Supes hear update on election, fiscal impact fee proposal
T here are approximately 5,600 provisional ballots yet to process according to an update provided by Imperial County Registrar of Voters Debra Porter during the Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
Porter said the reason why the process has taken a long time is due to the verification process the department has to do for every provisional ballot
“It’s a one-on-one verification, it’s not just verifying the signature like we do on vote-bymail,” she said. “We also have to verify the residents’ address, whether or not they are a registered voter and the precinct they voted at. It’s a long process.”
In addition to those ballots, Porter said there were a few hundred damaged ballots that they have to duplicate before they run them in the system to be counted.
District 3 Supervisor Michael Kelley asked what happened with the system improvements the board invested on since the last presidential election, Porter said that the new system does expedite the process during election night but not the portion of counting vote-by-mail and provisional ballots.
She noted that for future elections the department will try to encourage voters to turn their vote-by-mail ballots early and not wait until Election Day to do so, which was this case in this election.
Fee proposal
Auditor-Controller Douglas Newland presented to the board a proposal for their review that seeks to recover the funds that the county loses when new areas of development are annexed into a local city.
Newland explained that developers pay a larger sum of money to develop unincorporated areas of the county, while for city limits they pay a smaller countywide fee along with the fees each city has in place.
He said in the past, development has begun in an unincorporated area of the county, and later that area gets annexed to a city and the county loses out on resources that come out of future development in such areas.
Newland said the county-wide fees pay for maintenance of county infrastructure, while the unincorporated area fees pay for the actual functions carried out within the county facilities.
The proposal will guarantee that once development has begun in an unincorporated area of the county, any future development in that area has to pay the unincorporated area fee for the next 20 years, regardless of that area getting annexed by a city.
“The more property that gets annexed the more support we lose for the jail and fire (department),” Newland said. “This is a way to replace what we lost in the unincorporated areas.”
The board didn’t take a vote on the issue but gave direction to from an ad hoc committee with Supervisors Ryan Kelley and Ray Castillo along with city managers from across the valley to review the possible impacts of the proposal.
Calexico Police
Victor Ibarra, a member of the Calexico Police Officers Association, approached the board during the public comment portion of the meeting to ask the county to allow the police department to come to a resolution with the city before they consider an agreement with Calexico to bring in the Sheriff’s office to take over.
Last week the Calexico City Council gave city manager Armando Villa approval to look into alternative options to cover for the city’s police department functions in an effort to reduce the city’s expenses.
Ibarra was worried about the manner in which the issue is being handled by the city. He said that the item was added to the council meeting agenda last minute and not gave the public enough time to be aware of the issue. He said that the CPOA has presented different proposals to the city manager, which still have not been presented to the council.
“We ask that you allow us to work with the city. We have proposals and council members haven’t been made aware of them,” Ibarra said. “We want to work with the city we want to be there, we may be the best out there but we care about our community and all CPOA members do.”