The Appleton Redistricting Committee met 09/27/2021 and reviewed three ward and redistricting proposals that city staff had prepared.
All the committee members were present. Traditionally, the mayor and staff members on the committee do not vote. Voting members consisted of Alderpersons Matt Reed (District 8 ), Katie Van Zeeland (District 5), William Siebers (District 1), Vered Meltzer (District 2), and Michael Smith (District 10).
Although not on the committee, Alderpersons Denise Fenton (District 6) and Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) were also present.
Clerk Kami Lynch explained, “In a perfect world, we would have liked to make one ward plan and then move those wards within the districts. It just doesn’t work that way.” Therefore, each redistricting plan had a specific ward plan attached to the proposed district lines; the wards and districts were package deal.
The purpose of the meeting was to get some consensus from the committee regarding (1) which option they preferred and (2) whether or not they wanted to renumber the districts in a more ordered manner.
Clerk Lynch said that once the committee decided which option they preferred, city staff would then then take time to refine and finalize it before bringing it back to the committee to vote on and then send on to the Common Council.
Each of the proposals conformed as much as possible to the statutory principles they had discussed at the previous meeting. There were a few wards that didn’t meet the minimum 800 population either because they didn’t have any population or they were an island territory, but those were all exceptions. There were also a couple smaller wards that had to be separated because they were in a separate school district.
The issue of alderpersons being drawn out of their districts was touched on briefly, mostly just to discuss what the policy was in response to that situation, but it was not discussed in an in-depth manner. As had been laid out in the previous Redistricting Committee meeting the lines needed to be redrawn to conform to certain statutory requirements including compactness, contiguity, and ideal population. The locations of sitting elected representatives are not one of the statutory requirements. However, I would have to think that that issue was on the mind of every alderperson as they reviewed these proposals. Option A was the only proposal that did not result in any sitting alderpersons being displaced. Alderpersons Meltzer, Joe Martin (District 4) Fenton, Reed, Kristin Alfheim (District 11), Hartzheim, and Chad Doran (District 15) each faced the prospect of being drawn out of their districts in one of the other two options.
***SPOILER ALERT*** The committee opted to go with Plan A.
Alderperson Siebers kicked off the questions by asking how staff came up with the population figures for the districts. The population of District 1 was 5,210 in Option A, 4,685 in Option B, and 5,210 in Option C, and the ideal population for a district was 4,967.
Clerk Lynch answered that although the idea population of a district was 4,967, obviously not every district could be that ideal population because of the ward and census tract requirements. The populations of districts did very a bit but they tried to get every district as close to that ideal number while maybe also leaving some room for growth in some of the areas.
Alderperson Siebers asked where Appleton’s greatest growth potential was.
Clerk Lynch said that they expected District 7 to grow and there were also some multi-family development proposals in Districts 1 and 2 so they tried to take that expected growth into account when developing the plan.
Alderperson Siebers asked if the southern part of the city was locked in or if there was still room for growth there.
Mayor Woodford said there was some potential there, but not as much as in other districts. The more likely kind of development was multi-family housing through the downtown corridor as well as continued subdivision development predominantly on the north side. The city was mostly locked in on the west and east.
Alderperson Van Zeeland wanted to clarify that the estimated future population was not included in the population numbers listed on the proposals.
Clerk Lynch confirmed that was correct. The population numbers listed on the proposals were rough estimate based on the information they had.
Alderperson Hartzheim said that one of the goals of the redistricting was to try to follow the lines of the county supervisory districts. It looked to her that Option A followed Outagamie County’s proposed lines better than the other two plans.
Clerk Lynch responded that all of the plans do follow the county supervisory district lines except for a couple areas on the north side and south side where the city is asking Outagamie County and Calumet County respectively to change. For example, on the north side, Broadway is a school district divider, so the city would like the county line to conform to that.
There was then some discussion about a small neighborhood next to Riverside Cemetery and Highway 96 that had been added to District 13 in the proposals, but it was separate from the rest of District 13 and didn’t seem to make sense for it to be a part of District 13. It was currently a part of District 2, and, per Alderperson Meltzer, it consisted of two houses on the other side of a vacated road. The most registered voters it had ever had was 4, and it didn’t really fit with any district.
Clerk Lynch said it had been put in District 13 because that conformed with the supervisory district boundary.
Alderperson Reed said that at their last meeting they had talked about the importance of using natural boundary lines. Option A seemed to have as much continuity with the river as any other plan and the district lines seemed to coincide with current district lines more than Options B and C. He was not a big advocate of change for change’s sake and stated, “I’d be of the opinion, if we can make this work why change it dramatically?” He thought Option A would affect fewer people in terms of what district they ended up being in.
