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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN 04.12.2011 CC-WThe City Council of the City of Georgetown, Texas, met in Regular Session on the above date with Mayor George Garver presiding. Council Present® Council Absent: Patty Eason, Gabe Sansing, Danny Meigs, Bill Dale Ross Sattler, Pat Berryman, Tommy Gonzalez '• i- - •• '- • •• • • •-' i it '` A Redistricting Update -- Paul E. Brandenburg, City Manager and Mark Sokolow, City Attorney Councilmember Ross absent. Brandenburg said, over the past year, there have been a lot of questions regarding the redistricting process. He said, now that the City is ready to move forward with this process, they have hired the firm of Bickerstaff, Heath and Delgado to help with the documentation and the drawing of the lines. With a Powerpoint Presentation, Mendez reviewed the findings from the firm's analysis of the 2010 Census data and the proposed redistricting 2011 process. He said he would like for Council to approve some set parameters and guidelines that will govern the process as well. He reviewed the legal principles that applies to why he is here today. He said, at its heart, the redistricting process is a mathematical one. He noted the goal is to have each District contain the same amount of people with a less than 10% deviation rule. He said the level of imbalance between the least and most populous district is 133%. He said this means District 4 is almost twice as big as an ideal district in the city. He said District 6 is at about 4,000 persons and is about 36% under populated. He noted, as legislators, it is our requirement to get the deviation down to less than 10%. Mayor asked why children are counted as voters in that they can not vote. Mendez said it is because you have an obligation as a lawmaker to make laws for every single person that resides in the City of Georgetown, whether that person is a child or a non -citizen. He said, no matter if a person is a voter or not, they must be treated equally. He said there is a movement afoot where voters have challenged this and have asked that only citizens or voters be counted but, to this day, not a single court has accepted our caused a city to move to a different level of counting. Mendez spoke about the kind of census data that is available for the Council to work with for redistricting. He said the data includes total population as well as VAP (voting age population), Race and Hispanic Origin. He said we will be using this type of population because that is the population the Department of Justice will be using to measure whether or not the City gets pre -cleared. He said it is the data the department uses to benchmark. He said redistricting would be very simple if it was just math but noted it is complicated because of the Voting Rights Act. He said the main issues are the Department of Justice's role in pre -clearance and legal standards for liability. He noted, when the City changes its Council districts, the Department of Justice goes to great lengths to determine whether or not the minority groups and neighborhoods have been inversely impacted by the change. He spoke about the legal standards of liability in this process and the efforts made to insulate the city from any potentials of criticism. He said, to obtain pre -clearance by the Department, the plan must not City Council Meeting Minutes/ Page 1 of 4 Pages have the purpose of denying or having an adverse affect on right to vote by anyone. He continued to describe the pre -clearance process of the Department of Justice. Mayor said the City's population has grown a lot and the percentage of minority folks is much smaller and he asked how that plays into redistricting. Mendez said that, at the council member district level, there is a good possibility that the districts can be re -balanced without an adverse affect on the minority district. He said he can get into this a little more in Executive Session if Council has questions. Mayor asked why it is necessary to go into Executive Session. Mendez said it is okay to discuss the issues here in public as Council sees fit. He noted he wants to give Council the opportunity to ask questions of him that they may not have had the chance to fully think out. Mendez continued and said the city has to redistricting without retrogressing the current districts. Mendez showed Council an example picture demonstrating cracking and packing of minorities within a district. He said, in this example, the minority district was drawn so that it could not influence anyone on the Council. He said, in another example, the districts are drawn so that the entire minority population is within that one district. He said the proper way to treat minorities would be somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. He said the City also has to worry about the rights of the Anglo community and that that group is not adversely treated while accommodating the minority groups. He spoke about the 14th amendment case, Shaw Vs. Reno, which was about the rights of the Anglo community. He showed Council the districts in this case and how it is a demonstration of racial gerrymandering. He also showed Council a map of Harris County districts and described how it was considered unlawful by the Texas courts because of racial gerrymandering. He said it is okay to be aware of race and to consider race, but race may not be a predominant factor in the redistricting process. He said if race is the predominant consideration, the plan may still be permissible if the plan is narrowly tailored to address Section 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act. He described what the courts have found to be traditional redistricting criteria. He said the criteria consists of adopting districts of relatively equal size, drawing the lines along identifiable boundaries, maintaining communities of interest and neighborhoods, using whole voting precincts to the extent possible, basing a plan on existing districts, drawing districts that are compact and contiguous, keeping incumbents in their districts and narrowly tailoring the plan to comply with the Voting Rights Act. He said the purpose of this presentation is to build a record that the council and the public understand fully the rules and process of the redistricting. He spoke about the guidelines for public participation in the redistricting process and he summarized those guidelines for the council. Mendez showed Council a proposed 2011 timeline for redistricting. He said he would like to come back in the first meeting in May to work with Council in rebuilding an illustrative plan for this process. He continued to describe the timeline for the council. He noted the final plan will be adopted by the middle of August and added the goal is to get it pre -cleared prior to the May 2012 Election. Berryman asked and Mendez said the public hearing for the redistricting could be held during any regularly scheduled meeting right before the regular session. He said it does not have to be a special meeting and added council can choose to have more than one as well. He introduced his partner Cobbie Caputo, who is a resident in the area and will be assisting him and council throughout this process. Sokolow spoke about District 4 and clarified that Mendez does not want to create a new eighth district. Mendez agreed. Mendez said he would like to layout the population for Council. He gave the percentage of each race within the city and within each district. He noted, according to the population from the 2010 census, the ideal size for each district should be 6,741. He described how each current district differs from that ideal