Politics & Government
Council Considers Plans for Redistricting
The redistricting commission presented three options to the city council at Tuesday's meeting.
The College Park Redistricting Commission presented three possible plans to the city council Tuesday night to reapportion citizens among the city’s four districts.
Members of the commission supported all three plans.
“We’re pretty proud of all of these maps,” Commission chair Robert Day said.
The council, however, asked the most questions about the most forward-thinking and least conservative plan, Plan C.
“We all seemed to be in support of Plan C,” Councilwoman Denise Mitchell said.
Plan C took likely population growth over the next decade into account when creating district lines. Planners incorporated growing areas like the Mazza Grandmarc apartments into the smallest districts to help even out the districts over time.
It also grouped all residence halls on the University of Maryland’s North Campus in
District 4.
The Council will further discuss the plans at its meeting next Tuesday and eventually hold a public hearing for discussion before it votes whether to make changes.
College Park has four city council districts. District 1 grew 10 percent and District 4 grew 27 percent since the last census. District 2 lost five percent of its population and District 3 lost 11 percent.
Significant changes in each district forced the Commission to revamp the district map.
The census calculated that College Park had a population of 30,413. The Commission counted 31,907 people, including students in residence halls and new student apartment buildings that the census missed.
In the last election, voters in District 1 voted more than voters in other districts. In a city with a diverse population of students and families, balancing the composition of each district was challenging, commission members said. They tried to balance the diverse communities among districts.
One of the challenges was having so many students in such a small geographic area.
“There are different pockets of lifestyles,” Day said. “We wanted to try to balance that through the city.”
If approved, the redistricting would take effect August 2, 2011, in time for the election season.