Map confusion prompted the Hamilton County Commission to kick its redistricting plan down the road for another week.
On Wednesday, Chairman Larry Henry jumped early to a proposal to redraw the county’s political boundaries, an effort he’d hoped to have finished more than a month ago.
But the plan, which the state requires the county to pass by Jan. 1, quickly stalled.
Henry looked at the map in the packet and realized it was not the one everyone had agreed to.
“I’ve got lots of heads shaking,” Henry observed. “This is not really what we had intended.”
Henry deferred the matter until next week.
The commission must draw new district lines based on population shifts and minority concentration based on 2010 census figures.
Commissioner Greg Beck offered an amendment when he noticed that the map attached to the resolution did not contain a change that he and Commissioner Warren Mackey reached over whose district the Glenwood neighborhood would be in.
“We were instructed ... to go down to the office and make a particular adjustment to this map as far as the Glenwood district was concerned,” Beck said. “The staff went back to the original and took away the tweaking that Mr. Mackey and I did.”
Commissioner Joe Graham then asked if he should also offer his own tweak.
Graham asked to have part of the Riverview neighborhood included in District 6 to equalize the number of schools. District 2 Commissioner Jim Fields, whose district would be affected by the change, said he wanted to see the proposed lines before voting on them.
Ansley Haman covers Hamilton County government. A native of Spring City, Tenn., she grew up reading the Chattanooga Times and Chattanooga Free Press, which sparked her passion for journalism. Ansley's happy to be home after a decade of adventures in more than 20 countries and 40 states. She gathered stories while living, working and studying in Swansea, Wales, Cape Town, South Africa, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Ga., and Knoxville, Tenn. Along the way, she interned for ...
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