The Pulaski County Election Board is budgeting for a big election cycle in 2022. It isn’t a presidential election, but Clerk JoLynn Behny notes that many town and county offices are on the ballot. “The four district [county] council, we’ve got one commissioner, sheriff, prosecutor, assessor, clerk,” she told the rest of the county election board Monday.
Behny discussed the 2022 election budget with the election board Monday, before she presents it to the county council today. She’s asking for a total of almost $76,000, although that’s expected to be cut significantly during the budgeting process. For comparison, the election board spent about $47,000 in 2020 and a little more than $49,000 in 2018.
One cost that’s going up is IT consultant fees. Behny said DeGroot Technology is raising the cost of its services to the election board from $5,000 to $6,000 per election year. “And I don’t blame them,” Behny said, “after everything that Willie did last year for us.”
But a big part of the budget’s increase is payroll. Behny said she’s asking to return the election board’s collective pay to $4,000, and she wants funding for a part-time clerical position that wasn’t used last year. “One of the reasons I increased it is because God only knows what’s going to be going on in the world next year,” she said, “and we never anticipated handling 500 absentee ballots with the envelopes and the postage and the manpower involved. We never anticipated that.”
The election board budget also assumes a three-percent pay raise. Even though it’s likely to end up being less than that, it would allow election workers to get whatever raise the county council ends up approving.
Meanwhile, Pulaski County will also have to replace its e-poll books, since vendor Microvote says the current iPads will no longer be supported. That could end up costing almost $5,200, when the cost of encoders is included. Behny said she’s looking into the possibility of using American Rescue Plan money. If that doesn’t work, she’ll ask the council to transfer unused funds within this year’s budget.
