Change isn’t something many people yearn for, but sometimes it’s necessary for the betterment of our society.

Change often is met with adversity and sometimes a fight, but at the end of the day, change is inevitable.

The Cherokee Delegation is mulling an adjustment to the way we vote for the Cherokee Board of Commissioners and the Cherokee Board of Education. Some see it as, don’t fix something that’s not broken, while others see the need to accommodate the growing county we live in.

A blue ribbon committee has been formed to recommend to the Cherokee Delegation on how to change, if at all, the structure and the way we elect both boards.

Each of the four members of the delegation appointed volunteers that make up the 13-member committee.

The issue is not about who is holding the offices involved right now or how their performance has been; it’s about a more equitable representation for all of Cherokee County.

Currently, the Cherokee County Commission is made up of four commissioners and one chairman. The county is run by a professional manager hired by the board.

During elections, people living in Posts 1 and 2 (eastern Cherokee) vote for each of the commissioners in both posts. The same goes for Posts 3 and 4 in western Cherokee.

If you run for office, you must live in the post for which you are running.

All registered voters in the county can vote in the chairman’s race.

For the school board, there are seven posts, and it also is run by a hired professional manager (the superintendent), not an elected official.

You must live in the post you serve; however, the entire registered voting population in Cherokee County has the opportunity to elect all school board members.

In city elections, officials are elected at-large, meaning all of the cities registered voters can select the representative they want.

And with an at-large election, you get more of something great – accountability.

There isn’t enough accountability in government, all the way up to Washington, D.C.

As it currently is, Post 1 and 2 commissioners only are accountable to their constituents in the east side of the county, and Post 3 and 4 commissioners only have to answer to voters in the western part of the county.

But the county commission should represent the entire county population, and that should be memorialized on paper, through legislation introduced by the local delegation and enacted by the Georgia General Assembly.

I’ve given it some thought, and here’s one idea: the county commission make-up and the way we vote for commissioners should mirror how the school board currently is elected, which has more accountability to all voters in the county.

We probably wouldn’t be talking about changing the make-up and voting process of the county and school board elected officials had the U.S. Census from 2010 not shown extreme population growth in the county.

But, here we are, and we should take this opportunity to make electing officials equitable countywide.

And, if we all vote for every elected seat on our governing boards, each and every one of them would be accountable to each and every one of us.

At the end of the day, elected officials work for all of us, not just some.

With at-large elections, we are able to choose the best people for the job, and requiring them to live in the post they want to run for gives them an advantage to know what’s going on in that specific area and what needs to be done.

They can bring that information and their concerns to the full board and make the best decision for the county, considering budgets and resources and prioritizing action countywide.

Some would argue that electing only the person who represents your neighborhood (not subdivision) would make it a closer-knit area and that you would have a more personal relationship with your elected official, feeling you could call at any time.

That may be the case, but if we add three commissioners to the mix, eliminating the chairmanship (the board can elect their own chair and vice-chair like the school board does) and redraw the post lines, turning four into seven equal posts, then each commissioner would have fewer residents in their respective posts.

With that change, constituents can still build a good relationships with their elected official.

But when your post commissioner doesn’t return your calls, and that is likely to happen at some point, you’ll have six other people who are accountable to you.

As it stands now, if you live in a western post, and your commissioners don’t address your concerns (no matter who is in those seats), it’s unlikely that the commissioners in the eastern post will feel the need to help. They are not accountable to you.

Post lines don’t need to be redrawn to cater to any specific person or special interest group. This shouldn’t be a political measure; it should be about equality in our local representation and accountability.

In a growing metropolis, change is bound to happen. We encourage the building of new roads to accommodate heavier traffic. We construct new schools to handle large student populations. We hire more public safety officials to keep the general public safe.

There’s no reason why we shouldn’t modernize our elections and make all of our officials accountable to everyone.

When they are accountable to us and they don’t do the job, we can change who represents us when we get to the ballot box.