Appleton’s redistricting committee met 09/20/2021. This was an informational meeting at which no action was taken.
The committee consists of City Clerk Kami Lynch, City Attorney Christopher Behrens, Mayor Jake Woodford, City GIS Specialist Jess Schneider, City Assessor DeAnn Brosman, Alderperson and Council President Matt Reed (District 8 ), Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2), and Alderperson William Siebers (District 1).
Alderperson and Council Vice President Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) and Alderperson Michael Smith (District 10) are also committee members but they were not present for this meeting.
Clerk Lynch explained that the purpose of the meeting was mostly to go over the redistricting principles and guidelines before they kick off the redistricting process. A redistricting guide was included in the packet, and Clerk Lynch touched on the highlights.
Redistricting happens every 10 years, after the census has been conducted. This year’s redistricting is different because the city received the census data later that normal due to Covid. So, the redistricting time period is condensed.
The city has grown since the last time the districts were redrawn and they are now trying to clean up those boundaries and conform the districts to meet the requirements that are set out by state statute. The boundaries are based on census blocks which are little tracks of data the city received from the census. The city cannot divide census blocks up at all, and they use those blocks to form wards and then use wards to create aldermanic districts.
Before the city can do that, the counties have to do their parts by creating the county supervisory district lines. As of 09/20/2021 Outagamie County had provided their tentative map but Calumet and Winnebago Counties had not, so Appleton was waiting for those and doing some preparation on the backend before they could really dive into the redistricting process.
The redistricting process is influenced by several considerations
Population. They want to make sure that each city ward has between 800 and 3,200 people in it, although there are exceptions to that for island territories and potential growth areas.
Compactness. Some of the city’s current wards don’t meet that compactness standard due to how the city has grown and some of the islands that we’ve annexed over the years, so they want to dry to clean those up during this redistricting.
Contiguousness. Wards all have to be next to each other, except for island territories.
They hope that through the redistricting process they will end up having fewer wards than the 64 Appleton current has.
The city staff planned to maintain 15 aldermanic districts with just under 5,000 residents per district which would add up to the approximately 75,000 population of Appleton. Clerk Lynch said that if committee members had different thoughts on that, they were open to hearing them, but she thought it would be easiest to stay with 15 districts.
Alderperson Meltzer asked what would motive them to want to increase or decrease the number of districts.
Clerk Lynch didn’t have all of the historical data as to why the city last moved from 16 districts to 15 but she thought the main reason to adjust the number would be if they couldn’t get the number of aldermanic districts to fit with the number of wards or if the city had seen a huge increase of decrease in population. Appleton stayed relatively steady over the past few years; there was some growth but in smaller increments and no districts had exploded with growth that would require an increase in representation.
Mayor Woodford summed things up by saying, “So, in other words, if we can hold to the principles that you’ve laid out in the packet with the existing number of districts, that would be the priority. So, changing as little as possible in terms of configuration of the Council. Is that an accurate way of putting it?”
Clerk Lynch confirmed it was accurate. She also noted that maintaining the current number of districts was beneficial in terms of polling places and elections as well. Obviously, not all 5,000 people in a district would be registered voters because some will be under the age of 18, but they usually see around 2,000-3,000 per district. It’s good to try to keep the population at each polling place equal and manageable.
There are some challenges regarding the redistricting.
The big one was time. Normally the redistricting process would happen in the spring. Census data would be release in March or April to the counties, and the counties would draw their county supervisory district lines. The city can’t really do anything until they get that data from the counties because they may have to adjust their wards to fit within county supervisory districts. A ward needs to be fully within one county supervisory district and within one school district. It was also stated elsewhere in the meeting that aldermanic districts could be split between county supervisory districts, but a ward could not be split.
Outagamie County had really moved their process along and adopted a tentative supervisory district plan the previous week, which had allowed Appleton to use that data to start building its ward. But Appleton is still waiting on Calumet and Winnebago counties who were going to hopefully adopt their tentative supervisory district plans later that week.
Alderperson Siebers asked her to explain what she meant by “tentative”.
Clerk Lynch said that once the counties draw their lines, they’ll sed them to the city to draw its lines, but the city may find some discrepancies. For example, the city had noticed that one of the county’s lines travelled along the north side of a road and then dipped down to the south side. So, when the city catches errors like that they can kick it back to the county to change. The city might also have things they disagree on and go back and forth with the county about it until they’re both happy.
The agenda packet included a map that showed the city’s current aldermanic districts and overall population growth and the areas where it decreased. This was what they were going to work with as they formed the ward lines. There has been a lot of growth on Appleton’s north side as well as a lot on the southeast side in Calumet County. The other areas were up and down and in between.
