THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602030100
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 133 lines
WHAT DOES A guy living on a quarter-acre lot in Kempsville have in common with a tree farmer on the North Carolina line?
They could soon be in the same voting district.
Under two of four proposed redistricting maps, the city's farmland would remain in two pieces, but would be combined with sections of the suburban north.
Under the other two proposals, the sparsely populated rural area would fall in just one huge district, which would reach from the North Carolina line to as far north as Virginia Beach Boulevard. Whoever represents that district should be given a helicopter instead of a car allowance, several council members joked recently.
Presently, seven of the 11 City Council members and an equal number on the School Board are considered borough representatives, and must live within their respective boroughs.
But the General Assembly decided last year that the city's borough system is unfair, because the population of the boroughs ranges from fewer than 1,000 people in Blackwater to about 150,000 in Kempsville. The legislators required the council to draw new districts, with about 56,000 people each, to take effect in 1998.
The legislators neglected to mention the School Board's voting districts in their bill, but the General Assembly is expected to approve that change this winter so both bodies will again share the same districts.
The council has spent the past several months considering different ways to configure the new districts. On Tuesday, it will pick one of four plans.
Council will hold the last of several public hearings at 2 p.m. immediately before voting on the matter.
Four plans have been examined in detail by consultants who concluded two weeks ago that all of them comply with U.S. Justice Department standards.
Virginia Beach's population of minorities is small enough and dispersed enough to preclude designing a district that would give minorities a better chance of winning office. So racial makeup did not figure into the design of the districts.
Instead, the values behind the district lines involve concern for the rural area, the resort strip and existing precinct lines.
PLAN A: City Treasurer John T. Atkinson g5vbcov04 Atkinson drew Plan A with the idea of breaking the city's resources up among as many council members as possible. That way, Atkinson said, more than one council member would have to be concerned about the farmland, the resort strip and the Central Business District in the Pembroke area.
PLAN B: Maurice B. Jackson and others g6vbcov04 Jackson with the Council of Civic Organizations drew Plan B five years ago with the idea of keeping the districts as close to their present configuration as possible. They combined the rural area into one district and were careful not to disturb precinct lines. The CCO has long pushed for a new voting system and Jackson led a petition drive two years ago to put the issue on the ballot. Jackson also leads Virginia Beach Citizens for Electoral Reform, a 150-member group recently organized to push for a new voting system.
PLAN C: Jackson and Citizens for Electoral Reform drafted Plan C to correct what they saw as problems with the Atkinson plan - primarily that Atkinson ignored existing precinct lines.
Jackson charges that every move of a precinct line would cost taxpayers $11,000, and so Atkinson's plan would waste city money.
City Registrar Marlene J. Hager, however, said the city does not incur costs when it moves precinct lines. Only the addition of precincts costs the city money, and Hager said it will have to do that anyway over the next few years, regardless of which plan is chosen.
PLAN D: Three council members - W.W. g7vbcov04 Harrison Harrison Jr., Barbara M. Henley and John A. Baum - drafted Plan D, as basically a compromise between plans A and B.
Henley and Baum, the two rural representatives, decided rural residents would retain a larger voice on council and the School Board if they had one member with a large number of rural cong8vbcov04 Henley stituents, rather than two members representing a handful of farmers each.
Harrison also decided the resort strip should be in only one district, instead of diluting its voting power by splitting it.
The resort strip, like the rural area, will lose representation when the districts are equalized. Now, there is one g9vbcov04 Baum council and one School Board member representing the Beach Borough, population 8,730 in 1990. Under any of the four new plans, Beach residents will be included in a district with nearly 50,000 more residents.
Kempsville, which has more residents than Portsmouth, will be divided up, no matter which district plan is chosen.
That should increase Kempsville's voting strength on council and the School Board and help relieve the workload of the Kempsville borough representatives, who now have almost 150-times more direct constituents than Blackwater representatives.
The most significant change awaits a May decision by voters, however. Voters will be asked for a second time whether they want to keep electing all 11 School Board and council members at-large.
The alternative would be a modified ward system, where the seven district representatives would be elected only by residents of their district. The mayor and other council and board members would continue to be elected at-large.
In a 1994 advisory referendum, voters narrowly supported a move to equalize the boroughs and create a modified ward system. By a 6-5 vote, the City Council asked the General Assembly to support what the voters had decided. But because of the split council vote and other concerns, legislators opted to require new district lines and a second referendum on the ward system.
Proponents of a new system, led by Jackson, have said it would make elected officials more responsive to their constituents.
Now, someone could win a borough seat on the council without winning a majority in his or her own district. Jackson, who has supported a candidate who lost twice in that way, considers the current system to be taxation without representation.
Opponents of the ward system, including many of the present council members, say a change would encourage parochial thinking and divide a council that only recently has learned to work together. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Maps
Proposed voting districts Plan A
Atkinson Plan
Proposed voting districts Plan B-2
Council of Civic Organizations
Proposed voting districts Plan C-2
Va. Beach Citizens for Electorial Reform
Proposed voting districts Plan D-2
Harrison-Henley-Baum plan
KEYWORDS: ZONING VOTING DISTRICT by CNB