Draft Plan - Rural Areas, Valdez, and Fairbanks Approved

[UPDATE: 10pm added maps and board meeting schedule for rest of the week]

Here's a summary, I'll add more to this to fill it out (Maps) and catchup from what I missed yesterday.

Summary:
1.  Adopted Board Plan 1-2 for rural areas.
2.  Adopted Valdez from Board Plan 1-2.
3.  Adopted Holm plan for Fairbanks.
4.  Played a bit with Matsu and Anchorage,
So far, the strategy has been to put together the rural districts first in order to get nine Native districts and then move into the urban areas which theoretically should be easier because there are more people in a compact area and they are reasonably ‘socio-economically integrated.’ 
5.  Memo from Taylor Bickford about Anchorage

So, the question is, will the board become more political as it carves up Fairbanks and Anchorage?  Fairbanks got adopted today based on Holm’s plan.  There was no discussion about incumbents.  Well, there was a question about whether any one knew how this affected incumbents.  Torgerson said all he knew was that Coghill lives in North Pole.  But I find it hard to believe that Holm, who was a Fairbanks legislator until he was defeated in 2006, has no idea where the incumbents live.  He didn’t say anything one way or the other.  I’ll have to check with people from Fairbanks to see what they think these proposed districts will do. 

At least with Brodie doing Anchorage, there’s no indication that he has any idea of how what he’s doing affects the existing incumbents.  Doesn’t mean that he hasn’t checked, but, for example, as he played around with District 24 - my district - moving blocks of people into 23 which needed more people,  he came close to Berta Gardner’s neighborhood, I don’t think he had any idea where she lives. 

double click to enlarge

The meeting went from 2pm and Chair Torgerson said he wanted it to end at 6pm.  I left a few minutes before that.  Member Jim Holm left even earlier to catch a plane to Fairbanks.

Also, note that Kay Brown, who's been attending all the meetings for AFFR (Alaskans for Fair Redistricting) has been blogging on their site.  She understands all this much better than I do.   AFFR is a group made up of AFL-CIO and Native groups and a few others.  You can see who all on their site.

Click to Enlarge

 Board Option 1 v. 2 was approved today, with these caveats.  Basically, what was approved were the rural districts - excluding Southeast, Valdez, Kenai, Matsu, Fairbanks, and Anchorage.

Later, they approved the Valdez district on this map as opposed to the one proposed by Valdez.  They needed to do that to get enough Native districts and, as I understood it, to have District 5 contiguous with a Southeast Native district to be established. 
And later they also adopted the Fairbanks map above. 

The board is meeting tomorrow

Sunday, April 10th
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Location: 411 W. 4th Avenue, Suite 302, Anchorage, AK 99501

Here's the schedule for the rest of the week:

Monday, April 11th
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Location: 411 W. 4th Avenue, Suite 302, Anchorage, AK 99501

Tuesday, April 12th
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Location: 411 W. 4th Avenue, Suite 302, Anchorage, AK 99501

Here's the schedule for the rest of the week:

Wednesday, April 13th
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Location: 411 W. 4th Avenue, Suite 302, Anchorage, AK 99501

Thursday, April 14th
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Location: 411 W. 4th Avenue, Suite 302, Anchorage, AK 99501

Each meeting may involve periodic recesses to a time certain and the Board may also consider administrative and legal matters at the daily Board meetings. Discussions of legal matters may require executive sessions.