BexarMet hopes latest redistricting makes the grade

Web Posted: 01/16/2006 12:00 AM CST

Jerry Needham
Express-News Staff Writer

Less than two years after a bungled redistricting effort led to delayed elections for Bexar Metropolitan Water District, the utility's board is trying again.

The board last Monday approved a realignment of districts' boundaries that nearly equalizes the population in each based on the 2000 U.S. Census. The new boundaries must be approved by the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department before they become valid.

Board President Victor Villarreal said he doesn't foresee problems with federal approval because the new plan appears to meet all the criteria laid out for acceptance and preserves the five current predominantly Hispanic voting districts.

"This is probably one of the cleanest redistricting plans that we've had," Villarreal said. "The last plan that we had was sprung on us at the last minute in executive session with no options."

That plan surfaced without public notice in late June 2004 under now-fired General Manager Tom Moreno and with only two of the current board members in place.

The plan proposed to move more than 27,000 people out of the two districts scheduled to vote that November because they were overpopulated, but it left those people with the prospect that they might go 10 years without a chance to vote.

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, who established the utility's single-member voting districts in a 1996 Voting Rights Act lawsuit, stepped in and stopped the redistricting effort, telling the utility to hold elections in February 2005 under the existing boundaries.

He said he saw no reason why the utility should have taken a piecemeal approach to redistricting.

The new plan drawn up by consultants gets all the districts within 5 percent of the ideal population of 32,126, Villarreal said.

The board voted to hold at least four community meetings over the next few weeks to explain the proposed changes.

Those meetings are to be held in conjunction with homeowners' or neighborhood association meetings.

The only one scheduled so far is for the Heritage area at Cody Elementary School at 10403 Dugas Drive at 7 p.m. Tuesday.