Redistricting. What a massive hassle. I understand the purpose and it's valiant, but my goodness it's a murky political soup. I thought Johnson County and the City of Joshua would not run into anything controversial, but I was wrong. The business of politics is alive and well.
Back in July I met with Johnson County Judge Roger Harmon to interview for the Precinct 2 Commissioner position he would later appoint Troy Thompson to. In the course of that meeting we discussed redistricting Johnson County and reviewed the precinct maps to ensure there would be no issue with my residency should he choose to appoint me to the position. He asked where I lived and looked at the map and commented on how it would not be a problem. Things apparently changed.
Last week following another meeting of the redistricting committee and the commissioners it was brought to my attention that a section of the City of Joshua was now drawn out of Precinct 2 and into Precinct 4. A large part of that section happens to be the neighborhood in which I live, Mountain Valley. Precinct 4 makes up the southeastern quadrant of Johnson County and up until now had no boundary with Joshua and not very much boundary with Precinct 2 either. What's very odd is that the Mountian Valley edition is in the northeastern part of Joshua so to make Precinct 4 reach it a narrow finger of land had to be carved out to get up to it.
Joshua has identified with Precinct 2 for a long time. The southern border of Burleson meets us at the north and we work well with them. Since a very small sliver of our city was already placed into Precinct 1 if the current map goes into affect we'll be split between thee commissioners. Inter-local agreements for road work we might choose to outsource will have to be worked through three different offices. County related issues will have to be represented by three different people after a street level map is looked at to decide whose jurisdiction it may fall into and how much real representation will anyone get when the city's voters are split three ways. Mountain Valley certainly won't be a convenient stop for a Precinct 4 commissioner to make.
The current map is not good. I'd like to be able to show it to you, but that has proven harder than you'd think it should be. I first looked on the Johnson County website for the information, but I came up empty handed. When I visited the Johnson County Court House last week to have a look for myself I thought they'd have street level maps available for the public to view, but I was wrong. After much discussion I was finally able to see a rough overview on a small sheet of paper. That has now become unavailable this week to someone else I know that wanted to see a map. You can see how Tarrant County handled their redistricting information here. Anyone can view the proposed maps.
Tarrant County handled the process a bit differently as well. They had a public hearing back on August 17th to get public input on the maps. This week their commissioners will vote on the maps. Johnson County is going about it in a similar manner, but with less emphasis on public input. Actually that's not right. They're allowing for plenty of input just no time to do anything with it. Two public hearings are scheduled for next week. The first is in Burleson on September 7th at 6pm. The second is in Cleburne on September 7th at 7:15pm. Are all the commissioners supposed to be at both hearings? That's a tight schedule. What's even harder to figure out is how they are going to deliberate on any public input and incorporate any changes that may compel them in the course of discussion since they are planning to vote on the maps immediately following the Cleburne public hearing! So Tarrant County had about two weeks between the hearing and the vote and Johnson County will have a few minutes. Perhaps they just expect nobody to show up. That may be the case, but what it really looks like is an attempt to slip this right past the voters. The public hearing will be a dog and pony show to be able to tell the Justice Department it was done.
A.J.
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