Scott Myers: Where the authority lies to amend ward boundaries

The boundaries are found in Section 1 of the City Charter and are generally amended every 10 years after the release of the census data by a Municipal Ballot Charter Question that voters go to the polls and vote on during the November election.

This year due to COVID, the U.S. Census Bureau was delayed in releasing the census data needed by municipalities like Laconia to perform the task of proposing new ward boundaries to reflect the change or shift in our population. We are required to revise our ward boundaries in such a way that there is an acceptable range of deviation among the wards' populations.

In a "normal" year, our redistricting proposal work would have been completed in time for a charter question to appear on the November Municipal Ballot. Since the data we needed was not released until Sept. 30, of this year, there was no time for the city to create a proposal for voter consideration and get it on the ballot. Our ballots need to go to the printer in early October in time for us to get a proof and review it, and then get ballots printed. Early October is our printing deadline because we need to have ballots in hand in order to respond to voter requests for absentee ballots.

By not being able to get a charter question on the ballot as explained above, our alternative would have been to hold a special election — most likely in January — for the purpose of voters going to the polls to vote just on the redistricting proposal. We did not feel that this type of election would garner a strong turnout and would also cost the city the expense of opening six polling places and paying and feeding poll workers for a 10-12 hour day.

An option that made sense was to place a charter question on the municipal ballot for the voters to decide that would allow the city council to adjust the ward boundaries with a two thirds majority vote and after holding a duly noticed public hearing. That is what we did and that is a question on next week's municipal ballot. The Concord City Council already has this authority and the cities of Dover and Keene have similar questions to ours on their municipal ballots for next week because of the same issues with the census data being delayed.

The city council was also adamant about getting the proposed map published in advance of election day so that voters would have an opportunity to view the approach the city was recommending in order to see that there wasn't any gerrymandering or other strange boundaries being proposed. The map was on the front page of The Laconia Daily Sun.

We have a large map with the narrative on display in the lobby of City Hall and we will have maps and narratives available at all six polling locations next week.

As you are probably aware, both the New Hampshire House and Senate are working on their own redistricting tasks as well. The need to complete our work in a timely manner is critical to the work being done on the state level so that is why we are hopeful the voters will accept this change.

So in conclusion, we feel the changes to ward boundaries as shown were the least impactful we could do in order to obtain six wards of very close population. We used natural boundaries, like the lake, or street boundary lines as is the strongly suggested approach. We tried to keep identifiable neighborhoods together as appropriate and keep the wards compact. We are hopeful that the voters support the charter question so that our work is completed in a timely manner and then the state can complete its work. If the voters reject the charter question, we will then need to schedule a special election and try again in January.

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Scott Myers is city manager for Laconia.