Agenda - Council - 02/26/2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

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W3P1 Municipal Center (AR Room) 7550 Sunwood Drive NW 1,005 W3P2 Ind. Baptist Church, 1565 Sunfish Lake Boulevard NW 1,041 W3P3 Municipal Center (Council Chambers) 7550 Sunwood Dr NW 771 W4P1 Fire Station 2/Former Municipal Center (lower level) 1,490 15153 Nowthen Boulevard NW W4P2 Lord of Life, 14501 Nowthen Boulevard NW 1,625 Funding: There will definitely be a cost to adding more precincts /polling places. The costs for equipment that will be realized this election year will be approximately $12,000 for the purchase of the AutoMark machines. The AutoMark assists the physically challenged voter so he /she is able to vote independently. (The AutoMark was mandated by the Federal Government for Election 2006.) There will be no cost for the AccuVotes this year for each of the new precincts as Anoka County has spare machines to loan to us. Anoka County is looking at possibly changing to a new, updated version of the AccuVote machines for election 2010 so it wouldn't make financial sense for us to buy any new AccuVotes this year. The AccuVote is the regular voting tabulation piece of equipment that the ballots are fed into. There will be extra cost in 2010 for the new AccuVotes for all precincts if that's the route that is chosen — or at least three new ones for our City if the County determines there isn't enough of a change in the machine itself to warrant going with different machines. There is no real estimate at this point what the cost may be for all new machines, however, staff has budgeted approximately $8,000 per precinct at this time. Staff is proposing to order 35 new voting booths in anticipation of the added precincts. The cost is approximately $265 per booth for a total of $9,275. Other miscellaneous expenses to add new precincts would be additional batteries for the machines — eventually 6 more (AccuVote and AutoMark) at approximately $25 per machine, postage for correspondence with the added judges. There is no added postage for written communication with the polling places as the new ones proposed are all City -owned buildings. The additional amount will equate to about $175 for batteries and about $45 for postage. At the present time, Ramsey employs 82 election judges — 16 of those being head judges (2 head judges per precinct). Head judges are paid $9.50 per hour and "regular" judges are paid $9.00 per hour. Judges are also paid for training which is about 3 hours for each judge plus possibly an extra two hours for additional training for the head judges. The judges may put in about 16 hours for the Primary and 18 hours for the General Election. Adding new precincts will also mean adding more judges. I may, however, be able to pull a few judges from current polling places as the need for heavier staffing could lessen due to the number of registered voters decreasing per precinct because of the three proposed precincts /additional polling places being added.. I am planning to solicit for 25 additional judges. That puts Ramsey at roughly 107 judges. The costs, all of which are estimates, are broken down as follows: —132—