BLAND — The Bland Board of Aldermen is asking that the community vote NO on Proposition A that will be on the April 6 ballot, due to incorrect verbiage.

Aldermen decided months ago that they would ask the community to approve a local sales tax to help fund the police department.

Alderman Diana Mayfield said she noticed the proposed tax was written incorrectly when she received a copy of the ballot early as she is an alderman candidate in the election.

“It does not have the correct wording,” Mayfield began. “It was written incorrectly as a use tax (as in the police department would only receive taxes from online sales purchases over $2,000). I was sick when I got the ballot in the mail.”

The board voted to have the sales tax on the ballot in January and have the city clerk, Carrie Krupp, submit it to the county clerk.

Gasconade County Clerk Lesa Lietzow said she received the ballot language from the clerk.

“The ballot that was certified to us asked for a half-percent use tax,” Lietzow said. “That is what (Krupp) sent us and that is what we printed. That is what we are voting on and voting started this week.”

Lietzow said the alderman said that is not what the board-certified to be submitted. In the future, they will require ballot language to be given to aldermen prior to submission to avoid the situation from happening again.

“Certification for the election was Jan. 26, and that week we provided all the ballot copy to the printers, ordered them, and proofs came a couple of weeks later,” Lietzow explained. “We gave the final order on Feb. 8 if not Feb. 1. There was a point in there, yes, where even after I gave the go-ahead to print the ballots, the city could have notified us, we could have halted printing and the city could have paid to have the ballots already printed re-printed correctly.”

However, Lietzow said she was informed by a Bland alderman that the board was not privy to see what the city clerk submitted to the county prior to it being sent. Now it is too late to reprint the ballots because early voting began Feb. 23.

“I don’t want people to think the city is wasting money by having this question on the ballot,” Lietzow said. “Because regardless of (Prop A) the city had to pay to have their election candidates on the ballot.”

The county does not charge the city by the number of propositions they have or by space. They simply charge for a ballot.

“We don’t want people thinking they could have got by cheaper. The cost is the same,” Lietzow said.