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Board OKs new county districts
Lines now await state, federal approval
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Though not everyone was pleased about moving parts of a North Bryan district into the southern half of the county, the Bryan County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved Tuesday new districts for the county that do just that.

Commissioners voted on the new county districts during their regular meeting in the County Administrative Complex in order to get them into the special session of state Legislature, which convenes Monday. That’s when state officials will redraw House, Senate and Congressional districts for Georgia. In addition to state approval, the new county districts will also need to be OK’d by the Justice Department before they are official.

District 2 Commissioner Wade Price had expressed some concern with the then-proposed changes during a previous board workshop on the matter. The change splits Price’s district between North Bryan and the northernmost part of South Bryan, and he originally said he felt that would cause concerns for some of his constituents.

However, commissioners found that splitting District 2 and shrinking District 3 in South Bryan was the best option to attain appropriate population distribution throughout the county based on the results of the 2010 U.S. Census.

All of the county’s districts were changed in some way. District 1 in North Bryan grew larger, and the District 2 split caused the geographical size of the District 3 to shrink and also caused the northern border of District 5 to be pushed down. The geographical size of District 4 will expand.

Though Commission Chairman Jimmy Burnsed was happy to get the new districts to the state level, he reminded everyone of how complicated the process was.

“This has been a very difficult process because we did grow quite a bit during the 10 years, and of course it has changed every commission district quite a bit,” Burnsed said. “It has changed how people are going to be represented.”

Read more in the Aug. 13 edition of the News.

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