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Nelsonville officials face an election deadline that could prove costly for the city
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Nelsonville voters are supposed to choose candidates for a new City Council in a few months, but only three of the seven seats may be on the ballot.
![Photo of town square in Nelsonville Ohio. The town's fountain in on the left hand side of the image with buildings on the right.](https://woub.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Nelsonville_Ohio-e1544726003232-300x141.jpg)
The city has less than three weeks to avoid this scenario.
Nelsonville voters in November overwhelmingly approved an initiative that returns the city to the form of government it had 30 years ago.
Back then, power was split between a mayor and the City Council. The city switched to a new form of government that got rid of the mayor, concentrating more power in the council, which hired a city manager to run the city.
Now with the switch back, the city needs to elect a mayor, all new council members and a few other positions.
The problem is four of the new council members will represent wards; the other three will be at-large, meaning they represent, and are elected by, the entire city. But the city doesn’t have wards.
Under the charter that created the government the city has now, wards were abolished and all council members were made at-large positions.
The solution is to draw new wards, but after the election, the city’s attorney, Jonathan Robe, told the council it has no authority under the charter to do this.
Robe also said the council cannot set salaries for the incoming elected officials, which he said means they will have to work for free for four years.
Meanwhile, the county board of elections is planning for the May primary election, and people wanting to run for office in Nelsonville are gathering petition signatures.
But without wards, it’s impossible for the elections board to certify candidates for four of the council seats, because the signatures are only supposed to be from residents of the ward they would be representing.
“If we don’t know their wards, we can’t check their petitions because we won’t know what ward they’re in,” said Debbie Quivey, director of the Athens County Board of Elections.
The deadline for filing candidate petitions is Feb. 5, so if wards are not drawn soon, four of the council seats could not appear on the May 6 primary ballot.
This could require a special election later to elect these positions, and the city would have to foot the bill, or at least most of it, Robe told council members earlier this week. The cost could be in the six figures, he said.
Quivey met with Robe this week and said she suggested the council use the city’s four voting precincts as the wards. The new council members could then draw up new wards after they take office for the next election.
“The most logical thing would be to follow the Board of Elections precincts,” she said.
Quivey also questioned whether the council has the authority to call for a special election. If not, this means the city could begin 2026, when the new government takes over, with just three of seven council members.
WOUB was unable to reach Robe Friday afternoon to get his response to Quivey’s precinct suggestion and his legal opinion on whether a new council could function with just three members if all seven seats do not end up on the May ballot and the city cannot call for a special election.
The salary issue is also something that may need to go on the May ballot for voters to decide, Robe told the council this week.
The newly elected council members could not simply set the salaries for elected officials when they take office next Jan. 1, he said, because state law prohibits changing salaries during a term in office.
“The elected mayor will have to serve for free,” Robe told the council. “The reason that’s an issue is being mayor requires an enormous amount of work. And if that person is not going to be paid, why would anybody want to run for mayor?”
This would be true of the other full-time elected positions as well, he said, including the city treasurer and auditor.
It’s unknown whether a legal argument could be made that because there is no salary for these officials, setting a salary after they take office would not be a change but instead establishing a salary for the first time.
WOUB reached out to find municipal law experts who could offer an opinion on this, but did not receive a response by the time this story was published.