McHenry County redistricting map squeeks past panel

A proposed map that shifts some McHenry County Board district boundaries in light of new census figures will now move on to the county board for approval after narrowly passing a committee vote.

Members of the Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee voted 4-3 on Thursday to send the proposed redistricting map to the county board, which will discuss the new map at its first meeting in June.

The county is required to redraw district maps after each U.S. Census to account for population changes.

According to the 2010 Census, 308,760 people now call McHenry County home, a figure that reflects nearly 19 percent in growth from 2000. Much of the growth has occurred in the Huntley area east of Route 47.

All board members will continue to represent the district they currently serve. Some voters, however, may find themselves in a new district due to a number of precinct changes, board member John Jung Jr. said.

Committee member Ersel Schuster, a District 6 board member from Woodstock, said the proposed map addresses the issue of voter representation without taking political lines into account.

“It is a clean map that has a good distribution of new voters,” Schuster said. “It was the least disruptive but moved numbers to where we needed the population.”

The proposed map retains the current boundaries for largely rural Districts 4 and 6, the two largest districts in the county in terms of area.

The county’s southernmost district — District 1 — now stretches west to include all of Algonquin and parts of Huntley, as well as a handful of precincts in Grafton Township, said Brittney Venetucci, a county analyst.

Other modifications include five Grafton Township precincts shifting from District 5 to District 2 and three Algonquin Township precincts moving from District 1 to District 3.

But Marc Munaretto, a District 1 board member from Algonquin, argued that the board should strive to keep some of the major townships intact.

“All of Algonquin Township should have remained in District 1 in order to keep Algonquin Township whole and the communities whole,” said Munaretto, who submitted two alternate maps for the committee to review. “Those townships relate to Cary, not Nunda. The map that was approved wasn’t consistent with what we talked about.”

Munaretto said two goals of redistricting were to keep townships whole and districts as compact as possible based on township and municipal lines.

But Jung Jr. said based on the population growth in the southwest portion of the county, those criteria would have been impossible to meet.

“It was a map that helped us accomplish our goals of taking an increased population and spreading it evenly across six districts,” Jung said. “It takes townships that have grown at a disproportionate level and spreads them out over three or four districts.”