G'ville BOE 'not comfortable' with new lines

GAINESVILLE - An hour and a half meeting with the former state legislative redistricting director Thursday morning got the Gainesville Board of Education no closer to resolving issues about proposed district lines.

Board members, council members and redistricting consultants met and while they said it was educational, Linda Meggers said shifting lines did not make board members comfortable.

City Council members run at large, city wide, board members get votes from their districts, and potential voter impact is different.

"They needed to see what was possible and what wasn't possible and today was an educational process," Meggers said. "It's one thing to look at a map and wish that it could look different, but then when you get to the realities of population figures sometimes what you want and what you can achieve might be two different things."

Board Chairman Willie Mitchell plans another meeting soon. The City wants to approve its district map under its own home rule,while the Board wants local legislative approval. There could be two different district maps for City Council and the Board of Education districts.

"Nothing really was worked out," Mitchell said. "One of the possibilities is that the school board district may be different from the City Council map, we have no idea if that will happen but that was one of the concerns."

Communities of interest was a phrase that surfaced repeatedly and Mitchell said by that board members meant they are concerned about who they represent.

"They want to make sure those people are included, I think that was the reason we had that issue come up," Mitchell added. "My interest is that the people protect whatever interests they have. I'm not concerned about my interest as a board member."

Gainesville City Clerk Denise Jordan, who headed up the committee that drew up the proposed redistricting map, said with two separate redistricting maps, the cost of the city election could go up in November because of the cost of more ballots.

"In talking with the Elections Office, there is a concern that if the maps are not the same for both the Council and the Board of Education there could be additional cost in the election process," Jordan said. "I wanted to make sure the Board of Education was aware of that."