Clerk Lynch said that Option A had been built off of the city’s existing ward plan so it was the most consistent with the current plan.
Alderperson Fenton didn’t want to put anybody on the spot but wondered if staff had any data on how many people would be moved out of their original districts and into new aldermanic districts. Looking at some of the plans it seemed like very large chunks of people would be moved out of their original districts.
There was some discussion about whether or not they could gather that data. It seemed that it was possible but it would involve an extra process. Mayor Woodford suggested that, in order to preserve staff time, they not have staff gather those numbers unless those numbers were going to be the defining issue on which the committee based its decision between two options.
Clerk Lynch also pointed out that some of the shifts in people were probably because they had to contain those census blocks into wards. They could not just scoop in three homes here or there and put them in a specific district because homes were contained to census tracts which had to be contained in wards. That was why some areas looked funny because the census tract was perhaps long or diagonal or narrow, and the city couldn’t break that tract up.
Alderperson Meltzer asked if the city would potentially have to hold special elections depending on how many people moved in and out of a district or whether or not the current alderperson ended up in a different district. “Is the cost of that something we’re supposed to consider in this process?”
Clerk Lynch said that when developing the plans staff did not look at where current alderpersons live or take that into consideration. That is not one of the statutory practices or principles of redistricting. Instead, they were trying to do what was best for the whole. In the instance that an alderperson is redistricted out of their district, they could serve through the end of their term and they if they wanted to run again, they would have to run in the new district in which they lived. The biggest challenge to alderpersons being redistricted out of their district would be from an administrative standpoint figuring out how I guess the biggest challenge to that would be administratively how that was–how they could still be communicated with via email and how residents within the district would be made aware of the situation.
Alderperson Hartzheim said that knowing the current District 13 and its neighborhoods and how they work, she had problems with Options B and C and didn’t think they made sense based on how District 13 was currently. She thought those options meandered rather than staying compact. She had also been concerned about the supervisory district lines but maybe that would not be a problem in light of the city pushing back on some things there. She also thought that in Options B and C there was not a lot of compactness in the Calumet County corner of town. Like Alderperson Reed, she preferred Option A because change for the sake of change didn’t make sense and she also thought Option A did a better job of keeping the districts compact and contiguous.
Option A 
Option B 
Option C
Mayor Woodford asked if Clerk Lynch could talk the committee through compactness and how it applied.
Clerk Lynch answered that compactness meant that the areas, districts, and wards within the districts are reasonably geographically compact and the distance between one side of a ward or district not too far away from another side. In Option A the south side of the city tended to be more compact and the north side less so. In each plan, adjusting compactness in one area resulted in less compactness in another area. Staff tried out many different iterations and these three were the best they could come up with that still met the ideal population per district and per ward.
There was a discussion about the big island of territory in the upper left-hand corner of the map. On the Option B map it was not colored in but Clerk Lynch thought it was intended to go with District 7 in that map.
There are sometime moments of lightheartedness in meetings. Alderperson Meltzer joked that we could trade that for the hole in the middle of District 6.
When the committee members wondered why it had 0 population Clerk Lynch informed them it was a landfill to which Alderperson Hartzheim joked that there were no voters to worry about and Mayor Woodford dryly noted “it’s not an anticipated area for population growth.”
Alderperson Smith expressed a preference for Option C. He liked that in that option District 10’s polling location would actually be within the district boundaries.
Clerk Lynch said that polling place location was not taking into consideration when they made the maps, and they likely would not change the places the city uses as polling locations, but they might have to change which districts they service depending on. It’s difficult to find polling places, so they intend to keep using the ones they have.
The committee had a brief discussion of the timeline and next steps of the committee’s recommendation and Mayor Woodford reminded them that the purpose of the meeting was to narrow down one of the three options so that staff could then finalize the wards within the districts. He thought that this would be a good time for committee members to bring up any changes they would like to see or ask for additional research they felt was necessary.
Alderperson Fenton asked if there would be an opportunity for public input between the committee recommendation and the Common Council’s final vote as had been available when Outagamie County redrew its supervisory lines.
Clerk Lynch said that a public hearing is part of the county redistricting process but not the municipal process. The public was certainly welcome to provide their comments to the redistricting committee members.
Alderperson Van Zeeland did have a concern regarding a little island of territory down by Districts 5 and 15. It only stayed with District 5 in Option B, but she would prefer that it stay with District 5 in the final plan regardless of which option they chose. She had a good relationship as an alderperson with many of the people in that area and she thought they would prefer to remain in District 5.
