The number of seats on the Adams Township board of supervisors won’t be reduced.

Judge Michael Yeager last week struck down a voter referendum seeking to pare the board from five seats to three.

According to Yeager’s Oct. 8 court order granting a preliminary injunction to the township supervisors, the referendum — if passed — would disenfranchise the voters who elected the supervisors to six-year terms.

Supervisor Linda Lees’ terms ends in 2016, the terms of supervisors Donald Aiken and Edward Vogel end in 2018 while the terms of Thomas Franceschina and Russell Ford finish in 2020.

Shari Brewer, director of the county elections bureau, said it’s too late to remove the referendum question from the electronic ballot, but no votes on the question will be certified.

“They will not be tallied,” Brewer said.

Voters will be notified that the court struck the referendum.

“We’re just putting up notices at the three precincts,” Brewer said.

Supervisor Linda Lees on Tuesday said she feels that, with a growing community like Adams Township, there is a need for the input of all five supervisors. “Amen. I’m glad it’s over,” she said.

Yeager’s order also prohibits the election bureau from releasing the results of any votes cast for the nullified referendum.

The Butler County commissioners, serving as the county election board, in August placed the referendum on the November ballot based on a residents’ petition with 491 signatures.

To be eligible for consideration, it needed 5 percent of the municipality’s registered voters, or 442 names out of 8,854 voters.

The commissioners said at the Aug. 27 meeting they were legally bound to approve the referendum’s placement on the ballot.

Charles Clark, the resident who turned in the petition, previously said the issue prompting the referendum effort was not that the supervisors disagreed with opponents of natural gas drilling, but that they refused to listen to those residents state their case.

Clark couldn’t be reached for comment.

The supervisors in September challenged the referendum’s constitutionality in county court.

The township argued a reduction in the board would violate the state constitution by removing two supervisors from office before the end of their terms.

Yeager in 2013 overturned a similar referendum passed by Center Township for the same reason.

The county and the election bureau took no position on whether the referendum should be stricken.