2021-09-09 Redistricting Commission minutes (2nd Session)

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Commission’s job is to start moving these district boundaries, census block by census block, to get these populations of each council district closer to that 22,232. Now, it’s never going to be perfect. There’s various reason of geography, and not splitting communities. I think you’ll be hearing about some of those guidelines later in the meeting today. But the number that you’re looking for, the ideal is 22,232. And one of the other numbers then, is to look at the highest and the lowest. So this is where if we look at Council 5 as the highest at 11.22, and Council 7 as the lowest at minus 8.16, that is a total deviation, the difference between the two, of 19.38 percent. So a number you’ll hear is below 10 percent. That’s what courts have upheld as a reasonable deviation. Ideally, you’d make it even below that. And that’s where as you’re moving in the application, you can monitor, as you move census blocks and assign them to different council districts, you can immediately see the change in that district population and the deviation percent, and you can kind of keep track then of the difference between the highest and the smallest. So that’s a quick overview of the census data that is being used, and has been loaded. The online application is available for use. I’ll stop the video now and take any questions. Thank you. KOSSOW: Are there any questions from the Commissioners? Mr. Hustace. HUSTACE: Thank you, Chair. You talked about—just the very beginning of your presentation there—how current are the drawings of the census blocks? JONES: Those are the 2020 census blocks. HUSTACE: So my concern is, I’ve looked up the application a little bit, and I’ve seen some—and I know you mentioned that there are cases that they do not—they don’t really conform to streets, and some boundaries, but I have come across some census blocks that cross over roads and are going through different areas. And I’ve seen a couple on the map already so I do have concerns about the blocks. JONES: Well those are the blocks from the Census Bureau and I agree. Sometimes, you wonder why did they do that. Sometimes there seems to be blocks that just run down the middle of the street. There’s other blocks that yeah—particularly in the mauka areas, you get some strangely shaped census blocks. I will tell you that the council district boundaries are based on those 2020 census blocks, even though they were drawn based on the 2010 census blocks. Now, 99.9 percent of the time, it’s the same lines, but I did notice a few areas ‘cause I’m the one who did create and did this assignment of the 2020 blocks to each of the council districts. There was like half a dozen places where a census block split a boundary. But it wasn’t very much and it was in very low population areas. In fact, I think they were zero population areas. It was up in the real—the areas that don’t have much population. So that is the shape, the areas, the census blocks, the official ones that they release the counts by, that’s what we have to use. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question, but plesae, ask more if I haven’t. 12