we will call this meeting to order do you want i'll be happy great thank you we'll remain standing for the pledge of allegiance let's pray father we come to you tonight to do your work do your work here for the citizens of of greenwood south carolina be with us during this meeting so that we may glorify your name in your name we pray amen of amen and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right [Music] in accordance with the freedom of information act chapter 4 title 30 code laws of south carolina 1976. an agenda has been posted on the front door city hall a notification of this meeting has been given to the news media i can't confirm that we have a quorum correct thank you all right i think we have a proposed executive session first is that correct all right do i hear a motion with grounds for exec to consider executive session a motion to enter executive session to receive legal advice on business license violations and other matters covered by attorney client privilege and discuss proposed contractual arrangements for grant writing services second promotion by mr miller second by mr bass any further discussion regarding going into executive session all in favor of going into executive session for the reasons stated that motion carries unanimously with six votes if y'all are okay we'll just go into the conference room for executive session and um i miss heart of any further discussion regarding coming out of executive session yes sir all in favor of coming out of executive session the motion carries unanimously with six folks we do have one new business without taking any action on the road um we do have one item under new business uh this evening to consider ordinance number 22-015 amending the city of greenwood's code of ordinance chapter 16 election section 16-7 award lines for single-member districts these are this is the new ward lines after every census obviously you have to do redistricting i know we've talked about this at several different meetings so i just wanted to touch quickly on this so the reason we're doing first reading tonight just so everyone's clear is so that we can have second reading on june the 20th and try to get the new lines adopted in time to get them over to the election office so that they're ready to go for the um filing deadline for the elections in november so that opens august the first and you have to have the new the new award lines adopted uh miss bulls by august 1st correct but i mean they need time to be able to eat to send information out to people who are in new wards because some people shift it around so if you know if if i i used to live in mr bass's war and now i'm going to be living in mr miller's war i need to be notified that i can vote in the ward 4 election but i normally would vote in ward 5. so you have to give time for them to get that information out and i understand the timing issue but let's say we're doing first reading second reading be the public hearing correct yes i mean let's say if there's right there there's input and something needs to be tweaked a bit how would we so miss bowles actually asked me the same question and so if during the public hearing there were things that came up that council wanted to evaluate we can do that um you know i think every every council member just needs to be aware that every change is like a domino so if something changes in ward 6 it might affect ward 4 which might then affect ward 3 which affects ward 5. and so you have to take the numbers run them again make sure your deviation is good make sure that you're complying with the voting rights act and you know so there's a lot of pieces to it but if something came up that council wanted staff to evaluate you could table second reading you wouldn't have to have the public hearing again because you already had it and then you could vote at either the july work session or the july meeting without having to start over correct okay but it gives us that's all i wanted to go ahead and have first you know i tried to have first reading in may but then there was some an error in the numbers that we got from our face so um this will give us a little bit of flexibility not as much as i'd like but so um i'm going to go through these slides i know that rfa came and presented so you all know that the revenue south carolina revenue and fiscal affairs assisted the city with the redistricting process they helped a ton of cities and counties all across the state thank goodness for for them so what they do is they evaluate they make sure that we're following all the laws that we're supposed to follow they make sure that we you know the awards are contiguous that they're um minimizing the division of voting precincts that they're um compact that they're um keeping communities of interest you know we had a lot of discussion about that leading up to the first draft of the map um they make sure that if all possible council members remain in their awards i know sometimes it gets a little touchy but everybody still lives in their ward even you mayor smith i do although my representatives may be changing appreciate it um so just really quick rfa um presented the city with a preliminary benchmark report which i'm going to show you some of those numbers in just a minute um and that was based on okay here's the new census and here's your award lines right now and this is if you keep your award lines exactly the same this is what your numbers will look like um after then they came to our january 24th meeting and we had a public meeting where they presented that benchmark report then we had an open comment period for anybody