BOULDER &mdash Voters went with experience in a City Council race in which they had their choice of 22 candidates vying for seven seats.

The two incumbents, Ken Wilson and Crystal Gray, led the pack, while Susan Osborne, president of Historic Boulder, placed third.

Also on their way to winning seats were Lisa Morzel, a former two-term City Council member; Angelique Espinoza, who had the endorsement of the Boulder Area Board of Realtors for her pro-business stances; Macon Cowles, an environmental lawyer who led the lawsuit against Exxon in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case; and Matthew Appelbaum, another former city councilman.

Wilson, Gray, Osborne, Morzel and Cowles had been endorsed by Plan Boulder County, the influential nonprofit citizens group, which said those candidates would best carry on the tradition of valuing open space, limiting growth and giving residents plenty of non-automobile transportation options.

The winners will face the ongoing challenge of making the city, with an average single-family house cost of $500,000, accessible to the middle class. They'll also wrestle with finding havens for prairie dogs and reducing the city's carbon tax.

Appelbaum, who won the endorsement of the Sierra Club, said during the campaign that sustainability is the key issue. Boulder should set "cutting-edge standards for energy efficiency," and be a leader in climate-change strategies, he said.

Osborne said the city needs to have a tough debate about housing Ñ pop-ups, scrape-offs and house size. She was dismayed when the Planning Board recently OKed the demolition of a house built in 1895, a decision that, she said, "made the community poorer and a developer richer." Morzel vowed to be an advocate of the underserved Ñ one in seven people in affluent Boulder lives below the poverty level. She wants to restore library hours and make it easier for pedestrians and bicyclists to get around town safely.

The new City Council isn't going to get rich, apparently.

In a tight contest, voters were rejecting a pay raise that would have bumped council pay to a maximum of $12,000 a year.

If "no" keeps its narrow lead, council members will continue to get paid $170 a meeting, up to a maximum of $8,000 a year.

Voters did overwhelmingly approve two changes to the city charter prompted in part by Councilman Richard Polk's arrest for allegedly having marijuana in his car.

Ballot Question 2C states that a council member will be removed from office if convicted of a felony, as opposed to being convicted of any crime.

Ballot 2D changed how the city deals with council vacancies, the aim being to not hold a special election if the vacancy is only for a short while before the regularly scheduled election.