OFFICE OF
THE CITY COUNCIL
CHERYL L. BROWN 117 WEST DUVAL STREET,
DIRECTOR 4TH
FLOOR, CITY HALL
OFFICE (904) 630-1452
FAX (904) 630-2906
E-MAIL: CLBROWN@coj.net
RULES REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE
MEETING MINUTES
May 11, 2011
2:00 p.m.
Location: City Council
Chamber, 1st floor, City Hall –
In attendance: Committee Members Denise Lee (Chair), Doyle Carter, Bill Bishop, John Crescimbeni and Clay Yarborough (dep. 2:45)
Excused: Committee Members Richard Clark and Art Shad
Guest: W. C. Gentry – School Board Chair
Also: Cindy Laquidara, Peggy Sidman and Jason Gabriel – Office of General Counsel; Bill Killingsworth – Planning and Development Department; Kirk Sherman – Council Auditor’s Office; Sherry Hall – Mayor’s Office; Juliette Williams – Legislative Services Division; Tiffany Hager – ECA; Kevin Meerschaert – WJCT; Dr. Steve Baker, Dick Berry, John Libby
Meeting Convened: 2:07 p.m.
Chairwoman Lee convened the meeting and welcomed School Board Chairman W.C. Gentry as the School Board’s liaison to the redistricting process. She requested that staff provide Mr. Gentry with previous informational handouts and meeting minutes recapping the committee’s work to this point. She suggested that future committee meetings be moved to a smaller room for ease of looking at and working with district maps.
Cindy Laquidara distributed a memo dated May 9, 2011 in response to a series of questions posed by the committee at its last meeting. Regarding the timing of the redistricting process, the memo contained a chart showing the timeline mandated by the City Charter and Ordinance Code. The 2010 Census data was certified to the City on March 18, 2011, so the Charter’s 8 month deadline means that the City Council must adopt a redistricting plan by November 18, 2011. Absent a special council meeting, the last regularly scheduled meeting to meet that deadline is the council meeting of November 8th.
With regard to the “effective date” of redistricting, the redistricting ordinance will become effective upon signature by the Mayor or eventually without the Mayor’s signature. The application date for practical electoral purposes will be the next election that occurs at least 9 months after enactment of the ordinance. For the School Board this may be the election of fall 2012; for the City Council it will be the election in the spring of 2015.
With regard to what criteria
should be considered in developing the redistricting plan Ms. Laquidara cited the
City Charter and Ordinance, State law and court precedents. Chapter 18 of the Ordinance Code and the City Charter require that districts: 1) are
as nearly equal in population, and 2) are arranged in as logical and compact a
geographical pattern as is possible to achieve and to insure that all federal
and state constitutions, laws and requirements are complied with. Compactness
and contiguity are to be considered to ensure the adequate representation on
City Council of the varied economic, social and ethnic interests and objectives
of the City. She noted that
With regard to state law, the Florida Statutes require that counties must draw districts contiguously with as equal populations as practicable. Court cases have defined typical allowable redistricting considerations to include the following: major physical boundaries such as bridges; political subdivision boundaries; schools; notable major structures; existing incumbencies as they represent communities of interest; and political affiliation Several issues cannot be the predominant reason for drawing district lines, including: race, sex, and economic status (Florida constitutional analysis only). Because of the fact-rich nature of the analysis, Ms. Laquidara stated that she would advise the committee on how to apply the appropriate analysis to a particular set of facts as the time arises.
With regard to the application of
the recent
The committee next reviewed and discussed a list of criteria for redistricting: voting age vs. total population; district population equality; contiguity; communities of interest, compactness and preservation of existing districts. With regard to which population count to use, Ms. Laquidara stated that either voting age population or total population numbers are appropriate to the analysis and defensible. Analysis of redistricting plans for compliance with the Voting Rights Act considers voting age population, but the committee may wish to consider plans developed with both sets of data to see what works better. With regard to population equality among districts, the courts have generally found that a maximum 10% deviation between the districts whose populations are the farthest above and the farthest below the ideal target size is acceptable (i.e. least populated district is 4% below target, most populated district is 6% above target – total deviation equals 10%).
The committee discussed contiguity (all parts of the district should be connected in a traversable sense) at some length, particularly with regard to the use of bridges to carry parts of a district across rivers. Ms. Laquidara stated that this will be a judgment call on the part of the committee when looking at proposed plans to determine whether a river, major highway, bridge, etc. is a true barrier separating two substantially different communities of interest or whether the community of interest encompasses both sides of the physical feature and citizens view the feature as either a minor inconvenience or perhaps no barrier at all.
