Malia Riggs
Elmore Autauga News
The Prattville City Council held yet another redistricting workshop Monday night to discuss further concerns regarding the city council redistricting lines.
The last redistricting workshop was held in early August and went to vote before the city council at the Sept. 3city council meeting. In a 3-3 vote, the ordinance for the redistricting failed to pass, thus sending them back to the drawing board with the three respective maps that have been drafted.
Municipal redistricting occurs after each Census, which happens every 10 years. Local officials are required to redraw the boundaries of their districts to best represent their constituents, from which people elect the City Council, and to account for population and demographic shifts since the previous census.
Due to the recent 2020 census and a large population influx, the City of Prattville has continued the process of redistricting they started the in June of 2021.
The last redistricting map was adopted in the 2010 census, Prattville City Planner Scott Stephens stated. The redistricting needs to happen to ensure the one person one vote principle within each district. This is to ensure that every vote is heard within each district.
Stephens confirmed that the number breaks down to about 5,397 people within each council district. However, the current districts house vastly different numbers than the projected redistricting due to the amount Prattville has grown since 2010.
Nathan Willingham with Slaughter and Willingham Urban Planning Consultants also attended the meeting where his software could make changes for the council members in real time to reflect the number to the respective changes the council proposed. Willingham was able to move numbers and exhaust the possibilities of how and where to move district lines and how that would affect other districts in terms of numbers.
At Monday night’s meeting there were slight changes made to district 6, per the request of Councilor Robert Strichik, where district 6 would obtain more of Wetumpka Street. Strichik stated he works with and hears from his constituents near that neighborhood and would like to keep them in his district.
District 7 represented by council president Lora Lee Boone, and District 2, represented by Marcus Jackson, also had slight modifications due to reaching the ideal percentage of constituents within each district.
Jackson posed the question of why this map has several split blocks, meaning that a block is split with one side being in one district, and the other in another district. Stephens answered the question stating that in general it helps to make the numbers work.
In the current map, there are three split blocks. Willingham confirmed Monday evening that there are seven split blocks in the Alternate Map 3, where the councilors made the majority of their changes.
Willingham stated that he has appreciated the public input, because the maps from the public and feedback from the council help to ensure the city is represented well.
Once the map is voted on, and everything is submitted to the probate office, information will be sent to each voter in all districts. That will include information on how and where to cast a vote and other pertinent municipal election information.
Currently there’s a benchmark plan in place with Slaughter and Willingham Associates Planning Firm for the new city council districts, using the 2020 census block numbers, input from the council members and the community that have either given input or sent in their own district maps. The Benchmark plan is publicly available online and can be found on the City of Prattville website or by clicking https://prattvilleal.gov/redistricting-2024/.
