SNOW HILL – Concern about the county’s redistricting timeline highlighted a public hearing this week.
On Tuesday, the Worcester County Commissioners hosted a public hearing regarding proposed redistricting of the county’s election boundaries. Election Director Patti Jackson, the only commenter, brought up the fact that there was a candidate filing deadline in February.
“We’re going to have to have new districts in place by then,” she said.
For the past several months, county staff have been working to review Census data and formulate updated election district maps. Jennifer Keener, director of development review and permitting, presented the various map options prior to Tuesday’s public hearing. She said the districts had to be modified because of population changes throughout the county. According to the 2020 Census, the population of Worcester County grew by 1,059 residents. Keener said district boundaries needed to be adjusted so that each district had a nearly equal population of 7,515 but in a way that the minimal deviation between the highest and lowest population was less than 10%. In addition, District 2 has to be maintained as a majority minority district.
“Meeting all this criteria is a complex task,” she said, adding that staff had used software to come up with the options for each district.
Those options have been available for review on the county’s redistricting website since early September. She said the maps would remain available and that public comment would remain open until November. On the website, residents can look up their property’s address to see how the various options would affect their election district placement. Residents are also able to view maps side by side with the current district map.
“We’re encouraging everybody to take a look at the interactive maps online,” she said. “Our staff is available to go through them with the public.”
Commissioner Ted Elder pointed out that the Census showed that populations in certain districts had decreased.
“There’s nothing we can do about it but the Census has got to be way off,” he said. “I have a hard time believing there was any district in Worcester County that lost population, with possible exception of maybe Ocean City,” he said.
Keener said the fact that Census data was collected during the COVID pandemic hadn’t helped.
When the floor opened for public comment, Jackson asked why redistricting hadn’t started in 2021. Keener said the revised Census data hadn’t been available until 2022. Her department then began evaluating how to handle the process, and in April got approval from the commissioners to purchase software to generate new potential maps.
Jackson asked when the redistricting process would be complete, pointing out that her office needed to adjust maps for next year’s election.
“It’s going to depend on how much public comment we get,” Keener said.
Jackson said the candidate filing deadline for the three seats on the Worcester County Board of Education that would be up for grabs in 2024 was Feb. 9. She asked if maps would be done by then.
“We will do our best,” Keener responded.
Jackson said if the maps weren’t done by then, a candidate might file in what would end up not being their district.
“We certainly don’t want to redistrict somebody out of a seat whether it’s now or in the future,” Commissioner Joe Mitrecic said. “We really need to look at that sooner than later.”
Keener stressed that adjusting the maps was tied to the amount of public feedback her department received.
The commissioners asked her to report back with a status update in November.
