COOPERSTOWN _ The Otsego County Board of Representatives has agreed to expand the county's Board of Elections by two full-time workers.
The decision to add more employees came after a prolonged discussion during Wednesday's board meeting. Lucinda Jarvis, Democratic deputy elections commissioner, said the employees are needed as the county begins to use its new optical scanner voting machines.
Unlike the lever machines the county has used for decades, the scanners, which will be stored at the Meadows Office Complex, periodically need to be started and tested, Jarvis said.
The new technician-election specialists, who each will be paid $26,054 a year, will split their time between tending to this sensitive equipment, whose purchase was mandated by the federal government, and more mundane elections duties, she said.
The new employees will reduce, but not eliminate, the Board of Elections' need for part-time workers this year, Jarvis said.
The resolution to create the new positions was opposed by Reps. James Johnson, R-Otsego, and Cathy Rothenberger, D-Oneonta.
The office has been staffed by two part-time commissioners, two full-time deputy commissioners and two full-time elections specialists, as well as part-time workers.
In other business, the board:
ä Defeated a motion to compel department heads to seek committee approval for expenditures of more than $5,000, rather than $10,000, as has been the rule in the last two years. The resolution was brought to the floor by the county's Administration Committee as a tool for restraining spending.
Opponents to the measure deemed it unnecessary and noted that it pertained to purchases already approved in the current year's operating budget. Voting against the measure were Reps. Marti Stayton, D-Oneonta; Keith McCarty, R-Springfield, Stephen Fournier, R-Milford; Katherine Stuligross, D-Oneonta; Kathy Clark, R-Otego; Richard Murphy, D-Oneonta; Rothenberger; and county board Chairman James Powers, R-Butternuts.
ä Agreed to purchase two new Ford super-duty F-250 crew cab pickup trucks at a cost of $18,241 apiece for the county Highway Department.
The measure was opposed by Reps. Sam Dubben, R-Middlefield, Johnson and McCarty, who said the money would be better spent on repairing the county's roads.
ä Agreed to outsource the county Highway Department's parts room to the Genuine Parts Co. of Middletown, Conn.
This measure was opposed by Reps. Donald Lindberg, R-Worcester; Dubben and McCarty, who said they worried about a clause that guarantees the firm a profit.
and about the arrangement's effect on local automobile parts businesses.
``If this is such a great idea, why is only one other county in New York state doing it?'' asked McCarty.
Johnson said local automobile parts business owners had told him the effect of such a change on their profits would be minimal, and the resolution passed.
ä Heard from Powers, who asked the county's Public Safety and Legal Affairs Committee to make sure emergency medical technician courses are available at several locations around the county, not just in Oneonta and Cooperstown.
``This is the way it was done in the past," he said, "and there's a need to do it that way now.''
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