Marion County won’t hold a referendum on additional fire property taxes this year because the costs could exceed $24,000 and deadlines are fast approaching.
Circuit Clerk Janette Nolan, election commissioners, fire officials and the Board of Supervisors met Wednesday, and all were in agreement that it was not feasible.
Tri-Community Volunteer Fire Department Chief Cole Robbins asked the board to consider a 1-mill countywide fire tax, which would be in addition to the property taxes that the departments already receive.
“This could be done without an election. We’re prepared to back you up,” Robbins said.
District 2 Supervisor Terry Broome said the Board would investigate that option.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Nolan said the county has never had an election for fire districts so she asked fire chiefs and members of fire boards to be present.
A referendum would have to be done individually for all six fire districts, but those districts don’t line up with the supervisors’ districts and there could potentially be multiple fire districts within one voting precinct.
“If we were to put it on the upcoming ballot, we would have to have everything done by April 14,” Nolan said. “April 16 is the deadline to create an election. We would have to have the ballots ready to provide to the voters by April 21.”
Nolan said a consultant would be needed to help update the information because lists have to be compiled of the voters and which fire district they are in; voters would also have to be informed of which fire district they are in. Nolan said that process would cost about $3,250.
She added that when initial discussions were held the cost was believed to be much lower. But then they found out the issue could not just be added to the primary ballot.
She said an opinion from the Attorney General’s Office states that the elections must be held on a regular election day, but that it would be separate from the primary or general election that day.
“We can share the receiving and returning managers, but we would have to have two extra poll workers,” Nolan said. “The paper ballots would have to be counted at each individual precinct. There would be 18 precincts involved and that would be an additional cost of $4,500. The total effort for such an election would mean up to $24,000 in additional costs.”
Broome raised several concerns about adding the referendum at this time.
“We can’t afford it,” he said. “It’s $24,000 that we don’t have. I don’t think we have the time frame to get it completed if everything else was good. You’re looking at less than a week.”
“Rushing this is not what we want to do,” Nolan said.
Broome said there would be “mass confusion over where these people would vote.”
“It could open a can of worms if someone voted in the wrong district or there were problems. Only certain people would be eligible to vote in the voting districts – the lines do not coincide. I don’t feel that we need to go into the expense of it. I’m not for doing it myself,” he said.
Robbins said he agreed with Broome’s assessment.
“It’s way too much money,” he said.
Morgantown Volunteer Fire Department Chief Krae Morgan said it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
“You spend $24,000 to get it going and you’ve got 3,000 people show up in the election and probably half of them, if they had to turn right back around and wait in line wouldn’t do it, so you’ve wasted $24,000,” he said. “Even if half the people did, it still wouldn’t be worth it.”
