ESD Has Done Well, Director Says, But Does Not Erase Election Woes

GRAND SALINE—Doyle Milliorn says he sometimes feels he is being cast in a bad light.

Milliorn, one of two Van Zandt County Emergency Services District No. 2 directors who recently voted to accept a petition for a new election on the district’s existence, said he is not against the ESD. Instead, he contends, he wants a "fair and legal" election to be held.

"This has always been my issue. There are some who have tried to put me in a bad light as though I was against the fire department, the EMS and the ESD," Milliorn said.

"The ESD is a good thing, it has helped the community and I think we as a board of directors have been making strides getting it going in the right direction…but none of that overweighs what happened with the (2006) election," he added.

A Sept. 8 public hearing on a petition to overturn the original election and hold a new one was denied by a 3-2 vote. Directors John Teague, Harry Clifford and Ray Carnes voted to deny the petition; Milliorn and Mary Ann Ritchie-Fisher voted for it.

Speaking about the vote, Milliorn said if the petition had been accepted and a new election called, he felt the ESD would have been in no danger of being voted out of existence.

"I truly believe it would have passed to keep it like it is. We (the ESD directors), when we voted not to allow that petition, I think we failed the community and the precinct. We let them down," he added.

Morgan Elliott, a Wills Point attorney who, along with Bruce Monning, represented the petition signers at the public hearing, said Wednesday that the group is determining its next possible move.

"They are evaluating their options and then will decide if they want to push the issue further or not. They can still bring legal action and they can do another petition next year. They can go through that process again," Elliott said.

Milliorn said he felt the attorney’s presentation of evidence of election code violations and voting improprieties in the original 2006 election should have been more than enough for the board to accept the petition.

"When the attorneys got through presenting that, even though to myself and everybody else there knowing how the cards were stacked, I thought how can anyone with a clear conscience not say ‘Let’s have an election,’" he said.

One of the major charges brought out at the public hearing was the denial of a vote to those who have since been charged taxes for the ESD. Likewise, the attorneys contended, some outside the ESD boundaries were incorrectly given a vote in the election.

Van Zandt County Precinct 1 Commissioner Ricky LaPrade said he was one of those who was denied a vote, although he lives within the district and has been charged an ESD tax on his property since the election.

"A lot of the problem is it seemed no one knew where the (district) boundaries were. I was denied a chance to vote and so was my mother and dad. I was standing in line behind them," LaPrade said.

Although LaPrade said he started getting phone calls about possible election improprieties "about a week or 10 days after the election," he added, "I don’t think the people who were upset with the election realized that they had 30 days after the election to protest the results."

The election results were accepted by the Van Zandt County Commissioners’ Court, but have been an unending point of contention ever since.

"I don’t think it will ever end until there is another election. There is a lot of people that is not going to be happy with it," LaPrade said. "It (ESD) needs to be brought in under a fair election and then the people who pay their taxes on it won’t have one thing to gripe about it."

Milliorn said he feels the original election results should never have been accepted under such a cloud of allegations.

"I think there is a lot of blame to go around…the commissioners’ court should have been making somebody responsible for the election results. They have to take a responsibility along with others," he said.

Still, he said, he is pleased with some of the improvements being made in fire protection throughout the district since the ESD has been in place, and noted that its operation has been running well since the city of Grand Saline entered into a contract last year with the ESD on behalf of the volunteer fire department and emergency medical service.

That, he said, is why he agreed to be appointed to a second two-year term as a director.

"I felt it was going smoother and felt it was playing an important part in helping the fire department. There have been a few times that I’ve questioned things going on, but I’ve voted for a lot of things to help the fire department. I felt I should make the best of things by straightening things up within it," Milliorn said.

What has not changed for Milliorn is his belief the district was not established fairly, especially with district residents being taxed after having been denied a chance to vote nearly three years ago.

"I’ve always contended for our right to vote and that it is to be counted as one of the most important things we have in a democracy," he said. "When we lose that, what have we got left?"