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Mahoning County sales tax vote cost about $500,000 with poor turnout
Amount equates to about $29 per vote
YOUNGSTOWN
Justice came with a steep price in Mahoning County.
Many county voters arrived Tuesday to find just one item requiring their vote: the countywide 0.75-percent sales tax renewal for justice services. The cost of Tuesday’s primary ballot was about $500,000, said Joyce Kale-Pesta, county board of elections director.
Turnout was only 10.67 percent with 17,437 of the county’s 163,435 registered voters casting ballots.
With a cost of about $500,000, that works out to about $29 per vote.
The tax was approved 64.18 percent to 35.82 percent. In comparison, the November 2018 general election, which cost about the same amount as Tuesday’s primary, had 92,812 of the county’s then 169,619 registered voters cast ballots.
That’s less than $5.50 a vote.
The biggest expense for an election, Kale-Pesta said, is the $1,800 cost per precinct that largely goes to poll workers’ pay and for rental fees.
There are 212 precincts in the county, but about 82 of them had either primaries or school issues on the ballot – including 45 in Youngstown and 12 in Struthers. The $1,800-per-precinct expense is evenly split between those cities and/or school districts and the county.
Even with that reduction, the county’s share of poll workers’ pay and rental fees is more than $300,000.
On top of that, the county is required under state law to print ballots for 1 percent more than the total number of eligible voters, Kale-Pesta said. That’s 165,069 ballots with a cost of 22 cents a ballot.
The cost of printing was $36,315.
The 90 percent of unused ballots are being stored by the board to eventually be shredded and recycled, Kale-Pesta said.
The rest of the approximate $500,000 expense for the election came from the need to hire extra workers at the board of elections, particularly on Tuesday, as well as truck costs, she said.
“It was a full election,” Kale-Pesta said. “This election costs almost as much as a presidential election.”
The sales tax is projected to generate $25.1 million annually for the county justice system. That makes up the majority of the funding for the county sheriff, prosecutor and coroner’s offices, and for 911 dispatching services.
With overall turnout at 10.67 percent, Kale-Pesta said it was obvious many people didn’t know there was a primary election.
Data provided by the board of elections show that only 13.07 percent of registered voters in Youngstown – where there were also Democratic primaries for municipal court judge and four city council seats – cast their ballots.
In Struthers, which had citywide Democratic primaries for mayor and council-at-large, turnout was 28.77 percent.
In Goshen, which is part of the West Branch school district that had a school income tax measure on the ballot that failed, had turnout of 32.53 percent – the best in the county. Smith, which is mostly in the West Branch district, had turnout of 28.56 percent, while Beloit, which is in the school district, had 29.76 percent turnout.
Springfield Township, which is in the Springfield school district that had a successful school levy on the ballot, had 18.4 percent turnout. New Middletown, also in that school district, had 24.44 percent turnout.
In Campbell, where there was a school renewal levy, turnout was 10.41 percent, slightly below the county percentage.
In every community where the county sales tax was the only thing on the ballot, turnout was in the single digits except in Ellsworth, where it was 10.22 percent.
It was 6.42 percent in Austintown, 7.84 percent in Boardman, 9.93 in Beaver, 7.79 percent in Berlin, 6.27 percent in Canfield Township, 7.29 percent in the city of Canfield, 7.23 percent in Coitsville, 8.71 percent in Craig Beach, 9.3 percent in Green, 8.62 percent in Jackson, 5.23 percent in Lowellville, 6.04 percent in Milton, 9.49 percent in Poland Township, 9.95 percent in the village of Poland, 9.58 percent in Sebring and 8.37 percent in Washingtonville.