Will County Ad-Hoc Complete Count Census Committee Met March 2.
Here is the minutes provided by the committee:
I. In Accordance With Public Act 101-640, Effective June 12, 2020 And The Gubernatorial Disaster Proclamation Issued By Governor Pritzker On February 5, 2021, This Meeting Will Be Held Via Videoconference/Telephonically Through The Webex Events Platform. Will County Board Members Will Be Attending The Meeting Remotely And The General Public Is Strongly Encouraged To Do The Same.
II. The Public Is Invited To Comment Or Pose A Question By Email At publiccomment@willcountyillinois.com. At The Public Comments Portion Of The Meeting, The Emails Will Be Read Into The Record. Please Go To www.willcountyboard.com/meetings for a link to attend the meeting via webex.
III. CALL TO ORDER
IV. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
Mr. Gould led the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.
V. ROLL CALL
Chair Tyler Marcum called the meeting to order at 1:00 PM
| Attendee Name | Title | Status | Arrived |
| Tyler Marcum | Chair | Present | |
| Donald Gould | Vice-Chair | Present | |
| Mimi Cowan | Member | Present | |
| Mike Fricilone | Member | Present | |
| Gretchen Fritz | Member | Present | |
| Jim Moustis | Member | Present | |
| Meta Mueller | Member | Present | |
| Judy Ogalla | Member | Present | |
| Jacqueline Traynere | Member | Present | |
| Denise E. Winfrey | Member | Present |
Present from State's Attorney's Office: M. Tatroe.
VI. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
VII. OLD BUSINESS
VIII. NEW BUSINESS
1. Legal Guidelines on Reapportionment
(Mary Tatroe)
Mr. Marcum stated I want to get the broad legal guideline of our reapportionment process. We had a Committee of the Whole a few months back to go over this, but I wanted Mrs. Tatroe to give us a rundown of exactly what our process will look like from a legal process.
Mrs. Tatroe stated the process in Will County is a little different than most counties in the State because we have the County Executive form of Government. The County Executive gets the first stab at creating a new map and drawing the districts. However, practicality demands a little bit of interaction between the County Board and the County Executive.
Mrs. Tatroe reviewed the attached Reapportionment Guidelines.
Mrs. Tatroe stated the requirements of Section 2-3003(1) state the districts shall be comprised of contiguous territory, as nearly compact as practical. This is not something you can do with precision, as you will see from some of the other requirements. Your next requirement is you should try to not divide townships and municipalities. The townships are drawn pretty much by straight lines, but municipalities are not. As you are drawing these districts and trying to keep municipalities cohesive, you are going to have a certain number of wiggly lines and that is pretty much unavoidable. It is a tricky process to try to make sure they are compact and contiguous. You need to create in a manner so you avoid splitting precincts. These are difficult things to try to balance. Our GIS Department has done a great job of developing software and I think they will go a long way in helping you to be able to see in real time, immediately what happens when you move lines in different directions to draw the maps. I tried to keep this short and high level just to give you an idea of what you need to do. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Mr. Marcum asked since we are obligated to have the lines drawn by July and it appears we will not have the census data until September, is the State going to have to pass something or how will that work?
Mrs. Tatroe replied I would hope the State would address that issue. I have not seen anything, but we will continue to watch. Maybe we can reach out to our local legislators and find out if there is any legislation planned to address that issue.
Mr. Fricilone stated I heard there is a possibility the State, because they are supposed to have theirs by June 30th, that potentially they can go ahead and reapportion and then in September when they get the numbers they will adjust it. Which means, they are meeting their obligation by June 30th and making a readjustment in September. I don’t know how that will work, but we will be in the same boat as the State and the Feds if they don’t get the census out in time. The State, in its history, has delayed for two years a reapportionment where they said they did not have the right numbers so they kept it exactly the way it is for another two years. I also heard the Feds have that the option, even though they don’t have anything on the books, they could do the same thing. All we can do is keep going until we figure out what we are going to get and what we have to work with.
Mr. Moustis stated we talk about compact and communities of interest and we did a pretty good job ten years ago of doing that. I did not hear you talk about it, but there are certain requirements of not splitting minority communities to not dilute their voting base.
Mrs. Tatroe stated I did not mention that, maybe I kept this too high level. My understanding was they wanted it very high level, so I kept with the strict statutory requirements. The requirements of communities of interest, which we spoke about in-depth ten years ago, is a requirement under case law. It is absolutely something you need to keep in mind and not break up those communities of interest.
Mr. Moustis stated I consider that high level. We have an obligation to make sure everybody’s communities are appropriately represented. I wanted to mention that. With Mr. Fricilone’s comment, I think in the absence of census data we could do a blue print of what we think our map would look like.
