The Clinton County Commissioners are taking steps to try and have voting held at the Clinton County Courthouse on Election Day.
“We as a Board of Commissioners feel like the Courthouse is a little under utilized on Election Day,” said Commissioners’ President Josh Uitts. “We would like to see a voting location here at the Courthouse for many reasons. One, I think people still expect the Courthouse to be open to vote and number two, we don’t have to rent the Courthouse. We already own it. So, we would save the Election Board some money.”
Currently, the Courthouse is used as an emergency voting center in case one of the seven voting centers in he county has problems.
“We are going to have our County Attorney draft a letter to send to the Election Board just to make our thoughts known and that we are serious about having elections here again,” said Uitts.
If a change were made, it would not be until next year’s elections. The county voting centers will be used in the General Election in November.
With ground about to be broken on the new EMS facility at the Clinton County Fairgrounds, the debate still goes on regarding where a second satellite EMS office would go in the county.
“We have been in contact with a couple of owners at Maddox Corner who are willing to parcel off sections of their farmland for that purpose,” said Uitts. “We are going ahead and do a feasibility study and some site surveying just to see how much land we would actually need whether it would be an acre, two acres or what would be required.”
However, Mulberry officials would like to keep the third ambulance used in the county at its headquarters at the Madison Township Fire Department in Mulberry.
“I have been contacted by the Mulberry Town Board, the Madison Township Board of Trustees and the Madison Township Trustee who aren’t particularly fond of the idea seeing that ambulance leave Mulberry,” said Uitts. “They like having it right there in Mulberry. They floated the idea of adding on to their station right there and keeping that truck where it’s at.”
The main reason the Maddox Corner is attractive is because it is equally distant between Mulberry, Rossville and Frankfort.
Uitts said a decision would be reached at their next meeting on Monday, August 20.
“We’ve got kind of a decision here to make whether or not we want add on to somebody else’s facility or whether we want to do our own thing, control our future and build a brand new facility,” said Uitts. “We’re going to make a decision in the next two weeks. We need to get a plan of action together and get that off the ground.”