Brookhaven aldermen have adopted a ward redistricting plan toadjust for the city’s recent annexation and to establish boundariesfor future municipal elections.

The next step in the process is a public hearing, to allow forcitizens’ comments, followed by submission of the redistrictingplan to the U.S. Department of Justice for pre-clearance. Thepublic hearing is scheduled for Oct. 23 at 5:30 p.m. in the cityboardroom at the government complex, and we would encouragecitizens to attend.

In redrawing the lines, the challenge for city officials andtheir annexation consultant was to address population imbalancesamong the wards while also maintaining minority voting strengthunder Voting Right Act provisions. The adopted plan appears to haveaccomplished those goals.

The plan keeps in place three majority black wards – one, twoand three – and three majority white wards – four, five and six.According to plan totals, 50.3 percent of the enlarged city’s13,141 population is black, while 48.2 is white.

Among individual wards, Ward One maintains its status as themost populous with 2,324 people, while Ward Four continues as theleast populous with 2,131 people. Ward One, at 84.3 percent, hasthe highest percentage of black residents, while Ward Four stillhas the highest percentage of whites at 94.3 percent.

Wards Five and Three would see the biggest changes in regards toracial makeups of their areas. Ward Five is in line to see itspercentage of black residents increase from 16.1 percent now to24.7 percent, while Ward Three would see its percentage of whiteresidents go from 17.5 percent currently to 25.9 percent, mostlikely due to the extension of lines to include the LakewoodVillage area in the ward.

With a larger city comes larger populations in individual wards.Ideally, to have each ward have the same population of 2,190people, 546 people would need to be added to each area.

Obviously, that is not possible, so officials drew lines to getas close to the ideal as possible. Under that scenario, Ward Twowith 2,198 is the closest to the ideal population while Ward One’s2,324 is the furthest away.

The redrawing of ward lines is in large part a numbers game. Butthose numbers are important for the future of Brookhaven and in theability to provide fair and equal representation for all of itscitizens.