Board of Elections office moves
By Steve Herring
Published in News on July 17, 2018 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Nicholas Sullivan and Will Ohnmeiss assemble some of the office furniture at the new Wayne County Board of Elections headquarters at 309 E. Chestnut St. Monday. The building was the former location of the Wayne County Development Alliance.
Instead of counting votes, the staff at the Wayne County Board of Elections has been busy counting the screws as they put together chairs and tables for their new office.
The elections office has moved diagonally across the street from its old location at the County Administration Building, 209 S. William St., to the former Wayne County Development Alliance building, 309 E. Chestnut St.
Moving day was Thursday to the building, which sits next to the main Wayne County Courthouse parking lot.
But other than the address, everything else remains the same, and the office is open for business as usual, said Dane Beavers, Wayne County Board of Elections director.
"I guess the first official day would have been Friday," he said. "We spent all day Thursday moving, and we still are unpacking and organizing.
"You know it takes a while to recover from a big move like that, but we are here, and we have a very nice facility."
The front of the building will be changed, he said. The large wooden homestyle door will be replaced with a commercial glass door to make it a little more inviting, Beavers said.
Currently, visitors have to press a buzzer in order to gain admittance. That will be changed so that people will be able to come in, he said.
However, it could still be used when there are only one or two staff members in the building.
Notices and a map have been placed on the doors at the old office with directions to the new office.
Signs for the new location should soon be in place, too.
"We've been updating our address on all of our websites and publications, all of our documents," Beavers said. "It is a little bit hard to locate if you are not familiar with the area. It's sitting back in the corner of the courthouse parking lot.
"But there is plenty of parking, and you can also park on the street out here. We have several handicapped places."
A few things need to be tweaked, such as the threshold for wheelchairs, he said.
"It is a step up from what he had," Beavers said.
Beavers, who has been with the county since 2012, said the board of elections office had been in the County Administration Building for a number of years.
At one time, it shared spaced with the Veterans Services Office and other agencies in that building.
The building has a lot of space and was laid out in wings so it worked well for housing several agencies, but not so well for just one, since it required directing the public to where it needed to go, Beavers said.
"Whereas here when you walk in, the first thing you see is our front desk," he said. "So you don't have to wander around to try to find somebody to help you."
The location has sufficient space, including a conference room where the board of elections will be able to hold its meetings, Beavers said.
In prior years, training for poll workers was held at the old office. That will now be done off site -- possibly at the county facilities department building's large conference room or at Wayne Community College's Moffatt Auditorium, Beavers said.
However, Beavers does not think the new and smaller space will be suitable as a one-stop early voting location, with the possible exception of a small municipal election when only one site is needed.
That is yet to be determined, he said.
The County Administration Building will be renovated to house parole and probation offices. The Wayne County Development Alliance has moved to an office on Malloy Street.
The Board of Elections office is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The phone number is 919-731-1411 and the fax is 919-731-1409.
The website is waynevotes.com and the email address is wayne.boe@ncsbe.gov.