Cape Coral City Council shakes up district boundaries with redistricting maps

The Cape Coral city council voted to approve the city's new redistricting map, changing the boundaries of districts 3 and 5 and incorporating all of the Sandoval community in one district.

The council chose option two of the two options presented by the redistricting commission.

The districts affected are represented by councilmembers Tom Hayden and Robert Welsh, who will have some new constituents as a result of the new boundaries.

Welsh's District 5 now makes up the western side of the Mid Cape, while Hayden's District 3 represents the eastern side of the Mid Cape.

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In a 7-1 vote on Jan.19, with Hayden being the sole dissenting vote, the council approved the map to move forward as an ordinance at a later date.

"I don't think there's any reason to switch them (the districts)," Hayden said. "I thought the borders were defined the way they were on the old maps, and I thought the populations matched up nicely."

Welsh had no issues with the change and preferred this map to the other presented.

"Councilmember Hayden and myself are the two who would be dealing with the biggest change," Welsh said. "I think this option two has been handled well."

Cape Coral has a council-manager form of government with seven districts that need to contain population sizes that are equal as possible and follow the center lines of streets or canals.

"We thought it was important to make sure there was equal population representation, but we equally thought it was important for members of our community to know who was their council member," said Kevin Karnes, chief operating officer of the Lee County Clerk’s office and chairman of the redistricting commission.

The redistricting commission is tasked with filing a recommended plan for adjustment of the council district boundaries with the city clerk.

"If you lived in the same block and one side of the street was one councilmember and the other side of the street was (different), we were trying our best to correct that," Karnes said.

For example, the gated community of Sandoval, previously split between district three and five, would now be fully located in district five.

According to Hayden, almost 1,800 people live in Sandoval, the largest gated community in the city.

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As for an explanation to these changes, the City Attorney Dolores Menendez explained that the population of districts 3 and 5 would shift between those areas and saw this as a way to maintain population balance and keep the councilmembers' district numbers.

"This maintains the stability for the next couple of years, until 2024, and both of these councilmembers' seats are up in 2024" Menendez said.

Karnes said that the redistricting commission came to realize that drawing the maps based solely on the U.S. Census was the best way to go.

"We realize it was not our responsibility to project the growth of the city," Karnes said. "It was to use the data of the census."

Cape Coral has 194,016 residents and it expected to have more than 430,000 by 2070, with most of the growth expected in the city's two northern quadrants.

Hayden said he will vote no on an ordinance enacting the new maps unless he gets more information that convinces him these changes are necessary.

"I applaud the districting committee for all the work they did. They took it seriously. They're doing what they believe is right, but this is just one I don't agree with," Hayden said.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Cape Coral redistricting shakes up Tom Hayden, Bill Welsh districts