Council Meets Monday on Redistricting Question

The Concord City Council will hold a special meeting on Sept. 26, to discuss altering this November’s after state officials and candidates and fairness of the proposal.

In the proposal forwarded to voters, the city’s voting ward lines are changed and scheduled to be implemented on Jan. 1, 2012. The mayor and city councilors will be sworn in on Jan. 9, 2012. However, the new ward lines move two ward council candidates – Jennifer Kretrovic in Ward 2 and Kris MacNeil in Ward 3 – out of their districts. If they win their elections, city officials said they would not be seated, since after the ward line changes, they would no longer reside in the wards they were elected to serve.

At the same time that the city has redistricted its ward lines, the state is in the process of redistricting federal and state office district boundaries. If the voters approve the city’s new ward lines, at least one incumbent – state Rep. Mary Gile, D-Concord – will be moved from Ward 3 to Ward 4, redistricting her out of Merrimack District 10. Questions arose as to whether or not she would be allowed to keep her seat until the end of her term in 2012, since she would no longer live in the district she was originally elected to.

After back and forth between the Secretary of State’s Office, the state Attorney General’s Office, and city officials, Concord Mayor Jim Bouley called for the meeting in an effort to fix the problems.

While the specific language was not approved to be released by the city solicitor’s office on Friday, due to possible amendments at Monday’s meeting, Bouley said he will propose additional sentences to the ballot question to change the effective date of the implementation to meet state guidelines and compliance. The date would be changed to Jan. 1, 2014, he said.

The change would also allow Kretrovic and MacNeil to serve, if elected, and would allow Giles to serve out her term as well.

“It’s a fairness issue,” Bouley said. “Whoever is the top vote getter in the 2011 elections would be eligible to be seated as a ward councilor and would be able to fully serve their two-year term. But everyone would be on notice. Come the next election, the new ward lines would be effective … you’re basically getting two-years notice.”

The changes also appear to stem the tide of potential lawsuits and avoid a future constitutional crisis of having duly elected ward councilors who would not be seated a couple of months later.

Secretary of State Bill Gardner said the current proposal as presented to the voters was not constitutional since Article 11, Elections and Elective Franchises, of the New Hampshire Constitution, states that “every inhabitant, having the proper qualifications, has equal right to be elected into office.” He said the act of not seating Kretrovic and MacNeil would probably be frowned upon by the courts.

Moving forward, to avoid future problems in, say, another 10 years, when the city redraws ward lines again based on a new U.S. Census, Bouley said he would like to have the charter amended to have new ward lines draw up as a city ordinance. This change would allow the council to change the ward lines, have public hearings about redistricting, and then approve them as a full council, and have them implemented, without voter approval. The changes would be implemented before the official filing period, which would allow any future candidates to know the new wards they would be living in before the next municipal election, he said.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated correcting information about state Rep. Gile's district.