Mrs. Tatroe stated I appreciate you brought up the communities of interest. I apologize, I should have brought that up.
Mrs. Traynere stated I was listening to an attorney speak about this. They were talking more about home rule communities as opposed to the County which is not home rule, but they were opining that if we did a map for the 2022 election cycle we could go back and make additional changes in subsequent years. I had never heard that before. It might have been because it was a home rule community attorney talking and not someone from the County. What is the leeway? Mr. Fricilone indicated we did not have to do this now, we could wait if we don’t have the data. What are the rules? I get the State may change or overrule any of those, but what are they right now?
Mrs. Tatroe replied under state statute you are required to draw a map in July. If you fail to do it within the proper timeframe, then the County Clerk is required, by law, to convene the county reapportionment commission. The commission would consist of the County Clerk, State’s Attorney and Attorney General or their designee to draw a map for the county. You have an obligation to draw a map. I will do some research to see if the State is addressing this anticipated expectation that we will not get the data until September, which creates a problem for drafting the map and see what our alternatives are.
Mr. Moustis stated I agree with Mrs. Tatroe, we should move forward and draw a map regardless. I think GIS they could assist us with some population numbers. There has been additional census data done over the last ten years. We could present a map and if we don’t have the census data correct, we would do some tweaking. I think our current map, as a template, is going to be pretty good to work off of. The state statute has not changed, they have not said they are changing it and until we hear something different I think we need to move forward.
Ms. Winfrey stated I remember from the last time, it takes quite a bit of time. It is not as easy as it seems on the face to sort out how to draw the lines, make sure we get the proper amount into each area, don’t split precincts, and don’t split particular communities. I would also say we need to get started. We can adjust for the numbers after we are up and running. Get started and get going because it did take us quite a while last time.
2. Available Technology Re: Drawing Maps for Reapportionment Process (Greg Johnson, GIS)
Mr. Greg Johnson demonstrated the plan put together ten years ago and the features of the updated software available for assisting in the reapportionment process. He stated what we need from the Committee is the requirements; how many districts, what type of population or demographics you are looking at and we can assist you as much as necessary to make sure a plan is acceptable to the Committee and eventually the full Board.
3. Review of Past Re-Map Process
(Don Gould, Jim Moustis & Nick Palmer)
Mr. Marcum stated I wanted to ask everyone who was here ten years ago what they thought worked and did not work, so we can make this process as smooth as possible, since we don’t know what is going on with the actual data. I asked Mr. Gould, Mr. Moustis and Mr. Palmer to comment, but anyone else who was here ten years ago, please feel free to chime in.
Mr. Gould stated I think there are several things that were done well ten years ago. One was we were very transparent. There were a lot of different proposals made whether they were 9 or 13 districts. But they were all posted on-line so the public had an opportunity to see all of them. Everything was posted. All the work of the Committee was very transparent. As has been said, we had to follow the law and it was a goal of the community to try and increase minority participation on the County Board. I think you can see we were very successful with that. We probably doubled the number of people of color on the County Board in the last ten years. That became very clear when the census data came through and we saw districts, like #3, #4, #8 and #10 and we were very successful in achieving that goal. The challenges were very different because we had about 150,000 increase in population; a 30% increase in County population. Whereas, this time it is nowhere near that; we may be looking at a 3% or 4% increase. We were successful and you will notice following the municipal boundaries and Mrs. Tatroe pointed out, we followed the various boundaries to avoid dividing communities, so they would all be preserved and we followed all the city and village lines. What we could have done better, if you look at District #13 it was the last district drawn. When we got done with it everyone looked at it and said it looks like the remnants of what is left over. I have to admit that is true because we basically followed everything and every district is the same in population so it was 50,000, 50,000 and 50,000 and then we got to the end. So if District 13 looks kind of long and narrow, I think we could have done a better job and made District 13 more compact. I think that could have been done better. As I said, that was the last district. That is my recollection of things and for the most part, I believe it was very successful.
