HERMANN – What could have been a disappointment April 7 turned into a pleasant surprise for veteran Gasconade County Clerk Lesa Lietzow. Voter turnout for what was her final General Municipal Elections ballot was twice as high as her projection going into the day’s balloting.

Lietzow is retiring after two decades of being the county’s chief elections official at the end of her current term Dec. 31. Her office is responsible for conducting all elections in the county, assembling all the ballots, staffing the county’s 16 polling places and venturing an educated guess about the possible turnout for each election. April elections are notorious for low voter turnout.

Still, the 15 percent turnout projected by the county clerk was itself a low number — despite the most crowded April ballot Lietzow has had during her career and one that featured a controversial countywide property tax-relief proposal.

But when all the ballots were scanned and votes counted, the turnout wound up being 30 percent.

“It was awesome for an April” election, Lietzow said about the turnout. Indeed, despite the many ballot issues and candidates that were on this April’s ballot, the most glaring item was not who or what won or lost, but how many people cast a ballot.

“The biggest surprise was the turnout,” the county clerk said.

Her turnout projection was on the mark in one precinct (Redbird) and close in others, but the countywide turnout was pulled up by a larger-than-expected turnout in one of the Hermann wards. Ward 1 voters turned out at a 40-percent clip.

“I think that’s because they had a race for mayor and a race for Ward 1,” Lietzow said.

The 30-percent turnout countywide (3,165 voters casting a ballot out of 10,543 registered voters) was set in the voting for the only countywide issue — Senate Bill 3, the proposed property tax-relief measure. In a 30.02-percent turnout, voters approved the proposal by a vote of 1,910 yes to 1,135 no, making for a large margin of victory (62.7 percent to 37.3 percent).

That the measure passed at the polls wasn’t surprising to Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte, R-Hermann. What did surprise him, he said, was how many people voted against it.

“I was a little surprised at the vote,” he said during Thursday’s session of the County Commission. While county government officials could not advocate for the passage or rejection of the proposal, they did talk about the potential effects of losing revenue as a result of passage of Senate Bill 3.

Being her final April vote to oversee, Lietzow said this year’s version went smoothly. “This went well,” she said. “It was good.”

Meanwhile, the Commission heard that Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office has been formally notified of the opening in the County Collector’s Office with the retirement March 31 of longtime Collector Shawn Schlottach. Deputy Collector Glenda Shockley has been named interim collector by the Commission. She will serve in that capacity until the governor appoints a successor to Schlottach or until the office is filled in the Primary and General elections this year.

“Now we wait ‘til he notifies us,” the county clerk said, noting the governor might wish to appoint Shockley to the post, considering she is the longtime deputy collector and the only candidate for the office.