Changes ahead for upcoming City Elections

Two elected officials won’t seek re-election

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

The Monticello city government is set for changes ahead. At least two of its long-serving members have indicated that they do not plan to seek re-election, and a third is on the fence regarding his decision.
City Clerk Emily Anderson and Councilwoman Julie Conley announced at the council meeting on Tuesday, April 4, that they would not seek re-election to their respective positions in the coming election. The two said that their advanced notice was to give potential candidates sufficient time to decide if they want to run.
Meanwhile, Councilman Tory Avera said he too was leaning to not running, but was still undecided.
The next general election, specific to the city, is set for Nov. 7, with the qualifying time scheduled for the week of noon-to-noon June 12-16, and the primary on Aug. 22.
Five positions are up for election. They are chief of police, city clerk and council seats for groups 3, 4 and 5, currently held by Conley, Councilman John Jones, and Avera, respectively.
Anderson has held public office since 1999, serving one term as a council member before running for city clerk, a position she has held unchallenged ever since but is now ready to relinquish.
Whoever is elected as her replacement, Anderson said the individual would need ample time to learn the duties of the office.
“I’m happy to work with potential candidates to familiarize them with the process,” she said.
Conley is another who has long served in city government, first as city clerk and then as a council member. First elected in 1996 to the clerkship, she served two terms in this office before switching to the council in 2004. After one term on the council, however, Conley did not seek reelection.
Then in 2014, she sought and was appointed to fill the vacant seat of a council member who had been forced to resign. Conley has since been elected to the seat on her own, beginning in 2016. She has also served several terms as mayor.
To seek an elective office in city government, a candidate must be a city resident at the time of qualifying.
In other election-related action, the council decided that one week of early voting would be sufficient for the election, given that it would cost significantly to add a second week of early voting.
As Anderson explained it to the council, the supervisor of election will schedule early voting one week prior to the Aug. 22 primary and one week prior to the Nov. 7 general election, each week from Saturday to Saturday, including one Sunday.
Should the council choose to add a second week of early voting, Anderson said, it would cost about $1,700 for each the primary and general election. The reason for the charge, she said, was that it would require three elections office workers to staff the polling location, at overtime pay for the Saturdays and Sunday.
On the other hand, the council voted to incur an additional cost to ensure that registered voters in the city receive adequate notice of the new requirements for mail ballots.
This is because, per state law, voters must now sign up for vote-by-mail ballots for every election cycle. Anderson told the council the elections supervisor was willing to mail courtesy letters to all registered voters in the city instructing them of the new rules and how to request vote-by-mail ballots for the 2023 city election for an extra cost.
The notices, she said, would be mailed within the next six weeks at a cost of about $900.
Anderson noted that per the elections supervisor, numerous voters in the city historically preferred to vote-by-mail and the instructions could well avert confusion near the election dates.
She added that the elections supervisor’s office on West Washington Street would be the only polling location for the two elections, thereby saving the expense of establishing several polling locations and staffing them.