06-28-11 La Porte Redistricting Committee

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Redistricting Committee Minutes of June 28, 2011 Members Present: Charles Harrington, Nolan Allen, Charles Montgomery, Mark Follis, Paul Berner, Nancy Ojeda, Nanci Lotz, Lisa Garcia, Charlie Perry, Venessa Guerrero (Alternate), and Martha Gillett (Alternate) Members Absent: Champ Dunham (Alternate) City Staff Present: Planning Director, Tim Tietjens; GIS Technician, Isaac Rodriguez; Assistant City Attorney, Clark Askins; and Planning Coordinator, Peggy Lee 1. Call to order Meeting called to order by Chairman Charles Harrington at 6:10 p.m. 2. Roll call of members Roll call of members by Planning Coordinator Peggy Lee. 3. Consider approval of June 9, 2011, meeting Minutes Motion by Nolan Allen to approve the June 9, 2011, meeting Minutes. Second by Paul Berner. Motion carried unanimously. 4. Apply 2010 Census data to Census block geography. Planning Director Tim Tietjens introduced Michael Cline, Associate Director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University. Mr. Cline has experience with redistricting and offered his assistance whenever needed. Mr. Tietjens also introduced Clark Askins, Assistant City Attorney and Isaac Rodriguez, GIS Technician. Mr. Tietjens spoke briefly about the difficulty in trying to enumerate the four census blocks that were split during the previous redistricting process. He described the method Staff used to arrive at a population estimate for the four split blocks by utilizing census data currently available for the entire block, counting rooftops, and applying vacancy and person per household rates. Mr. Cline stated that La Porte's four split census blocks are the first split blocks that he has ever encountered. He recommended avoiding split blocks altogether and encouraged the City to provide input on census block boundaries with the LUCA program prior to the next census. Martha Gillett spoke of her experience with the 2000 Redistricting process and the difficulty the Committee had creating the boundary lines. The ideal population for each Council District is 5,633 persons with an acceptable range of up to 5% over (5,915) or 5% under (5,351). In trying to clean up split blocks, the Committee began by reviewing Block 1767, in Council Districts 4 and 5. Motion by Nolan Allen to move the Council District line splitting Block 1767 over to Ohio Street, moving 13 persons from District 5 into District 4, changing the population in District 5 to 4,208 and 5,294 in District 4 at this point in time. Second by Nancy Ojeda. The motion carried unanimously. The Committee also discussed census Block 1011, which is split between Council Districts 3 & 6, and census Block 1000, which is split amongst Council Districts 1, 3, 4, & 6.