The Best Dallas City Council Redistricting Plan yet!

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Today, 6-30-11, the final plan was presented to the Dallas Redistricting Commission for study.  Find details at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

************* Posts below are archived as of 6-30-11 **************

Using the online redistricting application for Dallas City Council, I have created this weekend the 6th and best redistricting plan yet.  It is named wPlan03, not to be confused with pPlan03 submitted over a month ago. 

WPlan03 increases minority representation potential for both Black and Hispanic communities of interest. The 5 Hispanic districts now have a voting age population that averages over 62% of the population in those 5 districts, 4 percentage points higher than the pPlan03 submitted a month ago.  The three Black districts now have voting age populations that averages over 60%, 2 percentage points higher than the pPlan03 submitted a month ago. 

The one failing of the online application is the difficulty in getting a map from it without city staff help.  Below are two photos of the design of the districts reflected in the above statistics.  These are digital photographs taken of the online map with the District numbers inserted.  (Maybe someone can show me how to get a digital map from this software.) This clearly shows where the boundary lines are. 

First, here is the map for the north side of Dallas under wPlan03 as of 6-19-11:

Here is the of the South side of Dallas under wPlan03 as of 6-19-11:

While I am certain that the compression tests for this wPlan03 will show improvement, those results will not be available until Monday afternoon at the earliest.  City staff must run those tests after wPlan03 is formally accepted for submission.  Your comments and questions are welcome: bbetzen@aol.com.

Remember, there are now two plans that will be presented before the Redistricting Commission on 6-21-11: pPlan03 submitted a month ago and wPlan24 submitted a week ago. WPlan03 is a new plan completed this weekend.  It is built on the improvements of all the plans that have gone before it, and improves those results.

Documents describing first two redistricting plans to be presented to Dallas City Council Redistricting Commission

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Today, 6-30-11, the final plan was presented to the Dallas Redistricting Commission for study.  Find details at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

************* Posts below are archived as of 6-30-11 **************

Two pdf documents have now been received that were prepared by city staff from the first two redistricting plans that will be presented to the Redistricting Commission at their next meeting.  The plans are pPlan03 and wPlan24.  These are the documents that have already been sent to the Commissioners to prepare for the 6-21-11 meeting. If you are interested in seeing these two documents please email bbetzen@aol.com. 

Please join us at the 6:00 PM meeting on Tuesday 6-21-11 in room 6SE of Dallas City Hall.  You may also sign up to make your own comments on these plans, or any other item you may want to speak to the Commission about regarding redistricting.

Fifth Dallas City Council Redistricting Plan as of 6-17-11

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On 6-30-11, an improved version of this plan was presented to the Dallas Redistricting Commission for study.  Find details for newest version down the page at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

************* Posts below are archived as of 6-30-11 **************

Following input received at the last Commission meeting, wPlan24 was redone to move districts closer to their population centers and thereby improve the compactness scores for the entire plan.  The western boudary for District 13 was moved to Marsh Lane with effects that went around the map. Compactness measurements will be secured Monday.  Here is the resulting map for pPlan12, the fifth plan done:

I am very certain that the compactness measurements for this new map will be higher than any to date.  Here are the populations statistics generated by this new map:

Work remains to be done, but the maps are getting better.  What problems do you see?

bbetzen@aol.com 

Fourth Dallas City Council Redistricting plan completed, second one submitted to city for consideration.

This afternoon, 6-14-11, I submitted a second offical redistricting plan to the city that met all requirements for acceptance. While it was my fourth plan finished, two of them have not been submitted for various reasons.  Work continues on one of those. The plan submitted, wPlan24, has many improvements from the first plan submitted almost a month ago, including that almost all of West Dallas is in one district:

Click on this map to enlarge it. Only one small area of West Dallas, east of Beckley and South of Commerce are in District 1 and not with the rest of West Dallas in District 3. Here are the statistics generated by this redistricting map. Study them closely.

Comments to this map are welcome. It is a work in progress and critical comments are especially valuable.  bbetzen@aol.com, Bill Betzen

The compactness scores for this redistricting plan were received this afternoon. (See copy below.) They are very good! The average index average score is 1.43, about 5 percentage points below the 1.50 average index score achieved by the "ideal compactness" pPlan10 that was designed last week with compactness and district population equality as the ONLY goals.  

