Trejbal: Incumbent protection
Montgomery County protects politicians
Christian Trejbal
Trejbal is a Roanoke Times editorial writer. He is based out of the paper’s New River Valley Bureau.
Montgomery County residents are little more than an afterthought in the high-stakes game of local redistricting.
Every 10 years, after the U.S. census, governments apportion their seats in the spirit of one-person, one-vote. The General Assembly is busy doing it for its own members and for the congressional delegation.
Montgomery County is busy doing it for supervisors and the school board.
Click on the following images to see changes to individual districts. Red hashed areas show people removed from current district. Green hashed areas show people added to the district. In both cases, the +/- number in the hashed areas show how many people are affected by that particular change. For more details, visit the county website.
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March 20, 2011 - 9:31 AM
“Blacksburg has 42,620 residents”
This misrepresentation has always bugged me. Blacksburg has about 16,000 permanent residents and about 26,000 VT students, and speaking from experience, the vast majority of those students couldn’t care less about local politics. I’m sure there are a few thrown in who are active politically, but can anyone really argue that they don’t comprise a tiny fraction of the total student population? The practical reality of this is that Blacksburg’s 16,000 residents end up with an overly represented voice in county government
@1 So to sum up your view, some citizens’ views aren’t worth as much as others. Like it or not, students are citizens of Blacksburg and they are entitled to equal representation. If they choose not to vote, that is no different from any other citizens who choose not to exercise that right. Turnout in local elections is almost always low.
Actually, Christian, you are making my argument for me. When Blacksburg is allowed to pad their numbers by including a transient population, most of who are registered to vote in other areas, it has the effect of creating a situation whereby the views of the rest of the citizens of the County are not “worth” as much as those of the people in Blacksburg.
And to sum up your view, some people are just entitled to more than others.
Uh, no, Chuck. You are the one advocating for violation of the principle of one person, one vote. I prefer that everyone, even students, have a say in their government if they want.
On the question of is a VaTech student a Blacksburg citizen, I side with Chuck. The vast majority of students are there 1-5 years and make no plans/have no plans to stay there. They pay their personal property taxes elsewhere, they don’t change/or establish their legal residence. They are more likely counted in another locale and possibly state and have their “representation” there.
Chuck & C. IMHO you both miss the real point & beg the real question. Should college/university students be domiciles of the jurisdiction where they attend school?
They are almost always transient & temporary, more time than not supported by parents in other jurisdictions, if not outright legal dependents.
The real question is the dilution of genuine one-man one-vote of the local population, by the students with no long(er) term residency.
Students who are not domiciles before attendence should remain domociles of their permanent address & vote there, by absentee vote if necessary.
Uh, no Christian. You are advocating for those who belong to a demographic that is statistically likely to agree with you politically to be counted twice, once in Blacksburg and once in their home locality. So it would appear that it is you who is , uh, advocating for the “violation of the principle of one person, one vote” in favor of the more “democratic” one person, two votes.
Chuck where did I advocate counting students twice? In fact, the Census only counts students once, where they live on Census day, which for most is at there school. If you want to disagree with me, disagree with what I write, not what you fantasize that I write.
Who knows where these students will be voting after graduation. My 4 oldest children, college graduates, (Radford, Hollins, Roanoke College, and Purchase College in Upstate NY) no longer live in this area. They were all informed voter who chose to vote where they happened to live at the time. The important thing is that they WERE voting. This is just another wave of rabid partisanship. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-hampshire-college-students-can-still-vote-in-state-for-now/2011/03/10/ABY6eIQ_story.html
Do you ever wonder what it would be like if you didn’t have these students? Think economics.
#10 I fail to see anything partisan, rabid or otherwise, in not wanting a dispropotionate impact on local politics/policies by those not genuinely vested. Even if one argues otherwise, where’s the partisanship? I’m not assuming how the students will vote, are you?
If your argument is against “transient” voters, many apartment dwellers and renters do not stay in any area even as long as some college students, should they also not count, especially if they, Heaven forfend pay no property taxes? It is a very specious argument and one that should be settled and over, and yet… If you live in any place long enough to meet voter residency requirements you should be able to vote there. Period. Don’t forget that denying that right to Tech Students also denies it to Liberty and other right wing colleges as well. It is something that BOTH sides have an issue with but it is one of the realities of a college town.
#12 I’m not aware of a lot of apartment complexes that house 20, 30 even 40 thousand people who are by design & definition transient. Especially against a local population half or less.
Once again, any assumption of partisonship is not mine. My view here is the same, Liberty, Tech or What’s-a’matter-U.
But what is fair about not allowing some transients and allowing others based only on volume?
“Blacksburg has about 16,000 permanent residents and about 26,000 VT students” Assume much, Chuck? How do you know that? Are all of those 26,000 VT students neatly contained within the town limits of Blacksburg, so when the lines are drawn for voting districts they can be all mashed together to make sure county residents get better, majority representation? Are you sure there aren’t any VT students who might have spilled over and are living outside the town limits and are maybe out in Prices Fork or down in McCoy or horrors! maybe even living in Christiansburg or perhaps even the pristine burg or Elliston! There might even be Virginia Tech students living in Radford and Radford University students living in Blacksburg.
And how about those transients? Not all students are transients and not all transients are students. I’ll bet there are people living in other parts of the county who spend less time here than some students and contribute less than some students (and maybe are a bigger drain on taxpayers than students).
If there were less of the agrarian utopia people who still think of the good times of the ’40s and ’50s when VPI was just a small-time military school and Montgomery County was just another sleepy place like Floyd and Giles, we wouldn’t have these problems. But we’re stuck with them and they keep electing supervisors who think that way, too, which is why we have budgets and tax rates that reflect that era (and keep things stuck there) instead of facing the realities that we live in an urbanizing county with growing needs that have to be paid for. No, I don’t like increasing taxes, but if we had a better tax base (like from industries and business — but business is bad and won’t come, thanks to the fight against Norfolk Southern), homeowners might not have to shoulder the whole burden.
It’s simply about votes, college students tend to vote for democrats, If they voted for republicans, this would not be happening!
Think student housing, also. Those apartment complexes in Blacksburg are assessed a whole lot higher than any trailer park in the county. There are a whole lot less trivial rescue squad runs to those places than to the trailer parks as well.
Now let’s talk about the balance of influence. The last new school built in Blacksburg was Blacksburg Middle School and that opened quite a few years ago. The rest of the county has done quite well in the building program and things finally came around again with the replacement for Prices Fork school (which took so long because no county property owner wanted to give up any land for the much-needed building). The much-needed replacement for Blacksburg High School (which served the entire northern end of the COUNTY, not just the Town of Blacksburg) was not to happen for several more years — it only got moved up because the shoddy construction of the past finally caught up with the place.
As to other influence, it only took a handful of Elliston residents to force the Board of Supervisors down a silly path of the expensive court suit to keep out Norfolk Southern, the intermodal terminal, and any future economic development. That move has hamstrung the county from offering up any kind of tax breaks to anyone else down the road — after all, if it is bad for the state to do it, how can it be good for the county to use taxpayer dollars to do it? Students had nothing to do with that bonehead move.
So don’t bash the students counted in the census or figured into any kind of gerrymandering to make sure county residents get special treatment over people who live in the town limits of Blacksburg. They pay taxes just like the folks in Shawsville, McCoy, and Elliston and deserve to have equal representation and the same voice on the Board of Supervisors. Don’t mess with districts to keep the same crowd on the board — we can see the mess they put us in today.
#16 I don’t think there’s much question about this, Randy. Republicans also wouldn’t be going after unions if unions supported Repubs.