Residents will once again weigh in on Fort Worth’s contentious redistricting process
We’re down to two.
The Fort Worth City Council failed to find consensus Tuesday on which redistricting map to send to the public for consideration.
Instead, the public will be presented with two maps, which they’ll get to comment on during a special city council meeting at 6 p.m. Monday.
Both need to account for two extra districts added to the council in a 2016 charter election, and both need to account for a rapidly diversifying population, including the city’s growing Hispanic population.
Both maps create five “minority opportunity districts,” which are council districts where 50% or more of the voting age population is Black, Hispanic, or made up of another minority community. They differ on the exact percentages though, with city staff suggesting one map is more likely than the other to elect two Hispanic council members.
The City Council had planned meetings throughout the city in February, however confusion about redistricting procedure and disagreements over which map to present to the public pushed back the timeline.
The council voted Tuesday to change its redistricting process to limit the number of public comment meetings from four to one before it votes on the final map at its 10 a.m. meeting March 29.
The March 29 deadline is to give candidates enough time to establish residency in their districts ahead of the May 2023 elections.
The city’s redistricting task force had selected Map X, which appeared to have a wide array of public support after numerous residents praised it at a public comment meeting on Feb. 8.
However, District 8 council member Chris Nettles raised concerns that the map broke up too many established communities of interest, which are pockets of the city that typically align together politically and thus would benefit from being in the same council district. Nettles suggested a map that made 23 adjustments to the initial one.
It creates one likely Hispanic voting district and three with a plurality of Hispanic voters.
But two of those plurality districts were viewed by city staff as not being likely to elect a Hispanic member to the council, however, one of the plurality districts in southeast Fort Worth would have enough Hispanic voters to make it a tossup, according to city staff analysis.
A version put forth by District 4 council member Cary Moon made 40 adjustments to the initial map. It creates one likely Hispanic voting district and two districts with a plurality of Hispanic voters. However, a city analysis found those two districts are not likely to elect a Hispanic council member because that community does not tend to have a cohesive voting block.
Version 2 also has five council districts representing areas in far north Fort Worth, however, the majority of District 2, consisting of the mostly Hispanic neighborhoods of Northside and Diamond Hill, is inside Loop 820.
Each of the 10 districts should have around 90,000 residents each to give equal representation to the city’s more than 900,000 residents.
Moon believes far north Fort Worth deserves at least three council districts because the area is home to 270,000 people. His map has two districts entirely north of Loop 820.
Both maps remove the historically Black Como from District 3, represented by Michael Crain, and connect it with District 6, represented by Jared Williams.
Kenneth Jones Jr., pastor of the Como Missionary Baptist Church, told the City Council at the Feb. 8 public comment meeting the neighborhood wanted to be moved to District 6 to give the neighborhood a bigger voice in choosing its elected representative.
“We love Michael Crain. We just want to be free with an opportunity to be part of a minority opportunity district,” Jones said.
The council will have another map drawing session Tuesday after getting public feedback on the two proposed maps.
It is scheduled to finish up map drawing during a council work session 9 a.m. March 22 at city hall followed by a vote to approve the final map at the March 29 council meeting.
This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
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