Milton council tables discussion of council districts

Milton Town Council tabled discussions of whether to create districts for council seats, but officials plan to resume discussion at a later date. 

All involved agree that adopting a district system is not something that is going to happen overnight, but council has wanted to get ahead of the issue in anticipation of future residential developments that could dramatically change the town’s demographics. Milton currently uses an at-large system where council members can come from anywhere in town. 

“The whole idea of adopting districts leads us to a significant amount of work,” said Mayor John Collier at council’s Jan. 5 meeting. “We’re looking at a charter change. We need to decide as part of that charter change whether to adopt three districts or four districts. We need to decide whether we are going to elect and vote within a district or elect from a district and vote townwide.”

Collier compared the idea to what Georgetown does, which is a townwide election, but council members have to represent a certain ward. The opposite pole of that is Milford, which allows voters to only vote for council members from their ward. Collier said Selbyville recently adopted a four-district system where council members only come from within the district. 

“To me, in a small town like Selbyville, that's a little easier to deal with, but with a town like Milton, that's a little more complex than what we want it to be,” he said.

Collier added that going to a district plan would also require a transition plan to phase in districts over a period of years. He said there will also need to be public outreach to make citizens aware. 

In October, council heard a presentation from John Laznik of the University of Delaware’s Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research, who described the district system as a math problem, with the goal being to try to have each district have an equal number of people.

What Collier was looking for Jan. 5 was suggestions and questions from council.

Councilwoman Randi Meredith had a number of questions, first of which was, what happens if no one runs from a certain district? She said the town’s candidate pool is already small and could be narrowed down even further under a district system. Meredith said even with expected growth, the town is small enough that most council agenda items will affect all residents regardless of geographic location. She said her concerns might be totally invalid, and she does not have the answers to these questions at this time, but they were worth asking as council began discussion. 

Councilwoman Lee Revis-Plank said council needs to look carefully at the number of districts it creates so representation is not skewed toward newer residents in areas outside the town center. 

Both Collier and Councilman Scotty Edler said that districting would be tied to the 2030 census. Collier said another consideration is that council will not be able to do this by themselves, and will need to bring in outside help, which the town has not budgeted for this year. 

“This is going to be a very complicated thing to do,” Edler said. “It’s not just creating the districts; we have to look at how the whole thing fits together. It’s going to take a while to get this done, and if we’re going to do it, it’s best to start it now. Even if we don’t do it until 2032.”

Town Manager Kristy Rogers said town staff can work on mapping should council choose to move forward. However, Collier said he wants council to think about it more before a formal vote is taken to move ahead. With that, council decided to table the matter for further discussion.