Committee Narrows Down Concord Ward Map Options

A committee looking at the way voting wards are shaped in Concord focused on some minor changes and hopes to make a final decision at a meeting tonight. 

The Redistricting Committee, made up of the mayor, city clerk, school board president, at-large city councilors, and others city officials and citizens, spent a little less than two hours last week analyzing some of the numbers of the 2010 U.S. Census.

Upon a table in the Concord City Council chamber, the planning department presented four color maps – one containing the Census data, gathered into small cluster blocks bordering various streets, and three others that shifted the cluster blocks around in order to create 10 wards of about 4,300 people each.

When presenting the maps, Assistant City Planner Steve Henninger said that unlike other cities, Concord shouldn’t have a problem reaching a threshold of a 5 percent difference between the wards. He also said that the city would not face any lawsuits about diversity issues, since only 4 percent of the population is minority and the minorities are spread pretty well throughout the city.

At the previous Redistricting Committee meeting, Mayor Jim Bouley asked everyone to take the figures and maps home and see if there were any issues that people saw with the new numbers.

School Board President Kass Ardinger said she would like to see some changes made to the wards in the northern part of the city so that all the Ward 1 voters lived in the Merrimack Valley School District. Henniger, however, said that Merrimack Valley students were already spread out over Ward 1 and Ward 2. He said that demographic changes were “overwhelmingly new construction.”

“If you took that off, you’d have to do some serious readjustments,” Henninger said. “With the 10 ward system, the Merrimack Valley School District is about a ward and a half.”

At-Large City Councilor Dan St. Hilaire said he disliked seeing polling locations right at the edge of the line within a ward although admitted there wasn’t much that could be done about it, due to the limited number of buildings that could host elections in Concord.

“It’s almost like we are drawing the ward lines simply to accommodate our polling locations,” he said. “We’re pressed because we need to use those polling locations.”

At-Large City Councilor Mark Coen said the new schools might lend themselves for polling locations.

City Clerk Janice Bonenfant said that Broken Ground was a good example since it has its own entrance. She said, in the past, parking had been a problem at some of the schools.

Bouley agreed with St. Hilaire’s point, noting that Ward “literally is Gerrymandered to cut out and into Ward 4.”

Coen remarked that he thought some of the wards should not be split by the Merrimack River.

St. Hilaire agreed, noting that there were constituent issues that were different between the Heights and the center of town, even though they were in the same ward. Parts of Ward 1 are also split, another member noted.

Henninger said that Fort Eddy Road and NHTI area residents had been moved into Ward 8 to balance out the ward. He said that he thought those residents get redistricted and moved around every 10 years.

Eyeing the maps

Henninger gave a quick run through on the changes he made to the city wards.

On the eastern part of the city, Wards 9, and 10, Henninger offered minor changes, shifting a couple of streets from 10 into 9.

“It seemed to be the least disruptive,” he said.

Everyone on the Redistricting Committee agreed.

In Ward 8, the Fort Eddy Road and NHTI areas, were shifted around into either Ward 4 or Ward 6. 

On the west side of the river, Ward 1 was left the same because it was in the upper limit of the population. Ward 2 needed to be reduced and in order to do that, streets west of Sewalls Falls Road, like Peterson Circle and Sylvester Street – needed to be moved into Ward 3. This changed caused shifts from Ward 3 into Ward 5.

In the three proposals, Ward 4 either gained areas of Penacook Street or the Fort Eddy Road/NHTI areas.

Ward 5 could gain some areas around Penacook Street and Columbus Avenue or lose other areas around the Green Street Community Center, according to the maps.

Alternative 1 was quickly eliminated from consideration, since most of the committee members though the bow-tied shape of Ward 3 looked odd and didn’t work. It also allowed Ward 5 to border on Ward 2.

With Alternative 2, there were some disagreements. Some folks didn’t like the Fort Eddy Road/NHTI areas connected to Ward 6. Others liked the fact that the changes allowed Ward 6 to become a heavily commercial district.

Consensus then began to build around Alternative 3, which proposed moving the Fort Eddy Road/NHTI areas out of Ward 8 and into Ward 4 and shifting parts of Ward 5 into Ward 6.

No displacement, so far

According to a review by Concord NH Patch before the meeting, only two ward city councilors could have potentially been displaced by the new maps.

The map known as Alternative 1, with its splitting up of Ward 3, moving District 5 Road into Ward 5, would have forced a face-off between long-time Ward 3 Councilor Jan McClure and Rob Werner, the current Ward 5 councilor assuming they both wanted to run again in Ward 5.

Later, while analyzing Alternative 3, a proposal was made to shift the area in the southwest corner of the city – between Birchdale Road, the Hooksett Turnpike, and the border with Dunbarton – from Ward 5 into Ward 7. The change was proposed as part of an updated version of Alternative 3, that Henninger called Alternative 4. The idea was to add the entire bottom of the city’s population from the South End westward into one single ward.

The change though would have set up a face-off between Werner and current Wardy 7 Councilor Keith Nyhan, assuming they both decided to run for the seat.

Late into the meeting, while analyzing and tweaking Alternative 4, Henninger continued to play with the figures and moved the area back into Ward 5, and shifted different areas of the center city around.

Tonight

Members of the Redistricting Committee expected to receive an updated copy of Alternative 4 in map form so they could analyze the data before tonight’s meetings. The committee will meet at 5:30 p.m. and then, the Concord City Council will hold a special meeting at 7 p.m. A public hearing is tentatively scheduled to discuss the changes in voting wards on Aug. 8.