County to Purchase Vote Tabulators
On Monday, April 21st, the Adams County Commissioners met at the Adams County Courthouse. All commissioners were present, however commissioner Vicki Purdy was in attendance via Zoom, as was Prosecuting Attorney Peter Donovan.
First on the agenda, the commissioners discussed the purchase of Election Systems & Software’s DS300 Tabulators for county elections. County Clerk, Sherry Ward, spoke to the commissioners and wanted approval to purchase the tabulators. She wanted to make sure everyone understood what a tabulator was and was not. “A tabulator is not a computer, it’s not an election voting machine,” said Ward, “they have been certified at the federal level, clear down to the state level… I have listened to clerks, they haven’t been problematic, they’ve done their job and they’ve done their job consistently.” She said that during state audits of elections the errors they have found have been with hand counting not with tabulators. She said Adams County is a strong voting community and is growing in population. She reminded the commissioners that the people helping with the elections are older and the really long days are hard on all of them. Also, they are now required to count under and over votes which is adding significantly to the complexity. The cost would be partially offset because they would need fewer poll workers. Ward also mentioned the tabulator would alert voters if they marked things incorrectly so there would be fewer instances of a vote not being counted due to an error. The money for the tabulators would come from elections and the general fund.
Commissioner Joe Iveson said he understood the troubles, but Adams County is a small county, and the county portion of the bill was high. He said his main concern was balancing the budget and trying to give people raises next year. Commissioner Daren Ward agreed. Clerk Sherry Ward mentioned that the funds they are using couldn’t be used for raises though. Then they discussed some other funds that might be able to be used in lieu of dipping into the general fund.
Commissioner Viki Purdy was concerned about why the state was pushing it so hard, about ongoing costs, and about the cost per voter, which she thought was too high. She said at this point she’s not going to support it for two really long days in the year and she doesn’t have any faith that it’s going to stay like this because everything to do with computers and software gets more and more expensive. Clerk Ward said it was more like a few weeks for each election, but they decided to see if they could use the other fund and then revisit it.
Meredith Fisher, with Planning and Zoning, gave an update on Brundage and said the reimbursement agreement has been executed. Phase 1B West is in 45 day technical review. Phase 2 preliminary plat is not yet in technical review, there were some deficiencies that needed to be corrected in the application.
She had a question about someone who wanted to do a boundary line adjustment who has two parcels, but the deed reads like one property. He is being taxed for two parcels. He doesn’t want to subdivide but wants to do a boundary line adjustment to make both parcels about the same instead of one large parcel and one small and unusable one. Commissioner Iveson said liked where they make the call on boundary line adjustments and didn’t want to see that in ordinance. Commissioner Ward thought it made more sense to have two larger lots than one small and one large. Fisher cleared up that the deed reads it as one property, but they are being taxed for two parcels. Iveson thought that applied to a lot of the county, but it didn’t mean they had two lots. He thought the tax parcels did mean anything in this county, and was confused and didn’t realize that was why he thought there were two lots and if that was the case he’d have to go through the normal process to subdivide.
Steve Shelton said they are taking about three bins a week up to Valley County. The commissioners thought they might only have one more week. Shelton also had paperwork for a compactor. He said they started working around the pond but it’s still pretty wet. A fencer is lined up. Job postings are on the website and should be in the paper this week. They talked about how to share job postings on local Facebook pages because they wanted to make sure they were seen by as many people locally as possible.
Adam Balderson with Road and Bridge arrived next. Commissioner Iveson asked if Airport Rd was on the list for Mag Chloride. He said they’ve been getting a lot of complaints about truck traffic and dust. They also talked about the parking lot at the Rec Center. Balderson said they were still waiting on numbers from the city for the lots for sale. They had them appraised already and the city was still planning on giving the county first dibs. Commissioner Ward thought they should get the numbers and put it on the agenda for next week to discuss.
Sheriff Ryan Zollman said there were 26 state inmates and 3 County. The state hasn’t been pulling inmates because they can’t get the bus through. They’ve been holding meetings about the highway on Monday and Wednesdays and he is looking forward to the next one for updates.
Building inspector, Kody Williams, said he had quotes and contacts for HVAC work. Also, two compressors are out and need to be replaced, he had a bid for around $10,000. The fire sprinkler systems in the jail are in need of repair and he is trying to get bids on those. The smoke alarm and fire systems can only be serviced by one company right now and they said the control panel is slowly breaking down and needs work, which will be over $9000. Williams said they are at about 35 permits for the year so far which is about normal, but there haven’t been as many questions coming in.
Clerk Sherry Ward said she heard back already about the money for the election tabulator and they can use 100% of the other fund which they wouldn’t be able to use for other things anyway. Sherry Ward said ongoing costs can come out of the same fund. Commissioner Iveson said if they can do that then he was in favor so Commissioner Ward made a motion to approve the purchase of the tabulator and hardened computer and Iveson seconded. Commissioner Viki Purdy voted against it, however, with 2-1 the motion passed.
