 verified signatures.
District 3
Incumbent councilor Klarissa Pena qualified with 557 verified signatures.
Christopher Sedillo (610) and Teresa Garcia (520) will challenge Pena in Nov.
District 5
Athnea Allen has qualified with 550 verified signatures and will challenge incumbent councilor Dan Lewis, who has verified 546 signatures.
District 7
Incumbent councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn has qualified with 612 verified signatures. She is the only candidate running in District 7.
District 9
Renee Grout, the current councilor in District 9, has qualified with 540 verified signatures.
Melani Buchanan Farmer qualified with 530 verified signatures as did Colton Newman, who had 520.
Public financing
Candidates can also qualify for public financing by getting the number of required qualifying contributions, which are determined by voter registration in the district in which the candidate is running. The number of registered voters was extracted from the County Clerk’s voter registration database on the first business day in February.
Griego, Leiva, Pena, Lewis, Fiebelkorn and Grout each qualified for public financing, meaning they can only spend the funds distributed by the City. Privately financed candidates have no fundraising or spending limits.
The spending limits for publicly financed candidates are:
- District 1: $56,311.25
- District 3: $41,865.00
- District 5: $55,718.75
- District 7: $58,205.00
- District 9: $51,957.50
Districts 2, 4, 6 and 8 are not elected in the 2025 Regular Local Election.
The petition period, which began on June 2, concluded on July 7 at 5 p.m. Candidates who met the 500-signature requirement will be officially placed on the ballot for the upcoming City Council election. Early voting is set to begin on October 18.
