03-05-2002 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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• Final Report of Re-Districting Committee to La Porte City Council The Redistricting Committee of the City of La Porte, Texas, heretofore established and appointed by the City Council of the City of La Porte, Texas in Ordinance No. 2000- 2460 in December 2000, and as directed to reconfigure single-member city council districts pursuant to the procedures set forth and established in City of La Porte Ordinance No. 2001-2502, hereby submits this its Final Report to the City of La Porte City Council recommending the establishment of new boundaries for the election of district Councilpersons. Attached to this report as "Exhibit A", and incorporated by reference herein, is the proposed map of the City of La Porte containing the reconfigured district boundaries, as is herein officially recommended by the Redistricting Committee for adoption by City Council and for submission for preclearance to the Department of Justice pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C., §1973c. Based on the directives established in Ordinance No. 2001-2502, the Re-Districting Committee followed the following criteria in redrawing district lines for the election of district Councilpersons: 1) Each district was redrawn so as to achieve relative parity in population size, based on an ideal population of 5313 for each of the 6 redrawn districts, and working with a new total city population of 31,880. (31,880 / 6). The directive followed in establishing the population for each district was that the highest population district would not exceed the lowest population district by 10% (plus or minus five percent deviation in population between districts). 2) The Committee based each new district as closely as possible on the boundaries of existing districts. To this end, the Committee sought to preserve present incumbent/constituency relationships, with consideration toward the residence of existing members of City Council, and their history in representing their current districts. 3) The Committee focused on maintaining easily identifiable geographical boundaries for redrawn districts, with a premium placed on drawing each new district to be compact and contiguous. 4) The Committee acted so as to maintain historic communities of interest contained within existing districts when redrawing district lines. This was accomplished by maintaining these communities entirely within newly created districts. 5) The Committee worked to draft the proposed new district lines to follow as closely as possible the existing Benchmark plan, which sets out the present district lines as reconfigured and adopted by City Ordinance No. 1775, and passed by City Council on August 12, 1991, and as precleared to the Department of Justice by letter dated January 21, 1992.