PORT TOWNSEND — Brinnon and Sequim School District voters in East Jefferson County have until 8 p.m. today to cast their ballots in separate levy elections.
Ballots returned to the Jefferson County Auditor’s Office elections division as of Monday totaled 688, or 57 percent of the 1,209 ballots mailed out Jan. 19.
Most of the ballots — 956 — were mailed to Brinnon School District voters.
A small portion of the Sequim School District– which stretches from Blue Mountain Road through Sequim to Gardiner — is in East Jefferson County. The Jefferson County auditor mailed 253 ballots were mailed to those voters. Clallam County mailed 20,534 ballots to voters in the district.
Seven ballots returned to elections officials have been declared to be undeliverable.
Ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday to be counted in the levy elections.
On Election Day, voters today can return their ballots by hand by 8 p.m. to the auditor’s office on the second floor of Jefferson County Courthouse, 1820 Jefferson St., Port Townsend, or at the drive-through drop box in the parking lot on the west side of the courthouse.
South county voters can return their ballots to a drop box at Jefferson County Library, 620 Cedar Ave., Port Hadlock.
The Auditor’s Office will release an unofficial tally for both elections once results are tabulated at 8 p.m.
The Brinnon School District two-year maintenance and operations replacement levy ballot measure asks voters to approve the levy and raise $572,000 over two years starting in 2011.
The Sequim School District levy measure will, if approved by voters, raise $4.05 million for Sequim’s public schools next year, $4.9 million in 2012 and $5.78 million in 2013.
If the Brinnon measure passes, property owners in the district, which has 30 kindergarten to eighth-grade students, would be taxed at a rate of $1.04 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, which would go up to $1.10 percent $1,000 of assessed valuation in 2012.
A homeowner with a home valued at $200,000, for example, would pay $208 a year, which would increase to $220 in 2012.
That would raise $278,885 for 2011 and $293,661 to be collected in 2012.
The levy replaces an existing levy that expires this year, with levy money going toward textbooks, supplies and unfunded special education requirements.
It also covers the cost of sending Brinnon students to neighboring districts, such as Quilcene High School.
Sequim’s proposed levy replaces the current one — which expires at the end of this year — and raises the tax rate.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