Alderperson Reed pointed out that in Option B Districts 1, 6, and 7 seemed to experience an almost 10% reduction in population as compared to the other two plans.
One of the committee members said they were taking anticipated growth into consideration for Districts 1 and 7 and wondered if there was anticipated growth for District 6 as well.
Clerk Lynch was not aware of any expected growth in District 6. That district was a little bit more challenging than the other districts because there’s a big chunk missing from the middle of it.
The committee then decided to go through each option and point out concerns and make comments.
Option A
- This was Alderperson Van Zeeland’s top choice, but she wanted that island territory to stay in her district.
- Alderperson Hartzheim didn’t think it made sense for the small island she had brought up earlier to be in District 13 and that it might make more sense for them to stay with District 2 since those residents were already familiar with being represented by District 2.
- Alderperson Meltzer was concerned about where the district lines were drawn in relation to the Leona Street Pond area and wanted to make sure that the homeowners in that area didn’t end up in a District where they were the only homeowners surrounded by commercial property
Option B
- Alderperson Hartzheim didn’t think this was a good arrangement for the north side of the city, and it left the north east corner of District 13 feeling a little like an island.
- Alderperson Meltzer didn’t like the sprawl on the north side of the city and the way District 7, in particular, was so spread out.
- Alderperson Fenton did not like that there were no city parks within the boundaries of District 6 in this plan.
Attorney Behrens asked if any of the members of the committee favored Option B over Option A. No one responded affirmatively.
Option C
- Alderperson Smith liked that the distribution of population across the western districts seemed more balanced.
- The section of District 13 that had felt like an island in Option B was placed with District 7 in Option C, but Alderperson Hartzheim felt doing that made it feel even more like an island and that District 7 was very spread out
- Alderperson Van Zeeland felt that Option C looked more compact until it got to Calumet County at which point everything felt thrown together in a horrendous fashion.
- Alderperson Hartzheim thought it didn’t fit the Outagamie County preliminary supervisory districts plan very well, although maybe that would change after Appleton pushed back on things.
- Alderpersons Reed, Van Zeeland, and Meltzer didn’t like how District 15 was drawn.
Clerk Lynch said there were some goofy census tracts on the south side of the city which influenced the way things looked down there.
It seemed to come down to a choice between Options A and C. They took an informal vote and Alderpersons Reed, Van Zeeland, Siebers, and Meltzer all preferred Option A while Alderperson Smith preferred Option C.
Clerk Lynch summarized the items of concern the committee had raised regarding Option A.
- Look at the island population that’s on the south side currently in District 15 seeing if it best fits there.
- Look at the supervisory line for the little sliver that’s in Option A just north of ward 54 to see if that would fit better within District 3 or perhaps District 2 or where it is in District 13.
- Clarify the boundary between District 13 and 2 right by Leona Pond, to zoom in on that boundary line and see where it best fits.
Clerk Lynch then moved on to the question of whether they wanted to maintain the current District numbers or renumber the districts in a more sequential order.
Alderperson Van Zeeland asked if they knew why the numbers were the way they currently were.
Clerk Lynch answered that they seem to have been built up this way over the last 20 years over the last couple redistrictings.
Alderperson Van Zeeland didn’t have a problem leaving the districts numbered the way they currently are.
Alderperson Hartzheim pointed out that if they did renumber them, they should try to keep even numbered districts even and odd numbered districts odd because of how the city alternates its aldermanic elections for odd and even numbered districts.
Alderperson Fenton thought that turnout in local elections is already low. Redistricting and then trying to teach people that they are in a completely differently numbered district could negatively impact participation.
Alderperson Smith said people regularly asked what ward they were in as opposed to what district. He was happy to leave the districts as they were.
Alderperson Meltzer was concerned that renumbering the districts might result in additional administrative costs in terms of having to redo charts, tables, and plan. Although the current numbering scheme was not necessarily optimal, it didn’t make sense to spend money to renumber it and also end up with residents being confused and not knowing where to vote.
Mayor Woodford concurred and didn’t think that it was worth the investment to renumber and provide public education and make internal changes. “The only real benefit that I see is that it would make a little more sense if there was some order to it, like the high numbers were on one end of the city and the lower numbers on the other on a north/south axis or east/west axis, but as you think about—as I think about that even, where would you start and what’s 1 and then…? That itself would be quite an exercise.”
The committee decided to meet again on October 11 at which point Clerk Lynch would be able to present a final plan in response to the feedback the committee gave and with the wards all correctly numbered.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=895968&GUID=0DC3C7D9-C93B-4D1A-9FE8-0E1E129B0280
Be the first to reply