County Considering Purchasing Vote Tabulators
On Monday, March 25th, the Adams County Commissioners held their final meeting of the month. Commissioner Viki Purdy was present and Commissioner Daren Ward was in attendance via Zoom, however Commissioner Joe Iveson was not present.
Prosecuting Attorney, Peter Donovan, followed up with the inquiry about the Fourth of July Porcupine Races and said that there is no start date specified but that all the porcupines need to be released immediately following the race. He had recently alerted the commissioners about a wildlife ordinance that technically made it illegal to possess a porcupine for the race outside of the Council city limits. They changed the ordinance so that participants of the porcupine races were not technically in violation.
Meredith Fisher, with Planning and Zoning, said they are working on making sure that the application for Mountain Origins is complete before sending it out to all the applicable agencies. She had some questions about the billing schedule for reimbursements. They decided to update the language to be consistent with the verbal agreement. Fisher also told the commissioners she was looking into road setbacks in other jurisdictions to see what they are doing. She said that many of them varied depending on the type of road. In some ordinances, the setbacks were much larger for highways, for example. Fisher said she didn’t want to complicate things more, but they might need to make the requirements different in different scenarios. She wanted to set up a meeting with Road and Bridge and the Building Department to discuss that. Fisher didn’t have a draft of an ordinance yet since the situation had a bit more nuance than expected.
After this, County Clerk, Sherry Ward, spoke about the election ballot tabulator she was hoping to buy. She added the invoice for a hardened computer that includes a printer that goes with the tabulator. They can get it much cheaper from other sellers, but they weren’t sure if it would be Idaho certified if they did that. Clerk Ward thought they were better off going with their system and their support even if it was more expensive. Commissioner Ward agreed and thought the extra money was worth the piece of mind that the company would be there to fix problems. Commissioner Purdy was skeptical. She said she talked to some people in Texas who said they didn’t consider purchasing this kind of equipment until they had over 10,000 people in a county. She said it was definitely worth asking “what does it cost per vote?” Purdy was also concerned about ongoing costs and was unsure if they were being fully disclosed. Sherry Ward agreed to get her an estimated cost per vote and said there would be at least the $7,400 annual cost of the software, but by getting the tabulators they would also be eliminating two people. “It also relieved us from being there until 2:00 In the morning,” said Ward.
Steve Shelton, with Solid Waste, said everyone is complaining about mud. They are having problems getting the garbage and recycling trucks down Highway 95 since the slide has closed the highway to commercial vehicles. They were not sure what to do and were worried about having to shut down some services in New Meadows. Commissioner Viki Purdy thought they needed to have a meeting with the Department of Transportation.
After executive sessions, Sheriff Ryan Zollman arrived and also was concerned about the road. He was afraid of the DOT shutting the whole road down again. Zollman said the people can’t afford the economical effect this is having on the community. He talked about someone who needed a septic pumped and what should be a two hour job was turning into a ten hour job. They briefly discussed alternate routes. Zollman said he hoped they would be assigning a liaison to help communicate with the public. They discussed whether the slide area was on the radar prior to last week. “The problem is, we are so low priority here compared to the uncontrollable growth in the valley,” said Zollman.
Zollman reported there were 22 state inmates and 2 county inmates in the jail.
After lunch, the commissioners had a meeting with the Bureau of Land Management scheduled. While they were waiting, they discussed the technicalities of adding something to the agenda and did end up adding to the agenda a letter of support for a rancher. Commissioner Viki Purdy said a couple years ago the Forest Service was concerned that domestic sheep were causing wild sheep to die on the forest so they forced a rancher off his allotment, but they later decided it wasn’t the domestic sheep causing the problem and the rancher wanted his allotment back. Purdy had drafted a letter of support for the rancher to the Payette Forest Supervisor, Matthew Davis, and the commissioners approved signing it.
Brent Rolston, from the Bureau of Land Management, arrived then and gave a short update from BLM. He said most of the work they have been doing is fire and post fire work. A lot of acreage burned on BLM land last year, and they have been doing restoration. The Paddock Fire had the biggest footprint for the year. It burned 236,000 acres, 186,000 of which were BLM. They have reseeded about 100,000 acres so far aerially. He said they got the seed on top of a light layer of snow which is ideal for reseeding. They are looking at grazing closures in some areas and have been working with the different permitees. Commissioner Viki Purdy asked how many permits were affected on the fires last year. He said they had 23 on the Paddock and less then ten on Lava as well and some on Mineral and Big Flat.
The next county commissioners meeting is currently scheduled for Monday, April 14th.
