City looks at 8- and 10-district possibilities

As promised at Tuesday’s council meeting, the City has released maps showing how the City might look with eight or ten council districts instead of five. Here’s the explanation:

The Ad Hoc Committee of the City Council on Redistricting conducted several public meetings regarding criteria and possible maps for new boundaries of five City Council districts. The boundary changes are required to have nearly equal districts based on the 2010 Census data. Map 12 was selected by the Committee as an example of what the boundaries could be like for five districts. For five districts, the goal of each district was 23,001 people with a maximum deviation of 5% [21,851 to 24,151].

In response to recent discussion at a neighborhood forum in the West Bluff, the Administration has prepared maps with either eight or ten districts as examples of what that number of districts could look like. Note that for each map staff used the criteria of:

  1. Nearly equal population with a maximum deviation of 5%, with the lower range of population in those areas planned or expecting growth
  2. Compact
  3. Contiguous
  4. Keeping together neighborhoods
  5. Using major thoroughfares as boundaries, with more weight on keeping together neighborhoods

Please find attached six maps that are examples of how the City could be divided into either eight or ten districts….

  • Maps 14 – 16 are examples of eight districts, with the goal of 14,376 people with a maximum deviation of 5% for a range of 13,657 to 15,095.
  • Maps 17 – 19 are examples of ten districts, with the goal of 11,500 people with a maximum deviation of 5% for a range of 10,926 to 12,076.

Note that these maps, along with minutes and recommendations from the Committee, will be scheduled for discussion at a future Council meeting.

Any questions or comments about the maps may be addressed to the City of Peoria Planning Department, 309?494?8600 or planning@ci.peoria.il.us.

And here are the maps (PDF): 072911-Redistricting-MapsикониПравославни икони

Bill would rename Peoria post office after 9-11 victim

Yesterday, at the height of Speaker Boehner’s attempt to convince his fellow Republicans to approve his debt ceiling plan, the House instead voted on a bill sponsored by Rep. Aaron Schock:

House leaders have delayed a scheduled vote on the debt ceiling plan offered by House Speaker John A. Boehner, a possible acknowledgement that Republicans lacked the votes to ensure passage.

The postponement was announced just minutes before the planned 6 p.m. vote. The House instead moved to consider a far less controversial measure — to rename a post office in Peoria, Ill.

That bill is H.R. 2548, a bill to “designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 6310 North University Street in Peoria, Illinois, as the ‘Charles “Chip” Lawrence Chan Post Office Building.'” Chan was a 23-year-old Peoria native “employed as a currency trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, working on the 105th floor of the North Tower” when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center. He had graduated from Richwoods High School in 1995 and earned a degree in economics from the University of Illinois in 2000 before moving to New York. A memorial service in October 2001 was attended by 850 mourners.

The bill was approved by the House last night by a voice vote.

Hat tip: Peoria Pundit