Small turnout, no opposition heard at town hall meeting
Voters who cast their ballots at the Big Creek Fire Station might be going to a different polling place as early as May.
Only a handful of Big Creek Precinct voters attended a town hall meeting at the Gilmer County Courthouse last Tuesday that was held to discuss moving the polling place to the fire station on Roy Road.
“I didn’t want to just make that decision, then inform everybody, ‘Hey guess what I did? I moved your polling place.’ I wanted to (invite) the public, especially the people who vote in that area, to give some feedback,” said Scott Chastain, Gilmer County Elections Superintendent, at the town hall.
The idea to move the polling place took shape over the past few years, and several factors led to it, Chastain noted. It began when he visited the Big Creek station during a 2018 election.
“As I remember, it was raining that day, and I couldn’t get a place in the parking lot so I went right across to Pisgah Road to park. As I was sitting there, there was a young mother that had pulled up across from me. She got out with her small child, and they both ran across Big Creek Road to get over to the fire station. I just had an awful feeling of what if she fell, or the child fell, or a car came around the curb and there was a bad accident. That was my first concern,” Chastain said.
“In the fire station, there was water coming up under (one of the) bay doors onto the concrete floor where people were passing through. That was my second concern,” he added.
Chastain said he recently learned of problems with the water system at the Big Creek station, which runs off a well.
“I found out from our maintenance department that there’s a bacteria growing in the water system at that fire station, and the water there is not safe to drink. That’s a concern of mine, as well,” he said.
Despite the small town hall turnout, Chastain said he’s heard from several Big Creek voters about the proposed move, and the feedback has been mostly positive.
“We may not have any negative comments until the day of election,” he said.
Few comments or questions were heard at the town hall, but no one who spoke said they were against moving the polling place.
“I want you to move it,” said Sherry Marks-Weaver, who’s worked for years as a poll manager at Big Creek.
Weaver said her late husband and many others helped build the Big Creek Fire Station. Although she loves to work the elections, Weaver said she sometimes dreaded going there.
“Anybody who was thinking about working at or was going to come to Big Creek, the first thing I would tell them was don’t drink the water. It’s been a problem for years,” she said.
Chastain said the Roy Road Fire Station is about 4.3 miles from the Big Creek station, and it’s a bigger, newer facility. The layout looks like it will better accommodate a crowd for elections and provide a better parking situation for voters, he noted.
“This station is quite a bit bigger than Big Creek. It has three bays. I’ve spoken with the (fire) chief, and he’s fine with us moving it from Big Creek to Roy Road,” Chastain said. “It’s a visibly bigger parking lot, (and) there’s nowhere really at Roy Road for people to park across the road and run across. Hopefully that eliminates people parking on the other side of the road and trying to get across.”
Chastain said the fire station near the Dollar General at the intersection of Big Creek Road and Highway 52 wasn’t considered because it’s a fully-manned station. The one on Roy Road is a volunteer station. A church was also initially considered to be the new polling place, but that wasn’t a good idea because it could turn into a disaster if an election and a funeral fell on the same day, he noted.
The local elections office is still waiting on state approval to move the polling place, but it’s hoped that the Roy Road station can be used for voting in the upcoming May 24 primary election. Chastain said it’s his goal to move it as soon as possible.
Chief Registrar Tammy Watkins said, when the polling place is moved, registered Big Creek voters will get a postcard in the mail notifying them of the change.
As of the Nov. 2020 presidential election, there were 1,479 registered voters at the Big Creek precinct, and 35 percent of those (or 405) came to vote at the fire station on that particular Election Day. The rest of the Big Creek voters who cast ballots in the 2020 election used early voting, Chastain noted.
Early voting will continue at the Gilmer County Voter Registrar’s Office, 1 Broad Street, and it will not be affected if the polling place is moved.