Communities of interest also generated considerable discussion and again Ms. Laquidara stated that this consideration will be a judgment call on the part of the committee. In response to a question from Chairwoman Lee about how lines can or should be drawn to balance economic opportunities and improve the perception of some areas of the City, Ms. Laquidara stated that this question is the subject of an ongoing philosophical debate in political science circles. One school of thought holds that it is better to concentrate communities that bear similar characteristics into their own complete council districts so that their elected representatives are intensely focused on the issues which affect those complete neighborhoods (i.e. issues of economics, crime and opportunity). The other school of thought holds that it is better to distribute parts of disadvantaged communities into more affluent, economically successful districts where the general prosperity level of the remainder of the district may help to improve conditions in the more distressed areas.
Mr. Killingsworth requested guidance for the Planning Department in the form of a ranking of the listed criteria so that the department can begin crafting a proposed plan that reflects the committee’s priorities and preferences. He stated that very narrowly defined communities of interest will tend to lead to less compactness and more extended “fingers” reaching out from district cores, while more broadly defined communities of interest will tend to make it easier to produce more compactness because the criteria are less specific and therefore less confining. Mr. Killingsworth stated that he sensed a reluctance on the part of the committee to endorse his suggestion at the last meeting that the plan begin with one district and work outward from there, gaining consensus on adjoining districts before moving on to the next. Council Member Bishop stated that a holistic approach is necessary; the committee will look at a proposed plan showing all districts and work from there to produce a better subsequent plan.
The committee requested Mr.
Killingsworth to provide draft plans designed with both voting age population
and total population so they can see how the differences in the two data sets
play out in the maps. Mr. Killingsworth
stated that producing a Beaches/Mayport district that does not cross the
The committee discussed public input into the redistricting process. Chairwoman Lee expressed a strong preference for the committee approving an initial map produced by the Planning Department and taking that to the public for review and comment rather than going to the public without any plan and asking them to make suggestions from scratch. Redistricting is a complex task with many competing legal requirements, so it would be unfair to ask the public to attempt to weigh in without any knowledge of what is permissible and what isn’t. Presentations to the six CPACs on the general requirements and timeline of redistricting was suggested as a way of letting the general public know that the process has started and what to expect.
John Libby, who produced the
redistricting plan that was ultimately adopted by the City Council in the 1981
redistricting process, asked for an explanation of the issue of regression – a
legal consideration under the federal Voting Rights Act concerning reduction in
minority voting access. Ms. Laquidara
stated that it is a complex legal question that requires a detailed analysis of
voting behavior to see how minority and majority voters actually voted in
previous elections and to determine if there is concerted race-conscious voting
to block one group’s preferred candidate.
To assist in avoiding a Voting Rights Act problem, one would actually
have to look at crossover voting in terms of race. The courts, if called upon,
would do a balancing test to determine the actual effect of a set of electoral
districts on various communities of interest. Mr. Libby stated that the last
couple of city redistricting plans have produced districts crossing rivers and
sending out long narrow fingers because a higher priority was placed on having
four heavily minority districts than on compactness or respecting major
physical boundaries. It would help the Planning Department in the drafting
process to state a preference for one criterion or the other at the outset so
they know how to proceed. Ms. Laquidara stated that it would be helpful for the
committee to see maps of the existing districts with the 2010 Census data added
so that the committee has an idea of how much the existing districts are above
or below the new target population using both the total population and voting
age populations. The Council Research
Division was requested to research which population method other
The committee further discussed the application of the various criteria presented earlier, including recognition of the fact that the new plans need to consider the contiguity of the Mayport area now included in District 11 which would be non-contiguous if the Mayport Ferry ceases to operate. In response to a question about how to evaluate compactness, Ms. Laquidara suggested starting with a simple dictionary definition of “compact” and moving away from there as necessary to balance other equally valid considerations. She stated that the courts have approved districts that to some observers appear to be less than compact because there were other valid reasons.
With regard to incumbency, Council Member Crescimbeni requested the Planning Department to produce a map plotting the locations of the current School Board members and the 2011-15 City Council members when their identity becomes clear after next week’s election, color coded so as to show which Council members will be eligible for re-election and which will be term limited in 2015. He suggested that the shift of a district from north/west to south/east could well make the production of School Board districts much simpler, since there will be even pairs of city Council districts on both sides of the river (six on the north/west, eight on the south/east) which may produce School Board districts that don’t need to cross the river.
The committee reached general consensus on the following ranking of the potential criteria which is subject to change as the maps become available and are analyzed:
- Most important/legally required: population equality and voting age or total population analysis
- Next most important: compactness, contiguity and communities of interest; river crossings are to be discouraged, at least at the start of the process
- Somewhat lesser importance: incumbency and preservation of existing districts
Michael Anania representing the
Arlington Business Society expressed the hope that the West Arlington area would
be represented by a complete
In response to a question from John Libby about when the Planning Department’s draft maps and data will be posted to the City’s web site, Ms. Laquidara stated that the information would be posted when the Rules Committee has had the opportunity to review the data and approve a first draft of the map for public review.
The ad hoc committee’s next meeting
will be on Tuesday, May 25th at 2:00 p.m. in the
The meeting was adjourned at 4:09 p.m.
Jeff Clements, Council Research Division
5.17.11 Posted: 4:00 p.m.