in the community or on council to to give comments we didn't get any on april the 27th april of 2022 rfa presented their first draft to us there was only one change requested from council which was the award four and five shift of a couple of small things we ran the numbers and got a deviation it's like 5.35 but we know that that will change with a lot of construction going on in ward 5. so rfa was comfortable with that with that number um on june the 20th we will schedule the public hearing which will also be in conjunction with you know our second public meeting and we'll have final reading to adopt the ordinance after it's adopted we send rfa a letter we say here's here's our new map and we notify voter registration so they can let voters know if they've moved into different wards and again we just need to get it adopted by july 18th preferably before that so really quick this is where we started so these this is the benchmark report so this is where they say okay here's here's here's the new census numbers and here's where your d your deviation is so you can see if you look at that really quick there was there were three wards in gray four five and six that needed to lose population julie we will you just quickly explain what deviation means it's so the you have ward 3 had the fewest people at the census so they had um 3 3269 people and then the highest populated district was worth six at 4 29. so the difference in those two numbers is the deviation rfa wants you to have less than five less than five percent the law requires less than ten so you can see three had to lose and three had to gain these are your population by race i know that's kind of a busy um it's kind of a busy slide but i'll give you guys just a second to to look through it these are pre redrawing of the lines so this is where we landed after the the census numbers came in based on our current ward lines these are the current numbers before the new lines before the new lines yep okay okay this was the voting age by race so like obviously everyone in your ward is not old enough to vote so this is those that are old enough to vote so after evaluating all this data rfa presented um the draft map which is right here this includes this word four and five that one change that you guys asked us to make um just to make them look more geometric actually you know i think publicly this needs to be said is that it's keeping communities together that are um there was a piece of a community in ward 4 that's really not part that was not continuous in our opinion matthew and i opinion and it and so i was ward 4 was able to get back a piece of community that was connected to the rest of it and ward 5 also the same thing do you agree with the way i just said that yes so we're keeping communities together by those two minor changes that were on laurel and off of the bypass um behind on new spring church that that area there so you can see after the new um this this these numbers here are based on the new ward lines our deviation is 5.35 with your highest um population being in ward ward 4 3 867 people and your lowest population and we're five three thousand six hundred sixty six people um so you're definitely a lot better than 25 now what happens once the the new developments oh what happens oh yeah numbers this gets a little confusing if you if you'll let me click through these slides right here i will um address your question okay these are your population by race on the bottom is your voting age uh your vote your your voters under the top is your whole ward so you can see three three of the wards are the one two and three have a majority um black percentage of voters and then your um four five and six me and miss boles talked both earlier today am i getting that right miss fools yes okay you said fifty percent and i thought i would have been to sixty but that's ward two i mean nick is higher yep do what i spend one is higher yep yeah and then your your voters miss bowles the those that are old enough to vote is four to sixty percent there almost 16. all right so this is the map that we're putting forward for adoption it's the same map here so that one has red lines on it and i asked them to take the red lines off for the actual official map the red lines just denote your previous ward line and it's a little hard to follow but um the biggest the the biggest changes to the map um is georgia alabama faulkner virginia that area went from ward six to ward one and then lodge grounds went from ward 5 to ward 6. those were really the two largest ships on the map in my opinion as i was reviewing it i know that you all have looked individually at your wards and i believe most of you all got a large city map as well um so um to miss bowles point redistricting is is a complicated thing to understand and we went we really went back and forth with rfa about annexations because there are a lot of annexations that are not included right here um and we know that the population is going to grow in those areas but for purposes of the of the redistricting process through the census we have to basically lock in our municipal boundary in 2019. so any annexations after that locked in date are not reflected for purposes of redistricting for 10 years there is a process by which you update it every year but officially it won't be included in any redistricting it's called the boundary and annexation survey every time we have an annexation at the city we have specific agencies we have to send those annexations to so they're tracking them and they and they know they're there so that in 10 years when we do this again they'll have