Board of Elections Director Brian Sleeth said he received many calls on Monday from Franklin residents wanting to know why they didn’t know an election was taking place.
Dieringer said when he got wind of the special election, he told everyone he could about it.
“There were many people who did not know about the levy until I told them,” he said. “I’m hoping I told enough people who told enough people, that we got a decent turnout and actually had a fair vote.”
The county special election only drew 11 percent of the registered voters. Prior to the final outcome of the election, Dieringer said he was against the tax hike, especially since he doesn’t know what the schools need it for and because officials seemed to have wanted to keep it a secret.
“I hope it didn’t pass. But if we have a majority of registered voters actually participate and vote and it passes, then it’s the voice of the people,” he said. “If you only have five percent of the voters vote, and all of those people are voting because they are affiliated with the school board, that’s not really the voice of the people. And that doesn’t meet my definition of a democracy.”
Levy chairman and board Vice Chair Chris Sizemore said the signs did go out later than he had hoped but the schools tried many ways — such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the Chamber of Commerce and visiting senior centers — to get the word out. A flier would have cost about $2,000 and that was beyond the campaign’s meager, privately funded budget, he said.
“We had a limited amount of funds and we tried to make the best use of it we could…,” Sizemore said.
Sizemore added he is very frustrated with the failure because Franklin schools have made great strides but funding has dried up from the state and federal governments, making it difficult to run the district.
“We’re going to have to regroup and make some tough decisions,” he said.
The school board anticipated the measure might not pass so in June it passed legislation to get the levy request back on the Nov. 5 general election.
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