DANE COUNTY REDISTRICTING COMMISSION ASKS PUBLIC TO IDENTIFY THEIR COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST

July 07, 2021
Dane County Redistricting Chair Ken Opin (ken.opin@gmail.com) Dane County Redistricting Vice-Chair Nakia Wiley (wiley.nakia@kw.com) Senior Planner Brian Standing (standing@countyofdane.com)
County Board

Over the last several months, Dane County’s Redistricting Commission has met to lay the groundwork for the short timeframe they will have to recommend new supervisory district maps to the County Board. Following severe delays of the data delivery from the US Census Bureau, the Commission is scheduled to begin their work on maps in early October.

 

In 2016, the Dane County Board of Supervisors adopted Ordinance Amendment 2016 OA-32, which created a nonpartisan independent citizen Redistricting Commission. The Commission was appointed by County Board Chair Analiese Eicher and County Clerk Scott McDonell following an application process in 2020.

 

State law requires counties to consider "communities of interest" when creating maps, but does not define what this means. Following discussion at commission meetings, the Commission will be using Representable to ask the public to establish their community of interest. Representable is an open-sourced tool for creating maps for Communities of Interest that was developed at Princeton University.

 

"The best way to define ‘communities of interest’ is to ask Dane County residents what they think. I’m excited to use this resource, not only to map the communities of interest, but to also bring people into the process that may not have otherwise. This is a great entry point to learn more about redistricting," said Ken Opin, Chair of the Redistricting Commission.

 

The Redistricting Commission will use Representable throughout the summer of 2021 to ask the public to map, explain and describe who, what and where their communities look like. Hmong and Spanish translations are also available.

 

Members of the public can access Dane County’s Representable site at: https://www.representable.org/drive/tell-us-about-your/

 

A how-to-use video is also available at: https://danecountyplanning.com/Projects/Redistricting

 

There will be a public training session on July 15 at 5:30pm, members of the public can register and access the training here.

 

"We’ve had a lot of discussion at our meeting about how to get input and involvement from the public. I’m hopeful we will hear from a wide variety of people during the entire process, and especially in telling us where their ‘community’ is," said Nakia Wiley, Vice-Chair of the Redistricting Commission.

 

More information about the Redistricting Commission can be found on the Commission’s website here. Any questions about the process or to contact Commission members, please email: 2021redistricting@countyofdane.com