Oklahoma City Council OKs ward map based on ’20 census
Over 100,000 Oklahoma City residents now live in a new ward, thanks to city council’s approval this week of a new ward map after a months-long redistricting process.
The city sought public comment on the proposed map through in-person and virtual town halls, meetings with city staff and through email. The public comment period yielded underwhelming results, with only seven comments through email or online form, and six residents at an in-person feedback meeting in late January.
Former assistant city manager Kenton Tsoodle said at a March 1 council meeting that no changes were made based on any of the comments.
At the same meeting, Tsoodle spoke to one request from the Windsor district to keep most of its residents within Ward 3. The district — whose boundaries are Interstate 44 west to Peniel between NW 20 and NW 36 — is split between Wards 2, 3 and 6, but a large portion moved from Ward 3 to Ward 2 with the new map.
“It was one of those that we looked at and couldn’t find a way to make the math work in that area without making wholesale changes to other places in the ward map,” Tsoodle said.
With Oklahoma City’s overall population growth of 101,055 people between the 2010 and 2020 census counts, the city determined the average ward population needed to be 85,132 residents, up from 72,500 in 2011. The wards could be 2% above or below this average, making the new wards range in population from 83,738 to 86,400.
This meant shifting a lot of people out of Wards 3 and 8, which each grew to hold more than 100,000 people each in the last decade.
The new ward map also could not un
seat current councilmembers and had to keep wards as “contiguous and compact” as possible.
Among the most notable changes on the new map are Ward 8’s new western boundaries of N Council Road and N Rockwell Avenue. It had extended to N Sara Road and the Northwest Expressway.
A southern portion of Ward 1 — within the borders of NW 10, N Czech Hall Road, Reno Avenue and N Rockwell — will be ceded to Ward 3. Ward 7 residents living south of SE 15 will now be in Ward 4.
Resolutions to create a redistricting oversight committee and to create two additional wards — giving OKC 10 wards with 68,105 residents in each — both failed 5-to-3 at a November council meeting. The last time Oklahoma City added wards was in 1966.