Boundary maps head to voters
(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2022)
The proposed, revised ward boundary map for Glens Falls, narrows the difference in population between wards to well below legal thresholds.
Glens Falls voters may approve changes to the city’s ward boundary map this November after it was approved by the city council at its meeting Tuesday evening July 26. Each of the city’s five proposed wards has between 2,936 and 2,982 people in it, and the five city councilors remain in their current districts.
The numbers are significant.
The process started earlier this year after an unnamed attorney told the city last year that they were not complying with the “one person, one vote rule.” That rule, made law throughout the land in a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, said that any voting district had to be within 10% of other districts in an area. At first, the task force believed that meant the wards must be within 10% of one-fifth of the population since the city has five wards.
However, task force member Sara Frakenfeld said state regulations required all districts to be within 5% of each other. That is, the largest to the smallest could be no more than 5% different.
The map approved Tuesday is well within those limits and is the fourth map that the task force drafted, Bob Curtis the task force chair told the board on July 12.
Wards 2, 3, and 4 have the same number of residents in each, and the largest spread is to Ward 1, just 46 residents smaller.
No members of the public spoke during the public hearing on Tuesday July 26. The city will consider redistricting again when the next decennial census is completed in 2030.
Amended parking study contract approved
The City of Glens Falls has approved an amended contract with C.T. Male Associates to complete a parking study in the city and look at six to 10 different locations that may be a suitable site for a parking garage or transportation hub in greater downtown Glens Falls.
The study will consider the various locations, whether or not the city needs more parking, and how much parking is in use throughout the city, the amended contract says. Mayor Bill Collins said the plan will not look at the feasibility of a parking garage over a transportation hub but more at the parking need and which of the structures might fit in various locations.
The total price on the contract is $34,500 up from the original $12,800, approved last December. Collins said the money will be drawn from the Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant money awarded to the city from New York State in 2017. The $10 million has and is being used for a variety of downtown redevelopment and improvement projects and is the driving force behind the redevelopment at the intersection of South and Elm streets.
The Warren County Economic Development Corporation has also agreed to help finance the study, the mayor told the city council Tuesday July 26.
The contract was first to consider the feasibility of a parking structure on the Elm Street parking lot, a surface lot between South and Exchange streets.
[See our original story here.]
When the city applied for a federal grant this spring, the project turned from a garage to a “transportation hub” — a structure that brings together buses, cars, rental bikes and other modes of transportation — to fit with the requirements of the grant, though officials have maintained that a hub had always been possible and was not created solely for the grant.
[See the Transportation Hub story here.]
However, the city felt some public pushback against the hub and people pointed out locations they thought would work better for parking, or wondered about the need for more parking at all given the changes in driving habits and commuting since the COVID-19 pandemic began almost three years ago.
[See the transportation hubbub story here.]
As a way to help the community understand the full DRI plan, the mayor ran two community meetings outlining the parking and building development.
“In those meetings…I said, ‘Let’s pull the parking study, let’s make a real parking study,’” Collins told FoothillsBusinessDaily.com after the city council meeting, Tuesday. “Some of the criticism that seemed to stick was that I was deciding this alone, so we [are doing] the study.” The most recent parking study predates the pandemic.
[See the mayor’s roll out of the full Downtown Revitalization Initiative plan here and here.
The scope of the work has changed, even if the name of the contract is still the “Elm Street Parking Structure Concept Planning Project.” Mayor Collins was quick to add that Elm Street is no longer the sole focus of the study and that the name change is only for continuity in the system.