Paperwork to complete the transfer of the former Southern Printing building from the city to the county should be complete by the beginning of April.

The Warren County Board of Supervisors on Thursday studied a contract written by city lawyers that includes a directive to count the $5,000 estimated cost of building improvements as &#8220earnest money.”

Initially, supervisors reacted with some exasperation, agreeing that the language contained wording spelling out the purpose for the county’s purchase of the site at First North and Clay streets.

In its offer, the county spelled out its intention of housing new touch-screen voting machines and moving the E-911 Dispatch Center to the bottom floor of the building.

But, in the end, supervisors agreed to authorize signature of the contract by the board president at its next regular meeting, on March 6.

&#8220I’m ready to go on with it,” District 1 Supervisor David McDonald said.

For the most part, changes tacked on to the $225,000 initial cost entail altering electrical circuitry to accommodate hardware and software for emergency dispatch operations.

Other alterations will include installation of a partition wall for emergency dispatch and setting up exit doors with fire code-compliant doors with crash bars.

In addition, more electrical outlets will have to be installed in the upper floor so there will be enough to keep batteries in the voting machines charged.

That and other issues were topics of a conference call between the Secretary of State’s Office and county administrator John Smith earlier in the week.

No date has been set for employees to begin operating from the building.

At Thursday’s informal meeting, Smith told supervisors that circuit clerks statewide are beginning to find and are trying to correct problems in integrating the state’s centralized voter database with their current rolls.

The state contracted with Saber Consulting to provide software for the new database. Since late last year when 77 counties opted into the state’s purchase of touch-screen voting machines, problems dealing with data retrieval and security have been detected.

&#8220The clerks are now starting to find the same problems that David Rankin has been trying to fix for six months,” Smith said.

Rankin is the information systems manager for the county.

As for the database of Warren County, Smith said, issues found earlier in the process with surname recognition and printing are being worked out.