Task Force Releases Draft ANC Redistricting

At Monday night’s ANC meeting, two representatives of the ANC redistricting committee discussed a draft plan to redraw the Georgetown ANC district lines. The changes would be minor, but may require some dispensation to become approved.

The reps, former ANC commissioner Monica Roache and Burleith Citizens Association president Eric Lagenbacher, are on the Ward 2 task force charged with redrawing the boundaries both between ANCs and within them. In ANC2E’s case, there will be no changes to the boundaries of the ANC itself. But some changes are necessary for the individual districts within it (known as single member districts, or SMDs).

Each SMD is required to contain between 1,900 and 2,100 residents. The count must come from the decennial census. And Georgetown lost population under that count. Here is a chart shared at the ANC meeting showing the population changes for each SMD from 2010 (the second column) and 2020 (the third):

GM’s written briefly about this apparent drop in population. It’s unclear whether this drop is real or just a product of a pandemic-driven undercount. Regardless of the cause of this drop, these are the numbers that the task force has to use.

As you can see above, SMD 03 (central Georgetown), SMD 05 (lower Georgetown), and SMD 06 (lower east Georgetown) are below 1,900 residents. Thus they need to grow to add more residents. The task force is recommending a few changes to do so:

The first change would move a chunk of 32nd St. from SMD02 to SMD 03. In east Georgetown, the block containing the 7-Eleven would move from SMD07 to SMD06. And in the west village, the old Georgetown hospital block, which is currently split between SMD08 and SMD05, would be moved entirely to SMD05. And the 3600 block of P St. would be moved from SMD05 to SMD08.

Even after these changes, though, some issues remain. Even after adding the 7-Eleven block, SMD06 will still be only 1,750, well below the 1,900 threshold. Lagenbacher stated at the meeting that he believed this would be approved as an acceptable deviation from the guidelines.

The other problem is that it will be difficult to split up the Georgetown campus. It is represented by two SMDs. But according to Lagenbacher, in order to come up with two relatively equal SMDs on campus, they would have to split a dorm in half, which would not be workable. It is unclear how this issue will be resolved.

Meetings of the task force are ongoing. A final plan will be submitted to the Council on April 1. It will need to be approved by the Council before becoming the final approved map.