County Council gives final approval to new redistricting map.

Written by Anthony Bicy

Belden Communications News

The Volusia County Council passed an ordinance adopting new council boundaries. The plan, also known as plan Fl-5B, delineates the new boundaries for the council’s five districts, keeping the districts as close in population as possible for the next decade.

When the county went through the redistricting process ten years ago, the population of the five districts ranged from 98,043 to 100,212. Now that the county has grown, population ranges from 110,054 to 111,217.

The redistricting process maintains population, but the council also sets goals to guide the process, with some information provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. Some achievements include preserving municipal boundaries, not splitting communities, or keeping large minority populations intact.

“This is the culmination of our redistricting process that we started back in January of this year,” Assistant County Attorney Sebrina Slack summed up Tuesday’s action to the council. “The ordinance now takes that map and translates it into a boundary description and sets forth all of the census information into the ordinance itself.”