City officials and members of the Reapportionment and Redistricting Ad Hoc Committee debated over the possibility of changing the current number of districts within the city of Madison Tuesday night.
Ald. Bridget Maniaci, District 2, said she looked into the size of Madison's Common Council and issues of redistricting for over a year. Maniaci said she is advocating the number of city districts to be reduced from the current number of 20 to 18. This is necessary in order to preserve the integrity of downtown, Maniaci said.
Altering the number of city districts would, in turn, alter the number of alders.
However, Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway, District 15, said she does not want to alter the number of districts unless the findings from statistical data and geographical studies recommend the number of districts change. There needs to be a clear and strong reason, Rhodes-Conway said.
""In my mind, our recommendations to council in terms of number of districts is purely based on the district and ward work we're about to embark on,"" Rhodes-Conway said.
Rhodes-Conway said even small changes in the number of districts could have negitive implications for Madison residents to be represented by a diverse government body.
""To me, that's the strongest argument for not going down on the number of districts,"" Rhodes-Conway said.
Ald. Tim Bruer, District 14, agreed with Rhodes-Conway and said the districts should not be changed unless there are compelling reasons based on had data.
Committee members also went over possible guidelines and topics to keep in mind when deciding how to redistrict Madison. Some of the guiding principles include looking at community interests, neighborhood associations and the demographics of a given district.
Committee member Brian Grady said the data necessary to figure out how to redistrict will come from the U.S. Census Bureau's release of the Census population for Madison. This data will provide population totals, as well as other data such as race and voting age.
The census data is expected to be released sometime this week, Grady said.