Mr. Moustis stated I would also say it was a difficult year to do it, not only did we have a significant population increase, but we took to heart trying to put communities of interest together and trying to define how you would identify that. You can say is it townships, it’s school districts; there are a number of ways you can define communities of interest. I think in the end it was very transparent. We made a determination that 13 districts would be more representative than 9 districts. With nine districts you had to do more splitting of townships and general communities of interest. Thirteen enabled us to put communities of interest together. I think we should continue that. We were very transparent and we held public hearings and we actually held public hearings early on. Primarily what we were hearing from the folks that came to the public hearings was keep the communities of interest, making sure the minority population is not diluted and they be given more representation. As Mr. Gould mentioned, I think this map helped accomplish that. The only part I did not like, is they took one-third of my township and put it somewhere else, that is just a personal thing. But that still worked, I am not saying that there was still not a community of interest, if you look at the map you will see Frankfort Township was significantly split. There was good cooperation; not that there weren’t differences of opinion between both sides of the aisle and the Executive’s Office. Because initially the Executive submitted a nine district map and when we talked about 13 districts there was good dialog between everyone and I believe everyone was in the spirit we are drawing a map. I remember Executive Walsh saying we are going to draw a map that represents the people. I am pretty proud of that map because I think we accomplished that. I think it was the spirit of everyone wanting to do the right thing for the people and that made a difference. That does not mean we did not go back and forth a little bit. It was a very nonpartisan endeavor ten years ago and I think that benefited the people. I did maps before we had GIS and GIS is wonderful. This is my third redistricting and not having good tools makes it much more difficult to draw good, fair maps and we have the tools to do that. I think we can move this along because we have not had a large population increase. I think GIS can help us with their data and show us where they think the growth is and if we have to tweak it here and there. I think we have up to a 5% variant we can apply, certainly we want to make the districts population as close as possible and we did attempt that. We have two districts that are a little short; but I think we accomplished that as well. I think Mr. Palmer has plenty of recollections because he was pretty involved as well.
Mr. Palmer stated I think the technology makes this a much less painful process. I can’t imagine doing this the old way. The GIS system was really a blessing that you can move lines very easily and recalculate numbers. That is great. Board Members; look forward to that because it is going to make this process less painful. I think the thing that worked well last time was the Board and the Executive’s Office sat down and talked about some principles and goals. In either version it was keeping the communities whole. We started off, because we have nine districts with three members each that is why the Executive’s Office and the Board we did nine district versions with the populations. Then when we did not all think that was the best fit, we moved to the 13 district version. Both the Executive’s Office and the Board took stabs at a 13 district version. Ultimately, there was a lot of back and forth and we took all the ideas and melded them together and pounded out a compromise map. As far as keeping communities whole, the Board members at the time said we want to keep communities together so we defined townships, especially in the rural areas of the county as communities of interest so we tried to keep townships whole. If you look at District #1 we kept those townships pretty much intact. Then in the more populated areas it was the municipalities. The one thing I caution you on when you look at maps like ours, is the lines are not perfectly straight and that is because municipalities don’t annex in perfectly straight lines; subdivisions are not in perfect lines. District #13 has already been mentioned; it’s a little jagged and that is because that is what was left. Even some of the other district angle in certain directions and that is because the municipalities developed that way. I think there is an art and science to this. The science is just the data is what it is. The art is what Board Members and other community members can offer; why don’t you keep this neighborhood with that district because they are in the same school district or there is more of a community there than if you put it in a separate district. The one thing that happened between the 2000 and 2010 census was there was massive growth along the Route 59 corridor. So the districts that existed when we drew the maps in 2010, their population almost doubled in their district from the last time the map was drawn. In other districts they were pretty flat or a couple districts even lost a couple of people. I think, as has already been said, our population has not changed that dramatically. If we stuck with the 13 district model, we probably would be tweaking the lines a little bit. I know there has been talk of completely different models. My recommendation would be to have that discussion sooner rather than later about what ideas are out there and then staff from the Executive’s Office, County Board Office and GIS can all start to map out scenarios and calculate the pros and cons as far as cost. If you reduce the size of the Board what the cost would be or if you want to expand the size of the Board. It really was a pretty open, transparent and cooperative process. I think the proof of that is, unlike other bodies there was not a lot of allegations of partisanship or someone trying to game someone else. When we said 26 members someone raised what if we tie; the response was that will never happen. The first election after the map was 13-13. I know there are other factors in play, but on our current Board, eight of the districts are represented by one Republican and one Democrat. I think that shows these really are not one sided districts where one party dominates. I think that is a good thing that we have balanced representation. I really enjoyed the process last time and I think it is interesting to go across the County. We drew the map the last time for the County Board and the Clerk at that time was Nancy Schultz Voots and after we drew our map and finalized it, she went back and worked with GIS to reconfigure the precincts with a goal of trying to keep precincts whole because the less you split precincts among different election districts, that means less ballot styles and that is a good thing for judges and the Clerk’s Office and everyone else. Unfortunately, it is not a perfect system and some precincts have one County Board district or one legislative district on one side of the precinct and the other side is another one. You cannot avoid that completely. With GIS and the tools we have available; it has definitely made it easier to keep clean. We will have to work with the current Clerk to see how that is going to work.
