At a Sanford City Council meeting last week, during which it was decided that the city’s three polling locations would be reduced to a single location, Mayor Becky Brink told a Christian pastor whose school gym previously served as a voting location that a “conflict of interest” was a cause for concern and a motivation behind the decision to remove the facility as a polling place.

Last Tuesday, the Sanford City Council voted 5-2 to consolidate the city’s three voting ward locations to one, making the Sanford High School gym the city’s sole voting site for this November’s election and all subsequent elections.

The move to consolidate the polling locations was purportedly part of an effort to streamline election day voting, and to make it cheaper to staff and provide security at a single polling location.

However, while discussing the proposal with the City Council on Tuesday, Mayor Brink revealed another possible motive behind the consolidation — a conflict of interest caused by the wife of Sanford Christian Academy Pastor Todd Bell running against Sanford Democratic State Rep. Anne-Marie Mastraccio in Maine House District 142.

One of the eliminated polling locations, the Sanford Christian Academy Riverside Campus — formerly known as the St. Ignatius Parish Hall-Gym — previously served voters in Sanford Ward #2, which overlaps with House District 142.

The Sanford Christian Academy was founded by Todd and Amy Bell in 2010.

Amy Bell, who serves as the school’s administrator, is currently running as a Republican to unseat Rep. Mastraccio in House District 142.

Todd Bell spoke during the public comment portion of the Tuesday meeting, telling the City Council that his church sees acting as a polling location as a “civic duty,” and even offering to run the voting site without city funds.

Bell denied rumors that his church was against acting as one of the voting locations, saying “it’s a falsity.”

“We are for it — matter of fact, we welcome it to such an extent, we don’t even need city funds to do it,” Bell said.

“We want to do it as a civic duty, and the opportunity to have citizens that may not be able to get to the voting location that is proposed, can come and still vote at a location that they’re comfortable with,” he added.

Responding to Bell later in the meeting, Mayor Brink said she is “concerned about that being a conflict of interest.”

“I’m not insulting you or your wife, because I really appreciate you, and I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to run for office, but there would be a problem with our having a vote in a building that you are a part of,” Brink continued.

“That would definitely come under conflict of interest, so I would be concerned — I mean, definitely that would be a location that I would remove at that point,” she said.

Brink also turned down the pastor’s offer to operate the polling location without city funds, saying that doing so would also be a conflict of interest as the city would still have to pay the other locations.

The Sanford mayor did not respond to requests for comment on her statements.

Rep. Mastraccio, the incumbent Democratic candidate in House District 142, supported the consolidation of polling locations in testimony to the City Council last week.

She did not mention, however, the potential conflict of interest regarding her political opponent as a reason for her backing the measure.

Instead, Mastraccio argued in favor of the consolidation on the grounds that taxpayer money would be better spent elsewhere than on more poll workers and security across multiple polling locations.

Mastraccio also praised the “flexibility” of early and absentee voting procedures brought in during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying it is “easier and just as safe a process as voting in person.”

When asked by the Maine Wire if she had concerns that the Sanford Christian Academy would not run their voting site properly on election day, and if that factored into her support for the consolidation, Rep. Mastraccio referred to her testimony from last week — which does not mention her opponent Amy Bell or Sanford Christian Academy.