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Residents will have two new polling sites in the Jersey Shore Borough following the approval by the Lycoming County Board of Elections to move them from their current locations because of accessibility issues.
Voters in the borough's Third Ward will now cast their vote at the Jersey Shore Area School District Administration Building, 175 A&P Drive, while those in the Fourth Ward will vote at the Jersey Shore Borough Building, 232 Smith St.
"We had to do polling place changes for both of these as part of the accessibility project we're engaged in," said Forrest Lehman, director of Voter Services.
The moves were made to bring the county in compliance with American with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements.
The polling place for the Third Ward had been the Jersey Shore YMCA and Fairplay Gospel Fellowship for voters in the Fourth Ward.
"We've used them for a number of years. But in both cases the architect after surveying those those sites found some significant issues and I kind of knew that we would," Lehman said.
The changes that Lehman was presenting for approval are what he call medium term changes.
"We would be using them for a while-it could be 18 months, two years- so fairly long term, but not permanent," he said.
"The reason for that is because we've also initiated dialogue with the borough about ultimately potentially reducing the number of wards from four to two, because they only have 500 people in their wards. They've had trouble over the years recruiting council members. If we only have two wards, we would need fewer facilities," he explained.
Jersey Shore Borough is also proposing to construct a new borough facility which ultimately could be used as a polling site, Lehman said.
"Either one or both of those would probably lead us to reexamine the polling places," he said.
The county has been approaching schools in order to use their facilities for polling sites and one of the arguments districts have used against doing that is the public interacting with students on election day or needing to change the school calendar to make election day a day off for students to avoid any contact with outsiders. By using the district administration building, both scenarios were avoided.
Both of the new sites have been reviewed by Tony Visco, the architect the county has hired to assess accessibility issues at polling places.
"They are very accessible. There are a few issues that we need to correct, but nothing like what we're facing at the other facilities. And, and ultimately, I'm hoping that when one of those other things comes to pass, then we won't have to use any school facility of any kind in Jersey Shore," Lehman said.
Although the Jersey Shore YMCA is accessible, the issue at that building was the parking.
"I don't want to get too much into detail about the accessibility issues with a building, but I'll just note that it's always been an issue even for able bodied people that the parking is all the way around the side of the building...basically, there's no sidewalk. They're walking along the parking lot around the front of the building," he said.
"They have other spaces inside that could be good. But there are steps that are inaccessible to get to them like the gymnasium, because that YMCA is essentially an old house. It's very old construction. And that poses a lot of challenges," he said.
"It's a facility I've kind of been eyeing needing to change for a long time, even before the accessibility issue came along. But this just kind of tipped it over, that we needed to take a look at an alternative," he added.
Lehman also updated the board on the status on the petition filed with the Court of Common Pleas to combine two precincts in the Muncy Borough into one, a move necessitated for accessibility reasons.
"We held the hearing in front of Judge Butts back at the beginning of August, and at the hearing, there were, I would say, about seven or eight people present from the borough, including someone from Borough Council who expressed some reservations, objections to the plan," Lehman explained.
"I think it's important to have the two issues separate, because the question before the court, and the hearing was, do you combine these precincts and we were asking for that for accessibility reasons, because it is a real challenge to find accessible facilities in Muncy Borough. Their concern was about where the polling place is and the court wasn't considering that question. It was 'do you have one precinct or two,'" he said.
Some borough residents also objected to having the polling place at the Methodist Church in the event of the precincts being combined because they felt the church was too far south for people to walk.
"I think the issue of walkability, I can understand why they raised it. I can understand why there would be some residents who are concerned about it, but it kind of misses the point of the challenge that we're facing, because we're talking about accessibility for voters with disabilities, who don't even have the ability to walk in some cases, you know, that's not an option that's on the table for them," Lehman said.
"We need to have facilities that are available for those people. The biggest most challenging issue on our plate right now is accessibility and complying with federal law. And that's kind of why we got to where we are," he said.
The First United Methodist Church in Muncy and the Muncy Historical Society building are currently the polling places for the first and second precincts.
"If the court denies our petition, we're still at the status quo with the first precinct at First United Methodist and second precinct at the historical society. That is not sustainable with respect to the Department of Justice, because the First United Methodist needs only some very minor corrections but the Historical Society has some pretty significant issues that I discussed when we were in the court hearings," Lehman said.
"My recommendation to the board if we continue to have two precincts was going to be to put them in the church anyway, so the question really was going to be are they all voting as one at- large borough in that facility or as first and second precincts voting on opposite sides of of the room. It presents its own challenges because now you've got to make sure everybody's waiting in the right line," he said.
"Given the numbers we're talking about, it's easier to have them together," Lehman added.