The DeKalb County Commission has adopted a redistricting plan to bring the population inside the seven districts of the county into line with requirements based on the results of the 2010 census.
Some residents who were formerly in a particular district will soon vote in another district, which means that they will have different county commissioners, a different school board member and a different constable representing them.
The commission approved the plan Monday night at their regular meeting, with Director of Schools Mark Willoughby and Election Commissioner Dennis Stanley voting along with the commission.
All 13 commissioners present, as well as Stanley and Willoughby, voted in favor of the plan.
According to the 2010 census, DeKalb County’s  population is now at 18,723.
In order to put the districts within a 10 percent deviation population, each of the seven districts required a population of no more than 2,675.
The 3rd and 7th districts had the most people under the old plan, while the 2nd had the least.
The 3rd District had a total of 2,890 residents under the old boundaries, while the 7th District's population totalled 2,881, which makes each of those districts deviation over by 8 percent.
The 2nd District, meanwhile, had only 2,428 residents, putting it under the required population by 9 percent.
“We hope we have reached an agreement that will work out to everyone’s satisfaction,” said County Mayor Mike Foster. “It did necessitate moving a few lines but basically the districts are pretty much the same as they were. Some people in some of the districts got moved to other districts because of the way the numbers fell. We hoped we could keep it all the same but we had a 17 percent disparity and we have to be less than 10 percent.
The new district boundaries will bring each district into line as follows;
The 1st District will havew a population of 2,671, a deviation of four people, or -.01 percent
The 2nd District will contain 2,681 people, a deviation of six persons, or +.02 percent
The 3rd District will have a population of 2,673, a deviation of two people, or -0.1 percent.
The 4th District will have 2,719 people, a deviation of 44, or +1.7 percent
The 5th District will have a population of 2,666, a deviation of -0.3 percent, or nine people.
The 6th District’s population will be 2,644, a deviation of thirty one people, or 1.1 percent.
The 7th District will have 2,669 people, a deviation of six residents, or -0.2 percent.
A workshop has been set to discuss the arrangement between the city and county governments to treat storm water, or leachate, run-off from the county dump, and the tipping fees for the city’s refuse.
The City of Smithville has apparently not been paying the county for the disposal of city garbage in the landfill  since Aug. 2008, and the county has not been paying for the treatment of landfill leachate being hauled to the city's waste water treatment plant since March 2009.
Foster said that the agreement was worked out with Smithville Mayor Taft Hendrixson several months ago, but Hendrixson said there was no deal at the last city council meeting.
He told the council that the city stopped paying the tipping fees because he feels that the county should not be charging Smithville to dump city garbage in the county landfill since city residents are already supporting the operation of the landfill with the county taxes that they pay.
“I don’t think the city taxpayers should have to pay for dumping their garbage twice,” the Mayor said. “That is double taxation.”
Hendrixson also questioned why Smithville, which hauls its own garbage to the landfill, is expected to pay for disposal when the three other cities, whose garbage is hauled to the landfill by the county, are not required to pay for disposal.
Foster told the county commission Monday night that the Solid Waste disposal Committee needs to be present at the workshop so that the problem can be sorted out.
“Whatever deal we are going to have, we need to get it worked out, and we need to get something on paper that says thats the way it is,” said Foster.
"I think its something that we need to at least discuss," Alderman Shawn Jacobs said at the city council meeting. "I think we owe it to the ratepayers of the Smithville water system to investigate this and decide what we need to do and to come to some kind of formal agreement because right now we don't have one."
The last payment the county made to the city for leachate treatment was in March 2009 for February hauls.
According to city records, from March 2009 to September 2011, the total amount of money the city could have tried to collect from the county for treatment of landfill leachate comes to $400,110.
The city was paying the county approximately $50,000 per year for garbage disposal, but stopped making those payments after August 2008.
The last payment made was for April through June 2008.
The total amount of money the county could have tried to collect from the city from July 2008 to September 2011 is more than $150,000.
City officials contacted Don Darden of the Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS) in May 2009 for an opinion on whether it would be possible for the county to prevent the city from taking  trash to the county landfill.
Darden said, "If the county is paying its landfill expense from property taxes county wide, then I think you are right. I ran into this same situation when I was city administrator in LaFollette. Campbell County used its second half of the sales taxes to pay landfill expenses, and LaFollette had to pay a tipping fee to dump there. If the county is using a revenue that is not levied against its county residents who live in Smithville, then I think Smithville will have to pay."