The city of Denton released a proposed redistricting map Tuesday that would shrink one City Council district, shift two others and leave a fourth mostly intact to preserve minority voting power in southeastern Denton. ALSO ONLINE
Existing Council Districts
Proposed Council Districts PUBLIC FEEDBACK
The Denton City Council approved a resolution in April inviting the public to submit redistricting comments - or even complete plans - to the city secretary's office for consideration prior to a public hearing that is tentatively scheduled for August.
Alternative plans must:• be submitted in writing, • redistrict the entire city,• show the total population and voting-age population for all racial groups based on 2010 census data, and• follow other council-approved criteria. The council approved criteria in April saying the new districts should: be compact, contiguous and roughly equal in population; have identifiable boundaries such as streets or creeks; and avoid splitting existing neighborhoods and precincts as much as possible, among other standards.
City leaders are inviting the public to critique the map and even submit their own for consideration ahead of a public hearing, tentatively scheduled for August. Since Texas is subject to the Voting Rights Act, a new map also would need approval from the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court.
City leaders hope to have the new districts approved and in place for the May 2012 election.
Denton must redraw its four council districts to reflect growth over the past decade and meet a federal mandate that districts be roughly equal in population. About a third of the city's population lives in southern Denton's high-growth District 4, which must lose residents to other districts.
Council members created the proposed redistricting map, known as Draft Plan C, during a June 21 meeting by tweaking an earlier draft with slightly different boundary lines in the downtown area.
All of the draft plans would shift population clockwise among districts, said Robert Heath, an Austin attorney hired by the city to help with the redistricting. That means District 4 would lose residents to District 3, District 3 would yield residents to District 2, and District 2 would give up residents to District 1, he said.
The result: District 4 would shrink considerably as District 3 shifted south, and District 2 would extend west to Interstate 35. District 1 in central and southeast Denton would remain mostly intact, although it would gain some land along Interstate 35E and lose some of the downtown area on its western edge.
The city must comply with federal laws designed to protect minority voting rights. That complicates changes to District 1, which is home to large Hispanic and black populations.
The percentage of minorities in District 1 is likely to fall slightly because the district needs to add about 3,500 people, Heath said. Through redistricting, the city must reshape districts so each holds about 28,445 people.
"We don't have a lot of minorities to put in [District 1 from other districts]," Heath said. "But we want to do it in such a way that it preserves that district to the greatest extent possible."
The proposed map would split some downtown-area voting precincts into different council districts - a result of the council's tinkering to keep the Panhandle-Egan-Congress neighborhood west of Carroll Boulevard in a single district. The change also required that a finger-shaped strip of District 2 extend south past the downtown Square, even though most of the district would be north of University Drive or east of Mockingbird Lane and Mayhill Road.
The plan might have an odd shape, but it would put together a more contiguous neighborhood, Mayor Mark Burroughs said.
In an interview Tuesday, District 1 council member Kevin Roden said the process raises questions about what it means to live in a particular council district. Federal criteria focus on total population but fail to account for local considerations like a district's political or cultural identity, he said.
Roden, who analyzed the first two draft maps before the June 21 meeting, said they would fix the population disparity but leave District 1 lagging in the number of registered voters. That disparity could hurt District 1 in at-large council seat elections, he said, since candidates might be tempted to ignore the district in favor of others with more voting power.
Under the city charter, four council members are elected from single-member districts and three others - including the mayor - are elected at large.
"I still have lingering questions as to how that [redistricting] plays out when it comes to registered voters," Roden said.
LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com .
