THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 1, 1995 TAG: 9503010496
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
The City Council Tuesday night voted unanimously to ask Gov. George F. Allen to delay signing a bill that would drastically shift the power in the state's largest city.
The measure, which quietly passed by the General Assembly during the final hours of its recent session, came as a surprise to all 11 council members.
Under the bill, sponsored by Del. Robert Tata, R-Virginia Beach, three of Virginia Beach's smaller boroughs would lose their current status on the council; others would gain more.
The bill also requires a referendum in May in which voters would be asked to decide whether the council members from those new districts should be elected citywide or only by the residents of their districts.
Tata's measure was in response to a referendum, approved by voters 53 percent to 47 percent last May, that called for seven of the 11 City Council members to be elected solely by residents of equally sized wards.
The City Council, by a vote of 6-5, also signed off on the proposal and asked the General Assembly to consider such a change.
Under the current system, the seven district members must live in their respective boroughs, but everyone in the city could vote for them. The proposed changes would not affect the three at-large council members and the mayor, who is also elected at large.
Council members, who learned of the measure Tuesday evening at their regular meeting, expressed surprise that the General Assembly would have passed a bill that differed so greatly from what was approved in the referendum.
They unanimously passed a resolution asking Allen to delay action until the public has a chance to comment on the bill at a public hearing the council hastily scheduled for March 7 at City Hall.
Council member Barbara M. Henley, who represents the tiny Pungo Borough, whose representation would be virtually eliminated under the new plan, said she would not have supported the reapportionment proposal if she had known the General Assembly was going to keep only half of it.
``This doesn't cure any of the ills that people have said they had with the system,'' Henley said. ``The only thing it does do is abolish the rural representation.''
The Pungo and Blackwater sections of the city, which have one council member each, would lose their individual representation when the boroughs are equalized into seven districts of approximately 59,000 residents each.
The Beach Borough, which now includes fewer than 9,000 residents along the Oceanfront, would also be folded into a much larger geographic area.
None of the sitting City Council members would lose a seat. Candidates running for borough seats next year in the Princess Anne, Virginia Beach and Blackwater boroughs would run for shortened terms, and by 1998 all council members would represent approximately equal districts, according to the bill.
Tata said he was surprised that the council was not pleased with his action. Five members of the local delegation signed off on the bill, which Tata said he views as ``basically, what everybody wanted.''
``It gives those people who worked so hard half a loaf,'' Tata said Tuesday, referring to the civic league leaders who fought for reapportionment. ``It shows that their two to three years of hard work isn't entirely wasted.''
Leslie K. Fenlon, president of the Council of Civic Organizations, which fought for the changes for more than a year, said Tuesday that he is pleased with the compromise bill and determined to win wards in another referendum next year.
``Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all,'' he said.
Fenlon said his motivation was not to decrease the power of beachfront and rural interests, but rather to increase the power of the average voter who is confused and not well-represented by the current election system.
Under that system, residents were forced to choose among more than 40 candidates in the last election, Fenlon said. At least one council member did not receive the majority of votes in his borough but managed to win enough support citywide to win a seat on council.
``The city has changed, that's what this is all about,'' Fenlon said.
But several elected officials said the reapportionment bill was more politics than substance.
Council member Louis R. Jones, who represents the Bayside Borough, which had 73,465 residents in the 1990 census, said he was not surprised by the bill, because it was ``politically safe.''
``Reapportionment is a popular theme,'' he said. ``The ward system may or may not be.'' ILLUSTRATION: Del. Robert Tata
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH CITY COUNCIL VOTING DISTRICTS by CNB