Lorain/Elyria, OH
Money set for recall election for Grace
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ELYRIA — The Lorain County commissioners on Thursday voted to give the county Board of Elections $106,500.
It was far less than the $172,000 elections board Director Jose Candelario had asked for, but it will be enough, he said, to get through the end of the year.
The money will be used to finalize pollworker and overtime pay from the general election earlier this month and to begin paying for the recall election of Elyria Mayor Bill Grace set for Dec. 22.
Candelario said he has talked with vendors who will need to be paid to prepare ballots for the Feb. 2 special election on levies for Columbia Schools and the Amherst library and those vendors have agreed to push the bills back into next year.
The money will eventually be returned to the county’s general fund because political subdivisions are required to pay for their own elections and special elections, Candelario said.
Commissioner Lori Kokoski said the commissioners were able to scrape together enough money to cover the elections board, but she warned that might not happen for future requests for cash from other county departments.
“We got lucky this time,” Kokoski said.
The commissioners have begun scouring their 2010 budget for cuts in the wake of the defeat of a 0.5 percent sales tax increase at the polls earlier this month.
No decisions have been made, but the commissioners have said they will have to cut between $2 million and $4 million on top of $6 million in cuts made for 2009. The first round of cuts led to the layoff of more than 75 county workers, including sheriff’s deputies.
The county will continue to collect the increased sales tax through April 2010, but because of how it put it on the ballot will be unable to raise the rate again until 2011.
Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.
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Well Ms. Kokoski if you and your fellow Commissioners hadn’t wasted taxpayers money #1 buying the Old Train station and #2 spending money to restore it you wouldn’t have to scrape money up. Also you should get the message as Grace did when issue 4 took a dive the citizens of Lorain County do not trust you three Commissioners anymore with their tax money. Hope you and the other Commissioners enjoy your last term as Commissioners because you wont be able to be reelected aging on Obama’s shirt tail next year.
Oh just love the way the Chronicle by the head line makes it look like all the money for the normal Election is going to pay for Graces recall, very nice touch………
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I did like the headline as well.
Why not make pollworking a required civic duty like jury duty is? Then you would have sufficient pollworkers and have to pay less. Just an idea.
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Jason
You have a great idea there!!! Folks on jury duty get paid a small amount, but it has to be less than they are paid now, and most of the folks I have seen at the voting polls have been retired citizens. Also look who is running the BOE, the guy who lost Pat Riley’s paper work is, so maybe he should step down and let someone who can keep their eye on the ball so to speak.
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I wouldn’t trust poll workers if they were forced…
They should be city and county workers and they do that for a day… no extra money would need be spent.. other states do this…..
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Daniels
Another good idea! Maybe we should start a committee to pass around a petition to get your idea if possible enacted. See there are all kinds of new ideas that we citizens can come up with and we should start voicing our ideas to our local government until our Cities and County Government listens.
When the government fears the people there is
LIBERTY
When the people fear the government there is
TYRANNY
Thomas Jefferson
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Alot of the new worker are county and state workers who take a day off of work and than get paid $100.00 or alittle more to work the polls on and election day.
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Defender
Are you kidding me? Let me get this straight and please correct me, you mean to tell me a County Worker gets the day off from the County Job to work in the polls, then gets paid not only from his or her normal job as well as they get paid by the Board of Elections $100.00 for the day?
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The way I understand it. Poll workers can be just about anyone that has the time (and ability to take off work for an entire day on election day). You do get paid to be a poll worker. You do have to go for training because you should know how to run the machines,, etc. So what if city or county people work at the polls and get paid also. They are using a vacation day or paid time off day. 100.00 is not that much for all the time and grief that poll workers have to put up with.
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Carolyn
Well then next time I get the notice in the mail asking me if I would like to be a poll person I am going to do it.
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Dirtdigger,
There are two women that work at the poll that I vote at they both work for the State at the social security building in Lorain. They take a payed day off, and then collect for working the polls.
Don’t get me wrong that is a long day of 13 or 14 hrs. for $100.00.
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why would poll poeple get overtime just cuz they worked in nov? isnt overtime based on hours in week not a year?
love the way kokosi tries to make it sound so dire “we got lucky this time”. if they hadnt misspent so much; they wouldnt have to worry about not having funds. it wouldnt matter anyway would it? if theres supost to be a election, there will be a election right?
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