The Clark County Council voted on a rollback of sorts in its ongoing council redistricting process, as the council selected a boundary map that was initially created by an independent committee.
During an April 19 meeting, the council voted 3-0 to approve a map supported by the majority of the Clark County Redistricting Committee. A public hearing on the map is scheduled for April 27. The map, dubbed “B2” during the now-disbanded committee’s process, failed to meet the four-fifths threshold for the committee’s official approval, but was still forwarded to the council for consideration. That led to a protracted process where the county council decided to send the maps under consideration back to the committee, experienced deadlocks in voting and received accusations of council meddling in the process.
During an April 13 meeting, the council voted to direct staff to generate a map based on what was put in front of voters in November without considering where current councilors live. The meeting was a public hearing on another map which took that into account, which resulted in public outcry in most of the testimony received.
Currently, the map in effect is one voters approved in an amendment to the county’s home rule charter, which changed the number of districts from four to five. The amendment also made the formerly at-large council chair position an appointed position by the members of the council.
That map had flaws. The most evident was that the map did not take into account updated population data from the 2020 Census. In the voter-approved map, District 5 was more than 5,400 people below the equal-distribution target, roughly five times the deviation from the target deemed acceptable.
The council tasked Paul Newman, a Clark County Geographic Information Systems analyst who designed some of the previous alternative maps, to craft a new one based on what voters approved. In that map, District 5’s deviation was only 468 people below target.
Newman explained the map supported by most of the redistricting committee had about half the amount of deviation from the target populations as the newest map across all districts, though the one generated for the council had more geographically compact districts. As district populations get closer to each other, how compact they are start to drop, Newman explained.
Newman said both the new map and the one supported by most of the committee had the same deviation of only 12 precincts shifting districts from the voter-approved map.
Councilor Gary Medvigy moved to go back to the B2 map, which shifted districts of two of the four current councilors. That map shifted council chair Karen Bowerman into Medvigy’s District 4, and councilor Julie Olson into the currently vacant District 5.
Councilor Temple Lentz, who initially voted against going with the committee’s map, said it is “unfortunate” the council considered that map after they voted to recuse themselves from involvement in the process the prior week.
“The process has been compromised since the beginning, when even the past chair (of Clark County Council) started that compromise process by interfering in the selection in the redistricting committee,” Lentz said.
Lentz was referring to former chair Eileen Quiring O’Brien, who resigned in March.
Lentz noted the public pushback council has received. The staff-generated map before the council had the least interference, she said.
“This is the map that we should advance and I’m disappointed that is not the motion on the floor,” Lentz said.
She referred to the April 13 motion she made which led to the newest map presented. Lentz said the council ignored the part of the motion that stated adjustments could be made to the map presented at the time. Going with a prior map was not included in the motion.
“If the council moves the B2 map forward today, the council is not doing what it voted to do last week,” Lentz said.
The motion at the April 19 meeting initially received a 2-1 vote, so it did not pass. Following a discussion on the next steps the council could take, and with a looming deadline to approve the districts, Lentz reconsidered her vote.
Though she reiterated her disagreement with the decision to go with the B2 map, the protracted nature of the process led her to relent.
“Continuing to drag this out for multiple meetings where the council appears to need to consider to put their own personal preferences before the community is ridiculous,” Lentz said.
The Clark County Council will have a special meeting at 8:30 a.m. on April 27 for a public hearing on map B2.
