At issue is the Legislative Reapportionment Board’s plan to create one legislative district for Waitsfield, Warren and the portion of Fayston located south of Route 17. The northern portion of Fayston would join a new legislative district made up of Duxbury and Moretown. Currently Warren, Waitsfield and Fayston comprise one district with one representative. Moretown, Northfield and Roxbury comprise a district with two representatives and Duxbury is in a district with Waterbury with two representatives.
Little explained to those present that keeping all of Fayston with Waitsfield and Warren would mean a legislative district with too many voters per state representative – as compared to other districts in the state. Local voters would be “under-represented,” under such a scenario, by a deviation rate of 14.4 percent.
“What is the problem with a 14.4 percent deviation?” asked Jim Leyton, a member of the Waitsfield Board of Civil Authority. “The Mad River Valley is a community, and I, for one, would be okay with being under-represented if we could stay together,” he added.
The Legislative Reapportionment Board, using 2010 federal census data, is trying to create 150 one-member districts in the state, each with as close to 4,172 voters as possible. Keeping the Valley towns together in one district would mean 4,770 voters per state representative rather than 4,172.
Little explained that looking at the maps, population figures and geographical boundaries, the board felt that if some 180 to 300 people in the current district could be moved out and into a different district, the deviation rate would fall to a more acceptable 10 percent.
“But to move them, we’d have to move them someplace contiguous. So we looked at splitting Fayston at Route 17, which would mean 370 voters would go to the new district. The old district would have a 9.06 percent deviation and the new district with Duxbury, Moretown and part of Fayston would have a deviation of 4.67 percent,” he said.
He went on to explain that a 14.4 percent deviation on its face is not illegal but said that the range of deviation throughout the state would ultimately dictate whether it would be legally defensible in court.
“What your maps looks like to me is a landscape plan versus the actual job site. One thing that has not been brought into consideration is the geography and topography and land issues of The Valley,” said Fayston Select Board member Ed Read.
“I’m not sure that the people living on the north side of Fayston are concerned with and identify with what happens in Duxbury and Moretown,” Read added.
“And the courts do give a lot of weight to that,” Little said.
“I think under-representation would be for 180 to 300 Fayston voters to be such a small minority in a Duxbury/Moretown district,” said Waitsfield resident and former state representative from Warren, Waitsfield and Fayston, Carol Hosford.
Jim Sanford, speaking for the Warren Planning Commission and the Mad River Valley Planning District, where he sits as one of Warren’s two representatives, told Little that the towns of Warren, Waitsfield and Fayston belong to the only three-town planning district in the state and that the district was formed because the three towns are geographically linked, with a single downtown, linked Town Plans and many shared organizations/entities.
“The planning district does its best to bring these towns together on planning and has been incredibly successful. To move in the opposite direction is counterintuitive and counterproductive. How much is a Waterbury rep going to pay attention to 170 Fayston voters?” Sanford asked.
“Dividing the town is perceived as a threat to all the shared activities and planning efforts where the towns are symbiotic. Voting in two districts does not mean a loss of any of that,” Little said.
“This isn’t insurmountable if you take the emotion out of it. Locally, we may say that people in Warren are a bunch of tabule eaters, and they may say people in Fayston are a bunch of lawless rebels, and we’ll all say that Waitsfield has water pipes everywhere, but we are a community. The geography of the whole place is a bowl, a Valley. We are defined geographically by mountains on each side and a river on The Valley floor,” Read said.
Carla Lauren, the Waterbury town clerk, told Little that her town’s BCA met and does not like this proposal. That BCA, she said, would like to share a district with Duxbury and Fayston. The current proposal splits Waterbury.
The Duxbury Select Board, which met this week, also expressed its unhappiness with being paired with Fayston and Moretown in one district.
Little asked the Fayston BCA and BCA members from other affected towns to send their written comments to the legislative board.
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