County redistricting plan set
The county's new redistricting plan was approved by Grayson County commissioners after a short public hearing on Tuesday. The plan includes five new voting precincts, but otherwise looks very similar to the previous plan.
Grayson County Judge Bill Magers said increased population as reflected by the most recent census caused the "minor tweaks" he said the county's districting plan underwent.
Magers said in order to be in compliance with the state and federal laws associated with redistricting, the most and least populace precincts must population variation of no more than ten percent. He said the plan the commissioners approved Tuesday has a population variance of less than 4.62 percent.
"Commissioners made very few changes to this map," Magers said speaking of the commissioner's precinct map before the group at the moment. He said the changes that were made were made to take into account population shifts as well as to equalize road miles for each precinct and correction discontinuities in the previous plan and to comply with the Texas Election Code requirement for voting districts that match certain city boundaries. He said that last part about the city voting boundaries means that a voting precinct can't be partially in a city and partially in the unincorporated part of the county.
"So as cities grow and are annexed over the decades those lines change," he said.
He then talked about the two shifts on the newly approved maps. In Precincts 1 and 2, he said, to equalize east of Van Alstyne to equalize road miles and to more efficiently maintain equipment and roads. He also said there were minor changes made to Precints, 1, 2, and 3 in Sherman to even out road mileage and population amongst those precincts in Sherman.
"The bottom line here folks is historically every commissioner had part of Sherman, this last map it wasn't as pronounced but the new map returns to that tradition," he said.
He also said, "Voting district 204 West of Denison is returned to Precinct 4 to eliminate a perceived discontinuity water boundary connection." He said the problem was that the river can serve as a continuous boundary. Precincts 2 and 4 split some area up there in the North Part of the county with the river serving to connect the parts in Precinct 4. The changes move 204 to Precinct 4.
Magers said Precinct 205 in the East side of Denison was changed to because it was split in half by a water treatment plant and roadway.
"Finally, there was discontinuity in Precinct 407 on the border between Denison and Sherman and that was corrected in the proposed plan," Magers said. He added that Denison High School was moved from Commissioner's Precinct 2 to Precinct 4 because of the annexation. Also voting district 301 was moved to Commissioners Precinct 2 in Sherman to equalize population without impacting county road mileage.
"That was really how we got the population to balance was that one precinct," Magers stressed.
He said the boundary between Commissioners Precinct 3 and 4 was adjusted to equalize population along the natural boundary on Taylor Street.
"That was the bulk what took place in our tweaking was that cities grew, boundaries changed and we adjusted the (voting districts)," he said.
Magers said the Justices of the Peace made no changes to their maps. He said they are not governed by the one man one vote rule that commissioner's precincts are.
The county judge said that rules require that if a city has more than ten thousand people, voting precinct that is partially in the city and partially in the unincorporated part of the county. For that reason, he said, Voting Precinct 103 is now within the city of Sherman because of population. Voting Precinct 109 was added for Van Alstyne's area because of population. Voting Precinct 412 was added because of population and Voting Precinct 310 was an annexation issue where Sherman annexed part of its area west of Sherman.
This article originally appeared on Herald Democrat: Grayson County redistricting plan set
