New Redistricting Gets Final City Approval

The Fredericksburg City Council gave unanimous approval to a new redistricting map on Tuesday night. Every 10 years, following the national Census, localities and governments in Virginia (and across the nation, for that matter) must redraw their ward or district boundaries.

The new map, dubbed Redistricting Option 2B, attempts to rebalance the populations among the city's four council wards. By law, wards are supposed to have as equal a distribution as is reasonably possible.

Growth in the western half of the city over the last decade bloated the population living in Ward 1, represented by Councilor Brad Ellis. According to Census 2010 data, Ward 1 had a population of 8,319, compared to the other three wards which had populations between 5,000 and 5,500.

Fredericksburg's total population at the 2010 Census is 24,286. In an ideal world, each ward would contain 6,072 people. Ward 1's population had deviated just a hair more than 37 percent over the ideal, far outside the plus or minus five percent allowed by law.

Option 2B rebalances the ward populations so that, according to 2010 Census numbers, no ward is more than 2 percent more populous than any other.

The largest ward under the new plan is Ward 2, represented by City Councilor George Solley, with 6,252 residents. Ward 2's population deviates 2.97 percent from the ideal population split.

The smallest ward under the new plan is Ward 4, the city's "minority-majority" ward, with a population of 5,782, a negative 4.7 percent deviation from the ideal split. Ward 4, represented by Councilor Bea Paolucci, now has a 63 percent majority of racial minorities, 42 percent of which is African-American. Ward 4 has 4,257 registered voters.

Back in June, the City Council was shown three options for redistricting to consider. Since then, members of the City Council and the city's zoning office have been going out into the community to try and generate feedback from residents over the proposed redistricting options. Last night, members of the City Council received a breakdown of public opinion sent in to City Hall over the redistricting options.

An obtuse, neighborhood by neighborhood breakdown of the changes can be found below:

Option 2B sees Ward 1 lose Normandy Village to Ward 2. The Altoona Subdvision, the western half of Huntington Hills and an area on the West Side of Route 1 southeast of Hazel run would all go to Ward 3. All of the area north of Fall Hill Avenue is now in Ward 4. Ward 3 would lose the Fairview neighborhood to Ward 2 and the Fredericksburg Industrial Park to Ward 4. Ward 4 loses four blocks between Charlotte Street and Hanover Street from Lee Avenue to Prince Edward Street and five blocks on the west side of Charles Street between Fauquier Street and Ford Street.