Wake school board OKs new election maps, requests return to 4-year terms

The new electoral map attempts to reapportion the electoral districts across the county to give all districts roughly the same populations while also accounting for expected growth in some areas. Consultants for the board used population and building permit data and talked with planners and others to predict where growth would occur until the next Census.

At the same time, the board also wanted to preserve the basic core of each existing district, spread high schools evenly across the districts and split as few precincts and towns as possible.

“I think the board been really good about keeping municipalities in tact the best we can,” thereby allowing more residents to have the same representatives, Board Member Roxie Cash. Cash voted in favor of the new map.

Only Board Member Karen Carter opposed the map, citing concerns that the final drawing in the last week moved residents from District 4, which includes Southeast Raleigh, to District 2, which covers the western half of the county’s southern boarder. District 4 is a lower-growth area.

Carter said she’d heard concern about the change from a District 4 resident.

The map moves about 4,000 people from District 4 to District 2, compared to the original proposed map.

That’s a big number, Carter said.

“That’s where I still am at,” she said, prior to voting against the map.

Carter represents District 9, but District 4 did not have a board representative until Tuesday.

The new representative, Karen Waters, voted in favor of the map.

Last week, the board first considered the proposed change, among others, during a special meeting.

At the time, board members asked about the change and how it would affect the apportionment of residents long-term.

Board Member Chris Heagarty said he believed the change was a swap of a part of Garner that’s unlikely to grow in District 4 with a part of District 2 that is likely to grow, based on the forthcoming presence of the new Interstate 540.

EARLIER:

The Wake County Board of Education will vote Tuesday on a new electoral map for the board’s nine seats, as well as a recommendation to election officials to make some of the board members’ terms four years after November’s elections.

The map would be the first drawn by the school board since the North Carolina General Assembly redrew the board’s map in 2013; school boards typically draw their own electoral maps. Courts declared the General Assembly’s map for the school board unconstitutional.

That 2013 law and the subsequent legal dispute over it resulted in a judge’s temporary order that shortened school board members’ terms to two years.

That’s prompted the school board to draft a recommendation to the Wake County Board of Elections to ease the school board out of those two-year terms.

The ultimate goal is to return all nine board seats to four-year, staggered terms, which is what they have been for 36 of the Wake County Board of Education’s 47 years in existence.

Attorneys have advised the school board they can suggest the changes to the Wake County Board of Elections, which would ultimately decide how to run the elections.

Going through the General Assembly would not be necessary, attorneys said, because the school board already had the authority to have four-year, staggered terms before the now-expired judge’s order.

In the same vote Tuesday, the Wake County Board of Education will vote on redrawn electoral maps that retain much of the base shapes of the 2010 maps.

At the same time, the maps attempt to predict population growth over the next decade in one of the nation’s fastest-growing areas. It’s an effort that’s led to seven proposed maps and isolated concerns about splitting up towns and precincts to accommodate for growth.

Unlike creating their own electoral maps, the school board does not have the authority to determine the method of election, such as term lengths.

“We are in uncharted waters,” Adam Mitchell, an attorney with Tharrington Smith, told the board earlier this month.

Under Tuesday’s proposal, school board members in Districts 1, 2, 7 and 9 would be elected to four-year terms this fall, while school board members in Districts 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 would be elected to two-year terms.

The proposal notes that the board members who represented Districts 1, 2, 7 and 9 when Session Law 2013-110 was passed had their terms cut short to three years because of the law’s requirements. Board members who represented Districts 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 at the time had their terms extended to five years under the law.

The school board’s proposed resolution offers the differing two-year and four-year term lengths as a “suggestion” to the county election board before all board members’ terms become four years in 2024.

“I think it’s really critical that we get to staggered terms,” Board Member Christine Kushner said, to other board member agreement. Kushner said the proposal is the “most sound” method of getting back to four-year staggered terms she has heard.

The board is considering the recommendation following the 2020 Census.

After courts struck down lawmakers’ 2013 maps, a judge issued a remedial order that put all board seats up for election every two years. But that order was set to expire either with the 2020 Census or with a fix passed by the General Assembly. Lawmakers never approved new legislation, though the board pushed lawmakers to do so.

The board’s attorneys have advised that with the 2020 Census, the board can return to four-year, staggered term lengths.

Nothing in the 2013 law or court rulings suggest four-year, staggered terms are unconstitutional, Mitchell said. Under the law, before the judge overrode it with the temporary order, the board would have had four-years staggered terms.

“We believe the best legal interpretation is four years, based on the legal history,” Mitchell said.

Board Member Chris Heagarty noted the school board can’t set its own method of elections but argued the 2020 Census redistricting and lack of legislative action point toward a need to settle the dispute.

“We’ve arrived at that time,” he said. “And it seems clear to me if you fall to the state law that’s on the books, where we are, we should have the stagger, we should have four-year terms.”

The only way the board can proceed with changing things is to ask the Board of Elections to resolve it, Heagarty said.

Some elements of that 2013 law were not struck down and remain in place. The school board’s elections now take place in even-numbered years and the winner of the plurality of votes takes the seat instead of having both a nonpartisan primary and general election.

The maps were created by Mapfigure Consulting, working with Tharrington Smith law firm.

The maps were drawn with guidance from the school board that included preserving “cores” of districts, considering municipalities in them, not splitting precincts, projecting population growth and minimizing dissimilarity with governmental jurisdictions. Consultants also considered the current board members’ ability to run for re-election, though District 5 representative Jim Martin has said he doesn’t plan to run for re-election.

Board members have been split over whether to support two of the three proposed electoral maps drawn by consultants. Ultimately, the consultants drew three new variations on one of the maps that would appeal to what board members’ said they were looking for.

On Wednesday, board members said they favored a combination of the variations, resulting in a fourth variation on the map.

Board Member Roxie Cash, who represents District 3 in northern Wake County, favored moving part of District 6 in her district.

Cash is concerned her district won’t growth the way others will in the coming decade, hampered in part by an inability to develop new neighborhoods around a watershed.

Kushner, who represents District 6, said she was OK with the change.

“I think District 6 is going to become more dense,” Kushner said. She expects denser development in central Raleigh in the form of town homes and continued splitting of single-family home lots.

The board also favored swapping some land between Districts 2 and 4 that would place both districts closer to the ideal population figure.

The map the board will vote on Tuesday changes the existing electoral map in several ways, including:

The district held three public comment sessions, yielding little public interest.

Only 10 people total, including a WRAL reporter, attended any of the three meetings.

Four comments — one made during the virtual session and two submitted electronically — opposed the “Option C” map, among the first three maps proposed, which school board members also adamantly opposed.

Option C made the most dramatic changes to existing electoral maps. In particular, it stretched District 5 from central Raleigh to the county’s southwestern border with Harnett County. Critics likened its proposed thin, winding shape to a “river.”

All nine board seats are up for election in November. Filing runs July 1 through July 15.