A public hearing on redistricting drew 11 people Saturday morning at Beaufort County Community College.

Four simultaneous redistricting hearings in four counties were linked via video conferencing.

The only elected official on hand for Beaufort County’s meeting was Rep. Bill Cook, R-Beaufort, a member of the House redistricting committee.

Cook, one of several legislators scattered around the hearing sites, did not comment on the substance of the proceedings.

The lawmakers’ job was to listen, not comment, advised the piped-in voice of Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, chairman of the Senate redistricting committee.

Rucho guided the meetings from Pitt Community College, one of the four hearing locations.

The only Beaufort County resident who spoke at length on the redrawing of legislative district lines emphatically expressed his views.

Greg Dority, chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party, asserted the majority of his community’s residents want the Legislature to leave their county whole and intact in state Senate District 1.

“Two points I’ll try and make today,” Dority said. “The first, absolutely, under no circumstances, do we want to see Beaufort County split in the state House or state Senate districts.”

Beaufort County is broken in two by two congressional districts, the 1st and the 3rd Congressional District.

District 1 is represented by U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., of Wilson.

District 3 is represented by U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., R-N.C., of Farmville.

Roughly speaking, Butterfield represents the far west and half of the county below the Pamlico River.

Jones represents points east of Washington’s Market Street north of the Pamlico.

The county is whole and intact in state House District 6, represented by Cook, and state Senate District 1, represented by Sen. Stan White, D-Dare.

District 6 also takes in eight precincts in northeast Pitt County.

Dority and other political observers countywide say the Legislature should avoid carving the county up and parceling out its precincts to neighboring counties to meet district population requirements following the recent U.S. census.

During the hearing, Dority pointed out the widely held notion that cutting up rural counties lessens their influence in the General Assembly.

“We in no way in Beaufort County, as a Tier 1 county, one of the poorest counties in the state, want to see our county split and lose our representation in Raleigh,” he said.

Dority apparently referred to some Pitt County residents’ desire to have their own, locally based senator. Some Pitt residents are urging lawmakers to include a chunk of Beaufort County in a new, Pitt-centered Senate district.

“Under no circumstances do people in Beaufort County want to be attached to Pitt County in the Senate district,” Dority stated. “Now, we’re happy to do so in the state House. We have Rep. Cook and we feel that the way things are set up on the House side is working for everybody. But on the state Senate side, we absolutely cannot be split and joined with Pitt County.”

He said one hoped-for plan, not official as yet, would take the current eight counties of Senate District 1 and join them with Perquimans County, bringing the district’s population total to just over the 190,710 people federally required for a Senate district.

“These counties all have common interest,” Dority said of Senate District 1’s counties. “They share the water, they share the coast and they are more rural in scope. But tying us to the urban areas of Pitt County, which would require Beaufort County to be split … that’s just not going to work for us.”

The only other Beaufort County speaker who signed up to be heard, former state Rep. Zeno Edwards, D-Beaufort, concurred with Dority.

“Every word he uttered represents my thoughts on this,” Edwards told his far-flung listeners and fellow audience members at BCCC.

According to Rucho, a final public hearing on redistricting will be held from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. Monday in Raleigh.

Streaming video of that hearing will be available online, and people will be allowed to submit their comments in writing, he said.

The House and Senate redistricting committees likely will make public their proposed maps by the third week of May, he related.

The Legislature has to approve these maps, which also must obtain approval from the U.S. Department of Justice.

For more information, visit www.ncleg.net/redistricting.