By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
Great Bend City Attorney Allen Glendenning noted Monday night that Kansas statutes and common sense indicate voting wards should be divided into populations that are as equal as possible.
The City of Great Bend is divided into four wards, with two councilmembers representing each ward on the city council.
The ward lines were last drawn in the mid-1990s and the population has shifted since then. Councilmember Cory Urban took on the task of sorting through the latest census data to realign new voting wards within the city.
"The county gave me the block by block numbers and then it was about finding out how many were needed per ward," said Urban. "I also needed to maintain the balance between each ward, and each of the wards has three precincts inside of it. The three precincts have to be relatively balanced as well even though we don't use them for the city's purposes."
Barton County uses the smaller precincts to equally divide the entire county for their five voting districts.
The city council voted 6-0 to adopt an ordinance changing and redefining the boundaries of the wards.
The latest census showed Great Bend having a population of 14,733. To have fair representation, there should be close to 3,683 citizens residing in each ward. Before the realignment, Ward 4 in the southeast corner of the city, was underrepresented by more than 450 citizens.
