THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270211
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Would you rather have a ward system?
It should be a simple question, but what's simple anymore?
At the bottom of this page are suggested ways to poll Virginia Beach voters on this issue and meet the tests of legality. Comprehensibility isn't tops among legal tests. But the General Assembly has required that the Beach put the ward question on the municipal ballot next May. And you feared all you'd have to contend with is umpteen candidates for City Council and which bums you could throw off the School Board.
How did the legislature get in on the act? In an advisory referendum in May '94, some 21,000 Beach voters approved a ballot question that purported to measure sentiment for (a) equalizing the population within the city's seven boroughs and (b) changing to a ward system. A city that leaves so serious a charter change to, first, a third of the registered voters (5% of residents), and then to that .002% of Virginia's citizenry that sits in the General Assembly, arguably deserves the skewering it gets. Problem is, those who know better, on Council and off, have to suffer the consequences.
The immediate consequence: City Council has until March 1 to approve a plan that equalizes, more or less, the number of people in each borough. There's software for this purpose, but some hard facts re-main.
Fact One is that adjusting the district lines but keeping the same voting precincts intact would keep recordkeeping and confusion down. But paperwork isn't the prime factor. And some of the same people arguing that voters won't be able to find their new voting site also insist that 18 months ago these selfsame voters understood the convoluted ballot question that precipitated this mess of election reform.
Fact two, reiterated at right by city treasurer John Atkinson, is that equalizing the population in the city's boroughs needn't be the only variable in the redistricting equation. Mr. Atkinson started his proposal with this presumption: If equalization may lead inevitably to wards, then better that the ward lines maximize the city's shared interests and minimize parochial concerns. Mr. Atkinson identified the city's major revenue producers, or ``cash cows,'' and drew districts that compel councilmembers to consider the interests of not just, say, farmers but of the industrial or tourist or military or commercial sectors, too.
Is the Atkinson plan improvable? Maybe. Several council members have rightly questioned the impact of ward-drawing on school-district lines. The bottom line, however, is warding off wards in the first place. However Council decides to phrase the ballot question, the end result should be an unmistakable no. by CNB