City looks at district lines after ’20 census
HOT SPRINGS — Population shifts over the previous decade could place two Hot Springs city directors outside their districts when the city redraws its political lines in accordance with the 2020 census.
According to the census, 37,930 people were living in the city on April 1 of last year. That’s the date the U.S. Census Bureau uses to determine where people are living when they’re counted for the decennial census. Dividing the city’s population by six, the number of city director districts, set a target population of 6,321 per district. The city said a district’s population can be 5% higher or lower than the target number, meaning a district’s population can be between 6,005 and 6,637.
The map presented to the city board Tuesday showed District 1, the city’s northernmost political boundary, District 2 at the city center and District 3 in west-central Hot Springs will have to be expanded to reach the target number. District 1 is 1,007 people short of the target number. District 2 needs an additional 613 people, and District 3 needs 782 more people.
The populations in districts 4, 5 and 6 are over the target number. District 5 is 1,508 people over the target, an overage owing to the more than 600 acres the city annexed along the Hot Springs Creek Basin of Lake Hamilton in 2018. The city’s 2015 annexation of the Twin Points and Burchwood Bay areas contributed to District 4 being 772 people over the target.
According to the 2020 census, the city’s population grew by 2,737 from 2010 to 2020. The 2010 target population was 5,865 per district.
A working map presented to the board Tuesday expanded District 4 into the Forest Lakes Garden Homes Subdivision where District 5 Director Karen Garcia lives and District 1 into the Quapaw Avenue neighborhood where District 3 Director Marcia Dobbs-Smith resides.
The district 4 and 5 seats are up for election next year. .
“District 5 is up for reelection anyway, so I don’t think that’s going to present a problem,” City Attorney Brian Albright said on Thursday. “Whether it was an incumbent or not, somebody has to run for that position. We’re so early in the process. That was just the first map that came out for the board’s consideration and input. It’s too speculative to even think about what the map will look like.”
The local government title of the state code doesn’t allow a special election for the unexpired term of a vacant director seat in the city manager form of government. It requires the city board to elect a replacement by majority vote, as it did when it filled vacancies created by former District 1 Director Suzanne Davidson’s 2019 resignation and former Mayor Ruth Carney’s 2017 resignation.
“In the city manager form of government, that’s not permitted,” Albright, referring to a special election for an unexpired term, said. “The statute actually says that the board shall elect a person by majority vote.”
Another working map presented to the board keeps the addresses of all six non-at large board members in their current districts. Maintaining continuity of representation is one of the redistricting principles mapmakers can use when redrawing political lines, but creating irregularly shaped districts is discouraged.
“It is very permissible to try to avoid having current incumbents run against each other,” City Clerk Harmony Morrissey told the board.
The working map that keeps directors in their current districts included a diagonally oriented appendage connected to District 3 via a one-block section of Grand Avenue from Fourth to Fifth streets. Dobbs-Smith’s address is in the appendage, which has Grand Avenue as its southern boundary, Ouachita Avenue as its southeast boundary, Prospect Avenue and Pecan Street as its northwest boundary and Rose and Hazel streets as its northeast boundary.
District 1 would move as far south as a three-block area bound by Hobson Street to the south, Lacey Street to the west and North Patterson Street to the east. South is the only direction the district can move, as the city limits make up its north, east and west borders.
The working map that placed Dobbs-Smith and Garcia’s addresses outside their current districts doesn’t extend District 1 to Hobson. It expands it across Orange Street and down Quapaw Avenue, taking in Dobbs-Smith’s address. That map focuses on grouping communities with similar interests and characteristics in the same district, a priority District 1 Director Erin Holliday said should be given more weight than keeping incumbents in their districts.
“I think making these little islands within a district is something that at a minimum is unethical,” she told the board. “Based on gerrymandering, I think it’s something that could be challenged and should be challenged.”
The Garland County Election Commission was responsible for drawing the city’s political lines prior to a 2013 law that shifted the responsibility to the city board. The Legislature amended the law earlier this year to put county election boards in charge of drawing municipalities’ political lines after the 2030 census.
“Staff does not relish this task,” City Manager Bill Burrough told the board. “It’s one that I would much rather the election commission or someone else do. We’ve done the best we could with the task we were given. Now we seek your guidance.”