By LOHR McKINSTRY
Staff Writer
May 16, 2008 04:00 am
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ELIZABETHTOWN -- Moving from Elizabethtown to Mineville could alleviate a space crisis at the Essex County Board of Elections.
County Republican Election Commissioner Lewis Sanders said a tour of the former Moriah Community Building aimed at locating storage space turned into the realization that the entire Board of Elections could be housed there.
IMPRESSIVE' SITE
The building, located in Moriah's Mineville hamlet, was originally the Republic Steel office building when iron mines were operating in the town.
It was given to Essex County by Rhone-Poulenc, the successor to Republic Steel, and has been used by the Town of Moriah since 1992.
Now the major tenant, the Moriah Health Center, moved out of the three-story wooden structure, and Moriah is turning it back over to Essex County.
"We took a tour," Sanders said. "It's kind of impressive."
He said the first floor has about 4,000 square feet of usable space. The building also has a new heating system and has been rewired.
Supervisor Thomas Scozzafava (R-Moriah) said the building's deed says that if the town doesn't use it, ownership reverts back to the county.
He said no pressure was placed on the Board of Elections to consider the Community Center for its offices.
"Initially, it was to see if they could store voting machines there. As they took the tour, they said there was a possibility they could move their entire operation into that space."
Three tenants remain in the building: Literacy Volunteers, Girls Scouts/Brownies and X-Earth, the company that owns mineral rights to the old mines.
"We would like to see the building put to some use," Scozzafava said. "The building is in good shape structurally; aesthetically, it needs some work."
When the county had a space crunch in the 1990s, it tried and failed to move different departments into the Mineville space, he said.
"Some of the employees of Essex County didn't want to travel to Mineville," Scozzafava said. "We were letting the employees steer the ship."
MACHINE STORAGE
AES Northeast of Plattsburgh recently did an engineering study of the building that made some recommendations they could follow if the Board of Elections was moving in, he said.
The building has four walk-in vaults that could be used to store the new electronic voting machines the county is buying, Scozzafava said.
County Democratic Election Commissioner David Mace said he had a concern about whether there's enough space to set up voting machines there, though.
"There is a large amount of office space. We will need a not-insignificant amount of secure storage space."
He said 50,000 paper ballots must be stored there annually, and the new machines must be stored where there is space to program them.
That means a 25-by-30-foot room for work and for candidates to view ballot counts and recounts, he said.
REGISTERING TO VOTE
There should also be some way people can still register to vote at the county seat, Supervisor Daniel Connell (D-Westport) said, so they don't have to drive to Mineville.
"This is one department that works better if it's centrally located in the county. That's the one caution I have. What does it mean in terms of the whole election process?"
Scozzafava said the issue will be forwarded to the County Space Committee for a look. County Department of Public Works Superintendent Frederick Buck and County Information Systems Director Daniel Palmer should tour the building, he said, before the Board of Elections writes a proposal.
"It (Mineville) could be a very good option," Scozzafava said.
lmckinstry@pressrepublican.com
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