Election 2009 Thoughts

Last Tuesday, November 3, was election day. The votes have been cast and counted. There are some races where the results may change scattered around the county with the provisional ballots. None of them have any effect on what we voted for in the ville.

We already covered the outcome for the two seats for Council. The outcome is still surprising to me. Deep down I thought it would be a much closer race among the five candidates. It will be interesting to watch how things will go the next two years. If they decide to, the other four members of Council will be running again.

The election for the members for Wellsville's Board-of-Education spoke volumes for the confidence the voters have shown in how the school district is managed. Present Board President Tom Brophey was the top vote getter in getting re-elected. Running for an unexpired term, Karen Dash came in close behind Brophey with only 18 votes difference. Retired Wellsville educator Bill Miller won the nod for the second seat. He will replace Mrs. Meek who decided not to run.

Right now the school district is in sound financial condition enabling the Board and the school administrators to provide a quality education for our youth. In today's times that is not an easy task. Many districts around the country have been forced to cut back due to the economy and the students are the ones suffering. In a depressed area the Wellsville BOE has manage to keep a healthy balance on the books while introducing new learning technology and updated text books. With state budget woes there will be many challenges on the horizon for them. There may be some hard and unpopular decisions this Board will be forced to make. I surely hope not but along with others in the district I think we got the right people in there to deal with whatever comes up.

There were three state issues we voted on. In Columbiana County, and on the state level, the votes were overwhelmingly in favor of the bonus for veterans of the Mid-East conflicts from the Persian Gulf War up to those serving in both Iraq & Afghanistan. The Livestock Care Standards Board was also convincingly approved by county voters and across the state.

The only state issue that Columbiana County voters differed from with the state outcome was Issue 3, the casino issue. County voters said no to this issue with over six thousand against it. Across the state it was approved by over two million votes. Possibly concerns about jobs for folks working across the river at Mountaineer was the cause of this. However, I don't think casinos in Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland & Toledo will have that much effect on the business at MTR. It will create in-state jobs for construction workers and later for casino employees. It will also create revenue for state coffers that for years Ohio voters have chased across state borders. Since the beginning of time people have gambled and will always do so whether morally right or wrong. That's something that will never go away and with this issue the state legislators have promised to fill in some of the gaps in education funding left with the new two year budget. For some it's a damned if we do and others it's a damned if we don't. In my opinion it was something we needed to do.

The County money issues we voted on didn't fair too well. Of the three we voted on the only one that passed was the "foster care" issue to renew the 0.75 mill levy for Children Services. The renewal is at the same rates tax payers are already paying now. The cancer screening levy was on the ballot as a replacement which would have meant slightly higher taxes. It was voted down by 786 votes. The renewal of the 1% county sales tax was voted down by a very loud 7,303 votes. It wouldn't have taken effect until 2011 but the County Commissioners placed it on the ballot early. If it failed, as it did, they still have one or two more shots to take to the voters before it expires. Commissioner Jim Hoppel was quoted in the papers saying that 1% brings in $8 million a year and that accounts for 44% of the general fund in the county budget. You can't make up $8 million holding yard sales and bake sales even in two years time.

Alarm for passage of the sales tax came up as soon as the ballots were printed. On the ballot it was call an "additional" sales tax and Commissioners feared this was misleading. It is in addition to the state sales tax we pay but it was a renewal of what we have been paying in CC for a while now. It's true that it was misleading but one has to wonder if it was to all the 63% of the people that voted against it. It will be on the ballot again for next May's primary and both the Election Board and the Commissioners are working getting permission to have it worded more precisely. They have to go through the Ohio Secretary of State's office for that language change. In the meantime I hope any measures that have to be taken will not be extra harsh just to throw some fear into us. We got over a year to work it out. Hopefully they will stay on course and maybe there will be better days ahead.

Even though it's called an off year election there are times when things got nasty in the past. Thankfully we didn't see any mud slinging this year. With the county sales tax still up in the air we're assured we'll be going to the polls next spring. Wonder what else we'll be deciding?

ole nib