Ward boundaries need adjustment

It’s unlikely that the Vandalia City Council will act on Treasurer Marjorie Blythe’s recommendation to cut the number of city aldermen from eight to four. And while that suggestion may not spur any action, it should at least remind city officials that they should consider some action on the areas that aldermen represent.
City officials talked several years ago about a study that would ultimately result in new boundaries for the four city wards.
That’s a study that’s worth undertaking, based on inequities on the number of residents that aldermen in each of the city’s four wards are representing.
For many, many decades, Randolph Street and Eighth Street have served as the boundary lines that create the four wards. It was a clean way to divide the city into four parts.
But consider how the city has changed in the past 10, 20, 30 or 40 years.
The biggest, most obvious change in the city’s makeup has been the commercial growth in the west and northwest parts of the city.
But there has also been considerable residential growth in those, and other areas of town. Take, for example, the number of subdivisions that have been created in recent decades.
Also to be considered are expansions of the city limits, created as a result of more people wanting city water and sewer service.
With those things in mind, one realizes that the population in at least one of the city’s four wards is considerably larger than it was even 20 years ago.
At first glance, one would assume that the aldermen in Ward IV, the northwest part of town, are representing many more residents that those in Ward I, which includes the downtown business district.
The number of residents living in Ward I means that the aldermen of that ward have considerably less constituents than those of at least one other ward, and even with a high voter turnout at elections, the possibility of just one vote determining the outcome is greatly increased.
It’s something that city officials have discussed in the past, and it’s something that they need to keep in mind.
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