CLEARFIELD – The Clearfield County Commissioners approved a policy to prohibit electioneering on county-owned/leased property at its workshop meeting on Tuesday.
According to the policy, no person – when on county property – shall electioneer or solicit votes for any political party, body or candidate. It also stated that written or printed electioneer materials shall not be posted on or within county property.
The commissioners’ policy asks that all persons entering county property refrain from wearing buttons, hats, shirts or other paraphernalia that supports or opposes candidates, referendums or retention questions that appear on voting ballots.
According to the policy, the electioneering prohibition shall be in effect during the working hours of all county facilities. It also includes county facilities that operate 24 hours a day.
Commissioner Mark B. McCracken said it’s been a policy “understood” by employees. He noted that’s it’s never been an adopted written policy until now.
Commissioner Joan Robinson-McMillen added that, “When county employees come to work, they have jobs to do,” and the commissioners don’t want them to be facing electioneering-related distractions.
In other business, the commissioners approved a request from the Clearfield Revitalization Corp.’s (CRC) Main Street Manager Loretta Wagner to have a holiday tree at the Courthouse plaza.
Wagner said the CRC would like to host a holiday season kick-off with a tree-lighting and to involve merchants in a storefront holiday window contest. She said it would be held the Friday before Thanksgiving on Nov. 20.
According to her, the CRC would like to have children make decorations for the three. The CRC, she said, also invites any community entity to bring its ideas to the holiday kick-off event.
“We want the whole community to be involved,” said Wagner. She said the CRC would work alongside borough officials to “light up Clearfield” all at once for the holiday season and to have Santa “flip the switch.”