This new plan, named pPlan24, will be formally presented next Tuesday, 6-21-11, at the 6:00 PM Dallas City Council Redistricting Commission meeting in room 6SE in City Hall. If you support the map represented in pPlan24 please come and tell the Commissioners.  Public testimony is accepted at every meeting.  You may also email your support of the plan to Dr. Ruth Morgan, Committee Chairperson, c/o Yasmin Tolliver, yasmin.tolliver@dallascityhall.com.

Four Compactness Measurements used in Dallas City Council Redistricting

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Today, 6-30-11, the final plan was presented to the Dallas Redistricting Commission for study.  Find details at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

************* Posts below are archived as of 6-30-11 **************

The staff of the Dallas City Council Redistricting office have done a wonderful job of taking the recommendations of the Chairman of the Redistricting Committee, Dr. Ruth Morgan, and others, and forming an impressive system for measuring compactness. The link they provide, click here, to explain these four measurements is required reading if you want to best understand these measurements.  This linked article also lets you know that we are certainly not the first people to struggle with redistricting.  The issues are almost identical everywhere.

Here are graphics to explain the four measurements as simply as possible. Click on any one you may want to see more clearly.

For more details go to the excellent article linked above, and here.

For the "ideal map for compactness," pPlan10, the measurements used in the spreadsheet below were generated by city staff.  I added the averages to the spreadsheet.  In the chart, area is measured in square miles and perimeter is given in miles.

Probably the most valuable single number to summarize compactness will be the average of the four "indexed" scores on the last line for each measurement.  For pPlan10 those numbers are 1.64, 1.29, 1.71 and 1.36.  Their average is 1.50, in the lower right hand corner of the spreadsheet below.  Remember, a score of 1 would mean no improvement was achieved on average with pPlan10.

Following are the compactness measurements provided by city staff: (click on chart to enlarge)

Compactness idea proposed 6-7-11 at Dallas Redistricting Commission Meeting

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Today, 6-30-11, the final plan was presented to the Dallas Redistricting Commission for study.  Find details at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

************* Posts below are archived as of 6-30-11 **************

Now that the ten public input meetings throughout Dallas are over, that does not mean that public input is over.  Every Commission meeting accepts public input.

While nobody in the audience had input for the 6-7-11 City Hall meeting, one of the commissioners asked a critical question: "Could redistricting staff make a council map wherein compactness was the priority?"  Sadly this request was lost in conversations that followed (see the video), but the idea was excellent! Here is the result:

Above is a redistricting map made with population equality and compactness being the ONLY two standards used in the design. It will be presented at the next Commissioners meeting.

While this is NOT a map that can be presented as a redistricting plan, it does demonstrate the 14 "dots on the map" that represent the 14 population centers that are the same no matter who does the map. The location of these 14 locations, within each of the circles on the map, only change as the population changes. The value of this map is that it gives some idea of the locations on the map that the districts should be designed around.

While, the boundaries must  change to meet the other criteria, these 14 locations on the map are a constant, no matter who makes the map.  While the above map was not made with the certitude of a programmed calculation using detailed 2010 census data, it is very safe to say that each center of population "dot" for each district is somewhere within the larger circle placed in each district.

Here is the statistical report produced by this map.

Tuesday, 6-7-11, was a good meeting.  It produced one of the most productive ideas yet for any redistricting process that wants to minimize gerrymandering and maximize compactness in all districts. Population centers must be known, one for each district.  This is something a computer with census data could produce. It is 100% objective.  It only changes when the population changes.

Dallas Redistricting Process Now Online

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Today, 6-30-11, the final plan was presented to the Dallas Redistricting Commission for study.  Find details at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

************* Posts below are archived as of 6-30-11 **************

Yesterday was the day the Dallas City Council redistricting process when online. It is at http://www.dallascityhall.com/Redistricting/index.html.  In the left column click on Redistricting Web Account Request Form and begin the process.  You will be sent the instructions and password you will need to begin your own redistricting plan for Dallas City Council.

Yesterday three people requested passwords and are starting the process.

There are now three places the public can go to work on redistricting plans:

1. Dallas Redistricting Commission offices in City Hall,
2. the Central Library,
3. and any computer with an Internet connection. 

The final day for the public to submit a redistricting plan is June 30, 2011 at 5:00pm. 

If the guidelines established by the Dallas City Council Redistricting Commission are fully reflected in the final district boundaries established, this will be a significant step forward for Dallas. Citizens need to be vigilant and make certain these redistricting guidelines are followed.