CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Corpus Christi City Council members appear to have settled on a City redistricting plan.
It was one of the proposals voted on at Tuesday's City Council meeting.
In addition to the Mayor, there are 8 City Council members. Three of them are considered to be “Members At-Large,” and the other five serve specific districts.
This goal is to divide the population in those districts more evenly. Each time there is a new census taken, city leaders look at the numbers and determine whether any adjustments need to be made.
The City Charter requires that each of the five City Council districts have as close to the same number of people as is practical.
That way, there is equal voter representation, with no one district being much larger or much smaller than the others. With a population of nearly 318,000 people, that optimum number in this case works out to be 63,580 people per district.
The 2020 census showed that some tweaking needed to be done in order to achieve that balance. Based on that, the City Council hosted seven public information sessions throughout the city. At those meetings, they invited residents to provide input and submit their own redistricting plans.
Each district will lose some of its voting precincts and gain others.
The exception is District 1 served by Councilman Billy Lerma, which will pick up 3 ½ precincts without losing any. Councilman Ben Molina’s District 2 will incorporate 5 ½ new precincts, while only losing part of a precinct.
Late Tuesday afternoon, council members made additional moves with some of the precincts.
The council passed an amended first reading of the ordinance, but it was not unanimous. If it passes the second reading next week the new districts will be adopted immediately.
Fore more information regarding the maps, click here.
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