COVID caused Census to be late, possibly delaying new city council map
A commission charged with drawing new Columbus City Council member residential districts will be pressed by unanticipated delays in receiving needed U.S. Census Bureau population counts for city neighborhoods.
The problem could squeeze the drafting process in ways not contemplated when voters approved the plan in 2018.
The new commission is still scheduled to begin its work this month — when the needed population data from the 2020 Census typically would have been released. But in mid-February, the Census Bureau announced that it had pushed back the delivery date until Sept. 30, which is just three months before the council is required to vote on a new residential district map for its members.
The plan now is to use preliminary neighborhood population counts to come up with three new district plans and press on with the required public hearings to get public feedback. Then, when the census data is released in the fall, the commission would quickly make needed revisions using up-to-date 2020 population counts, said Councilman Emmanuel Remy, the council’s point person on the process.
“It certainly makes it challenging,” Remy said, noting that officials will have their “fingers crossed that there wasn’t wild changes in population,” which could require major changes as the clock ticks down.
The new census could reveal “some (population) changes that weren’t just minor,” Remy said.
In fact, Columbus and central Ohio traditionally have been the state’s population-growth engine, offsetting declines in its industrial centers. And the last decade was true to that form.
The last census set Columbus’ population at 787,033 on April 1, 2010. Annual estimates since by the Census Bureau indicated Ohio’s largest city has grown by 14% to just under 900,000, making Columbus the nation’s 14th largest city. If it were a city, the 112,000-person growth alone during nine years would rank as Ohio’s seventh-largest city, behind Dayton.
But in which Columbus neighborhoods that strong growth happened is yet to be revealed by the actual 2020 Census. The city has purchased new computer software to assist the commission with its work in drawing districts with the right number of residents, with no more than 1% deviation biggest to smallest, Remy said.
The preliminary work “would get people talking, would maybe find some concerns that are obvious,” Remy said.
In late February, the city council and Mayor Andrew J. Ginther appointed five members to the commission charged with drawing up the council district map: J. Averi Frost, Jeff Cabot, Dave Paul, Monica Cerrezuela and Malik Moore, who will chair the panel.
Despite the census being late, the commission plans to kickoff with two meetings, yet to be scheduled, during April, Moore said.
“We have to do what we can while we can right now,” said Moore, 50, a Hilltop resident. “The fact that there’s COVID and the data is coming in late I think is a curveball that nobody anticipated.”
A new council system
While the paperwork filled out by Columbus City Council candidates for this November’s election for three open seats states the winners will serve “full terms” starting next January, the pending council district system means those seats will be for only two years instead of the usual four-year terms, Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Aaron Sellers said.
That’s because the charter amendment required that all seven council seats effectively be canceled out,and replaced by nine new seats that will all be filled by voters in 2023. Winners in the November 2023 general election will be seated to the enlarged body in January 2024.
The unique new district system — a first for Ohio — will require that the nine new members each live in one of the newly drawn districts. However, the entire city will get to vote for every council member, as with an at-large seat. That’s unlike typical city council “wards” used by many Ohio cities, where only voters who reside in the ward get to vote for that council race.
And because all nine seats will be up at the same time in 2023, that year could see a large number of candidates in the primary before the candidates are reduced to only two per district for the November 2023 general election.
@ReporterBush
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