So Who Cares About Reapportionment? I sure do...you probably do too!

If you haven’t been following the reapportionment committees work – I’ll give you a little of my own take on the issue:

The purpose of redistricting is to establish and maintain voting districts that are faithful to the principle of one-person, one-vote.

In Connecticut, responsibility for redrawing legislative and congressional district lines rests with the General Assembly. With the assistance of an 8-member legislative Reapportionment Committee, the General Assembly is required to redraw district lines every ten years based on the results of the decennial federal census.

So what that means to you? Depends on where you live. Enfield, for example, is being discussed to move to Congressional District 1 (Larson’s area)...we now sit in Congressional District 2 (Courtney’s area). I (along with my town council) want to stay right where we are..District 2.

Now I’m not one who thinks that others should do “my heavy lifting” so I took advantage of the Public Hearing last night (July 6) and headed for Norwich. I must say Norwich has a beautiful downtown area and what a lovely City Hall – but that is a side bar – I took advantage of the 3 minutes to express my reasons for keeping Enfield in the existing district.

I believe Enfield has been treated fairly by our previous Congressman, Simmons and our current one, Courtney. Both have an office in our community and both keep Enfield in their “scope” to be sure we are thought about down in Washington. But that really isn’t enough; Enfield is a town, we act like a town and we call ourselves a town.

Our current form of government is run by volunteers on our town council and board of education and our community of interest is much like our fellow neighbors (Somers, Stafford, Ellington, Tolland, to name a few) and we take care of ourselves and our residents.

Not to say Hartford and the other District 1 folks have a different philosophy, but they are not like us. We don’t have a BIG CITY mentality and we don’t want one. We act local and we want to stay local.

I can’t say that my thoughts carry a lot of weight, but it is better to take advantage of public hearings and speak, than stay home and let someone else do it for you (hopefully).

If you have interest in getting your two-cents heard, there is still time:

July 18 – Norwalk – 7 PM
Common Council Chambers, Norwalk City Hall, 125 East Avenue

July 19 – New Haven – 7 PM
Fair Haven Middle School, 164 Grand Avenue

July 20 – Hartford – 2 and 7 PM
Room 2C, Legislative Office Building

Don’t let someone else do your lifting.