Redistricting Committee
March 24, 2011
Dear Surprise, District 3,
For the past ten years, if you’ve lived here as long as I have, you’ve been a part of the largest growing geographical area of not just Surprise, or Maricopa County, but as the census data has shown, the entire state of Arizona! I, like many of you, have been driving the argument to redistrict Surprise to ensure better representation. When the exponential growth of our population came to a screeching halt sometime in 2007, this left District 3 residents with a representation of 1 per 50,000 residents, while many other locations to the east and north have the luxury of having more intimate relationships with their representatives, and in fact one community north of Bell Road has 2 votes on the dais in Surprise.
Well, our frustrations are coming to a close, the census numbers are back, and the council has selected a national redistricting firm, the National Demographics Corporation (NDC), with a 100% success rate to spearhead the effort to bring us back to one man, one vote. As part of this effort, the city is forming a citizen lead Redistricting Committee. The purpose and function will be to lead public input sessions and narrow the legal redistricting configurations to be presented to the Mayor and Council. This ensures active community participation, and an open, transparent, process in establishing the new districts.
This is a call to residents that wish to a part of this effort to ensure we have fair representation from the largest district in Surprise. Please review my selection criteria below, and respond via email, john.williams@surpriseaz.gov, before Friday April 1, 2011. In selecting appointments I will be considering the following:
- Your subdivision, to ensure we are evenly spread throughout the district;
- Your understanding of census tracking
- Your commitment to the process, and understanding of it’s importance and relevance to equal representation in Surprise.
I know how busy life can be. Believe me, a full time teaching position, my duties on council, taking my little ones to religious education classes, swim school, coaching my sons little league team, and ensuring their doing their homework and not spending too much time on the Wii, I get “busy,” I know what that’s all about! All that said, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this process, and the need for your involvement.
Thank you all for your continued commitment to Surprise, and your consideration to partake in this effort.
Click here to download and review the NDC.
Have a great day and look forward to hearing from you!
