Prof. Murray and Greg take a look at the upcoming redistricting of Houston City Council, with the latter offering a possible map of the to-be-11 districts. I have two things to add to their efforts. One is to wonder just what the process is going to be to do this. We know how it works at the state level. It’s far from perfect, and indeed there are likely to be a number of better ways, including potentially the Wentworth Committee, if it ever comes to be, but at least it’s a process that happens with regularity and is well understood. Council has never gone through anything like this, and while the district lines are periodically redrawn to accommodate population changes and annexations and whatnot, it’s not clear to me that the process is defined for this. I’m thinking it would be a good idea to start talking about it now, rather than just waiting for the new Mayor to inherit it.
The other thing, given that the emerging consensus is that it will be difficult to give something to all of the interested parties with just two extra seats coming on line, is that maybe we ought to think about adding more than two seats. The 1979 lawsuit settlement required two more seats when the population hit 2.1 million, but unless it specified only two, I don’t see why we couldn’t go to 13 or even 15 seats, instead of 11. I realize that increasing the size of legislative bodies is something of a hobby horse of mine, so apply a suitable amount of salt. The idea should be considered, that’s all I’m saying.
I’ll be happy if Clear Lake is in a geographically compact district. Getting a D would make it even better.