Charter review committee asks staff to study mid-cycle redistricting and population triggers

The Charter Review Committee asked city attorneys and staff on Tuesday to return with options for updating council districts outside the regular 10-year Census schedule and to explain how a population- or percentage-based trigger would work.

At the meeting, City Attorney Rollins told the committee that under the current charter the council "shall" adjust district boundaries within six months after official Census publication, but added the council could adopt a charter amendment to allow more frequent updates or to use a population threshold instead of waiting for the decennial census. "You could peg it to another metric," Rollins said, offering to return with research on how other municipalities handle mid-cycle adjustments.

The committee pressed staff to clarify whether districts are based on population or voters. Rollins said the charter and standard practice use population counts, not just voter rolls, and that population-based mapping is typically done with GIS modeling and presented as multiple map proposals for council vote.

Several members said rapid local growth — including recent annexations — makes the 10-year window problematic and asked for concrete alternatives: a fixed population-per-district cap, a percentage-growth trigger (for example, realign after a 10% population increase), or a five-year review cycle. Rollins said staff could present at the next charter meeting sample language and the legal constraints for each option.

Next steps: Rollins and staff will return at the January 20 meeting with more detailed research on whether the charter should be amended to enable out-of-cycle redistricting, the legal process for doing so, and example ordinance language for the committee to consider.