Montville meetings Thursday to include public hearing on voting redistricting – theday.com

Montville A public hearing will be held Thursday intheCouncil Chambers at Town Hall at 5:30 p.m. tolet the public address theredistrictingofthe municipality's voting precincts, turning six districts into five.

The state and U.S. constitutions require redistricting every 10 years based on federal census data. In Connecticut, that process determines how many people belong to the 151 state House districts, the 36 state Senate districts and the five U.S. House districts.

Jeff Rogers is the town's Republican registrar of voters and the New London County chairmanfor theRegistrars of Voters Association of Connecticut. Rogers said Montville is one of a few towns in the area that needed extensive redistricting.

Rogers said he andRobin Marquand, the Democratic registrar of voters, have been working on redistricting the voting precincts since they received the redistricting mapof state House of Representative districts in November. He said they set out to make the changes ahead of state party conventions in May in case there is a primary election.

The changesmeantMontville was pushed out of the 42ndstate HouseDistrict, with state Rep. Mike France now running for Congress, Rogers said, and western parts of the town are now in the 37th District.That means some voting districts, specifically 3, 4 and 6,nowwould be split amongmultiple House districts. The 42nd state House District is now in Fairfield County.

Rogers said for example, this would place a lot of stress on the staff of theFair Oaks polling site, who would have tomake sureDistrict 3 and 4 voters filed correctly into three separate linesto vote onthree different House seats, alldepending on where the voters live.

To align better with the state's redistricting, hesaid their solution was to dissolve District6, and push the bulk of it into District 1 and a portion of it into District 5.

Under that plan, Rogers saidthe polling site for Districts 1 and 3 will be Town Hall. District 4 will remain at Fair Oaks School and Districts 2 and 5 will remain at Mohegan Elementary School,all of whichis subject to change.

"The bottom line is we'll reduce the number of voters at Fair Oaks, making it more streamlined and time-efficient," Rogers said. "On the registrars end, it means more work."

Rogers said mapping was not the hard part. He said the hard part is going through the legislative process to change the voting districts. What follows is the public hearing, the Town Council's approval and notifying all residents of the changes,whichgo in effect 30 days after the council's approval.

Rogers added that the changes have no effect on party lines,since out of 11,318 registered voters,a little more than half are unaffiliated, independent, Libertarian or Green.

The Town Council is set to meet in the chambers following the public hearing at 6 p.m. and will vote to approve or deny the voting district changes. The council also will vote on items the COVID-19 Impact Study Committee is proposing should be funded with American Rescue Plan funds.

The committee membersare set to meet before the public hearing at 5 p.m. for a final approval of the items they will propose to the council.

Among the items under consideration are$106,106 for two vehiclesrequested byFire Marshal Paul Barnes; $95,500 for a fingerprint machine,surveillance equipment and morerequested by thepolice department; and $23,000requested by thesenior center and social services.

j.vazquez@theday.com

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Montville meetings Thursday to include public hearing on voting redistricting - theday.com