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GREENSBORO — Five small towns on Greensboro’s outskirts want “a seat at the table” of the board that makes transportation decisions involving millions of federal and state dollars that flow into the area.

The towns of Oak Ridge, Pleasant Garden, Stokesdale, Sedalia and Summerfield petitioned for voting rights Wednesday on the Greensboro Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. The local board plays a key role in road, rail, mass transit, biking, hiking and sidewalk projects.

The towns have reached a stage of maturity where they should be able to participate formally in such important deliberations, Summerfield Town Manager Michael Brandt told the MPO panel.

“We’ve been in existence at most 14 or 15 years ,” said Brandt, spokesman for the towns. “We are taking on responsibilities. ... Greensboro didn’t grow up and do all that it does in a day. ... Now we are at the point, we’re ready to step up to the table.”

The local MPO has three voting members from the Greensboro City Council, two from the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, and one from the state Board of Transportation.

The board agreed unanimously to consider the towns’ request Wednesday once city transportation planners gather more information from other MPO’s across the state about how they share voting rights equitably between smaller and larger communities.

The board is a creature of the federal and state governments, which require each metropolitan area to have such a panel to make sure communities have some control over transportation spending in their back yards.

High Point has its own MPO, which includes five smaller communities with voting rights: Jamestown, Archdale, Thomasville, Trinity and Wallburg — a domain encompassing parts of Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth and Randolph counties.

While the format differs from place to place, most major MPOs in North Carolina allow smaller communities to sit on the boards, said Tyler Meyer, Greensboro’s chief transportation planner.

The votes usually are weighted so the major metro community has more say-so than its satellites, a weight often determined by population, Meyer said.

Greensboro has a population of more than 263,000 compared with a total of about 25,000 residents in the five towns.

The Greensboro MPO has wrestled with the issue of fair representation for the towns twice before, starting about a decade ago when the first county official was put on the panel. A second Guilford official was added four years later, after Pleasant Garden protested the MPO’s dearth of non-Greensboro voices.

Guilford County Commissioner Kirk Perkins said he was disappointed the towns seemed to feel they hadn’t been adequately represented on the MPO by county leaders. Perkins and fellow commissioner Mike Winstead sit on the panel. Perkins noted he hadn’t been besieged with requests for MPO information or action by the towns.

Brandt said the towns were not criticizing the way the commissioners represented them . They just want a more direct hand in shaping their transportation futures, he said.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com