As the song goes, two out of three ain’t bad.
The Austin school board voted unanimously on Monday to move trustee elections from May to November.
The school district will share November election costs with the county and the Austin Community College District, the board of which voted last week to move its elections.
“This will substantially increase voter turnout and significantly reduce cost for the district,” Austin school board President Mark Williams said. “There’s benefits in increasing access to voters, and part of a public school district is public involvement.”
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Sharing elections with ACC and the county will save the district more than $300,000, compared with sharing May elections with the city, figures from the Travis County clerk’s office show.
The Austin City Council has voted to keep its elections in May and now will foot the bill for May 2012 elections on its own. Travis County will charge the city $1.25 million for the May election, with an additional $500,000 if there is a runoff, according to documents from the city clerk’s office. Election precincts in Williamson County will cost an additional $22,700.
The city will still hold charter and bond elections in November 2012, including a charter vote on whether to permanently change city elections to November. That election will cost the city $303,561 — the same price as if they moved council elections to November.
The city originally budgeted $791,269 for elections in 2011-12 believing ACC and the school district would be sharing the cost. Now the city will have to dip into reserve funds, officials said.
That all pretty much speaks for itself, if you ask me. Looks like it will be up to the voters to fix Austin City Council’s mistake going forward. BOR, the Statesman, the AusChron, and the Daily Texan have more.