Lawton commission closer to agreement on new ward boundaries

LAWTON — The Lawton Redistricting Commission is moving closer to setting new boundaries for the city’s voting wards.

After considering three possible maps Tuesday, the commission voted 4-3 to endorse the map that made the fewest changes to the current map. A motion to endorse a different map, which contained the least deviation between the largest and smallest wards, failed on a 4-3 vote.

Based on the commission’s decision, city staff will prepare a new ward map to explain to the public. Staffers will also publish notices for a public hearing on the new map, which is set for 2 p.m. Dec. 1 in the City Hall Auditorium.

Following the hearing, the commission will vote on whether to adopt the new map. At least five commissioners must vote to approve the map for it to pass.

Once a decade, the commission adjusts the boundaries for Lawton’s eight wards, using the latest census numbers to guide their work. The current commission is using the 2020 census numbers as the basis for drawing a new ward map.

Lawton’s total population has declined over the last 10 years, but the number of people living on the east and west sides of town has grown during the same period. The total population as of 2020 was 76,752 people.

Fort Sill and the Lawton Correctional Facility are not included in the city’s redistricting calculations. Fort Sill is excluded because its active-duty soldiers vote in their state of legal residence, while the prison is excluded because inmates do not have the right to vote.

Each ward must have roughly the same number of people, according to the city charter. This year, the target number was 9,594 people per ward.

The wards should contain compact, contiguous territory, and they should reflect communities with common interests and ethnic backgrounds as much as possible, according to the city charter.

The population must be roughly the same in each ward, with a spread of no more than 10% between the smallest ward and the largest ward. A deviation of more than 10% is allowed if necessary to achieve a legitimate goal, such as following voting precinct boundaries so precincts are not split between wards.

City officials try to respect precincts, but they have to decide whether splitting some precincts will achieve a better balance among wards, said Deputy City Manager Richard Rogalski.

“If you didn’t want to break precincts, we could avoid it, but we’d have pretty bad balance in terms of population,” he said.

The new boundaries cannot be drawn in a way that protects or defeats candidates for the Lawton City Council, including incumbents.

Keeping all those requirements in mind, the commission reviewed three options for new maps. Each option met the commission’s requirements, but there were some differences among them – notably, the amount of deviation between the largest and smallest wards for each map.

The first map included a 7.55% spread between the largest and smallest wards, while the second option included a deviation of 9.18%, which was still allowable under the guidelines. The third option had a spread of 4.02%, the smallest deviation of the three maps.

Of the three maps, the first one contained eight precinct breaks, including two which were unavoidable. The second map included two precinct splits plus the two unavoidable breaks, while the third map had only one split as well as the inevitable ones.

City Manager Michael Cleghorn said when city officials discussed the various map with Rogalski and Planning Director Janet Smith, the third option seemed like the best choice.

“This seemed to be the most feasible option to consider, considering the fact it broke the least number of districts and was the lowest amount of deviation,” he said.

But Commissioner Kent Jester said he thought the second option was the better choice, because it did not require as many ward changes as the other maps.

“I just wanted to say after looking at this closely, I prefer option two because it seems to be fewer changes to the current wards – not as drastic,” Jester said. “And even though the population deviation is greater and we do have an additional precinct split, it seems to be less of a major change to the current wards.”

Commissioner John Purcell said he also preferred the second option for the same reason.

“I’m not concerned about who wins or loses in the next election, but but there was a huge flap that we had the last time when we switched wards, and there was a lot of heartburn over that,” he said. “I’m not sure we want to create that issue again.”