Mr. Fricilone stated Mr. Moustis and I talked about this and something resonated with me when Mr. Moustis talked about how these truly were fair maps. If you look over the past ten years the majority has passed back and forth and as Mr. Palmer said, a majority of our districts have one person from each side of the aisle. This truly was a fair map and the proof was in the pudding on how the elections have gone over the last ten years.
Mr. Brooks stated ten years ago I was on the committee and present. When I came on the Board in 2008 it was three members in nine districts, but what happened was when I came to the Board in 2008 I had a couple of precincts in my district in New Lenox and a couple in Rockdale. When I came to the redistricting meetings I fought to get those New Lenox and Rockdale precincts moved out of my district. It made it more conducive for me. When it comes to redistricting one of the good things this time is we did not have the population growth we did ten years. You can never please all the people all the time, but I think where you are today we have a much easier process. I know where we are with the number of people in Will County; we can come up with an equitable plan. When I came to the Board, I know we spent a lot of time on the redistricting because a lot of us had precincts in our district that we wanted out.
Ms. Mueller asked can someone tell me what the population was last time and how many residents we had in the districts?
Mr. Shay replied there were 51,120 per average per County Board district. The total population was 649,000.
Mr. Palmer stated when we had 9 districts, if we had stuck with a 9 district map in 2010, it would have about 75,000 per district. When we went to the 13 districts it became the 51,000 number. That is a policy decision how many people per district. Some people thought it made a bigger difference and some people didn’t think it mattered how many people you represented, but that was a factor in some people’s decision making.
Mr. Fricilone stated if we guess the population is 690,000 you are looking at another 40,000 people and if you divided that by 13 and kept the same layout you are talking about adding about 3,000 per district.
Mr. Gould asked Mr. Johnson do you have any information from the Census Bureau what approximately the Will County population is now?
Mr. Johnson replied the population right now is right around 690,000. The population in 2010 when we were doing the redistricting in 2011 was 677,000; so we have only gone up about 13,000. I can the send the information from the last time, it is also on the reapportionment Committee minutes as well as County Board minutes from June 2011; which was the meeting it was approved. I have all the reports from the last time, if anyone would like them, I can send them on to everyone.
Mr. Marcum stated that would be helpful information to send to everyone.
Mr. Moustis stated Mr. Palmer mentioned this and I agree; the first task that we need to go forward with is are we going to move forward with a 13 member district board and/or listen to other ideas on districts. I have heard various comments over the last few years, including single districts which I don’t think would work very well. I think that is the first determination. I favor the 13 member board because it works and we have not had a lot of population increase so I think we just have to do a little tweaking. There is always some challenges to current District #1 for various reasons and they have not had much of a population increase so we always have to add a little bit to District #1 and that may not be much of a challenge this year because we did not have much growth. I think the first determination is the number of districts we are going to work with. We should do that fairly promptly, in my opinion. I am going to throw that out there to have a real quick discussion on it now, but if for no other purpose to say yes that is the first determination we have to make; the number of districts. I think Mr. Palmer hit the nail on the head when he said we have to do that first.
Mr. Marcum stated next month we will be discussing our views on district numbers and representatives elected in each district. This conversation will happen in April.
Ms. Ventura stated District #9 has a weird layout and maybe it is like District #13 where there are two precincts in Homer Glen and one precinct in Lockport and that might be something to clean up a little bit, but it would then need to have those precincts replaced somewhere else. Going forward, if we have tailends like that, keep an eye on the ones that don’t fit with anything else.
Mr. Moustis stated that is exactly what happened. You do it and all of a sudden you need to put another thousand people over here and 1,500 here and you wind up with those little things. As much as we will try to clean it up this time, we will still probably have some of that.
IX. PUBLIC COMMENT
Mrs. Adams announced there were no public comments.
X. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR
Mr. Marcum stated next month we will have a big discussion and set the boundaries of how many districts we would like to see and the representation of those districts. I look forward to continuing the process of having as many voices heard as possible. I know the Executive's Office will be in touch with everybody. I don't like to make things overly complicated, and I look forward to making this as seamless of a process as possible.
XI. EXECUTIVE SESSION
XII. ADJOURNMENT
1. Motion to Adjourn at 1:46 PM
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Mike Fricilone, Member SECONDER: Jim Moustis, Member AYES: Marcum, Gould, Cowan, Fricilone, Fritz, Moustis, Mueller, Ogalla, Traynere, Winfrey |
Alerts Sign-up