AUSTINTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – It’s no secret Mahoning County’s Elections Board is not happy with its current arrangement inside Oak Hill Renaissance Place.
“We don’t have all of our equipment secured in one place, we had to retrofit the building, the early voting doesn’t work, it’s not centrally located,” said Atty. Dave Betras, with the Mahoning County Board of Elections.
On Tuesday afternoon, board members and others took a walk-through at the old InfoCision property in Austintown, which was acquired by the Western Reserve Port Authority last Friday.
“It’s got lots of room, lots of square footage,” said Sandy Barger, another board member.
Barger says this month’s presidential election showed there just isn’t enough adequate parking at Oak Hill.
“We had so many people that showed up to vote for early voting, and just turned around and left because there’s no place for them to park,” she said.
In comparison, the InfoCision site has space for more than 500 cars, sits on a WRTA bus route and has 50,000 square feet under its roof. That’s plenty of room for the board’s voting machines and equipment, which now sit on pallets in the basement of Oak Hill under tarps to protect them from leaky and broken water pipes.
“It has everything we needed. It has separate entrances, security, facility lockdown,” Betras said.
As it turns out, county commissioners are already looking to house other departments here, too.
“We have to look at the residents of Mahoning County and their accessibility to the needs of the departments that’s put in here,” Commissioner Dave Ditzler said.
Board members say if commissioners approve, they could relocate to the Austintown site in time for next year’s general election.