size. He noted some current districts are under -populated and others are over -populated. He listed the minority population and percentage within each district. Mayor asked how this is treated when the city's data suggests the actual population is much larger than the data the government has given the city to work with. Mendez said the snapshot of population was taken in April of 2010 and it has already been a year since that point. He said if the City knows of areas of the City that were under or over counted, the Council can make small adjustments within the 10% allowable deviation. Mayor asked and Mendez said this is not the only community that has taken issue with the census results. Mendez said the city must do its best effort to follow the law in this process. Gonzalez asked and Mendez confirmed the city is required to use a snapshot of that population in time. Sattler said there are areas and neighborhoods that have been annexed into the City but have not yet started building homes and Mendez noted those homes will not be taken into account until the 2020 census. Mendez said he did not go through every district on the chart, but council can get the sense of the level of imbalances among the districts. He said there are two districts he would concentrate on: district 1, which has a substantial minority population, and district 7 which has a 29.36% Hispanic population. He said there is only a finite amount of Hispanic blocks in town for council to use. He showed Council a chart of the current districts in Georgetown and reviewed the assumptions that could be made about each district. He said there are many opportunities to solve the imbalances. Sattler asked and Mendez said his only suggestion is that each district should be as close to 6,741 as possible. Mendez would prefer that council be the entity that gives direction on how to draws the lines. He said he would also like for Council to adopt policies and clear ground rules for how to receive comments from the public that City Council Meeting Minutes/ Page 2 of 4 Pages are being recommended for approval at the regular meeting. Caputo said they need advice from Council in that they do not know what the neighborhoods are like politically or neighborhood wise. He said they can draw the lines scientifically, but noted it might not make any sense to the council politically. Gonzalez asked and Mendez said they will be able to show the council how the election precincts play into this process. Caputo said the County may be redrawing their election precincts as part of their redistricting process as well. Mayor reviewed Mendez's presentation and added there will be three items on the regular agenda tonight. He asked that Mendez review those three items. Mendez's said the first item is recognition of the fact that Council has received this information tonight. He said the second item is the adoption of criteria for use in the redistricting process and the third is the adoption of guidelines for person's submitting comments and redistricting proposals. There was much discussion. Brandenburg asked if Council should speak about anything in Executive Session and added he does not see the benefit of going into Executive Session at this time. Meigs and Sansing said the discussion should be public and open. The rest of the Council agreed. B Mid Year Financial Status Report -- Paul E. Brandenburg, City Manager; Micki Rundell, Chief Financial Officer Brandenburg reviewed the mid year financial status report for fiscal year 2011. He said the 2011 budget was adopted in contingency mode and he described the items that were included and not included in that budget. He reviewed the issues that council said they would consider at mid -year in case there was funding, including bonus pay for employees, frozen positions and arts and culture funding. He spoke about unexpected events that occurred this year, including fuel costs and the September flood event. He spoke about the fund balance comparison and showed Council a chart of the budgeted fund balances compared to the actual fund balances over the past six years. He said the actual 2010 general fund balance is $855,000 more than projected in the budget. He said sales tax increases of 5.6% higher than projected and property tax increases have helped with that. He said having very dry and hot weather also contributed to more revenue in the electric utility. He spoke about the 2011 revenues and noted the sales tax is $382,000 higher than budgeted, the property tax is $77,000 higher than budgeted and ROI/Franchise Fee is $500,000 less than budgeted. He spoke about 2011 expenditures and fuel costs being $59,000 higher than budgeted. He described the flood expenses and bridge and trail repair costs. He noted the savings incurred from open positions was $255,000. He spoke about the joint services fund and said the actual year end 2010 fund balance is about $11,000 higher than forecasted. He reviewed the water services fund and said the actual 2010 fund balance is $300,000 higher than anticipated. He spoke about the electric fund balance as well and said it was also $792,000 higher than anticipated. He continued to explain the balances and expenditures in the electric fund balance. He spoke about the deputy city manager position and added the expected hire date is June 2011 and it was a previously frozen Assistant City Manager position. He described the general job description for the position. He spoke about being able to fund the damage done by the flood event, the public safety bond education and additional video equipment. He said the Arts and Culture Board made a request last year for $130,000, but they received no funding at that time. He noted the Board said $100,000 of those monies would go toward their grant program. He said another new expenditure being proposed of an employee performance bonus program and to fund at 75% for those employees rated outstanding or exceeds. He provided the Council with a general fund recap and added the projected year end balance will be $497,000 even after all of those proposed spending costs. Meigs asked about unfunded pensions. Sansing said when he was elected, we had less than 300 employees and now there are more than 500. He said he is not sure the City needs everyone that we have. He said he wonders if there is some trimming that can be done as well and still have the City as effective as it is now. He said he thinks the City should hang on to what the city has for a while longer. Brandenburg addressed Sansing's comments and added he can break down the growth of personnel and what has been happening in each department to justify the current staffing levels. He said some of the new positions are dictated by what has been done with new facilities as well. He noted a lot of new employees have been added because of growth. Sansing said he thinks the planning department is way overstaffed. Mayor said it may be good to compute the percentage of growth in population and match it up with the percentage of growth in City employees. Brandenburg mentioned the public safety employees and the number of employees to each citizen. Gonzalez spoke about looking at each department in concurrence with productivity. Sattler asked and Rundell said she envisions a tax increase because of the bonds that were issued. She noted, outside of bonds, there will not be any other increases. Meeting recessed to Executive Session under Sections 551.071, 551.072, 551.087 and 551.074 of the Local Government Code -- 4:15 PM Meeting returned to Open Session and adjourned -- 6:00 PM City Council Meeting Minutes/ Page 3 of 4 Pages City Council Meeting Minutes/ Page 4 of 4 Pages The meeting was adjourned at 06:00 PM.