UPDATE Thursday, May 26, 11:01am | Residents of the Ninth District are invited to a town hall meeting next Tuesday night, where Councilman Steven Neal and city officials will provide an overview of the city’s redistricting process.
The meeting will be held at Ramona Park, 3301 E. 65th St., from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, May 31.
Ninth District staffer Floyd Hampton Livingston said that attendees will learn how new district boundaries will affect them and their neighborhoods.
Data from the recent 2010 Census is being used to calculate the ideal population for each of Long Beach’s nine districts based on the city’s new population as determined by the Census Bureau. The ideal population is determined by dividing the total population evenly by nine.
The city’s 2010 population was calculated to be 462,257, meaning each district should ideally have a population of 51,362.
Historically, the city has redrawn the boundary lines of any district in which the actual population is more or less than five percent of the ideal population. According to this standard, the First and Sixth districts, which now have populations more than 5 percent below 51,362, and the Eighth and Ninth districts, which have populations more than 5 percent above 51,362, require boundary-line shifts. The districts which border these four districts should also expect to be affected.
The five percent range is used based on the suggestion of the City Attorney’s Office, which has determined that range to be legally defensible.
The Council discussed redistricting at its regular meeting Tuesday night, when it approved a motion by Neal to reshape only the districts that fall outside of the five percent range and to do so in a manner that will preserve the districts’ current forms as much as possible.
“I think it’s our obligation to try to manage the redistricting in a way that is the least intrusive to residents of the city,” Neal said.
The Council will revisit redistricting at its June 7 meeting, when city staff was directed to present maps depicting the various ways current boundary lines could be shifted. Over the summer, the city will gather public input on the proposed shifts, with the Council set to vote on the final changes in August.
For more information on the May 31 town hall meeting, call 562-570-6137.
UPDATE Tuesday, May 24, 9:09am | The Long Beach City Council is scheduled to discuss the possible redrawing of the city’s nine council district boundaries during its regularly scheduled Tuesday, May 24, council meeting.
The Council will use recently released data from the 2010 Census to determine whether all or some of the nine districts require redistricting and how this reshaping of the districts would be implemented. The Council will only discuss how to reshape these districts in order to bring them within the 5 percent range tonight. The requisite new boundary maps would be drawn at a later date.
The city’s current council district boundaries have been in place since 2000.
The census data is being used to calculate the ideal population for each of the nine districts based on the city’s new population as determined by the Census Bureau’s numbers. That magic number is found by simply dividing the total population evenly by nine.
The city’s 2010 population was calculated to be 462,257, meaning each district should ideally have a population of 51,362.
According to information provided earlier this month by City Hall spokesman Ed Kamlan, the Council has traditionally redrawn the boundaries of districts that have populations that are 5 percent above or below the ideal population. That means that four districts, based on their current populations as determined in the 2010 Census, need to be reshaped.
The Eighth and Ninth Districts both have populations that are more than 5 percent above 51,362, while the First and Sixth Districts have populations that are more than five percent below that number.
The Tuesday, May 24, council meeting begins at 5 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd.
May 1, 11:45am | The boundaries of several of the nine Long Beach city council districts will likely be redrawn based on the new U.S. Census demographics data for 2010 released by the city last Thursday.
Edward Kamlan, a City Hall spokesman, said the Long Beach Planning Commission is scheduled to review population data for each council district when it meets on May 5. The City Council will then by late May or early June determine whether redistricting is warranted based on the new population numbers.
The City Council in the past has redrawn council district boundaries when the population of a particular district grows or shrinks to more than five percent of the average population in the city’s nine districts, Kamlan said.
Based on the population numbers released last week, both the Ninth and Sixth districts appear to necessitate redistricting. The Ninth District is too populated and the Sixth not populated enough to ensure equal representation for all Long Beach residents.
Should the city’s elected officials determine that the boundaries of the two districts must be redrawn, this could cause other districts to necessitate boundary shifts, as well, to ensure each district’s population remains within the plus or minus five percent median range.
The redistricting process would include a number of public hearings, according to City Hall.
The final new boundary maps would need to be approved in August to ensure that the new boundaries would be effective in time for the April 2012 primary election, in which the city’s even-numbered council district seats will be up for grabs.