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There will be three contested races, including for the mayor's office, when polls open Tuesday in Takoma Park's municipal election.

Incumbent Mayor Bruce Williams will face fellow Ward 3 resident Roger Schlegel, while incumbent Councilman Terry Seamens – who declined a chance to run for mayor last week – will run against Eric Mendoza for the Ward 4 seat on the City Council. Two newcomers, local activist Navid Nasr and longtime neighborhood organization leader Frederick Schultz, will vie for the Ward 6 seat when interim Councilwoman Donna Victoria steps down after the election.

Preserving the city's finances in light of recent state and county budget deficits seems likely to dominate the mayoral contest this year. Schlegel hopes to bring his background in education, administration and public works to help the city stick to a stricter budget in the coming fiscal year. Williams is equally confident that his years of experience, both as mayor and formerly as the Ward 3 councilman, make him the best candidate to guide the council during the dark times ahead.

"My understanding of how finances work and don't work in the state and county will be very helpful to see us through this," Williams said in a telephone interview last week. "[State legislators are] looking for money, looking to share the pain, and they're saying, ‘Well gee, look at these municipalities ..."

Williams mentioned his three years of experience on the Maryland Municipal League, a group of city representatives from around the state that are lobbying against further cuts into city tax-revenue pots by the state legislature.

Schlegel said his priority was not only to keep the city's budget stable, but to more efficiently balance what services the city provides against the threat of increasing taxes for homeowners, many of whom were upset that the city's cut to the 2010 property tax rate did not go far enough.

"I want to work on attending more to the bottom line," Schlegel said outside a recent council meeting. "Using any low-cost solutions we can find to get the services we need, but also recognizing that, if we continue to increase the burden on households, the character of our city will change."

Ward 6 may well be decided on neighborhood lines, with Schultz representing the vocal New Hampshire Gardens Citizen's Association of homeowners west of New Hampshire Avenue while Nasr is crusading predominantly among the lower-income, foreign-born renters east of the highway.

Schultz advocated uniting these two factions to better address the issues confronting the ward, which posts the city's highest crime rates and will also undergo a major transformation when a new transit line is built along University Boulevard on the northern border of the ward through the Crossroads.

"I've always told people if I'm going to run for City Council, I'm going to need [all ward residents] to tell me what to do," he said. "My role, as I see it, [would be] to make sure citizens and business owners get their fair share in what they want to see done so that citizens don't feel overrun [by the development]."

Nasr took a more pointed approach, listing the possible threat of gentrification in the Crossroads development plan and the plight of low-income renters in the ward as his top priorities.

"I'm running as an activist; not to use the office as a stepping stone," he said. "There are so many apartments in this area where people don't even know what their rights are because they've been violated so often ... they are forced to live in horrible conditions."

Judging from supporter turnout at the city's nominating caucus Sept. 29, incumbent councilman Seamens may seem the favorite for that race against newcomer Mendoza – who will be placed on the ballot as a write-in candidate – but Seamens himself thinks the race will be close.

"I think he stands a very strong chance," he said of Mendoza. At the same time, Seamens was confident that his support from ward seniors, as well as recent youth programs such as helping to reopen the Piney Branch Elementary swimming pool, will grant him another two years on the council.

"The city should act as a catalyst for bringing vocational training opportunity to the young adults of the community," he said.

Mendoza himself nominated Seamens for mayor this year, calling him a "mentor" and praising his past work for the ward and the city. At the same time, he listed two issues long overlooked in the ward, the lack of youth programs and the related crime hotspots on Maple Avenue.

"The rec[reation] department needs a lot of help with the youth," he said. "So you won't see the kids hanging out in front of the stores all day, so they will actually be involved in constructive activities."