Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 3, 1991 TAG: 9104030397
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Uniform growth across the county during the 1980s has made redistricting a simpler job for a citizens committee the supervisors asked to come up with a plan. Election law requires that voting districts be equalized every 10 years, following the national census.
Monday night, the supervisors will be asked to set the first of two proposed public hearings on redistricting for April 22. Another hearing will be held late in May.
Redistricting has been "pretty easy" compared with the task 10 years ago, said Joe Powers, the county's planning director. Powers, who has served as a staff member for the committee, said the great majority of the county's residents will not be affected by redistricting.
"It was not as upsetting as we thought it might have been, primarily because the county has grown all over," said committee Chairman John Hairston of Christiansburg. Hairston of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is one of two non-voting members on the committee.
Following the latest census, District A in the northern part of the county, represented by Supervisor Jim Moore, and District D in southwestern Montgomery County, served by Board Chairman Henry Jablonski, varied the most from the ideal-sized district.
The latest census figures show the county now has 73,913 residents, compared with 63,307 in 1980. This means the seven districts should have an ideal population of 10,599 people.
District A grew the most and is now 10 percent larger than the ideal district. District D grew less than average and is 6 percent smaller than the ideal. The courts have ruled voting districts should not vary more than 5 percent from the ideal size.
But the biggest shift proposed by the committee is due to a new state requirement that boundary lines follow geographic or physical features such as roads, ridge lines and streams. "The idea is to get a boundary people can recognize," said committee member Mary Fessler of Blacksburg.
Chairman Hairston said the group rode all over the county looking for boundary lines that would have to be changed.
The biggest proposed change would require that 853 people living in Supervisor Joe Stewart's District C be moved into Supervisor Henry Jablonski's District D. Those people live in subdivisions off South Franklin Street, south of I-81 in Christiansburg.
Another major change would move 184 people in the Murphy Subdivision in Supervisor James Moore's district into Supervisor George Gray's District G.
Other changes suggested to meet the requirement for physical boundaries include the move of 80 people in the Woodland Hills Subdivision in Moore's district into Supervisor Ann Hess' District B and the shift of 60 people who live in Hess' district near the southeast Blacksburg corporate limits into Moore's district. Also proposed would be the shift of 66 people in the Pilot Mountain area from Jablonski's district to Stewart's.
Because these boundary adjustment still do not bring some districts within an acceptable range of the ideal size, the redistricting committee has come up with a list of five options aimed at doing that. "We are giving [the supervisors] several options to consider," said Fessler, who represents Moore's district on the committee.
Moore's district near Blacksburg posed the biggest problem because of its large growth. Two of the options involve shifting up to 578 residents out of Moore's district into districts represented by Supervisors Todd Solberg and Gray.
The supervisors also asked the committee to come up with a more equal distribution of students living in the dormitories at Virginia Tech, even though most students don't register to vote.
A majority, 4,931, of the 7,954 students living in Tech dorms are currently in Supervisor Ira Long's District E. Each of the committee's proposals for dealing with dorm students does not alter the current situation much.
Other directions the supervisors gave the committee were that districts including Blacksburg and Christiansburg contain a mix of urban and rural population and that the attendance zones of Shawsville and Auburn high schools be included in two election districts.
After the supervisors set the public hearing, redistricting maps will be placed in municipal buildings and libraries in Blacksburg and Christiansburg and in the county courthouse.
Keywords:
POLITICS
***CORRECTION***
PUBLISHED CORRECTION RAN ON APRIL 4, 1991.
BECAUSE OF A PRODUCTION ERROR, SOME INFORMATION WAS OBSCURED IN A CHART ON PAGE 1 OF WEDNESDAY'S NEW RIVER CURRENT. THE PHRASE READ, "AN IDEAL DISTRICT IS ONE THAT WOULD BE EQUAL IN POPULATION TO ALL OTHER DISTRICTS WITH EACH CONTAINING 10,599 PEOPLE."
Memo: CORRECTION