by Mickey Smith

     Start asking Eden residents their opinion of  a Superfund site or hang out at Town Meeting for a while, and you'll soon realize there are a lot of divisive topics in Eden and the residents don't mind airing their side of any given issue. But despite all the yelling, go to a community dance at the school or hang out at Old Home Day and you'll see there is a lot of pride in their town as well.
     If the current proposal for redistricting the Vermont's Legislature passes, Eden will be divided in a new way that is sure to ruffle feathers on both sides of the political fence in the town. The current proposal being offered in Montpelier by the Vermont House government operations committee, calls for Eden to be split along Route 100.  People living to the west of Route 100 would be in the Lowell district and those east of the dividing line would remain in the Johnson district.
     “Needless to say, I'm very upset,” said Eden representative Mark Woodward, of Johnson.
     Woodward said he offered other suggestions in the last couple of weeks, that he felt were much better, but they could not come up with the numbers to keep all of Eden in the district.
     Woodward said in some of the plans that were being discussed other splits had been included, ideas like splitting Johnson along Main Street or splitting Belvidere along Route 108.
     Woodward said districts work in an area like Burlington, where they already have natural divisions of areas, like the North End. But with that, he said they don't have the intimate contact with their representation that small towns expect and deserve.
     He said what it really came down to was not having a place for Worcester and Woodbury. He said with stability in the Montpelier census information there was no room to put Worcester and Woodbury back with that area.
     Rep. Linda Martin, who serves on the house government operations committee, said in figuring out the numbers for equal representation (which is based on 4,172 people per representative), it came down to needing to lower Lamoille County by about 600 people. She said completely removing Belvidere from the district (an early idea) would have only resulted in removing about 300 people from the district, getting rid of Woodbury and Worcester would have accomplished it, but there was no place to put them as districts have to be contiguous.
     Government Ops finalized this proposal – splitting Eden – on Friday, January 27, and it will now be presented to the general body on the main floor. Martin said there will probably be amendments, but once a final bill is passed it will move over to the Senate and then on to the Governor for final approval.  Boards of Civil Authorities in two member districts also have a final opportunity to make their district into two single member districts.