No formal action from Council will occur at this meeting since it is a City Council Work Session. Staff will share updated information with City Council since the October 5 Work Session when this topic was first introduced on the City Ward Boundary update process needed following the 2020 US Census. After further review of Montana Code and discussion with the City Attorney, staff will share a revised draft map that addresses the population changes from the Census that occurred across Wards. The revised map ensures all Wards are within 1% population deviation of the ideal Ward Population of 23,448. Staff also will provide the plans for a public information session on this process in January, and plans for bringing this item for action to Council by February 2023 to complete the Ward Boundary updates before the 2023 elections.

Article 3 of the City of Billings Charter requires election wards with 10 Council Members and two Council members representing each ward. Chapter 11 of the City Code requires that ward boundaries be described in an ordinance and shown on a map. State Code Section 7-5-4401 requires that cities of the first class (Billings) have between 4 and 10 wards and that the population in each be as equal as possible. This ensures that, per the US and Montana Constitutions as well as case law, that voters have equal voting strength and representation with their elected governing bodies. In jurisdictions like Billings that have more than one election district, equal voting power and representation are accomplished by equalizing the population among all of the election districts.

Staff had provided an initial map when it presented this item at the October 5 City Council Work Session in an effort to bring the 5 Wards within 1% of each other population wise. However, it was found that staff did not calculate the deviation between Wards correctly. The attached revised map ensures all Wards are within 1% population deviation of the ideal Ward Population of 23,448. The ideal Ward population is calculated by dividing the total number off Wards by the total Census population for 2020 for Billings - 117,240/5 = 23,448. The revised map now provides for the populations in all Wards for being within 1% plus or minus of 23,448.

Redrawing election boundaries has a judicially approved set of mandatory and a set of discretionary criteria. From the outset, staff focused its efforts on changes that meet the mandatory criteria, such as equalized population and contiguous and compact shapes of wards. The most common discretionary criteria are to use geographic or topographical features as boundaries and borders that use existing political unit boundaries - like roads, ditches, rivers, etc. A more rarely implemented, but allowed discretionary criterion, is to establish boundaries that do not adversely impact incumbent elected officials. The Billings City Charter requires that Council members reside in the wards that they represent. If a new ward boundary plan was adopted that placed an incumbent in a different ward from the one that elected him/her, that Council member would immediately forfeit his/her seat because s/he would no longer reside in the ward that elected him/her. The current plan does not affect any current Council members in terms of their place of residence and the ward they represent. However, given the location of the population in the City and across the Wards, staff is not able to draw the boundaries of each Ward as cleanly and neatly as might be preferred. There are areas of the City with little or no population as they are commercial areas, and there are areas with greater density of population and those with less. As depicted on the attached draft map, to get the 5 Wards to be within less than 1% deviation in population from the idea Ward population staff had to select some small areas of several Wards where there was population to achieve this. Staff continues to try and use streets and other geographic barriers to define the Ward boundaries even if some boundaries are a little less uniform than before.

The City's 2020 population per the 2020 Census data is 117,240. The 2010 Census data set the City population at 104,170. The current population of 117,240 means that the ideal population per ward is 23,448. The increase in population since the 2010 Census is most significant in Ward 4 (See the attached Draft Ward Boundary Redistricting Map) at 25,722. This creates a significant imbalance with Ward 1 that has a current population of 20,580, a 5,142 difference between Ward 4 and Ward 1. Staff has reviewed the populations in the wards and also looked at election district boundaries, and has developed a recommendation for Council to make two significant changes between Ward 1 and Ward 4 to adjust the population distribution (See attached Draft Ward Boundary Redistricting Map). Several other smaller adjustments between other Wards also are shown to achieve nearly equal Ward populations. This proposal appears to be the most straight forward way to make the necessary changes with the last effect on the five wards overall. Staff at the meeting will walk through the draft map, proposed changes, and demonstrate how the changes were achieved.

Staff has scheduled a Ward Boundary Update Open House for Wednesday, January 11, 2023 starting at 5:30 pm to share information on the process and background on the City making Ward Boundary changes after each Decennial Census. Staff will coordinate with the City's Public Information Officer to publicize this event.

The 2023 City Government Primary is Tuesday, September 12th and the General is Tuesday, November 7th. The time for candidates to file opens 140 days prior to the Primary, or the third week in April 2023. That means the City should determine its Ward boundaries prior to the opening day for candidates to file so they know which Ward they reside within. Given the schedule in early 2023, staff suggests it bring the ward boundary changes to Council for public hearing and first reading of an ordinance no later than the first meeting in March 2023 so it can be passed and approved the second meeting March. After the public information session on this process in January, staff will work to bring this to Council in February to ensure the City is ahead of the deadline.
 

The stakeholders in this process include the residents of Billings that are represented by the City Council and Mayor across the five City Council Election Wards. Ensuring that the population in each Council Word is approximately the same to maintain even representation for each Ward is an important process for the City after each Decennial Census is tabulated and the data is released. Staff has scheduled a Ward Boundary Update Open House for Wednesday, January 11, 2023 starting at 5:30 pm to share information on the process and background on the City making Ward Boundary changes after each Decennial Census. Staff will coordinate with the City's Public Information Officer to publicize this event.

There is really only one alternative for the City Council at this point, and that is to move forward with updating the City Council Wards to adjust population distribution as evenly as possible across all five Wards. In this case, staff has made adjustments that bring all 5 Wards within less than 1% deviation of the ideal Ward population of 23,448 (See attached draft Ward Boundary Map).

The main fiscal impact from this effort is the staff time involved in collecting the Census data, analyzing it, and then preparing draft Ward maps to show how the adjustments in population would be distributed across the Wards. City GIS, Planning, Legal, the Clerk's Office, and Administration have been involved in this effort in the City, and the County Elections Administrator and County GIS Department also have participated. If the Council fails to adopt a plan prior to the 2023 municipal election or adopts a plan that does not meet the primary criteria for redrawing election boundaries, the decision could be challenged and additional resources would be committed to defending its decisions.