Council, BOE at odds over voting maps

The Commerce City Council and the Commerce Board of Education are trying to find common ground in re-shaping the city’s voting districts.

Although council members are elected by wards and school board members by districts, the boundary lines are exactly the same — except on the new voting maps being considered by each group.

The council earlier agreed on a map that kept all of the incumbents for both city council and school board in their respective districts. That map was created by Joel Logan of the Jackson County GIS office.


The school board went to the state Reapportionment Office and came back with a different map.

The differences are mostly in Wards/Districts 2 and 3.

“They weren’t quite satisfied with it (the city’s map) and want to make changes,” city manager Clarence Bryant reported to the council Monday night.

The problem, Bryant said, was that BOE members Bill Davis (District 3) and Mary Seabolt (District 2) “live too close together,” which made it “difficult to draw the line” between the two districts.

The BOE version extends Ward/District 2 across the railroad tracks and north to Washington Street.

“That’s crazy,” commented mayor pro tem Keith Burchett.

Bryant met with Logan Monday and came back with two new map alternatives he said appeared to meet most of the school board’s concerns. The council agreed to submit one of those to the board for its consideration.

“If that’s not suitable to them, we’ll arrange a meeting,” Mayor Charles L. Hardy Jr. said.

City attorney John Stell and councilman (and mayor-elect) Clark Hill reminded the group that the new maps must be ready for submission to the General Assembly during the upcoming legislative session.

“Time is of the essence,” Stell commented.

Reapportionment was also on the agenda when the school board met Monday night and superintendent James “Mac” McCoy relayed conversations he had on the subject with Bryant to the board during its regular work session held last week and at its meeting on Monday.

“We looked at a couple of scenarios. I told him where we stood. He told me where they stood,” the superintendent reported. “We’re trying to see if we can come up with something we both can live with. We’re working on that.”

He added that there is a desire to keep the districts and wards identical, as they have been. Doing so lessens confusion at the polls, officials said.

The board, on the advice of attorney Cory Kirby, requested help from the Georgia Reapportionment Services Office, which guides governmental entities through this process, the superintendent said. The map suggested is not in line with what the city envisions, McCoy said.

“The bottom line is this, you don’t have to do what the city says. You are your own entity,” the superintendent told them. “If you choose not to accept their own map, you can do your own thing.”

Both can create the maps however they want, so long as they legally reflect the population changes and shifts. The approval process for these maps includes the U.S. Department of Justice.

Presenting maps that benefit an elected official or don’t properly account for demographic shifts can result in disapproval and cause federal scrutiny.

That’s why the board consulted the Georgia office, McCoy explained, which can recognize any problems ahead of time.

“If it looks strange, once they throw it out, you become really under the microscope with how you set your maps up,” McCoy warned.

He said he would report progress made on any compromise maps reconfigured between the board and city. He added that he would continue forwarding the board’s map to the state’s reapportionment office for any review.

“We are trying to work together so we don’t have too much of an issue,” McCoy said, of the city.

“That’s good,” member Bill Davis said. “That’s a step forward.”

The timeline for completing the redistricting process is Jan. 1, the superintendent said.