YOUNGSTOWN — Two more water leaks in a five-day period at the Mahoning County Board of Elections has the board’s director concerned it’s just a matter of time before serious damage occurs.

The leaks into a room that houses the board’s poll books occurred Friday and Tuesday, said Director Tom McCabe, with the first one destroying six boxes of absentee envelopes.

McCabe said: “We’re fortunate it hasn’t caused major damage, but we’re getting closer. The board is lucky nothing has been destroyed, besides the boxes of envelopes, but it’s only a matter of time.”

This is the fifth time water has leaked or poured into the board of elections at the county-owned Oakhill Renaissance Place since a pipe broke Sept. 29 when county maintenance employees were working in the area.

Another smaller leak happened a few months later and one on May 18.

The leaks Friday and Tuesday were on the other side of a room where the poll books are stored. The books are used to scan voter identification cards, such as drivers’ licenses, before voting.

The board recently spent $400,000 to upgrade the equipment and has another $700,000 to $800,000 worth of poll books in the room, McCabe said.

Overall, the board has a few million dollars of equipment, including voting machines, at its office, McCabe said.

The Sept. 29 leak with the broken pipe was in an area where voting machines are stored. None was damaged, but the board switched seven of them for backups during the Nov. 4 general election as a cautionary measure.

Election board officials have complained for more than two years about conditions at Oakhill, a 125-year-old former hospital on Oak Hill Avenue.

The board hopes to relocate in the former Bottom Dollar grocery store on Glenwood Avenue in Youngzstown. It is the preferred spot for three of the four members.

Board Chairman David Betras wants Youngstown to give the building at no cost or $1 to the Western Reserve Port Authority, which would lease it to the elections board.

After the May 18 water leak into the board’s retention room, which didn’t cause any damage, Betras said: “This is what scares me the most about this building. At some point, something catastrophic is going to happen, and we’re not going to dig our way out of it. I want to put on pressure and we need to move expeditiously through this process because I don’t want to explain to the public why we’ve got a catastrophic building failure.”

A board resolution, passed March 3, states Oak Hill “is in materially deficient and hazardous condition, including but not limited to the lack of potable water for employees and unsafe building conditions, and such conditions materially impair the board’s ability to safely and effectively conduct elections and fulfill its statutory obligations.”

At its May 26 meeting, board members Lisa Robinson and Sandra Barger said they want to immediately move voting equipment elsewhere before it is permanently damaged. No decision was made though Betras said retrofitting a building for the equipment would cost a lot of money, and commissioners would be hesitant to invest that much in a temporary solution.