
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 28, 1991                   TAG: 9103280417
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN 
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT                                LENGTH: Medium

PLAN SHIFTS 4,000 VOTERS IN FRANKLIN

Nearly 4,000 Franklin County residents would vote in different election districts under a redistricting plan selected by the Board of Supervisors.

In the two most significant boundary line changes, 1,256 people from the Gogginsville section would be moved from Boone District to Blackwater District and 1,208 people in the Coopers Cove section would be moved from Gills Creek District to Boone.

The plan, however, would require no new polling places.

The public will have a chance to comment on these and other changes at a public hearing scheduled for April 16 at the Franklin County Courthouse.

Supervisors left themselves little time to change the plan. The county has until May 1 to conform voting districts to new population figures from last year's census. New district and precinct lines will take effect for the Sept. 10 primary election for local offices.

The Board of Supervisors earlier this month narrowed its choice to two basically similar plans. The option not chosen would have ensured that all seven supervisory districts included some areas covered by the county's 1988 zoning ordinance.

The ordinance applies only to four supervisor voting districts - Boone, Gills Creek, Rocky Mount and Union Hall.

Because areas with land-use zoning will remain the same, despite the shift in voting district lines, the proposing redistricting plan would add some zoned sections into Blackwater and Snow Creek districts.

Wayne Angell, Blackwater District supervisor, argued unsuccessfully that it would be better for each of the new supervisors elected in November to have a stake in the zoning process. But the supervisors rejected Angell's plan to put a small zoned area south of Rocky Mount into Blue Ridge District.

Here are other changes in the proposed redistricting plan in addition to the two major population shifts:

Nearly 800 Rocky Mount-area residents from Diamond Avenue Extension and Scuffling Hill Road would move from Blackwater to Rocky Mount. This would be a welcome change for residents of Diamond Avenue, who now have to drive to Waidsboro to vote.

390 residents from the Forest Hills subdivision and the Doe Run Road area would move from Union Hall to Snow Creek.

More than 200 residents from the Thompson Plant Road area would move from Gills Creek to Boone.

66 residents on the south side of Turner's Creek Road would move from Blackwater to Blue Ridge.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB