Marathon County
WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — An update was given regarding redistricting in one Central Wisconsin county.
Thursday afternoon Marathon County’s Redistricting Committee met briefly to hear about the proposed condensed timetable for the redistricting process that occurs every 10 years after the census is taken. The redistricting process using 2020’s Census data will be different from prior census’s as the day census numbers needed to be delivered to the President was pushed back to April 30th.
At this time, the state expects to get census data from the federal Census Bureau in mid-August as opposed to the traditional April 1st date. Because of that schedule change at the federal level, the Committee heard from Andy Faust of the North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission about the new timeline for redistricting.
Faust says that Marathon County is ahead of some of its counterparts by already having a committee formed for redistricting and having selected the number of districts. “So these are kind of the general steps to get through the process. And you guys are kind of already at this. You’ve already formed a committee to work on this. you’ve already determined the number of districts that you’re going to have.
“Then once the data’s released, you’ll create a tentative plan. By state law, once the numbers are released you theoretically have 60 days. But if you did take the full 60 days for each period of the planning process here, you would have to use your old boundaries for the next election, you would not be done in time for people to draw the papers as the Chairman has mentioned. You’ve got to have a public hearing on the tentative plan. It’s a Class 3 notice so you’ll have to get 3 insertions and get that figured out.
“So probably shortly after this meeting I’ll be meeting with your Clerk to kind of look at when your meeting schedules and things kind of line up to make a timeline plan for when this will work. Again work with the municipalities to make adjustments to the tentative plan once you guys send out the tentative plan. Then you have a public hearing on the final plan and you adopt that. And you have your new supervisor districts for another 10 years.”
Faust says the timeline recommended from both his Commission and the League of Municipalities project counties to have tentative plans drawn up by October 1st. Counties would then likely adopt their final redistricting plan in mid-November to be ready for the elections in the spring of 2022.
In getting ready to work on the tentative plan, Faust says there are several things the County needs to consider in drawing the 38 new districts. “Traditional neighborhoods, common boundaries, those racial and ethnic groups, common characteristics. Counties like the really kind of hold to their township and city boundaries where they can. Again these districts should be substantially equal in population, be compact, respect those communities of interest, and retain your core existing districts.”
As data from the Census Bureau has not been released to the state at this time, County Board Chair and District 32 Supervisor Kurt Gibbs said there aren’t too many next steps for the committee. “At some point we’ll come up with our tentative plan. So then it’s just a matter of now waiting to get the information. But also having the public hearing and scheduling that public hearing on the tentative plan.”
With census data planned to be released to the state on August 16th, the redistricting committee will mainly plan out meetings to begin working on the initial plan in late August. The committee meeting also included members of the Executive Committee to discuss a resolution to support a Broadband PSC Grant application from Charter Communications.
The Executive Committee along with the county’s HR and Finance Committee had approved three other Broadband PSC Grant applications at a joint meeting held last week. Those applications are being submitted by Bug Tussle Wireless, Cirrinity, and Country Wireless to expand broadband services in different areas of the county with fiber installation to new homes.
RELATED: Marathon Co. Committees Vote to Support ISP Broadband Expansion Grant Applications
Thursday evening at the educational meeting of the full County Board, the board voted unanimously to approve the resolutions authorizing the support of the three broadband grant applications to the state’s Public Service Commission. A vote was needed at the educational meeting to meet the grant application’s deadline of June 27th at 4:30 p.m.
Due to an issue of the resolution for Charter’s broadband grant application not being agendized for a vote, the County Board will hold a special meeting on Monday evening to address their PSC grant application.
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