Page 18 - Mark Andersen News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

/ Lynn Haven voters may cast their ballot in the special runoff elections for mayor and city commissioner at the town's Senior Center on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. Lynn Haven voters are electing their next mayor Tuesday—almost a year after former mayor Margo Anderson stepped down following her arrest on public corruption charges. Bay County Elections Supervisor Mark Andersen says no candidate in last month’s mayoral and city commission races got enough votes to win outright — triggering three runoff elections: one for mayor and two for city commissioner seats. The Lynn Haven City Commissi...

One immediate change the Bay County Supervisor of Elections Office made was removing the exterior drop box where early voters would typically drop in their ballots.   “The outside one, I’d have to have two people in security on it,” Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen said. According to the bill, SOE offices could be fined $25,000 if drop boxes are left unattended.   Anderson added since it is a municipal election but not county-wide, “it doesn’t impact (Lynn Haven voters) on the side of voting because we have drop boxes inside the voting places.”   Lynn Haven vo...

Gray said as soon as it became apparent that he would enter the runoff election against incumbent Judy Tinder, the man “started threatening my job, calling my boss saying I was doing illegal stuff, which I wasn’t.”   Emphasizing he does “not have access to information in the VA system” and “everything that I have came from the Supervisor of Elections Office,” Gray said the accusations still “made it all the way up to D.C.” Subsequently, the VA has opened an internal investigation and his supervisor recommended him to leave the race, according to Gray.   “...

Civic centers and arenas across South Dakota suffered significant financial losses during the COVID-19 pandemic but are seeing indicators of the potential for a return to profitability. Auditoriums sat empty for a few months or more in the early days of the pandemic in early 2020, and bookings remained slow and event attendance was down through the rest of the year and into 2021. Event cancellations or lost new business resulted from a desire by arena operators to be safe and by hesitancy of groups to gather indoors during the pandemic. Operators had to reimburse thousands of dollars in pre-p...

Local political positions competing for election included Lynn Haven mayor, Lynn Haven commissioner seats 3 and 4, Panama City commissioner Ward 4, Parker mayor and Parker Council seats 1 and 3.  Positions running unopposed were Mexico Beach mayor, Mexico Beach Council groups 2 and 3, Panama City mayor and Panama City commissioner Ward 1.  For Panama City's Hope Abbott, the school board referendum to raise millage rates would help the local education system be more competitive, attracting additional people to the area and boosting the local economy.  "We're not paying our teachers enough,...