BENTON COUNTY — Mayors in Avoca, Gateway and Garfield are upset.

They are mad after receiving bills from the Benton County Election Commission for their towns’ May 18 elections.

Each town added an item to the ballot to allow residents to decide whether they wanted fire dues included in property tax bills each year.

Avoca and Garfield voters passed the proposal; Gateway voters rejected the proposal.

Avoca was billed $2,013 by the Election Commission for thevote. Gateway was billed $1,956 and Garfield received a statement for $1,966.

Avoca Mayor Thomas O’Dell said he was surprised because it’s double what the town was billed two years ago.

“As a small town, we look at our bills; right now, we have a lot of questions,” O’Dell said. “An increase of over 100 percent is a little tough to swallow.”

One item in the bill caught O’Dell’s attention.

Each town was billed $500 for general and administrative expenses with no explanation what those expenses are.

Bill Williams, election commissioner, said the expenses are billed to entities requesting an election.

E.J. Miller, commission chairman, told the commission July 2 he raised the general and administrative fee from the agreed $300 to $500 because he didn’t feel $300 was enough.

“I changed it because I felt what we were charging was insufficient,” Miller said.

“He didn’t have the right to do that,” Gateway Mayor Lida Schnitzer said. “Why would we even be paying that (general and administrative expenses) anyway?”

O’Dell called Miller’s actions underhanded.

“I couldn’t do it with my boss. I couldn’t go tell him, ‘Hey, I’d like to have $200 more this week,’ so why do they think they can do it?” O’Dell said.

Garfield Mayor Laura Hamilton agreed.

Hamilton said she will request a breakdown of the expenses before paying the $500.

Schnitzer also said she will look into all of the items Gateway was charged for by the commission.

“They need to prove the need to charge us for all of that, and it should be legitimate,” Schnitzer said. “They just keep tacking on things.”

O’Dell is considering another approach.

The county uses Avoca Town Hall as a polling place for elections. O’Dell said he is thinking about billing the commission for using the hall and using that money to offset the commission’s decision to bill Avoca for general and administrative expenses.

Hamilton and Diane Bowen, recorder-treasurer for Avoca, have e-mailed Williams with their concern about the bills.

Williams asked Amy Huston, election coordinator, to address each of the towns’ concerns with the statements and to report back to the commission.

News, Pages 1 on 07/14/2010