Scottville's Free Elections

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On November 7, the Mason County Central (MCC) school district held its third election with a $30 million bond proposal on the line, this would be the first time it was split into two fairly-equal-in-cost proposals.  The first was mainly concerned with security issues and upgrades at the high school, the second was for auditorium upgrades.  Both failed, just like the first two.  

It's likely they will try again soon, but hopefully they're not as non-empathetic as they appear to be and save it until May 2025, skipping a presidential election year where turnout expands and voters will be less apt to vote for such measures.  But the question was posed during this third election cycle as to the costs to the MCC district taxpayer that all these elections are costing.  And since the district leaders are a bit reluctant to show those numbers anywhere, the Ludington Torch sent them a FOIA request for records showing their bond election expenses over the last three elections.  

There were some surprises.  The estimates of how much these elections cost just for holding them appear to have been overestimated, as has been the expense of the school for giving out election 'information'.  The district spans not only the City of Scottville, but 11 outlying townships in three counties.  Yet, something more unexpected was missing from the records which lends to this article's title.  See if you can guess what that is while we look at the records for each election:

The May 2022 election, as you can see, cost MCC roughly $20,000.  This would pay for costs of running the polling places, legal counsel, and county clerks for their duties during the election.  The costs for marketing this particular election was just a little over $3000, a pretty modest amount considering the variety of ways they got their messaging out.  

The May 2023 election saw better results in the election and it also saw additional expenditures for both election costs and marketing.  While spending nearly $28,000 to run the election, they upped the other costs to about $5400.  

And while the invoices from polling places for this election are still trickling in, they will probably be in the neighborhood of $30,000 when tallied, gauging from what's already in.  The marketing grew quite a bit, however, due to hiring some professionals to create videos to $16,800.  

The costs for these three elections were approximately $23,000, then $33,000, then $47,000 (estimated).  The district's funds have decreased by over $100,000 just to put the issue before the people.  That is the answer to the question the Ludington Torch originally sought, but another question came up once I looked the records over.  

The City of Scottville voters have reliably approved the ballot measures by a wide margin, usually over 60%.  One would figure this to be the case because all of the $30M in improvements will take place in that jurisdiction, and their businesses will be the most direct beneficiaries from the construction.  Yet, notice the absence of any election expense invoice from the City of Scottville in any of the three elections. 

Over the last year and a half, the Ludington Torch has been documenting the many creative ways that Scottville city management has been trying to get more and more money from citizens and their visitors, while using about 2/3 of a million public dollars just to relocate their Dollar General across the street.  

During that time, they have allowed MCC Schools to conduct free elections-- guess who pays for those free costs?  Just Scottville citizens.