Lynchburg City Council voted unanimously to keep the Heritage Elementary School polling place where it is Tuesday following a three-hour meeting that included an emotional and politically charged public hearing.
Council had, in an unexpected and unusual move, already decided earlier in the day how it would act on the matter, but passions still ran high during the evening hearing.
At one point, Liberty University’s director of commuter affairs Larry Provost loudly booed Councilman Ceasor Johnson. In another moment, a well-known local civil rights activist, Mary Payne, said too much time had been wasted on this “sorry subject” and said it was not council’s responsibility to “put diapers on” college students.
Three dozen people spoke for two hours during the polling place hearing and a crowd of more than 250, made up predominantly of LU students and representatives, including the school mascot, Sparky, was in attendance.
Uniform opposition was expressed to the proposal to move the Ward III polling place, currently located at Heritage Elementary, to the Lynchburg First Church of the Nazarene on Wards Ferry Road.
Many of those who spoke sparred, not over the central question before City Council that night, but over mutual feelings of resentment and indignation regarding the somewhat rocky transition LU’s student voters have been making into the local electorate.
A series of LU students spoke of how they felt targeted and even hated by parts of the city. Other speakers expressed frustration over their feeling that LU was unfairly seeking special treatment and wielding too much power over the community.
A frequent point of contention was the pervasive suspicion raised by LU students that a majority of council was deliberating seeking to discourage them from voting, an allegation that council members strenuously denied.
Council had already come out against moving the Heritage Elementary polling place during a work session nearly three hours earlier, although it proceeded with the hearing.
Officials had not been scheduled to discuss the polling place issue during the work session. It is unorthodox for council to render a decision on a public hearing matter before the public hearing is held.
The work session decision was informal. Council cast its official vote to stick with the Heritage Elementary location following the conclusion of the hearing.
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