Oneonta Redistricting Commission discusses Census blocks
Feb. 3—The city of Oneonta Redistricting Commission met Thursday and discussed a variety of topics including splitting the colleges' census blocks.
During last week's meeting, it was discovered the U.S. Census Bureau put all of the dorms, with their 2,000 students, at SUNY Oneonta into one census block and all of Hartwick College dorms in another Census block. It was announced at last week's meeting that census blocks cannot be split into different wards.
Commission Chair Gary Herzig said he called Jeffrey Wice, who is a professor at New York Law School and has many years of experience in redistricting, to ask if the city could split up the census blocks.
"He said 99% of the time it's impossible to do so," as it's hard to know which side of the road in the Census block people live, Herzig said. However, Wice told Herzig, "You have a very unique case,'" Herzig said. Because the colleges can give the city information about how many students were counted in each dorm during the 2020 Census, the Census block can be broken up into the different wards.
Currently, parts of the SUNY Oneonta census block are in the Second, Third, Fourth and Seventh Wards. Knowing the population of each dorm will help the commission figure out which wards can grow or shrink to ensure the residents of the city are represented equally.
Based on the 2020 population of 13,079, each ward would get 1,635 residents if divided equally among the eight wards, Herzig announced at last week's meeting.
According to the 2020 census, the Sixth Ward lost almost 400 residents, a figure Bill Shue, the Sixth Ward representative on the commission, disputes. During the meeting, he said he felt the figures in the Oak Square Apartments along Market Street and Nader Towers census blocks were underreported and asked if the census would do a recount. He said there were 60 people not accounted for on Market Street and Nader Towers was also undercounted. "My ward is losing a lot of people I think should have been counted," Shue said.
Herzig agreed, but said the census does not do a recount. However, if the commission found houses were not included on the map or in the case of group quarters like Nader Towers, where everyone was not counted, a municipality could ask for a count quality review.
Shue said he saw on the census website that officials would do recounts for special circumstances, so he called to ask what those were, had to leave a message, and hasn't heard back, yet. He said he would continue to research it.
Herzig said he asked Wice about this year's election. He said Wice said it was up to the council to decide if it will use the redrawn maps this year, hold a special election, or adopt them this year but not implement the new lines until the 2027 election.
Near the end of the meeting, City Administrator Greg Mattice distributed maps to commission members showing the current wards over the 2020 census blocks and 2020 census tracts. Some census blocks overlapped into two different wards, he said. Commission members were asked to look at their ward maps to try to determine the best way to divvy up the different blocks.
The next meeting will be at 7 p.m. Feb. 16.
Vicky Klukkert, staff writer, can be reached at vklukkert@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7221.
