Miscellaneous/redistricting - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

---- - -- u.s. Department of Justice Page 7 September 20,2002 Fitch). Operating under this guideline, the Committee recognized that the overall population of District 4 would increase significantly as compared to the remaining 5 districts. Therefore, the Committee attempted to reconfigure District 4, with its significantly higher population, in a manner to best avoid retrogression. First, the Committee drew the proposed District 4 to retain the same neighborhoods and communities of interests within the present District 4. As such, no areas contained within District 4 were removed. Second, the Committee only added new territory to District 4 that was both immediately adjacent and of similar demographic quality to present District 4. Third, the newly incorporated populations from adjacent areas were chosen on the basis to best preserve present incumbent/constituency relationships. For example, the areas added to District 4 from District 5 are generally of the same socio-economic quality as the neighborhoods within present District 4, as opposed to the more affluent enclaves contained within adjacent portions of Districts 5 and 6. In addition, and as discussed previously, the Committee followed the guidelines contained within the Criteria Ordinance in reconfiguring each district. As such, the Committee acted to forge a compromise between achieving new districts that are equal in population, compact and contiguous, contain both easily identifiable and natural boundaries, and best approximate the lines found within the Benchmark plan, while at the same time avoiding retrogression to the best extent possible in both Districts 4 and 3. (23) The Citizens Re-Districting Committee, following the public hearing of December 11, 2001, unanimously adopted the Re-Districting Plan attached hereto as a part of Exhibit "0". Following the recommendations of its Citizens Re-Districting Committee, the City Council of the City of La Porte on January 14, 2002, accepted (but did not adopt) the Re-Districting Plan presented by the Re- Districting Committee. It was the unanimous opinion of the Citizens Re- Districting Committee that the accepted plan achieves the goals of equitable population distribution among the Council Districts, without diluting minority- voting rights. After acceptance of the Re-Districting Plan of the Committee, city administration officials were directed by City Council to consider the feasibility of including minor refinements to the proposed Re-Districting plan, as requested by several Councilpersons. It was during this process that the city officials discovered that an error had occurred during the Committee's calculation of the populations of Districts 1, 3, and 4. The error was caused by inclusion of the entire population of a city block in District 4, when in actuality the block in question encompassed populations located within Districts 1, 3, and 4, Attached hereto as Exhibit "N" is a copy of the staff explanation of the error and an analysis of same. Thereafter, in an attempt to rectify this error, and to address the requests of individual Council Members to refine the boundaries of certain districts, at its meeting of June 24, 2002, City Council appointed members to the City Council Redistricting Sub-Committee. This Redistricting Sub-Committee included the Black citizen representative of District 4, as shown