The goal was for staff to present a couple option to the committee for review. They had already been drawing ward lines to conform to the Outagamie County supervisory district lines; although that work was not done. Every time they think that they’re close then they find something else that ends up changing everything. It is an ongoing puzzle. Once they have the Supervisory Districts for Winnebago and Calumet Counties, they’ll be able to provide the committee with a ward plan and an aldermanic district plan. The ward and district plans go hand in hand because they might have to adjust a ward boundary to change an aldermanic district, which is why they plan to bring both to the committee at the same time. They don’t want to approve a ward plan and then have to change it to line up with the new aldermanic districts. Clerk Lynch noted that “there will be significant changes probably to every aldermanic district. It’s not like one will really stay the same. A lot of them will be modified in some way or another.”
Mayor Woodford wanted to make sure it was clear that as they redrew the ward and district lines that staff would be relying on the principles and regulations she had previously laid out and that this was really a technical exercise in terms of maximizing all of those principles and ensuring compliance. [My impression was that he was trying to make it clear that this was not a political or partisan process but that the things staff and the committee were taking into consideration really were just the issues of population, continguousness, and compactness and making sure the city adheres to state statutes.]
Clerk Lynch confirmed that. She said that the WISE-LR system they utilize in the redistricting process has tables to flag all of those components. It will let them know if a ward is too small or too lard or if it’s not contiguous.
Alderperson Meltzer asked if they were going to be taking future growth into consideration. Were there calculations for anticipated growth or were they strictly sticking with the census numbers that they have been given?
Clerk Lynch said they are trying to accommodate for that when they draw the ward lines. For example, there are a couple apartment developments in downtown Appleton that are either not completed or not filled yet where they expect to see a spike in population. So, they do want to take that into consideration because Appleton will be stuck with these lines for the next 10 years, and they want to make sure that the changes they make are not just convenient for the next year but for the next decade. Known developments, future growth areas, boundary agreements with other municipalities, and subdivisions that are being platted are all things they are taking into consideration with the creation of wards.
She also noted that as they get the supervisory district plans from the counties that some wards will have to be changed to conform with those. She gave the example of one supervisory district whose line jumped across the river.
Mayor Woodford wanted to confirm that from a levels of government standpoint, a municipality was required to adjust their boundaries to conform to the county’s lines.
Clerk Lynch said that was mostly correct but that the city could talk to the county if something really stuck out as anomalous or if they wanted the county to accommodate something like a school district. But ultimately the counties set things up and the city conforms to it.
The committee had a bit of a discussion about the best way to display the proposed new lines when they held their next meeting—side by side or via some kind of digital overlay.
Alderperson Reed asked if they knew what the county wards were.
Clerk Lynch said that counties don’t do wards, so in that respect they have things a little easier since they only have to create county districts and not wards.
They decided to hold another meeting on Monday, September 27 at which staff hoped to present a main ward and district plan and then second ward and district plan for review and comment. That was an off week for committee and Council meetings, but they wanted to push things along so that that they could make sure they meet their statutory deadline even though that will be difficult. The goad was to present a ward and district plan to the Common Council on October 20 for them to vote on. That would also stay in line with some of the counties’ timelines because they can’t finalize their plans until the city finalizes its.
Alderperson Reed wanted to make sure he understood correctly, ward lines could not overlap the county district lines.
Clerk Lynch confirmed that was correct but aldermanic districts as a whole could be in more than one county. It would be nice for residents if they didn’t straddle those in terms of not having to know their county and ward information when they go to vote, but it probably isn’t feasible to do that.
She added that the aldermanic districts have to be contiguous and as compact as possible but likely the map will still probably have some of the tails that the districts currently have, “but we are gonna try to clean it up and make it easier for people to know, kind of, where they live and where there district is based on, you know, major streets we’ll make sure a dividing line is down a street rather than down a street around a corner and…”
DeAnn asked if it was still necessary for streets, highways, and the river to divide wards.
Clerk Lynch said it was not necessary but it was more helpful to have those clear boundaries if the population fits that way.
Alderperson Meltzer asked if there was any consideration about polling places being within the districts they were servicing. A lot of District 2 constituents wonder why their polling place is in District 4.
Clerk Lynch said they don’t take polling places or where alderpersons live into consideration. The redistricting is really based on the principles outlined in the statutes. Once the district lines are drawn then they’ll evaluate what they have as a polling place, but it’s really hard to get polling places, so they might not be in a district and they don’t statutorily have to be within the district, although they do want them there for the convenience of voters. She said thee city just sent out the agreement for most of the polling places this last summer and most will continue to be polling places so the city will likely reuse those as they can and as they fit into the districts even if they are a few blocks outside the new aldermanic districts.
There were no further questions and they reiterated their plans to meeting 09/27/2021.
Mayor Woodford noted that the Redistricting Committee meeting were being lived streamed and recorded so that interested people could tune in or watch after the fact.
Clerk Lynch also added that all of the maps and proposals would be part of the agenda packet as well.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=893689&GUID=06142DAE-3B74-4A02-BA66-A7F737B0A350
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