August 03, 2011 06:32 PM UTC

Reapportionment and Denver

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• by: Dan Willis

The Reapportionament Commission has given preliminary approval to a state house map and a state senate map. They will be travelling around the state throughout August getting public feed back about those maps. They do have the opportunity to make adjustments if they want, but major remapping is not expected.

Link to maps

The ones in the Denver area are as follows:

Aug. 8th: Commuity College Aurora at 6pm (16000 E. Center Ave, Aurora)

Aug 9th: Red Rock Community College at 6pm (1330 W. 6th Ave, Golden)

Aug. 31st: State Capotil Building at 6pm (Old Supreme Court Chambers)

         

House Districts

In Denver, population shift means we would go from 9 to 8 districts. This was accomplished by moving all of HD3 into ArapCo and then making smaller changes to the other 8 districts to accommodate the space. Over all, Denver comes out of this process in pretty good shape, mostly thanks to Wellington Webb sitting on the Commission.

HD1: very similar to today, but no longer has ArapCo portion. There is a very very small piece of Jeffco (3 voters) that is totally surrounded by Denver included. I am planning to ask the Commission to include another small portion of Jeffco so those 3 are not in a precinct all by themselves (as they are now). My recommendation has the support of the Jeffco County Clerk.

HD2: moves to the east and south of the current location, filling in much of the area formerly in HD3. Ferrandino currently lives nearer the eastern portion of his district, he will now be in the western portion. one very ugly boundary is the one betwwen 2 and 5. It goes from I25 along 6th ave to Lipan, drops down to 4th, and then down to 3rd on Bannock and follows 3rd to Downing.looking at the population numbers, I do not see an easy way to fix it. As is it cuts through the middle of the neighborhood bordered by Broadway, Speer, and 1st.

HD4:very little change

HD5: very little change, again, better job of following neighborhood lines, especially in the 6th/Colfax/Federal area. But it does have the ugly cut with HD2 (see above)

HD6: essentially looses Capitol Hill and Glendale and expands up to Colfax once east of Colorado Blvd. It does pick up a little ArapCo right along the Denver/Aurora border.

HD7: not much different, but slightly smaller. the lost area is in the Montclair area.

HD8: Stays very similar, but has a weird flagpole along the northern side of Colfax where it gains the territory lost by 7.

HD9: Extends westward a bit and streches up to include Glendale.

Senate Districts

This one is radically different. I did not like any of the maps that were proposed, but this is the one I disliked least. Population shifts required us to loose a SD, so we lost #35 (its in AdamsCo now).

SD31 (or SD21 depending which map you are looking at): only a small portion is in common with the current SD31. There is to be a rectagular block betwwen Santa fe and Colorado and Colfax and 1st Ave. the rest of the district is going to be to the east and south, but stops at Hampden/Havana. Includes Glendale and Holly Hills. This puts Joyce Foster and Pat Steadman in the same district. Joyce has already said she will not run if means running against Pat.

SD32: Essentially SW Denver, includes a small portion of Jeffco too. Extends eastward to Colorado Blvd/I-25. Does a better job of keeping neighborhoods together than the current map.

SD33: Not too different from the current map. The boundaries are balanced better to follow neighborhood lines.

SD34: Similar to the current district, but goes eastward to include downtown also.

There is also a small portion of Denver included in an ArapCo district. SE Denver, south of Hampden/east of Havana (Southmoor, Stoneybrook, and the tech center) in now in SD26 (Linda Newell)