YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The Mahoning County Board of Elections will have a new location, and officials expect to move in before the November 2027 general election.
Board of elections members announced Thursday morning that the board will move to the former Williamson Elementary School at 58 Williamson Ave.
“About 80% of Mahoning County’s voters are within a 20-minute drive to this facility, and it’s also on a WRTA line,” said Denise Bayer, a board of elections member.
It’s close to Interstate 680, Market Street and South Avenue, she added.
The decision follows years of discussion between board members and county commissioners about the board wanting to leave its offices at Oakhill Renaissance Place. Some board members cited deteriorating conditions at the building, including leaks they worried would damage voting equipment.
Several options had been considered but fell through, including the former Bottom Dollar store on Glenwood Avenue in the city and the former Infocision, called the Patriot building, in Austintown.
The Western Reserve Port Authority and the Youngstown City School District agreed for the district to sell the former school building to WRPA for $900,000.
Anthony Trevena, WRPA executive director, said that when the county commissioners notified the board of elections members they had the right to look at opportunities to relocate, they reached out to WRPA.
The port authority’s team worked with the board, showing them different options.
“We refer to the needs of boards of elections when it comes to a building as kind of like a unicorn,” Trevena said. “The reason I say that is the building needs what it needs when it needs it.”
For elections, the building needs to be scalable to accommodate nearly 200 parking spaces and a lot of traffic, he said. It also needs ample storage space for voting equipment and to be accessible geographically.
“When you look at all the properties available in this circumference, this just really did do a great job of checking all of those boxes,” Trevena said.
WRPA will be the general contractor to get the building designed and set up for the board of elections. Equipment will be housed inside before the whole operation moves in.
It’s the same process followed for the county’s Belmont Avenue Veterans Service Center.
“We bought it. We remodeled it with an MOU [memorandum of understanding],” Trevena said. “They reimbursed us for our costs, expenses and labors. And then just, I think, last week, I just signed the deed back over and gave the building to the county, so this will be the same way.”
Bayer said it’s an example of functional government and everyone listening to each other.
“Maybe it seemed to be contentious at times, but at the end of the day, everybody had the same goal in mind, and so we were able to reach that,” she said.
There’s enough land around the former school to allow more parking to be added.
She said the cost is on par with what would have been required to move into the Patriot building. And the former school is in the city.
“We definitely wanted to keep the board of elections in the city because it’s the county seat, and we’re also cognizant of not wanting to disenfranchise voters,” Bayer said.