Statewide election called for May 12
Trinity Standard , March 2007

TRINITY – When voters go to the polls May 12 for city, school and hospital district elections, they also will be asked to head to a county polling place for a constitutional amendment election.
Trinity County Clerk Diane McCrory said this week that the Texas Legislature has called the election for May 12 in an effort to implement tax relief for elderly and disabled homeowners.
The amendment, which is labeled as SJR 13, seeks to correct an oversight created when the 79th Legislature approved school tax relief legislation.
Current provisions of the Texas Constitution allow senior citizens to have their property taxes frozen in order to protect them from future increases.
However, there was no provision made to allow the “frozen” taxes to be “thawed” in order to take advantage of tax reductions such as the one enacted by the legislature during the 2005-2006 session.
The proposed amendment targets that problem and voters will be asked to vote either “for” or “against” a measure “authorizing the legislature to provide for a reduction of the limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for public school purposes on the residence homesteads of the elderly or disabled to reflect any reduction in the rate of those taxes for the 2006 and 2007 tax years.”
In addition to mandating a cut in local school taxes, the legislature has approved HB 2 which appropriates $14 billion in revenue to be used by the Texas Education Agency to compensate local schools for the loss of local tax income.
Normally, constitutional amendment elections are scheduled later in the year so as to not conflict with the local elections, but the legislature is seeking to try to get it approved in time to allow senior citizens to take advantage of tax reductions this year.
Scheduling the statewide vote at the same time as the local elections could create competition between the various governmental entities as they compete to hire qualified election judges and clerks.
Normally, many of the same people who work during the local elections also work in elections conducted by the county.
McCrory said this week that she doesn’t feel that will be much of a problem here.
“Because this is a constitutional amendment election, we consolidate our voting boxes. We’ll only need about half the number of workers as we would normally use so there should be plenty of qualified people to go around,” she said.
Early voting is set to begin on April 30.
Following is the list of the consolidated voting locations for the May 12 amendment election.

Commissioner Precinct 1
Box 1 – Groveton High School
Boxes 2 & 3 – 356 Volunteer Fire Department, Carlisle
Box 14 – Trinity Pines Baptist Church, FM 356 east of Trinity

Commissioner Precinct 2
Box 11 – Risin’ Sun Cowboy Church, Trinity
Box 17 – Trinity Community Center

Commissioner Precinct 3
Boxes 4, 5 & 19 – Trinity City Hall
Boxes 6 & 12 – Groveton Community Center

Commissioner Precinct 4
Boxes 8. 9 & 18 – Apple Springs Volunteer Fire Department
Boxes 7, 15, 16 – Baldwin Chapel Church, Groveton
Boxes 10 & 20 – Centerville School