THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 7, 1996 TAG: 9602070515
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
The City Council picked a compromise redistricting plan Tuesday that will break the city into seven equally populated voting districts for council and School Board elections.
The plan, which will take effect in 1998, calls for the southern half of the city - which is now represented by three council members - to be combined into one enormous district; and the current Kempsville borough to be split into several pieces.
Last year, the General Assembly demanded that the council draw new district lines to balance out population differences between boroughs. Now, the seven boroughs range in population from under 1,000 in rural Blackwater to nearly 150,000 in suburban Kempsville. All the new districts will have approximately 56,000 residents.
Virginia Beach has 11 council and 11 School Board members, all elected citywide. Seven members on each body are considered borough representatives and must live in their respective boroughs, although they can receive votes from anywhere in the city.
In May, voters will be given the chance to change the current at-large system to a partial ward system in which the seven district representatives will be elected solely by residents of their respective districts. The new district maps will take effect in 1998 regardless of the outcome of the May vote.
The plan chosen Tuesday was drafted by three council members as a compromise of three earlier proposals.
Instead of diluting the rural vote among two districts, as two of the plans would have done, it combines the southern half of the city into one voting district, at the request of the two council members who now represent that area.
The new plan also requires less tinkering with precinct lines than another of the proposals, and keeps the resort strip in one voting district instead of splitting it among two.
Council member W.W. Harrison Jr., who developed the new map, modified his proposal this week to combine all of the Lake Edward neighborhood into voting district 4, instead of splitting it into two districts as a previous version had done.
The council decided not to name the new districts yet, although they may add place names later. For now, the districts are numbered 1 through 7. ILLUSTRATION: Map
by CNB