Ward 4, for example, has gained residents since 2000 because of new housing on Village Hill.
NORTHAMPTON – It won’t affect their taxes or the amount of sunlight their rhododendrons get, but some city residents are likely to wake up on New Year’s day to find themselves in a new ward.
Using the 2010 federal census as a guideline, Northampton is beginning the process of redrawing the lines of its seven wards and 14 precincts based on shifts in population. State law requires that all legislative districts have as equal a number of inhabitants as possible and, with Northampton’s population dropping by 429 since the 2000 census and new housing clusters forming in various parts of the city, officials are expecting at least a slight shift in ward lines.
Mayor Mary Clare Higgins has appointed a Reprecincting Committee with representatives from each of the seven current wards to crunch numbers, study maps, talk with residents and come up with a plan by May 13. The City Council must then adopt it and submit it to the state by June 15. If the state signs off on it, the new boundary lines will go into effect on Dec. 31.
According to James Thompson, the city’s Geographic Information Systems Coordinator, the latest census figures puts Northampton’s population at 28,549. Theoretically, that number would have to be divided evenly among the seven wards and each ward’s population, in turn, split 50-50 among its two precincts. Because any shift would have a domino effect, even precincts with little or no population change could lose or gain a street or two.
Thompson said it is premature to predict how the latest census figures will affect ward configurations.
“It really depends on how the change is distributed,” he said.
Ward 4, for example, has gained residents since 2000 because of new housing on Village Hill. Some subdivisions have also been created along Ryan Road in Ward 6. To discourage gerrymandering, communities may not draw up wards with dog-legs or dilute minority sections by dividing them up.
Gerald Budgar, who represents Ward 3 on the Reprecincting Committee, said he has already heard from several residents of Bradford Street who would like to be part of that ward again. Bradford Street had been in Ward 3 before the 2000 census. Some wards historically have had strong identities. Budgar grew up in Ward 3 and his father, the late Leonard Budgar, represented the ward on the City Council for 16 years.
Noting that his committee has not yet scheduled its first meeting, Budgar hesitated to predict how the reprecincting will go or how it will be received.
“I’ll learn at that first meeting what everybody else will learn,” he said.
Although it’s possible that a city councilor could end up in a ward other than the one they were elected to represent, no one believes the changes will be as drastic as the projected loss of a congressional seat in Massachusetts. The state is expected to forfeit that delegate because its population grew at a slower rate than that of other states. Some have speculated that Western Massachusetts will absorb the lost seat, although the Legislature and Gov. Deval Patrick have not yet begun redrawing the congressional map.