From staff reports
Austin City Council will listen to public comments this month on a proposal to reconfigure the city's three wards and six precincts.
The public hearing will be at 4:30 p.m. April 22 in the city council chambers at City Hall.
City Clerk Lucy Johnson presented the proposal last week to the Charter Commission, which recommended approval of the plan.
The city is required to review its wards after every census and adjust boundaries so that each ward varies no more than 5 percent from the average. Austin's population rose to 23,314, for an average of 7,771 per ward. With the new plan, the population in each ward is within the 5 percent variance, Johnson said.
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To accomplish that goal while disturbing as few voters as possible, Johnson proposes two changes to the 2nd Ward. The first would take a section four blocks by eight blocks near the Mower County Fairgrounds out of the 2nd Ward and put it into the 1st Ward, adding 352 people to it.
The other change would move the boundary between the 2nd and the 3rd wards to the west, adding 703 people to the 3rd Ward.
Johnson said she also wanted to keep voters as close as possible to polling places.
