EUPISD To Seek Millage Increase on Nov. 6 Ballot
By Karen Gould

Mackinac Island City Clerk Karen Lennard gets organized with a work table set up in her office dedicated to election requirements over the next year.

Mackinac Island voters will participate in five elections over the next year, and a potential sixth election could to be added to the schedule. This fall there will be a millage election to support special education in the Eastern Upper Peninsula, scheduled for November 6. In 2008, the presidential primary election is January 15, local city and school elections are May 6, the state and county primary election is August 5, and the presidential election is November 4.

To handle all of the required paperwork for the upcoming elections, Mackinac Island City Clerk Karen Lennard has designated a work area in her office.

"My election work is more serious than anything I do," said Mrs. Lennard. She carries absentee ballots in her backpack to accommodate residents who approach her on the street.

In the last election, Mackinac Island had 646 registered voters. Of those, Mrs. Lennard estimates she will have 200 absentee ballots for the special education millage election in November and approximately 300 for next year's Presidential election. Absentee ballot requests drop during the summer season, she said, with many voters returning to the Island.

The special education millage is sponsored by the Eastern Upper Peninsula Intermediate School District (ISD), which is seeking 0.75 mills in all E.U.P. school districts to raise $1.4 million over three years. The proposal was defeated throughout the Eastern Upper Peninsula last may, with Island voters rejecting it 133 to 104.

Under the ISD's distribution proposal, Island property owners would have contributed $130,697 to the program but the Island school would have received only $28,000 of that back.

If the proposal fails again in November, the ISD could ask voters to reconsider as early as February.

The ISD is paying for the November election costs, which include ballots and election staff in each district, but the City of Mackinac Island will pay for the other elections. It has budgeted enough to cover the January primary. For its new fiscal year beginning April 1, the city will need to budget for the three other 2008 elections. Each election, Mrs. Lennard said, costs the city about $2,000.