Complete, unofficial returns in yesterday’s election show the proposal to create an emergency services district (ESD-1) in Collin County was favored by 6,594 voters or 72.57% of the total vote count of 9,086, Collin County Elections reported at 12:33 a.m.
There were 2,492 votes against ESD-1, or 27.43%.
Results are not official until they are canvassed by the Collin County Commissioners Court.
There were 47,869 registered voters living outside city limits who were eligible to vote on the issue, Elections Administrator Kaleb Breaux said.
Collin County Elections said voter turnout was 15.83% with 117,5109 ballots cast in all races out of the county’s total voter roll of 742,114.
Election Day voting Nov. 4 was 59,012, surpassing the 56,982 ballots cast in early voting that ended Oct. 31.
Commissioners called the emergency services election after receiving a petition seeking to create ESD-1 to serve residents in the 75.5 square miles of unincorporated area.
Since October 2013, the county has paid fire departments in 22 cities a total of $950,000 to provide emergency service to rural residents living outside the cities.
Melissa dropped their contract last year, and the cities of Princeton, McKinney, Wylie and Farmersville filed notice of termination effective Oct. 1 of this year, saying the county was not paying them enough to make runs into their extraterritorial jurisdictions (ETJs).
However, McKinney decided to continue service to rural residents for another year, and the Princeton City Council voted July 28 to extend service through the end of this month.
The ESD would be governed by a board of five directors appointed by the Commissioners Court. The board would be able to set a property tax, capped by state law at ten cents per $100 valuation, to finance fire service. The district could then negotiate with the cities to continue fire service under new contracts.