Marietta City Council prepares to redraw ward maps

Jake Busch, Marietta Daily Journal, Ga.
·2 min read

Dec. 1—MARIETTA — In the wake of the 2020 census, the Marietta City Council is preparing to redistrict the city's seven wards, which serve as districts for both the council and Marietta Board of Education.

After the census is taken every ten years, the city must redraw its ward lines, if the wards' populations are not roughly equal in size, as required by federal law.

Mayor Steve "Thunder" Tumlin told the MDJ Monday he expects each ward to have about 8,600 people.

Marietta has about 61,500 people, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

The council's Judicial Legislative Committee began the process Tuesday by appointing its three members — Chairman Andy Morris, Cheryl Richardson and Andre Sims — to the city's ad hoc Redistricting Ward Map Study Committee.

The three council members on the committee will have voting privileges. A Marietta school board member will also sit on the committee but have no vote on the maps. The Marietta school board follows the same ward maps as the council.

Tumlin said the committee will hold public meetings to determine new ward maps, which will be drawn with the help of computer software. That software, he said, takes the census results into account to create new boundaries.

Tumlin added that the city had a similar committee ten years ago, when it last redistricted in the wake of the 2010 census.

Ronald Barrett, the city's information technology director, already purchased the redistricting software and "got a little bit of a deal on it," according to City Manager Bill Bruton, who chalked the discount up to most other cities having already completed their redistricting processes.

Tumlin mentioned that Smyrna recruited outside help in its redistricting process from Mississippi law firm Butler Snow. The mayor doesn't think Marietta needs to take that approach.

"Smyrna took an independent party, but I don't think anybody knows our wards better than ourselves," Tumlin said.

At Tuesday's meeting, city Attorney Doug Haynie said the city is no longer required to gain pre-clearance, or approval from the U.S. Department of Justice, for its redistricted ward maps.

Before the landmark 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder, all redistricting plans in the state required pre-clearance from the Justice Department to ensure maps were fairly drawn and did not discriminate against any group of voters.

"You still should come as close as you can to those criteria," Haynie said.