County Council gives final approval to new redistricting map

Posted On: December 14, 2021

It was the last bit of business that the Volusia County Council had to transact to make it official.

On Tuesday, County Council members approved an ordinance adopting new council boundaries that will be in effect for the next decade. Known as plan FI-5B, the ordinance approved on Tuesday officially delineates the new boundaries for the Council’s five districts. The redistricting process, which the county must undertake every 10 years after each national census, is designed to keep the districts as close in population as possible to ensure equal representation.

The new boundaries will take effect for County Council elections starting next year. The five Council members who serve in the district seats must live within their district and are elected by voters within those districts. The other two members of the County Council – the County Chair and the At-Large member – are elected by voters countywide.

Ten years ago, when the county last went through the redistricting process, the population of the five Council districts ranged from 98,043 to 100,212. With Volusia County’s growth over the last decade, the population of the districts will now range from 110,054 to 111,217. Plan FI-5B was among 20 proposed maps that the Council considered. In addition to maintaining population parity, the redistricting process also was guided by a series of goals established by the Council, such as preserving municipal boundaries when possible, keeping intact large concentrations of minority populations and not splitting communities that have geographically connected populations and share common social and economic interests. While the Council actually selected the new map last month, county staff had the arduous task of creating a very specific legal description of the new boundaries to include in Tuesday’s ordinance – a description which fills approximately 40 pages of the ordinance.

“This is the culmination of our redistricting process that we started back in January of this year,” Assistant County Attorney Sebrina Slack summed up Tuesday’s action to the council. “The ordinance now takes that map and translates it into a boundary description and sets forth all of the census information into the ordinance itself.”

Tuesday’s council vote to approve the redistricting ordinance was unanimous.