them on the official boundary but i know it's confusing and we we've talked to them about this a ton but you have to lock in where your boundary is because they use those boundaries to create census blocks and you can't divide a census block when you're doing redistricting so it's uh it's a little bit confusing but once council adopts the um official the new ward lines we'll print you guys new municipal maps that will include the annexations because anytime something's annexed it's assigned to award so um like the the annexation over across some greenwood highs not included on this map all the calhoun road stuff is not included on this map so when you say not included you mean the additional density in terms of nothing related nothing related in this process i mean when they gave us the presentation they clearly stated that very clearly right and we asked the question during that presentation that was what my understanding has been this entire time so that did not come as news to me but it she said that that this is the way that it this is the process and you need to continue on this process correct but i don't want anybody to think that the properties that we've annexed are not going to be voting into in the city because they are um because they're assigned a ward when they when they're annexed then so over there on uh john's creed that subdivision there off calhoun anybody that moves into that ward will vote in ward 5 and will vote for the mayor and and they know that already it's reflected in our municipal boundary it's just not reflected in the census municipal boundary but that mean the population of the number voting numbers would increase i don't there's not a ton of people living in those parcels right now right yeah that's correct but he also has ward 5 has the lowest population right now and so i think that's why that deviation is comfortable because you know that his population will increase because of the recent annexations and i don't know 100 unfortunately i just don't know enough about the process of the boundary and annexation survey but i believe there is some like they keep it similar to how the census puts out numbers um you know what is that called when they estimate the population right i believe they do like an updated bas boundary and annexation survey but it's not as detailed and in-depth as this is it's no wonder they only do this every 10 years it is a tremendous amount of of work it really is um y'all have any other questions and i updated this a little bit since i sent this to you guys before so i'm going to send you an updated copy of this so that you'll just trash the other one and use this one i'll send it to you i also wanted to comment that miss boles called me today and some someone either she or i or someone on council or anybody who wants to go can attend the neighborhood count uh what is that group called the neighborhood council the neighborhood council that's at the hut june the 13th it's we think it starts at five i think it's fine um and we're going to present this what we just presented here yeah i've spoken to him i can't remember if i addressed this specifically it may have been before that we're also going to um i wanted to have some comfort level if council passes this on first reading and then we'll post it on our website again and we'll offer an opportunity for people to give written comments or they can call and tiffany will collect comments prior to the public hearing if anybody has anything that they would like to present to council prior to june the 20th i think due to the importance of this issue i think it would be wise if we pass them on those comments as quickly as possible and i mean amongst council if we hear anything from people and from tiffany if we can get those as quickly as possible because um i this is this is incredibly important for the community for our community so i mean i will commit to if i receive any comments to share it with the rest of council i hope everybody else will too but i think that this is really important yeah and i know we've we've spread the word as good as we practically can over the last number of months about this and we've had relatively little public input but you know the the june 20th hearing is the final opportunity for the public to weigh in on it so i'd encourage anybody like mr bass said to to have anybody that wants to be heard come here because that we still could tweak it i mean give comments ahead of time and or be here june 20th then or they can come through this neighborhood council meetings neighborhood council and asking the questions that they've done i know we had an email from the lodge grounds group went out and said i like any other citizen will pass along anything i i hear what's the gender yeah do we um do i have a motion regarding proposed ordinance number 22-015 motion to approve on its number 22.015 admitting city of greenwood code of ordinances chapter 16 election section 16-7-8 award lines for single-member districts established first reading second i have a motion by mr bass second by ms hudo any further discussion regarding ordinance number 22-015 all right all in favor of ordinance number 22-015 commotion carries unanimously with six votes just need a motion to adjourn the work session i have a motion by mr miller um second by ms bowles any further discussion about a journey into work session all in favor of a turning into work session that motion carries unanimously to six folks i'm gonna go out of order just a little bit from your memo because mr dodgen is here with his client about this particular reason um so i'm going to let you