Re-Apportionment Info from Senator Grantham

We were honored to have Senator Kevin Grantham and his wife Caroline at our meeting Otero County GOP meeting Thursday evening. Senator Grantham shared about re-apportionment and how it is likely to affect Otero County and the present Senate District 2 and House District 64.

(Redistristricting is re-drawing the lines for Congressional Districts; re-apportionment is re-drawing the lines for State House and State Senate districts).

He has provided some helpful links and information.

Reapportionment site: http://www.colorado.gov/reapportionment

Preliminary approved reapportionment maps

Very important:

Tentative Public Hearing Dates (PDF)

(If no one shows up to object to the current plan, it will probably be approved.)

Locations closest to Otero County are:

Aug. 19 - Lamar, 6 p.m.

Aug. 22 - Pueblo, 6 p.m.

Senator Grantham's Proposed Senate Districts (PDF)

Notes from Senator Grantham:

The pdf is a map showing SD's 1 thru 8 with new boundary lines. I also handwrote the populations and the variances from ideal. The total variance is .28% from ideal for these 8 districts.

District 1: simply added Crowley, Bent and Baca. -1.69% variance

District 2: removed above three counties, adjust lines in Pueblo to receive remainder after D3 is removed, added Park and Teller: +2.34%

District 3: still contained within Pueblo county, adjust lines to match ideal population: 0%

District 4: removed Lake, Park, Teller, and El Paso. District can be contained within Douglas. Some El Paso can be added to close variance gap. -.67%

District 5: added Lake and 7000+/- from Eagle county: -.89%

District 6: No additions or subtractions: +.76%

District 7: remove small portion of Garfield, completely within Mesa county: +2.11%

District 8: remove only 7000 +/- from Eagle (probably from SW corner) as noted above for D5: +2.27%

*This leaves all of the metro areas plus Larimer and Weld for the remaining 27 districts.

*The remainder of Douglas county would still be D30. Douglas can just about be split evenly for two districts.

*El Paso could be split into 4 full districts but will have some significant leftover population. Some could be allocated to D4 on north edge, some to D1 on East and NE edge, and possibly some to D2 on West edge. I have some other thoughts on this that could further minimize the ripple effect.

*This still leaves 22 districts to divvy up between the metro area as well as the resort areas (Grand, Summit, etc), Weld, and Larimer.

***As you'll note this minimally changes the existing map and doesn't create a new district. The most extensive changes are to my district (2): minus 3 counties, plus 2 counties. Inevitable given the logistics. But better than losing 8 of 9 counties (as proposed by the re-apportionment committee).