May elections will not be needed for 2 of Moulton’s 3 government bodies

With no contested races in any of Moulton’s three governmental bodies, May elections were nearly done away with entirely.

The state of Texas permits local entities to cancel their elections whenever they have no challenged races on the ballot as a means saving the expense of the holding an election, and it’s extended to school boards, city councils, medical services districts, water boards, and municipal utility districts, to name but a few.

With respect to challenged seats on any board in Moulton this year, there were none.

Whenever a challenge does occur, or when other issues are brought forth during the election time—like bond elections, for instance—then the election must proceed as planned.

And that’s where the City of Moulton will have to foot its own election bill in 2024.

All three alderman positions that opened up this year ran unopposed, including the seats held by mayor pro-tem Craig Hughes and councilwomen Roberta Mejias and Jenna Harris. Councilwoman Nina Blaschke opted not to run again, but she will continue serving until her term officially ends in May 2024.

The city will, however, hold a special election dealing with future street maintenance projects around Moulton. The city gets a certain portion of the sales tax that is dedicated to maintenance of existing streets only, and the May ballot will allow people the chance to vote for or against dedicating this portion of their sales tax dollars for this purpose.

Moulton was recently awarded several million in state and federal grants to refurbish to address street repairs throughout the town.

Prior to the pandemic, it was more than enough funding to not fix streets but also fund strip curbing throughout the town, but when construction costs skyrocketed in the months that followed, they found it was barely enough to cover the costs of fixing their biggest problem areas with city streets, which is why city officials hope to establish the dedicated fund for city streets.

No elections will be needed, but over at Moulton ISD, three seats on the board opened up this year, including Place 6 held by David Beyer, Place 7 held board vice president Justin Anderle, and Place 4 held by Chuck Greive. Only the incumbents filed to run again.