Ward 2 Alderman Wayne Easterly’s discomfort with redistricting of Pine Bluff’s four wards is something he needs to put behind him, unless he has a crystal ball hidden away.
Realignment of the voting wards when the City Council meets Jan. 17 is the simple and right way to go. It is also the law.
We are required – the law does not say “may” – to redistrict following each federal census count. The General Assembly has approved boundary lines for state House and Senate districts and Arkansas’ four congressional districts.
Quorum courts face the same requirement for justice of the peace districts and school districts for zones for school board members.
The law simply says that voting wards, districts and zones should be as equal as possible in population under the “one man, one vote” doctrine. There is a little wiggle room, but not as much as some folks would like.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The council, meeting as a whole Monday with its three-member planning and development committee, voted unanimously to recommend for approval one of two redistricting plans suggested by Jerre George, director of the Southeast Arkansas Planning Commission.
George, a common sense type, said the selected realignment plan would have minimum boundary changes among the existing four wards, but would greatly reduce the population differences. Minimum changes mean less confusion at polling stations in 2012, an election year.
Ward 1 has 11,089 residents, with the count in Ward 2 at 13,222, or a deviation in population of 17.4 percent. Holding the spread to 10 percent or less usually meets the test of law.
The population count within the proposed regrouping would be 12,585 in Ward 2; 12,434 in Ward 1; 12,087 in Ward 4; and 11,977 in Ward 3, or a population spread of less than 5 percent.
Easterly suggested that Ward 1 be expanded, noting the ward has been shedding residents for two decades. The ward populations could be badly “out of line” in 10 years a result, he said.
He may be right, but that’s why the law calls for redistricting every 10 years.
Scholarship changes?
The Legislature’s education committees decided Monday to consider possible changes to state lottery-funded scholarships, including the amounts awarded and limiting school choices for students who score the minimum requirement on the ACT.
A tiered award system, in which scholarship amounts would increase every year based on student achievement, and requiring students who score the minimum ACT required to qualify for a scholarship to attend a two-year school are among the potential changes.
Improving scholarship retention, balancing the percentages of scholarship recipients attending four-year and two-year schools, and freeing more scholarship monies for nontraditional students is the goal, legislators tell us.
Any legislation developed could be considered in the 2013 regular session.
To currently qualify for a lottery scholarship, a student must either score 19 or higher on the ACT or finish high school with at least a 2.5 grade point average.
Fewer than 50 percent of all freshmen who received a scholarship retain the award for their sophomore year. Eighty percent of the students receiving lottery-funded scholarships choose four-year colleges.
Non-traditional students have a higher retention rate, but the state lottery limits their pool of scholarship money to $12 million, resulting in about 5,800 non-traditional students waiting to receive lottery scholarships.
We normally develop a rash upon learning our General Assembly has decided to dial up another study, but this one may have some merit. Because of their track record, we probably should reserve comment until we see Gov. Mike Beebe’s signature on any changes.