Since a proposal for nine commissioners was voted down in the 1980s
and the Justice Department required a minority-majority district,
leading to the current three commissioners plus non-voting chair,
there have been various attempts to expand the number of Lowndes County
Commissioners.
Thomas County has eight commissioners, as do several other nearby counties
with less population than Lowndes County.
For that matter, the city of Valdosta has I think seven city council
members, for less than half the population of Lowndes County.
The previous commission was divided among itself on this issue,
and the local state representatives
would not bring it up in the legislature without consensus among the commission.
The new commission has been trying to move forward on this.
The last version I heard involved keeping the same commission districts as now,
plus adding two overlapping commissioners for new east and west districts.
Interestingly, there was nothing said about all this at Monday’s work session,
yet we discover
in the newspaper:
Paige Dukes, Lowndes County information officer, said the commission
visited with reapportionment in Atlanta twice during the past few
weeks. As a result of those meetings, the reapportionment office forwarded
several maps to the commission for its review, Dukes said.
Lowndes County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk said, “The commission
continues to work feverishly on the expansion issue. We are at an 80
percent consensus regarding a plan that will meet local needs and satisfy
requirements determined by the Department of Justice. I am working one
on one with each commissioner in an effort to get a plan to citizens as
soon as possible.”
Paulk was a guest of Scott James on his morning radio on program TALK
92.1 Monday, and in the course of that interview, Paulk said that if
all the commissioners agreed on the plan, the expansion could actually
be voted on by the board at tonight’s meeting.
It’s not clear from that just what they might vote on,
but from context maybe it would be to forward a plan to citizens to vote on.