Dallas City Council Redistricting Updates 7/26/11

Last nights meeting had some tense moments, but the following demographics, produced by the map below the chart, appeared to have been generally well received. (Click on chart to enlarge.)

There are 6 places in the map below where you will find that lines have been erased with white-out and new lines have been inserted. (Click on the map to see this more clearly.) These are the 6 areas where modifications are needed to wPlan03 to achieve the above demongraphic statistics.

Please note that the above map had changes made in 6 locations to produce the significantly improved percentages, up 7 percentage points, for Black voting age population in District 4 when compared with the version of wPlan03 presented to the Commission. This was achieved by following the requests of residents of Uptown Dallas to reunify their area of Dallas.  The northern boundary of District 4 was moved south from Turtle Creek to Thomas Avenue with the result that almost 8,000 in mostly Anglo population was moved from District 4 into District 14.  This necessitated 5 of the 6 corrections that were made to the original wPlan03.  That original wPlan03 is in the data base of maps being considered by the Redistricting Commission.

This change, plus one other minor change to District 8, moved the average Black voting age population (VAP) percentage for the three majority Black districts from 60.25% to 62.70%. 

Additional changes were done this morning to the western edge of District 13 in response to concerns by the District 13 Commissioner.  By moving the western boundary of District 13 from Marsh to Webb Chapel the Hispanic VAP has now risen a total of 3.66 percentage points in District 6 to 66.05%.  This led to a rise of half a percentage point, to 62.43%, as the average for the percentages of Hispanic VAP in the 5 majority Hispanic districts in the modified wPlan03.

No other map being considered by the Dallas City Council Redistricting  Commission is even close to the level of minority representation possible with these modifications to wPlan03: 62.70% Black VAP average in 3 districts and 62.43% Hispanic VAP average in 5 districts.  Wplan03 also continues to be the most compact map being considered of all the maps that also have 8 minority districts. 

Eight minority districts should be the minimum number of minority districts in any Dallas City Council map considered, and they should be strong districts, with VAP averages above 60%, unless someone manipulates the maps to make them weak.