Johnson County will pay for the Rio Vista option election to be held Nov. 3, according to a document signed by Rio Vista Mayor Keith Hutchison and Johnson County Elections Administrator Patty Bourgeois.
The election calls for the sale of liquor within city limits for off-premise consumption.
November marks the sixth such election in Rio Vista addressing the question in the last five years. The measure failed in three previous elections and passed in two.
Judges subsequently voided both elections based on illegal votes and signatures.
The county paid for four of the previous elections but voted in July to bill Rio Vista for any subsequent elections regarding the question of liquor sales.
In July commissioners voted to bill the city $4,469.67 for the May election.
State law allows a county to ask a municipality to pay for an election, Bourgeois said at the time.
“A lot of people have told me they do not like paying for the elections of other cities,” County Judge Roger Harmon said in July. “And personally, I don’t think it’s fair that all the county pay.”
The document, signed in August by Hutchison and Bourgeois, offers Rio Vista two options.
Under the second option, the county would have conducted the election and held early voting and election-day voting in Rio Vista with the option on a ballot by itself. Had city officials selected that option, the county would have billed them for election costs.
The first option, which the city chose, adds the Rio Vista option language of the measure to ballots for the constitutional amendment election the county will conduct that day. An election affecting voters throughout the county and the state.
Under that option, early voting — Oct. 19-30 — will occur at six locations, none of which are in Rio Vista although election-day voting will occur at the Rio Vista Civic Center.
Ballots will be counted at the Johnson County Courthouse by optical scan, and the city will not be charged for the election.
“We gave them the option this time because the county is having the constitutional amendment election,” Bourgeois said. “Last time the county wasn’t having any other elections. If we wouldn’t have had the amendment election this time, they would have had to pay.”
The cost relating to the option election will be substantially less than the May election, Bourgeois said.
The county will not have to hire extra personnel for early voting because it will not be conducted in a separate location from those used for the amendment election, Bourgeois said.
The main cost will be adding the option election language to some of the amendment ballots, Bourgeois said, not all the ballots, but a sufficient amount to cover the needs of the option election.
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