Fort Worth City Council Indecision Leads To More Redistricting Delays

Arlington TX

16 February, 2022

5:41 PM

Description

By Rachel Behrndt, Fort Worth Report February 15, 2022 The Fort Worth City Council spent four hours Tuesday making changes to maps they created with little to show for it at the end of the day. The council decided to push the redistricting process back and meet again Tuesday to finally vote on a map to put forward for public input. The map that was supposed to be chosen Tuesday would have been put forward for residents to view and respond to at four listening sessions in the community in the coming weeks. Instead, the first public comment meeting will be pushed to take place next Thursday, and the council will reschedule the following listening sessions, or cancel them altogether. The council was tasked with choosing between a map proposed by council member Chris Nettles and another map proposed by Cary Moon. Later, Carlos Flores said he would also like his map to be considered by the full council. "The time that (was spent) to clean up (Nettle's map) should be afforded to (my map)," Moon said. The sticking point was over whether a district with a Hispanic population of 50% could be considered a minority-opportunity district. Philip Arnold, a lawyer hired to analyze the maps, explained that determining the likelihood a district might vote for a certain candidate is subjective. But generally, for a Hispanic candidate to be elected, the Hispanic voting-age population in a district must be well over 50%. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.