West Lincoln gets new voting place
Published 6:00 am Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Supervisors and the Lincoln County School District have workedtogether to move the West Lincoln voting precinct out of thealternative school on campus, officials said.
A 30×30 square foot mobile lab will be set up on one acre ofschool property leased by the county to provide voters a place tocast their ballots, Superintendent Terry Brister told school boardmembers Monday. The new polling place will be located just past thebaseball field near a gravel drive on Jackson-Liberty Road.
“It will still be a part of the school, but it won’t be on thecampus proper,” he said.
District Four Supervisor W.D. “Doug” Moak said he welcomed theoffer.
“I’m excited we can work this out this agreement,” he said. “Itwill be very convenient now for everyone. They’ll have a permanentplace to go vote and it will stop interrupting the schoolschedule.”
The move will stop drawing voters into school buildings onelection days, keeping them away from the students and exposing thestudents to less vehicular traffic, Brister said. It will also stopthe school from having to seal off certain areas from students onelection days and disrupting their normal routines.
The lab building was donated to the county by the schooldistrict. It was not being used since students were able to moveinto a new classroom building on the campus earlier this year.
The building will be moved to the one-acre property leased bythe county. The county accepted a five-year low-rent lease on thatproperty.
“They basically conformed to what we would like to do,” Bristersaid. “They wanted a longer lease, but I told them this was astandard lease and they agreed to that.”
Moak said he was in the process of scheduling the temporaryclassroom’s move from its present location on campus to the leasedproperty. He is hoping to move the building during the Christmasholidays, when students are on vacation.
The building already meets a majority of the requirements of theHelp America Vote Act, Moak said. However, some minor additions,such as a ramp to assist the physically disabled, will have tomade.
“We’ll make sure it (meets those requirements),” he said. “It’llbe very low cost to make it compliant.”
The new polling place will certainly be operational by the nextelection, Moak said.