Lauderdale County supervisors are looking for solutions to space issues reported by several county departments. The Board of Supervisors heard Thursday from county election commissioners and Coroner Stella McMahan about the need to find workable space suitable to carry out their duties.

Election commissioners first approached supervisors in December 2023 after it became clear the space available at the new Lauderdale County Government Complex is not enough to meet the commissioners’ needs. In addition to office space, commissioners also need a secure place to store the county’s DS200 voting machines, transfer cases and other critical election equipment.

Election Commissioner Gloria Dancy said Thursday she and the other commissioners haven’t been included in discussions about the storage issue and want to have their voices heard.

“We need to be included. We are elected officials also,” she said.

In the March primary election, Dancy said, election commissioners worked out of three different locations, the new government center, the former courthouse on Constitution Avenue and the county annex. There isn’t enough space in the government center for everything, she said, so some equipment has to remain at the county annex, where much of the county’s voting equipment was previously stored. The commissioners themselves are working out of boxes in the old courthouse, she said.

Although supervisors have considered a number of options, Dancy said there are legal requirements that have to be followed in storing sensitive election equipment. The storage area must meet a number of criteria, she said.

“First of all, they have to be in a secure location,” she said. “All of this stuff has to be locked up.”

The machines also need to be able to be plugged in, Dancy said, as the batteries in the machines will run down between elections if left unconnected from a power source. The storage area also needs to be climate controlled due to the electronic components in the machines.

Space is also an issue when it comes to the required logic and accuracy testing, which involves setting up the ballot counting machines for the election and testing them for accuracy, Dancy said. There are 38 DS200 ballot scanners to set up and 38 express voting machines, but not enough room to perform the logic and accuracy testing on all the equipment at one time.

The 2024 presidential election is rapidly approaching, and election commissioners have just a few months until preparations for Election Day get underway, Dancy said. Poll workers will be hired in September, with poll worker training and packing secure transfer cases for individual precincts taking place in October.

Without a permanent home, she said, election commissioners need to know what the Board of Supervisors plans to do to address the storage issues and whether or not a decision is feasible by election time.

“We want to know now, are we still going to be at the old location,” she said.

Supervisor Kyle Rutledge, who serves as board president, said the issue of space has been ongoing since the county moved into its new offices last fall. He said his recommendation is to appoint a committee to meet with the election commissioners, work to find a solution that meets their needs and make a recommendation to the full board.

Rutledge asked supervisors J.J. Anders and Craig Houston to make up the committee and coordinate with the election commissioners to meet their needs.

“Y’all bring back a recommendation, and let’s fix this problem,” he said.

Coroner

Supervisors also heard from Lauderdale County Coroner Stella McMahan about the unresolved space needs of her department as well. Since being sworn in in January, McMahan has been operating without a county office and no permanent location for the county morgue.

“I’m currently working from my kitchen counter,” she said.

Problems with the coroner’s office surfaced following the retirement of longtime coroner Clayton Cobler, who also served as executive director for Metro Ambulance. With Cobler serving in the dual role, the coroner’s office and morgue have been located at Metro’s station on 17th Avenue.

Following Cobler’s retirement, the county learned it will need to find new office space for the coroner to use, as well as find a suitable location to relocate the morgue. One suggested location, near 17th Avenue and B Street, will not work as it is unsafe for funeral homes, families and morgue staff coming in at night, McMahan said.

“For many years, no one had to think about it because one office served two roles,” she said.

Additionally, Metro Ambulance recently notified the county it plans to stop transport of bodies for the coroner’s office, and contracting with funeral homes or other arrangements will need to be made, McMahan said.

County Administrator Chris Lafferty said his discussions with Metro’s interim executive director pointed to a lack of available staffing as the reason behind the decision not to transport bodies. In some cases, he said, ambulances were getting tied up with transport while 911 calls were going unanswered.

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, Lafferty said McMahan is right that appropriate space needs to be found. The county had previously offered some temporary office space, but it did not meet the coroner’s needs.

Houston said the situation with the coroner, as with the election commissioners, comes down to poor communication. These are issues that need to be dealt with and solved once and for all, he said.

“I don’t like kicking cans down the road,” he said. “We need to sit down, need to come up with a solution once and for all. We’ve got a lot of things going on that we should just deal with instead of kicking cans down the road.”