City’s voting districts to be realigned by next election

The city’s population districts may be realigned by the next election.

Mike Slaughter, president of Slaughter and Associates, PLLC, the urban planning consultant firm hired by the city to redistrict voting zones, presented a possible plan for realignment of the city’s seven election districts.

“The population of the city has increased over 46 percent, but the deviation between the largest and the smallest districts compared to the ideal population is 98.1 percent,”

District 2, the largest district in the city, has a population of 10,467. District 6, the smallest, has a population of 4,446.

Slaughter said the ideal population number each district should have is a little over 6,000 people. He got that number by taking the total overall population and dividing it by seven, the number of districts.

The city’s last major realignment was in 2000. Slaughter said it’s time for a new plan because not only did the population grow, but two election districts are out of balance.

“We are trying to stay as close to 6,000 as possible,” he said.

Slaughter plans to have an alternate plan by the end of the month to allow the city to hold a pubic hearing mid-June to explain the process and to get the public’s input on the issue.

“The bottom line that we take the one man one vote rule,” he said. “What you want to do is have an overall balance where the populations are close to equal to all others.”