Redistricting Warren County sets 3 hearings for discussions
Published 11:38 am Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Three hearing dates are set for the public to view and comment on Warren County’s proposed new maps for the five supervisor districts and three justice court districts.
Meetings on two proposed maps for supervisor will be at 9 a.m., Monday, April 25, and at 7 p.m. Monday, May 2. A single hearing on the new justice court maps is set for Monday, May 23, at 10 a.m. All will take place in the Board of Supervisors meeting room on the third floor of the Warren County Courthouse.
Proposals for each show areas of predominantly black sections of Vicksburg and Warren County moving into adjacent districts from which county supervisor, school board trustees and justice court judges are elected. Population losses inside the city shown by the 2010 census prompted a redrawn map to be submitted for federal approval.
Districts 2 and 3 gain population on both proposals for supervisor and school board. Land along U.S. 80 between the city limits and Bucks Drive, extending north to Culkin Road and south along Mississippi 27 to Stenson Road, would move to District 2 in the first plan. The second version excludes the city limits-to-Bucks Drive strip of territory, currently in District 1.
District 3 would gain in two spots in the first plan — along U.S. 61 South to the city limits, bounded to the south by Grange Hall Road, and a piece south of East Clay Street between rail tracks north of Old Highway 27 and Mississippi 27. In the second version, the central city-based district gains neighborhoods between Halls Ferry Road and Wisconsin Avenue.
The justice court’s central district gains voters from the northern district on each of two maps proposed, which use the same census blocks that determine the supervisor districts and mirror much of the same movement likely on the supervisor maps.
In the first alternative, the central district expands eastward to take in everything between Culkin Road and Stenson Road except for a strip of U.S. 80 between the city limits and Bucks Drive. It also gains territory south of East Clay and U.S. 80, including a chunk east of Mississippi 27 bounded by Stenson and Mount Alban roads.
The second alternative shows the northern district retaining the east side of Mississippi 27 and the central district keeping the expanded borders from the first proposal.
Legal action against Warren and nine other Mississippi counties filed in February by local chapters of the NAACP has been consolidated into a single case before Gulfport-based U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. Hancock County is part of the lead case, into which the other cases were folded. In each, the organization has argued the qualifying period should be extended to June 1 due to population shifts that threaten minority voting strength.