Are more members in Iredell Commission's future?

As uncovered by the recent national census, Iredell moved up four slots in the state’s county size rankings: from 20th to 16th.
Of the 15 counties larger, nine have boards of commissioners with more members than Iredell’s five. The membership of the other six equal that of Iredell’s.
Iredell’s population has grown by more than 70 percent in past generation. In 1990, the county had less than 93,000 people. This year, it will top 160,000.
At the same time, the county’s population center has moved farther and farther south with each passing year. The bulk of the growth since the 2000 census has clearly been in the Lake Norman area.
What that seems to point to is not only a larger board of commissioners, but also a board comprising members from districts throughout the county with district lines are carved in a way that reflects the population centers.
Statesville is in the process now of determining if there have been any significant population shifts in the city’s six wards. And while Iredell’s electorate has typically been pretty good at policing itself regarding the voting-in of commissioners from different parts of the county, there is no guarantee of that happening. In theory, all five of Iredell County’s board members could live on the same street in Union Grove or Harmony and make decisions about those who live on one of Lake Norman’s peninsulas.
Of the six five-board-member counties with higher populations than Iredell, only two –  Onslow and Union – are larger in area than Iredell. And neither has distances greater than the miles between Iredell’s northeast and southwest corners. Also, Union’s population explosion of nearly 63 percent (the highest in the state) dwarfed Iredell’s still robust 30 percent.
But Iredell Board Chairman Steve Johnson said there is more to consider than just size when talking about moving to a larger board, and he said those problems stem from misconceptions people might have about such a move.
“The problem I have when you start talking about a larger board you always talk about districts,” he said. “And I’m adamantly against going to seven but I am against having district representation.”
Johnson said the problem with district lines in Iredell County is that they would have strange shapes and sizes to them.
“People think that when you go to carving district lines you make these nice little boxes,” he said. “But what you’d really end up with is a much greater representation coming from the south and very little from the north. That’s because districts are not based on size but on population.”
And, he added, the drawing of the lines themselves could lend itself to political shenanigans.
“Right now, we have a system where the voters get to pick their representation,” Johnson said. “If we moved to districts, you’d have politicians playing too large a role in it. You’d have someone say, ‘Let’s draw the line over there because he doesn’t poll good there.’ Or, ‘Let’s do make it over there because she’s well-liked over there.'"
While Johnson – who is not only the chair of the board but also its longest-tenured current member – is not against a greater number of colleagues, he’s not exactly a cheerleader for the move either.
“I think we’ve done pretty good so far with five,” he said.
That’s a position apparently shared by most in the state. Of North Carolina’s 100 counties, 61 have five-person boards of commissioners. Another 28 have seven. There are three boards each with three, six and nine members; one (Guilford) with 11 members and one (Robeson) with eight.
The average board has 5.74 members, with each of them representing an average of about 16,600 citizens. Iredell’s five commissioners each represent nearly twice that number.