Wayne begins weekly election update

Sees paving project bids

By OWEN WALSH
Posted 8/26/20

HONESDALE, PA — Last week, Wayne County Commissioner and election board chair Jocelyn Cramer announced that she will be providing election procedure updates at the end of each weekly …

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Wayne begins weekly election update

Sees paving project bids

Posted

HONESDALE, PA — Last week, Wayne County Commissioner and election board chair Jocelyn Cramer announced that she will be providing election procedure updates at the end of each weekly commissioner’s meeting for the next few months.

A lot stands to change before PA voters cast ballots in November. President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has sued the commonwealth for supposedly endangering the security of this year’s primary election by allowing remote drop boxes for mail-in ballots. The campaign is also arguing that election officials should have thrown out mail-in ballots that arrived without the proper secrecy envelopes; Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration had advised officials to count those ballots anyway. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has also sued PA over mail-in voting—but from the opposite perspective—arguing that PA should expand the measures that Trump’s campaign wants to see eliminated. And last week, the PA Department of State asked the state Supreme Court to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received by election officials, citing a “significant risk” that many ballots may not arrive on time.

Amid so much uncertainty and anxiety about voting processes, Cramer wants to “assure our voters here in Wayne County of the degree that we go to protect our elections.”

Last week, the county received many calls from residents who had received a mailer sent by the Republican National Committee containing a voter registration form and an envelope already addressed to the county’s election office. According to Cramer, a number of applications were addressed to people who are deceased, sparking concern among residents.

“In the event that [a registered voter] passes away in Wayne County, we get an update from the state Department of Health every two weeks of those names, and they are removed from our voter registration list,” Cramer said. “We also get those names from our very own recorder of wills.”

As far as what procedural changes can be expected from the courts, Cramer said it remains a waiting game.

“We know that [procedures] may change; that’s all we know,” Cramer said. “If something changes, we’ll let you know, but if something doesn’t change, we’ll let you know that too.”

At another point in the meeting, the commissioners opened bids for a large county paving project. 

The paving project covers a wide scope of county property: the Park Street Complex; Midway Drive; the 911 center, recycling center and correctional facility parking lots; and the Curtis, Williams, Balls Eddy, Carley Brook, Swenson, Bischoff, High, Cummings and McGee bridges. 

With such a long list of projects, the base bids ranged from around $500,000 to more than $700,000. Chief clerk Andrew Seder noted that the county may choose to pursue a smaller portion of projects included in the initial bid specifications. Commissioner Joe Adams said that the bridges and access roads listed could be paid for using the state’s County Liquid Fuels Program and existing balances elsewhere could act as funding streams for the project too. He also said that with oil prices so low, now is the best time for the county to repave its roads, lots and bridges.

“We held off on [the paving project] for many years, [in part] to build the balances in the liquid fuels account,” Adams said. “Last year at this time, the price of oil was roughly $60 a barrel, now it’s roughly $40 a barrel, and one of the biggest components of any paving materials project is oil.”

The commissioners accepted the bids and forwarded them to the county’s solicitor and engineer for further review.

Wayne County, election, board, updates, mail-in, ballots, paving, bids, project

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