Residency districts for the county commissioners and five of the eight members of the school board were officially changed by the Moore County Board of Commissioners Tuesday.

The board’s unanimous vote drew applause from several members of the League of Women Voters, who have been urging county leaders to act on new district boundaries for the past year.

“We are like the Energizer Bunny,” said Jo Nicholas to describe the league’s persistence on the subject. Nicholas is president of the North Carolina league and also of the Moore County league.

O’Linda Gillis added her encouragement as well. She is a league member also but was speaking in her capacity as president of the local chapter of the NAACP.

Both women spoke during the public-comment period at the beginning of the meeting.

Board Chairman Larry Caddell made the motion to adopt Option 6 among the redistricting maps prepared by the county’s GIS (geographic information system) staff with the use of the latest census population voting blocks. Chris Koltyk, GIS director, presented the redistricting options for board scrutiny but made no recommendations.

Option 6 achieves the intent to redistrict the population more equitably in keeping with the 2010 census while retaining the present members of both boards within the new districts. All five county commissioners are voted on at large by all registered voters. Three school board members are elected at large, and the other five are elected from residency districts. The residency restriction thus applies to candidates for these offices, not to voters.

The new districts change the pool of potential candidates residing within those districts but do not affect the way in which voters elect commissioners and school board members.

In other business the board discussed membership in the steering committee for an updated land use plan and also decided to table action on a space allocation for the Courts Facility once the sheriff’s department is moved into the Public Safety-Detention Center complex to be completed later this year.

Commissioner Tim Lea was absent from the meeting because of illness.

More details about the meeting will appear in the Friday edition of The Pilot.