PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WMBB) — Panama City commissioners are making plans to redistrict Wards. District 4, encompassing St. Andrews will shrink while Ward 2 in Millville will expand.
On Tuesday Panama City Commissioners took the first steps to redraw wards.
“Every ten years, you’ve got to look at your wards and they’ve got to be within 5% of each other. So I think we, our population was 32,000 plus,” Panama City Mayor Greg Brudnicki said. “So every ward needs to be within 5% of like 8200 people.”
Brudnicki said Ward 2 currently has around 6,600 people. He said Ward 4 has expanded considerably over the last 10 years because the St. Andrews population has grown. There are now more than 9,000 people who live in Ward 4. Commissioners said every ward will change slightly.
“All of our boundaries are changing,” Commissioner Josh Street said. “Every single ward is. And so St Andrew’s had one of the fastest growing areas of the city. So our wards actually shrinking for Ward four and ward two will take part of that, Ward one will take part of that and Ward three is actually moving up towards Panama City north.”
Officials said Ward 2 will now expand to Frankford Avenue. It will also expand between 11th and 19th Street. All wards must be similar in size because of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Brudnicki said. “And you want to have equal representation in every ward because in the single-member districts, people vote for their particular commissioner.”
New wards will be implemented before the municipal elections in April.
