Appeals on fines heard by Monroe County election board, 2023 space needs not yet active topic

Monroe County election board met in the Nat U. Hill Room on Jun 10, 2022.

Looking northwest at 3rd and Walnut streets May 25, 2022. From left: Monroe County convention center (background); election operations building (foreground); and 4th Street parking garage. (May 25, 2022)

At its regular monthly meeting on Thursday, the Monroe County election board handled some routine business for the recent primary election cycle: appeals on fines for late paperwork.

On Thursday, just one of the cases got action from the three-member board

That was due in part to the fact that last week’s meeting was canceled and rescheduled for this week—without notice to the late filers that the hearing would be this week instead. That meant that the board could hear only the cases of the late filers who happened to attend on Thursday.

In the one case where the board took action, the board waived the fine as a first offense, which is the board’s typical approach to late filings.

So far, since the May 3 primary, the planned location of election operations for the 2023 municipal cycle has not been a topic of discussion for the election board.

The 2023 elections could see continued use of the former NAPA auto parts store building, at 3rd and Walnut streets, but that’s not certain. Continue reading “Appeals on fines heard by Monroe County election board, 2023 space needs not yet active topic” →

Post-primary: Work continues on Monroe County election operations building, prep for fall election

view of the corner of a concrete block building in the process of getting painted. The left wall is beige. The right wall is the original color, which was blue. — View to the northwest of the Monroe County’s election operations building at the corner of 3rd and Walnut streets around midday on May 12, 2022.

A little more than a week after Tuesday’s primary elections concluded in Monroe County, work has started on preparation for voting in the Nov. 8 general election.

On Thursday morning, the county’s new election operations building, at the corner of 3rd and Walnut streets, started a planned cosmetic change.

By midday on Thursday, the building was halfway through its transformation from an iconic blue, reflecting its heritage as a NAPA auto parts store, to a more subdued earth tone.

The painting work is being done by Premier Painting, under a $9,850 contract approved by county commissioners in early March. Continue reading “Post-primary: Work continues on Monroe County election operations building, prep for fall election” →

Monroe County turns map blue for COVID cases, but still in yellow advisory

covid map Screen Shot 2021-05-12 at 12.52.16 PM

bordered R-OUT COVID Daily Full Doses May 12, 2021

The height of the red line is at 21.2 cases a day. That’s the daily average below which Monroe County needs to stay in order to remain in the “yellow” category for weekly cases per 100,000 residents, in the state’s dual-metric classification scheme. The “yellow” category ranges from 10 to 100 weekly cases per 100,000. The blue line is at 11.4, the current 7-day rolling average.

At their regular Wednesday meeting, Monroe County commissioners heard a bit of good news related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

County health administrator Penny Caudill told them the 92 confirmed positive cases for the week ending on Sunday were low enough to put Monroe County in the blue category for the state’s dual-metric classification scheme.

That’s the first time in a couple of months that the county has been blue. Blue designates the best category, which is “low community spread.”

The other metric, besides the number of confirmed cases per 100,000, is positivity rate. Monroe County has consistently scored in the best category for the positivity metric, due in part to the massive amount of mitigation testing that Indiana University has undertaken.

Mitigation testing, of randomly selected people, by its nature will show a lower positivity rate than testing of those who decide they want a test for some reason.

Based on the number of positive cases, Monroe County is still in the next-best category, but when averaged with the score for positivity rate, the county comes out blue.

Caudill also cautioned the commissioners that under the dual-metric color-coded advisory scheme, the county needs to maintain its blue status for two weeks in a row in order to be considered out from under the cautions associated with the yellow rating. Continue reading “Monroe County turns map blue for COVID cases, but still in yellow advisory” →