Agenda - 08-24-2005- - Laserfiche WebLink

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AacL�4 'S so Follow -Up on Three Counties Regarding Method of Election for Board of Commissioners Based on a Board of County Commissioners' request, staff contacted the boards of elections for Edgecombe, Northampton, and .Jackson counties regarding the methods utilized by those counties to elect members of the boards of commissioners as well as any changes to those methods during the last 10 -15 years A summary for each county is provided below. Edgecombe County Contact Person: Gayle Hudson, Board of Elections Director Shortly after the 1994 merger of three school systems and the resulting new seven - member school board (with all seven members to be elected by district), discussions began regarding a change in the method for electing members of the Edgecombe County Board of Commissioners. (Previously, all five members of the Board of Commissioners had been elected on a Pure At -Large basis.) This consideration subsequently led to a change, taking effect with the 1996 election, which expanded the Board from five to seven members and changing the method of electing commissioners from Pure At -Large to Pure District. For the 1996 transition election, four of the seven seats on the Board were filled by members elected from four of the seven newly- created districts. The other three seats remained occupied by members that had been elected on an At -Large basis during the 1994 election and who still had 2 years remaining on their terms of office. Those three seats became district- elected seats in the 1998 election, bringing to completion the transfer to a seven - member Board with all members elected by the voters in their district. A five - member Board with all the members elected by all the voters of the county became a seven - member Board with each member residing in a specific district and being elected by the voters of those respective districts. General observations seem to indicate that the impetus for the change from the Pure At- Large election method to the Pure District method related to concerns that commissioners primarily resided in Rocky Mount and Tarboro and that other areas of the county were unable to elect connnissioner candidates. The establislvnent of districts institutionalized the opportunity for representation from seven different areas of the county. It should be noted that the configuration of the Board of Commissioners' districts do not coincide with the configuration of the districts for the school board members' election noted above. This is due to the impact of the City of Rocky Mount, a portion of which lies in both Edgecombe and Nash counties, and the delineation of the new school systems' district boundaries between those two counties following the above - referenced 1994 Edgecombe County school merger. It should also be noted that the establishment of the seven commissioner districts prior to the 1996 election placed two of the five sitting At -Large commissioners in the same