Columbia Daily Herald Article

Did anyone read the Columbia Daily Herald yesterday?
Re-apportionment as written by the Daily Herald


Spring Hill officials to consider reapportionment

By NANCY GLASSCOCK/Staff Writer
SPRING HILL — State Rep. Glen Casada, R-College Grove, said Tuesday he has received numerous calls from residents in favor of reapportioning aldermen’s wards to achieve fair representation for all citizens.

According to results of a 2005 special city census, Ward 2 contains 13,609 residents while 1,810 live in Ward 1 and Wards 3 and 4 have 1,040 and 866 residents, respectively. Two aldermen represent each ward. Casada said Spring Hill did not conduct a reapportionment following the 2000 census, though state law does not require it.

Casada said he and State Sen. Jim Bryson, R-Franklin, will attend the Board of Mayor and Aldermen regular meeting Feb. 21 to talk with city officials and present a draft of a bill that could become law in March, though he said he felt confident the matter will be resolved locally.

“We are concerned with the way the aldermen lines are drawn in the city of Spring Hill,” he said. “For example, you have one district that has 13,000 and another that has 800. The folks that called us, they want the state to intervene, but Jim and I want to sit down and talk with the aldermen of Spring Hill and talk about what we’re hearing from our constituents and just share that with them and see if Spring Hill would address the disproportionment of the aldermens’ wards.”

Casada said specifics of the bill such as whether it would be applicable to only Spring Hill, be based on the 2000 census or on the most recent special city-wide census in 2005, have yet to be finalized. He said current state law does not require a reapportionment based on the city’s current population numbers.

“There’s nothing specific that says we must re-draw the lines for cities and counties, but its commonly done,” he said.

Bruce Scotten, Parks and Recreation Committee member and Spring Hill resident of 30 years, said aldermanic wards in Spring Hill have never been reapportioned, and should not be until after five or 10 years, when the city’s rapid population growth slows. Casada said he, Mayor Danny Leverette and Ward 2 Aldermen Eliot Mitchell and Jonathan Duda have received a large number of phone calls from residents in favor of reapportionment, while Scotten said the move is lead by a few people.

“There’s no need for reapportionment at this time because it’s changing too rapidly, if you look at the 10,000 that are going to be in Spring Hill before very long in homes that are already approved to be built,” Scotten said. “As long as the state’s attorney says nothing is being done wrong, nothing is being done wrong.”

Scotten said the Tennessee State Legislature, an attorney general and the Municipal Technical Advisory Service are in agreement residents in Spring Hill are fairly represented.

According to an MTAS opinion for another city in the state, reapportionment is necessary for cities with officials elected from specific wards.

Regarding a Supreme Court case, Avery vs. Midland County in 1968, “The Constitution permits no substantial variation from equal population in drawing districts for units of local government having general governmental powers over the entire geographic area served by the body... In short reapportionment by municipal governing bodies has been elevated to a U.S. Constitutional command, and any statute expressly or implied to the contrary would not change that fact.”

I am still curious why anyone would be against making our city officials more accountable in terms of re-apportioning the aldermanic wards. And why has Bruce Scotten been so active in suppressing all of this? For those of you that are not familiar with Bruce Scotten, here is one little bit of information from the last time this issue was beginning to be raised. If Bruce Scotten is out there reading this, please tell me why you have opposed this in the past, and what the benefit would be in holding this issue off for 5 or 10 years? Could it be that in 5 or 10 years, the vast majority of this city will have been built, and representation will not be as effective on the planning of the city?

Williamson AM, May 19, 2004:

Spring Hill opts to leave its voting wards alone

Last-minute agenda addition stuns aldermen favoring redistricting

By BONNIE BURCH

Staff Writer

SPRING HILL - The city's four ward lines will stay the same after a surprise motion was made at Monday night's Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting.

In a last-minute addition to the agenda, the board voted to not redistrict the wards to better reflect the population growth especially in the mostly Williamson County Ward 2, where nearly 80% of the city's people now live.

Ward 3 Aldermen Bruce Scotten made a motion to vote on the issue the day of the meeting.

"This is something that keeps raising its head. The press has been interested in it and there has never been a general consensus. So instead of speculating on it, we need to be clarifying it. This is something that's been hanging over our collective heads for some time," Scotten said.

Currently, 79% of the city's population lives in Ward 2, an area of land that stretches east from around Columbia Pike to the city limits and as far south as just below Duplex Road. The two Williamson County residents on the board are from this ward.

Ward 1 and Ward 3, which has some land in Williamson County, both have 8% of the population, while Ward 4 follows with 5% of the city's residents. About 17% of Spring Hill's population lives in Maury County.

Some have argued that since most Spring Hill residents now live on the Williamson side, the wards ought to be redrawn to reflect that population shift.

But others say that since the aldermen are elected at-large, they are held accountable to all Spring Hill residents. The reason the aldermen must live in the voting district they represent is to make sure a majority of representatives doesn't live on the same street or in the same neighborhood, said Spring Hill Mayor Ray Williams.

The issue has been debated in Spring Hill for some time now, particularly as of late as new census figures have clarified the population shifts. But it was a surprise to some when it came formally up at Monday's meeting.

"It smacks of secrecy. I'm upset, you're right. But I think I have every right to be," said Ward 2 Alderman Eliot Mitchell, who has championed both redistricting and another topic added late to Monday's agenda: widening Buckner Road sidewalks.

The board is allowed to add items to the agenda at any time, said City Attorney Andrew Hoover.

"What was done here wasn't really a suspension of parliamentary procedure or the Robert's Rules of Order. It's was just to amend the agenda to add items."

Some items, such as rezoning land, require a public hearing before the board can proceed. But the ward issue, along with another late motion Monday night concerning sidewalks on Buckner Road, don't fall into that category.

"The things that were voted on don't have to be in a public hearing. They have to be in an open meeting but not in a public hearing," Hoover said.

Earlier, Mitchell had drawn fire by asking City Administrator Ken York why he did not tell him of the last-minute additions to the agenda. York said that as a city employee, he is not affiliated with the politics of the city and Mitchell's comments should be addressed to the mayor.

"One of the items to be discussed here tonight in this way is the most critical item the city faces. And there is no public advertising saying we were going to be doing this tonight. There was no time to get this in the paper so that the public would know," Mitchell said.

Although the aldermen all received the most recent census figures in regard to wards, there was little discussion of the issue at the last work session.

Ward 2's other alderman, Danny Leverette, also questioned whether Monday's board meeting was the time to take a vote on the issue. He said that he believed that having 10,000 people represented by one ward while others had much smaller numbers didn't seem fair.

"So we're making a motion to do nothing?" he asked.

"Yes," Scotten replied.

In the end, the board voted 7 to 2 to not redistrict, with both Williamson County aldermen casting "no" votes. In order to pass the vote, the motion had to have a two-thirds majority.