Council considers realigning voting districts

Because of the ample amount of growth in the city, The Colony City Council is looking at realigning its voting districts.

In August, the city assigned the redistricting committee the task of developing a series of options for the council. The redistricting committee is comprised of councilmen Richard Boyer and David Terre, along with city staff and volunteer residents of the city.

According to a presentation given to the city, the largest amount of growth has been in Place 3, which includes The Legends, the Cascades and Austin Ranch. Place 3 has nearly double the amount of residents as other districts.

"By law we have to make an effort and adjust those lines," Boyer said. "What that means is reducing some of Place 3 and distributing that throughout the rest of the city."

Terre said the committee took great concern to keep neighborhoods together within one district.

"[The committee] did very good in keeping major streets as a boundary," Mayor Joe McCourry said. "I know one year I was in Place 3 and Joel [Marks] and I didn't know who had Baker [Drive]. It makes it difficult when you have half a street on one [district] and half a street on the other but by putting it on major thoroughfares like you have done in most cases -- that's an excellent job and I know that must have been tough."

The Colony has seven city council members, three of which are chosen at large, including the mayor. This means that residents from the entire city choose those members. Four are chosen from single-member districts and every 10 years the city must review voting district boundaries to ensure fairness in single-member districts.

Voting lines, locations and issues were also considered during the drawing of the maps. Despite the learning curve that's expected, the redistricting should actually make voting easier for residents of the city, Boyer said.

"The great thing about this is the advantage about us moving those elections to November; there will be one site in the city for everybody but on Election Day you go to the place that's on your voter's registration card," he said. "The county will produce the right ballot based on the address."

Criteria

The committee met in October 2012, January and this month where two different sets of criteria were imposed. First, redistricting has to be in compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, eliminate discriminatory election practices and other federal guidelines that the states districts should be relatively equal in population with a difference of less than 10 percent of the ideal district population -- a quarter of the city's population.

Second, the redistricting has to be in compliance with city imposed criteria including the request that districts follow identifiable geographic and/or street boundaries. The city also asked that residential communities remain in tact and that new districts should be based on existing districts.

They should follow county voting precincts, be compact and contiguous, preserve incumbent constituency relations and history, treat racial minorities and language minorities with respect to their voting rights and maintain relative proportions of all races and ethnicity. The process should also be open and transparent.

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