Agenda - 11-15-2005-9a - Laserfiche WebLink

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hearing at its November 2, 2005 regular meeting on three initial draft maps/plans. Those three draft maps/plans are attached, For the November 2, 2005 public hearing, staff provided two other attachments. The first of those attachments was a summary of the draft district election plans potential impacts on current members of the board of commissioners, The second was a letter and attachments from County Attorney Geof Gledhill on the issues that may arise with district elections related to redistricting. Those attachments are provided again with this abstract, Also for the November 2nd meeting, staff detailed statistics on the number of commissioner seats for the 100 North Carolina counties based on information from the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners. That information is noted again below: 4 Counties -Three Commissioner Seats 61 Counties -Five Commissioner Seats 3 Counties -Six Commissioner Seats 27 Counties -Seven Commissioner Seats 1 County -Eight Commissioner Seats 3 Counties -Nine Commissioner Seats 1 County -Eleven Commissioner Seats Staff also recently received a request to again provide information on the use of nominating districts versus residential districts for the district election of members of other boards of commissioners in North Carolina. In response to a request from several months ago, staff had contacted 22 counties across the state. Through a process of elimination based on existing information, the County Attorney and staff determined that contacting the remaining 77 counties would likely not add anything to that learned from the 22 counties contacted. The counties contacted included Brunswick, Carteret, Chatham, Craven, Gaston, Henderson, Johnston, Moore, and Randolph, and Watauga. Results of these contacts were that only one of the 22 counties contacted (Carteret County) utilizes districts for nominating board of commissioner candidates in the primaries. Successful primary candidates in Carteret are then elected on an at large basis in the general election, The other 21 counties utilize the district delineations for residency purposes only with candidates receiving votes on an at large basis both in the primary and in the general election. Tonight's meeting provides the Board the opportunity to discuss next steps and consider any possible maps/plans far additional review and/or decision. Based on BQCC discussion, staff can provide any analysis requested by the Board for additional BQCC disaassion and/or move forward based on Board direction. Decision points for the Board's current and/or future consideration include: 1) Confirmation/determination by the Board that it wants to pursue a district election system and if so, when a referendum will be held; 2) Determination by the Board that it wants to pursue one of the three maps/plans presented at the November 2, 2005 public hearing, or, in the alternative, provide additional information/other frameworks to staff for the development of some other map/plan; 3) Selection of a Preferred Map/Plan; 4) Determination regarding whether district candidates under the selected Preferred Map/ Plan will be nominated by the voters of their respective districts or by all County voters -are the districts to be nomination districts or residency districts?;