12-05-1983 Public Hearing (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes, Public H• ring, La Porte City Coun~ December 5, 1983, Page 4 thing with Spenwick. College View and Spenwick have been under • the supervision of the master planning jurisdiction and what we call subdivision ordinance jurisdiction of La Porte for their entire histories. On the Justice Department question, all annexations of populated areas have to be approved by the United States Justice Department if they're. in Texas or the other Southern States that are under the Voting Rights Act. And we are preparing a-brief and we have it in draft form, to submit to the Justice Department; the burden of proof is strictly on the City to justify the annexation that it will not impair minority voting rights. Now La Porte adopted a charter a few years ago which the Justice Department approved; one of the conditions being on single member districts. We have six single member districts, one of which is a heavily minority district on the north side of La Porte, which has elected a black City Councilman twice. It's my own opinion that the Justice Department will be'we11 satisfied with what has occurred in La Porte, the commitments La Porte has previously made and kept on minority voting rights. And I do not foresee any difficulty in getting Justice Department approval of this annexation. The Justice Department .will have 60 days.-when they receive our brief-- we can't mail it until the day after-the annexation--in which to study it and to approve it. They routinely will contact the prominent minority leaders in our community, essentially to ask them. the question do-they feel like they've been dealt fairly • with, both historically and on this one. This area, if annexed, will be attached to District 2 in La Porte for voting purposes, but in 1985 and every five years under our charter, the whole -City has to be looked at and redistricted and the six districts have got to have a population equality plus or minus 5 percent, and that's the outer limits. So the way La Porte is growing, particularly the west end of town--Fairmont has about 400 building permits a year--we probably are going to see some major shifts in district lines in 1985. Because we have the one man, one vote rule from the Supreme Court, they're very strict about that rule. On the notice, on that gentleman's question, about the .public hearing, hearings on annexation are set by State law. The notice of hearings for these here tonight and the one that was held in November, were published im the Bayshore Sun which is the desig- nated official newspaper of the City of La Porte for publication of its notices and there's been a lot of publicity in the La Porte paper and the Baytown paper which has circulated in La Porte, about the studies, the hearing process, and that type of thing. -Every effort has been made, through the water district board members and others, to make their part of the studies and to disseminate information about the hearings to the public. The reason for the-two hearings tonight was just strictly one of convenience. The Legislature has amended the state law to require a hearing both at your city hall and in the area to be annexed, and this is the hearing in the area to be annexed. That's all the questions I can recall at this time.