Although the Election Day ballot for Valencia borough council may show what looks like a contested race for one of the three seats, the candidates say otherwise.

When borough residents head to the polls Nov. 4, they will see elections for two borough council seats.

One is a race between Joshua Zimmerman and Shanon McKenna — both incumbents on the council — for a four-year seat. The other election, for a two-year seat, is an unopposed race in which McKenna is the only listed candidate.

Both candidates are urging residents to vote for Zimmerman for the four-year seat and McKenna for the two-year seat to maintain the status quo of the council.

“I would highly recommend people vote for Josh over me for the four-year (seat),” McKenna said.

The unique situation came about as a result of Valencia residents showing their support for McKenna by granting him enough signatures to appear on the ballot for the borough council election in November.

What complicated matters was that McKenna received enough signatures to appear as a candidate in both races. To make matters even more confusing, McKenna appears as a Democrat on the two-year ballot and as a Republican on the four-year ballot.

“When they wrote me in, whether they were Democrat or Republican, they wrote me into the two-year slot, and then some wrote me into the four-year slot,” McKenna said. “And that’s how I ended up being on both.”

“Whenever we were chatting with people, they said, ‘Oh, yeah, was I supposed to write you in for four years or two years?’”

Complicating matters further, the term of the third council member, Roger Grey, also will expire at the end of the year. Zimmerman said he initially decided not to run for reelection, but the other two convinced him to change his mind.

“We just wanted to keep the group together,” Zimmerman said.

This decision came too late for Grey to put his name on the ballot, so Grey has distributed cards to borough residents urging them to vote for him for the two-year seat as a write-in.

McKenna became an interim member of the council in April, replacing former council member Torey Verts, who resigned due to, what McKenna called, “personal matters.” Verts was the second council member to resign in a matter of months, as Rob Vigue resigned in November and was replaced by Zimmerman.

Because McKenna became an interim council member on such short notice, he was unable to appear on the general election ballot through traditional means.

“It was too late for him to formally go through the paperwork process to get on that ballot,” Zimmerman said. “So he stood outside the door and handed out cards.”

For McKenna, it was a return to the council, where he had previously served until 2019.