Jamestown Reapportionment Commission member and city councilman Brent Sheldon points to an area of his Ward as he discusses redrawing Ward boundaries with his fellow commission members during the May 24 meeting.
Jamestown’s Reapportionment Commission reviewed the initial drafts of two separate redistricting maps during its meeting on Tuesday as the 11-member panel continues its work of bringing the city’s Wards into compliance.
Commission members reviewed a draft redistricting plan that contains the current number of six wards, with all populations within 1% of one another. The commission also reviewed an alternate five-ward map – which also saw near-equal populations – after it was initially proposed two weeks ago by commission member Jim Walton.
Both maps were presented by Zach Altschuler, the mayor’s Executive Assistant who is also helping the commission by creating digital copies of the maps, based on the input of commission members.
Altschuler said he focused changing the maps by starting with a portion of Ward 3 that extended into the center of the city, just south of the Chadakoin River.
“That’s kind of what the starting point was, and that creates a whole list of downstream effects, so it was about 1,200 people in that little section there. It’s about a quarter of the ward,” Altschuler said, adding that he was then able to shift other populations into Ward 3 to return it to balance, and worked to do the same to all other Wards until they all were within 1% of one another.
Not only did the draft plan bring near-equal populations to all wards, it also utilized more of the city’s natural boundaries, including the river, railroad tracks and major roadways, as noted by commission chair Pete Johnson. “Well, the thing that jumps out right away to me about that map is just the optics test,” Johnson said. “The optics test very nicely.”
Even though the revised map presented more uniform-looking wards, it was at the expense of making large adjustments to nearly every existing ward boundary. That’s something that didn’t go unnoticed by city councilman and commission member Brent Sheldon.
“I just wanted for you to kind of tweak the wards to get them close and not do such drastic changes,” said Sheldon, who represents Ward 1. “Because there’s some pretty radical changes here. I mean, it does smooth out the wards, but I thought we were just going to do some small changes here and there, just try to equalize the population. I thought that’s what my motion was.”
Five Ward versus Six Ward Map proposals to Jamestown Reapportionment Commission (May 24, 2022)
The commission also reviewed Walton’s proposal to reduce the total number of wards to five – who again cited the city’s shrinking population and the call for smaller government as reasons for reducing the size of the city council. But not all commission members appeared in favor of the proposal, with council president and commission member Tony Dolce again saying it would only mean more work spread out over fewer council members.
Commission member Ellen Ditonto also felt that regardless of how many wards the final plan will have, the commission needs to consider more than just whether or not the boundaries follow natural boundaries.
“I like the natural boundaries, actually. I like using the train tracks and the river as a boundary, but when you look at the people who live in those areas, they’re very different. We have a lot of apartments in certain areas versus many more one-family homes in others. So, I think we need more discussion on some of those topics,” Ditonto said.
At the conclusion of the meeting, all commission members felt the draft maps were a good first step, but would like to see a better comparison. As a result, Committee chair Pete Johnson said they will meet again Tuesday, May 31 to continue the discussion.
“Our next opportunity to look at the maps, we’re going to try to hone in with greater detail on what these proposed changes might look like neighborhood to neighborhood. It doesn’t look like there’s any crazy gerrymandering type of thing going on, so from a purely eyeball perspective it’s a good looking map but the devil’s often in the details,” Johnson said.
The commission has until September 1 to finalize a plan and present it to the full Jamestown City Council for its review and approval.
The reapportionment process takes place every 10 years following the results of the U.S. Census, and the city commission is tasked with proposing new ward boundaries to get the average number of people within each ward to be as equal as possible.
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