By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
The Boone County Fiscal Court Commissioners dealt with the redistricting issue that surfaced after the last census at the regular Fiscal Court meeting last week.
Executive Assistant/ Fiscal Court Clerk Shona Schulkers read an ordinance for the first time which adopts the full report of the reapportionment commissioners establishing the boundary lines of county commissioners as ordered by KRS 67.045. This ordinance supercedes another ordinance that set the old boundary lines which was passed August 9, 2011.
“We have the recommendation from the reapportionment commission,” said James Horton, GIS Data Analyst for Boone County. “These are the current conditions, we have 64 precincts in the county right now, and divided into three districts. The first thing we did was show 8 precincts which showed home districts of current elected officials such as commissioners, constable and justice of the peace, and there are 8 of those out of the 64, and we didn’t want to change any of those.”
Horton said the population of the county after the 2020 census was 135,968. Divided equally by three that would ideally make each district’s population 45,323. What actually happened was that district one, mainly Belleview, Burlington, and Hebron, had 46,171 people, district two, Oakbrook, Pleasant Valley, Union, and Richwood, had 50,351, and district three, most of Florence, Devon and Shamrock, had 39,446.
This created a disparity of 25.93 percent off the desired targeted numbers, and the office of the Attorney General recommends no more disparity than 10 percent. The difference between the desired number of people in district one is 1.87 percent, in district 2 is 11.09 percent and district 3 is 12.97 percent, which added up to the total disparity number of 25.93 percent.
Something had to be adjusted.
“So this is the recommendation,” Horton stated. “To move three precincts, Oakbrook, Greenview and Hopeful from district 2 to district 3. District one did not need any changes because it was only 1.8 percent away from the target number.”
With the corrections of adding three precincts to district three from district two, the amount of people in district two drops to 44,961, a disparity of .80 percent, and the people in district 3 rises to 44,836, which puts their district at a 1.07 percent disparity. The total disparity would then be 3.74 percent, acceptable to the attorney general.
“It was a lot better than it was ten years ago, I think it was about seven or eight percent,” he said. “So that’s the recommendation to you all.”
“One of the other things that occurs to me is that when we look at our growth areas of the county as we look to the next ten years, you think about active communities and what’s being built where, it’s probably going to be pretty even over the next ten years,” said Judge Executive Gary Moore. “We always know it changes immediately.”
Horton said district three is pretty settled because it is mostly Florence, and district one has some room for growth, having both Burlington and Hebron, but he thinks that district two will be the hot growth area, having both Union and Richwood in it.
The first reading does not receive a vote, but the second reading of the ordinance will be August 8.
It was noted that this would be the last meeting for James Horton, since he is retiring July 31, the same day as Jeff Earlywine is retiring.
