A move to district voting would end the ‘absurdity’

Posted

To the Editor:

I agree with the assessment of Phillip Johnson, in his letter to the News + Record last week (“Decision to close collection centers looks political,” Sept. 23-29). Most of the collection centers shutting down are in the west end of the county. It is one of the end results of at-large commissioner voting.

Because the two representatives of the west end, Jim Crawford in the 4th District and Franklin Gomez Flores in the 5th, are voted on by everyone in Chatham, they owe their elections to the larger number of voters in the northern part of the county. This is how two commissioners who support county-wide zoning could exist in an area where it still is one of the bitterest issues the rural population has to put up with in Chatham. Mr. Crawford’s attitude can be summed up with a statement I heard made to a west end audience a few years ago: If you don’t like people from Chapel Hill, don’t let them move here.

If it isn’t bad enough that conservatives have no representation in Chatham, the system forces the rural areas to have representatives that either disdain or don’t care what they want, as the collection center closings seem to show.

We need to move to district voting to put an end to this absurdity.

Bill Crawford
Pittsboro

Editor’s note: Chatham County officials tell the News + Record each collection center will be open at least one day a week as soon as possible.