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Consideration of ordinance amending Chapter 1.04 of the Wauwatosa Municipal Code to define modified ward boundaries for the purpose of compliance with new legislative maps, to be applied to current and future aldermanic districts
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Submitted by:
Alan Kesner, City Attorney
Steven Braatz, City Clerk
Department:
City Attorney, City Clerk
A. Issue
Shall the City adopt new ward boundaries in advance of the 2024 fall election cycle and 2026 change in council size in order to conform to 2023 Act 94, which re-drew Wisconsin legislative districts?
B. Background/Options
Following continued litigation over legislative boundaries based upon the 2020 decennial census, the Wisconsin legislature passed 2023 Act 94, signed by the Governor on February 19, 2024, which once again re-drew state legislative district boundaries statewide. Unfortunately, the legislature and courts had continued to use pre-2020 ward boundaries in Wauwatosa. Which means that in many places the new legislative boundaries split our current election wards as defined in sec. 1.04 of the ordinances. As was done previously, Wauwatosa voters were placed by Act 94 into four different assembly districts, which also places our voters into three separate state senate districts.
This was done in the last re-districting act as well, so in 2022 the common council approved ordinances creating a number of "sub-wards" so that individual ballots can conform to appropriate state legislative districts. As an example, Ward 2, as created by ordinance through the regular redistricting process in 2021, was divided into Ward 2A and Ward 2B. However, the new redistricting does not use the same "old" ward boundaries.
In order to match the ward boundaries to the Act 94 legislative districts, we are required to create new sub-wards in wards 8 and 9, and we can re-combine the sub-wards which had been previously created in wards 9, 20 and 21, because those wards are no longer split by state legislative boundari...
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