Sarah Coppola writes about the map drawn Saturday. ….. CONTINUING COVERAGE AUSTIN COUNCIL DISTRICTS Panel starts council district revision Resident commission to redraw 10 districts of near-equal population. By Sarah Coppola An Austin commission on Saturday began revising a draft map of 10 City Council districts, including the two districts in Austin’s core that had drawn the most criticism. The group worked for six hours Saturday, and didn’t finish or vote on a revised map. It will continue revising the draft map on Monday and possibly Wednesday and Saturday. “We made great progress today,” Chairwoman Magdalena Blanco said as Saturday’s meeting wrapped up. The 14-member commission is carrying out a plan that Austin voters approved last fall to change the City Council from seven members who each represent the whole city to 10 district representatives and a citywide mayor. Future City Council candidates will have to live in and campaign in the districts the commission draws. The first election of an 11-member council will be in November 2014. The commission must draw districts that are roughly equal in population — about 80,000 people each. It also must comply with the Voting Rights Act by drawing a few districts that have large numbers of African-American and Hispanic residents to give those minorities a fair chance to elect City Council candidates they prefer. The commission — which is made up of residents, not City Council members or council appointees — drew a draft map Sept. 28, then held four public hearings to gather feedback. Speakers from Southeast, Southwest, Northwest and Northeast Austin said at the hearings that they were mostly pleased with the draft map. But many residents were unhappy with District 7, which ran from Tarrytown in West Austin up MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) to far North Austin, and District 9, which included parts of South and Central Austin, downtown and the Mueller neighborhood in East Austin. On Saturday, the commission slowly began revising the districts with the help of a mapping consultant who projected the boundaries on a screen. They started with the so-called minority districts east of Interstate 35, and then redrew boundaries in South, Southwest and Northwest Austin. All of those changes affected the districts in Austin’s core, Districts 7 and 9, but the commission plans to look at those areas more closely on Monday. On Saturday, the commission put all of Travis Heights into District 9, as well as a slice of West Austin. However, the Bouldin Creek neighborhood remained divided, even though residents in Bouldin and other neighborhoods immediately south of Lady Bird Lake have asked to be grouped together. The commission also shortened the slender District 7 so that its southern boundary is now West 45th Street. It added to it a piece of Northwest Austin and the Wooten neighborhood in North Austin to increase the district’s population. The commission kept the so-called African-American district, in Northeast Austin, intact. Officials with the Austin chapter of the NAACP have said they support the draft boundaries for that district. But the commission revised the two areas that are considered Hispanic districts — Districts 2 and 3 in East and Southeast Austin — by dividing them more clearly along Texas 71. District 2 now pushes into far South Austin and the South Boggy Creek neighborhood. Those newly revised districts split Dove Springs and Montopolis, two neighborhoods with large Hispanic populations that had asked to be kept together. The commission also made significant changes to District 6, which now stretches from far Northwest Austin, near Lake Travis, to an area just west of MoPac. Still controversial is where to put the Mueller neighborhood, a mostly white, rapidly developing neighborhood of homes and businesses at Austin’s old municipal airport. Some Mueller residents had asked the commission to put their area into District 4, the North Austin district, but the commission on Saturday kept Mueller at the northeastern edge of District 9. A few districts will have to be tweaked to make their populations much closer to 80,000. Following Saturday’s revisions, for example, the boundaries of District 9 included more than 96,000 people.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 14:49:08 +0000
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