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Three precincts will have new polling sites in the upcoming May 16 primary election, following decisions by the county's Board of Elections this week.
The polling place for residents of Cummings Township will now be at the Township Building, on Route 44. Voters in Clinton Township and Montgomery Borough will go to the Clinton Township Fire Hall, on Route 54, to cast their vote.
The moves are all part of a settlement with the Department of Justice which had visited polling places in the county and deemed them out of compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements.
Of the 81 county polling places, the DOJ had determined that 25 were seriously in need of being fixed immediately. These three polling places were among those which needed to be addressed immediately. The remaining sites are now being assessed by the county as part of the settlement.
Referring to the polling place move in Cummings Township, director of Voter Services Forrest Lehman said that he had been contacted by a township supervisor that changes had been made at the township building that would make it more suitable for voters.
"We don't always know everything that's going on out in all these different places," Lehman said.
"He let me know that the township had put some investment into their municipal facility and improved it," he said.
There is a new meeting room inside the township building, and some accessibility improvements have been made with the addition of a new ramp to the door and an accessible parking space, Lehman said.
These make the township building a "substantially better facility" than the fire hall, he added.
The discussion about the move and for the Clinton Township and Montgomery Borough precincts was more extensive as there were two possible sites that could have been chosen -- the Clinton Township Fire Hall and the Montgomery Area School District's athletic center.
Montgomery resident Charles McRae spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting in favor of moving the polling site to the athletic center. He states that he felt the street where the fire hall is located is busier and that there is the possibility of noise and confusion at the fire hall in the event of a fire or ambulance emergency.
"My safety concern is people pulling out, especially in the November election it will be dark...and it is a fire company, and they do have ambulance runs and fire trucks that could be coming and going," McRae said.
Addressing McRae's concerns, Lehman said that he had visited both the athletic center and the fire hall before recommending the fire hall as the new polling site for the two precincts.
Although there may be some minor adjustments that will need to be made to the fire hall, Lehman said that the biggest deterrent from moving the polling places to the athletic center is the possibility of the construction of a new school at that site.
"It sounds like that could be a site for a new school building in the future. If we were to move voting there, we could be basically putting them there, and then in a year, we tell them they have got to go somewhere else," Lehman said.
"If there is going to be a new school constructed there, that can be a multi-year project. And for that reason, it didn't seem like the right time to maybe pursue that," he said.
When asked by commissioner Rick Mirabito, acting as a member of the Board of Elections, if Montgomery's school board had discussed the use of their facility, Lehman said that they had not and that the information about the construction had come from the district's superintendent who indicated that the athletic complex could possibly be used for construction in the future.
Mirabito, commissioner Tony Mussare and Judge Ryan Tira, who was serving on the Board of Elections in place of commissioner Scott Metzger who is running for re-election, at first seemed in favor of tabling the agenda item until there was more information.
Two factors seemed to sway them in the direction of approving the move to the fire hall.
First was the fact that the commissioners, in a meeting with area district superintendents, had assured them that the use of school facilities as voting sites would only be as a last resort.
Second, the possibility of construction and construction vehicles coming and going at the athletic complex on election days was a difficulty that could not be predicted.
"You know what," Mirabito said, "I'm inclined now to go with the fire hall. The points that the directors raised regarding construction are really problematic."
"The truth is that if they ended up building a facility out there, we could have a problem," he said.
Following the vote in favor of the fire hall, Lehman did not rule out the possibility that in the future the athletic center could be considered.
"I'm absolutely serious about this that if they finish their project, whatever their plans are, it is something I would want to look at again in the future and see if maybe it makes sense for something to happen out there," Lehman said.
"But at a minimum, I think we need to have the discussion with the school district and see where they would be at on that possibility," he added.