WYOMING, Mich. — Local elections are this Tuesday in Michigan, and there are various millage and bond proposals on ballots across the area.
"The day before Election Day is a culmination of many months of preparation," Wyoming City Clerk Kelli VandenBerg says.
City hall is busy the night before people cast their ballots.
"All of our precinct chairs report to City Hall, and they are picking up all of the items they'll need to run the elections tomorrow," VandenBerg says. "We host 30 elections on election day. And we have about 150 workers that will be out in the precinct serving our voters, their neighbors."
She says with local elections like this where there are more proposals on the ballot over candidates, the volume of voters is typically lower.
"I think we had like a 16 or 18 percent turnout last year, and I anticipate we'll probably be close to that again this year," VandenBerg says.
One of the bigger issues being decided Tuesday is a public safety millage in Wyoming. City leaders say the millage would raise four million dollars for fire fighters and police in the city.
The city recently held a series of meetings on the proposal, and the interim city manager says people are engaged and want to learn about the issue.
The five year millage would allow the city to have all four fire stations open and staffed 24/7.
"We will also see reduced response times from the fire department and from the police department," John McCarter, interim city manager says. "Currently we're just operating out of two stations means that there are some areas of our city where the fire department response time is over six minutes. We'd really want to see that around four."
Closer to the lakeshore, Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck says what's at stake can often bring a community out to the polls.
"We have a couple of more substantial issues on the ballot this time," he says. "A couple of bond proposals for school districts that are significant proposals (and) Holland has a proposal on selling the waterfront property, which is kind of a big deal for the city. We have a number of different things on the ballot."
Voters there will see some changes, as results will be hand-delivered and tracked by GPS to the county clerk's office. Results will also be posted to a .gov website.
"These are two projects that our office has been working on for quite a while for a couple of years now in preparation for both of these things. So really, as we came off of the presidential election cycle, (we were) looking at some process improvements that we can make and making sure that we're doing our very best to eliminate all possible risks and to ensure voters that their elections are secure," Roebuck says.
For what the expect on Election Day, officials encourage voters to visit michigan.gov/vote.