Residents to play role in redistricting

Panel seeks input on new boundaries for council districts

Many who live on the North Side likely will be shifted into a new City Council district as a group of residents begins to draw new boundaries.

A preliminary map moves Woodlawn Lake residents on San Antonio’s near Northwest Side to a different City Council district. It also splits two neighborhood associations in District 9 on the far North Side between two districts.

But the redistricting process is just beginning, and this is the first time residents will play a direct role in creating a new map for San Antonio City Council districts.

San Antonio City Council members appointed a redistricting advisory committee that will recommend boundary changes for City Council districts to account for growth over the last decade. The newly formed committee — made up of 23 people appointed by Mayor Ron Nirenberg and City Council members — met this week to discuss two initial plans and their criteria for proposed new City Council maps.

The U.S. requires redistricting every 10 years to account for population changes seen in new Census data. Districts must be roughly equal in population and cannot discriminate against minority voters. Since San Antonio’s population has grown over the last decade, that means each district should be around the ideal size of 143,494 people. Legally, the size of each district can deviate no more than 10 percent over or under that ideal size.

An outside team of attorneys with Austin-based Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta drew up the two initial plans, and the city attorney’s office joined them for a presentation with the committee.

“This is a launching point for the work you all are engaging in,”

said Iliana Castillo Daily, an assistant city attorney who is leading the office’s redistricting work. “Just because we’re proposing these two different paths today doesn’t mean at the end (what) we’re expecting y’all to create to look like them identically or even remotely like them.”

The committee and the city want to hear from residents about how changes — like shifting Woodlawn Lake from District 7 to District 1 — would impact them. It’s important for the committee to get public feedback on what communities they feel most connected to and how their neighborhoods have changed in the last decade, Castillo Daily said.

But City Council still holds the authority to give final approval to the new map, per city charter. Nirenberg expects the council to approve or vote down the committee’s recommendation without making changes to it in hopes of building trust in the independence of the new process.

Moving boundaries

The essential task in redistricting

is to balance the population sizes of all the districts, said Syd Falk, an attorney with the Bickerstaff firm.

District 8, on the far Northwest Side, is the largest by population and has to shrink. District 5, on the near West Side, has the smallest population and must expand. The two maps make few changes to Districts 2, 6 and 10 and no changes to Districts 3 and 4.

“We are pushing population from the northern districts into the center city districts,” Falk said.

While shifting population around, the map proposals also need to consider the impact of moving heavily Hispanic neighborhoods into different districts so as not to dilute their voting power. The city must abide by those rules to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

“These two plans illustrate both that you can balance fairly minimal changes but also the kinds of changes that have different effects you need to pay attention to,” Falk told committee members.

Members will begin to draw new maps themselves in the coming months, using specialized software and working with the outside counsel and the city attorney’s

office.

When they click and drag a boundary on the map to make a change, a chart below will display how that specific shift changes the population size of a district and how it changes the racial and ethnic makeup of a district.

Aside from population size and racial demographics, some committee members expressed the importance of keeping tight-knit communities together and understanding how a neighborhood views itself, which impacts how people might want to be represented on City Council.

Frances Gonzalez, appointed to represent District 7 on the committee, wanted to access data on how neighborhoods have changed over the last decade.

“Over the last 20 years, there’s been such a shift in our inner-city neighborhoods because of projects and programs that weren’t about redistricting, but they were about revitalization,” she said. “Districts have shifted and changed in terms of ethnicity, race — positive or negative.”

Falk said they might not have such detailed data to show those shifts, but that’s where public comment and engagement come in — residents need to share what

they know about their own communities.

How to participate

The meeting was held in a hybrid format that blended in-person and virtual participation because of ongoing concerns about the highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19. Residents and committee members alike may continue to participate remotely or in person at future meetings, depending on how virus surges play out.

Anyone can create their own version of a new City Council map to submit to the committee for consideration.

There are some conditions, though. To have a map officially recognized alongside others, it must:

Be submitted in writing to the Redistricting Advisory Committee

Redistrict the entire city of San Antonio, not just one district or area

Show the total population and voting age population by race or ethnicity for each proposed City Council district based on 2020 Census data

Follow the guidelines and principles the committee will use, which are online at www.sabexarcountmein.org/

Community-impact/redistricting

If a submitted map meets those requirements, it will be posted online alongside other map proposals for committee consideration and public review. If it doesn’t, the committee still will consider the feedback.

The city will keep copies of proposed maps at libraries for in-person review for those who can’t easily access the internet.

Officials confirmed maps will be available at Las Palmas Library in District 5 and Igo Library in District 8. They are looking for two more libraries to provide the maps.

The redistricting advisory committee will meet and hear public feedback on a new map through May. City Council is expected to vote on their recommendation later this summer, and the new boundaries will be effective for the 2023 City Council elections.

View a list of committee members and upcoming meetings online at www.sabexarcountmein.org/ Committee/redistricting. Proposed maps will eventually be posted on site.