McNeely said the township had been told they could follow proposed lines, but it’s unclear if they will be passed. So do they follow the old court lines or the newly proposed ones? But the county has submitted magisterial district court changes to the state supreme court. He said they might consider the current magisterial district boundaries. The only advice we have been able to really glean from those sources is that we need to do what we feel is best.” “The draft you were considering tonight reduces the disparity between wards but still leaves one with over 11 percent difference between the highest and lowest,” Ernie McNeely, township manager, said, “We have been seeking direction from the county and the court system. The county also rejected those ward maps, and Lower Merion had to redraw them.Under the map created by the township staff, the plus or minus six percent meant that two wards had a nearly 12 percent variation.īut there is a lot of uncertainty about how strictly the township must conform to those magisterial court districts, congressional lines, state house districts and census tracts. It was those lines the board approved in January that were rejected by the county.įollowing the 2010 census, the township also created ward maps that failed to follow magisterial district lines. The concerns of Kramer and others led the township to hire a consultant to help redrew new boundary lines. “We can do better than having an 11.2 percent variation between the smallest ward, Ward 10, and Ward 7, the largest ward,” Commissioner Gilda Kramer said in November when the board first discussed ward maps created by the township’s staff. Some commissioners and members of the public raised objections to the new ward maps due to the population disparity. When the township staff initially drew the new boundaries, they worked to follow the new congressional and magisterial district boundaries.īut by conforming to the congressional and magisterial districts, it created a population disparity in some districts by nearly 12 percent. The goal was to get each of Lower Merion’s wards as close to a population of 4,545 as possible. With most of the population growth occurring in the eastern end of the township, population disparities between the 14 wards must be evened out. Over the last decade, Lower Merion’s population increased by over 5,800, from 57,825 to 63,633.
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