Pasquotank County, once part of the very first county established in North Carolina, logged another first this July: It became the first county to adopt the Fair County Redistricting Resolution! It also announced dates for its public hearings.
Read all about the opportunities for public input to the new district lines in this story from the Elizabeth City Daily Advance. Here are some key quotes from the Daily Advance story:
Pasquotank residents will have three opportunities this fall to weigh in on the new redistricting plan for four of the seven seats on the county Board of Commissioners. Commissioners voted unanimously Monday to conduct three public meetings on the redistricting plan: Sept. 13, Oct. 18 and Nov. 15….
The first public meeting on redistricting will be held Sept. 13 and will be used to review the census data and how it will be used in the redistricting process. [The] public meeting on Oct. 18 will seek citizen input on the different options for the four commissioner districts. The board will hold a final public meeting on the proposed redistricting plan before taking a vote on the issue on Nov. 15….
The Pasquotank board’s current makeup of four district and three at-large seats is a result of a successful lawsuit filed by the county chapter of the NAACP in 1984…. Under the consent decree the county signed, and local legislation passed by the General Assembly, the county board grew from five to seven members. Four of the members would be elected by district and one at large. The consent order also required that one of the districts would have at least a 55-percent minority voting age population.
The Southern Inside position [on the county board] is currently the only majority-minority district, with Blacks comprising 66.53 percent of its voting age population, according to the 2010 Census. The Northern Inside is 36.50 percent Black while the Northern Outside and Southern Outside are 28.36 percent and 19.91 percent Black, respectively.