After another delay, the Byrnes Mill Board of Alderpersons has approved new city ward maps.
A public hearing about the ward redistricting was held Dec. 6, and afterward an ordinance that was proposed to approve the new maps had to be scrapped due to a clerical error, City Clerk Melinda Benedict said.
“We wanted to be very precise, and I did find a scrivener’s error when I was typing it up,” Benedict said. “It was a copy-and-paste kind of situation where I had highlighted a portion, and I didn’t paste it into the correct ward number before sending it off to the attorney. Instead of correcting that ordinance, we ended up submitting a whole new ordinance number to prevent any confusion in the future.”
The board voted 5-0 Jan. 17 to approve the new maps. Ward 1 Alderman Bob Prado was absent from the meeting.
Byrnes Mill’s current population is 3,173, and the city can have no more than 3 percent deviation in the number of residents per ward. According to the approved ordinance, Ward 1 now has 1,053 residents instead of the previous 902; Ward 2 has 1,057 instead of 689; and Ward 3 has 1,063 instead of 1,582.
Mayor Rob Kiczenski said none of the major Byrnes Mill subdivisions were moved into different wards.
He also said the wards are now better balanced and more representative of the city but do not move any of the current alderpersons to a different ward.
The last time the wards were changed followed the 2010 Census, Kiczenski said.
Municipalities are required to redraw districts once every decade after receiving updated population information from the U.S. Census Bureau, and Byrnes Mill did not redraw its maps after the 2020 Census. However, no state or federal statute dictates exactly when a city must redraw its districts following a Census.
Kiczenski said it took a while for the city to get results from the 2020 Census, which contributed to the redistricting being stalled.
City Attorney Craig Smith said there is never a bad time to redistrict, and Byrnes Mill is working to ensure every person in the city is appropriately represented.
Benedict said the next step for the city is to notify residents if their wards have changed due to redistricting. She said the city has worked with the county to send out notifications.
“Throughout the whole process, I have been working with Jefferson County and the Assessor’s Office, the County Clerk’s Office, so we can make sure to notify everyone who has changed wards,” she said. “I’ve been working with them so we can get mailers out to everyone and let them know that, when voting time comes, they’re in different wards.”
Benedict said the mailers will be sent prior to the April 2 election.