The voters spoke in November and said they wanted 13 county board members. That was the easy part.
The task of shrinking the current 21 supervisory districts down to 13, while staying within the stringent guidelines set by the state was rumored to be the hard part.
But the county's redistricting committee got down to business Jan. 11 and within an hour had produced a proposed map that met the restrictions and met their main objective - keeping entire towns intact and under the representation of a single county supervisor.
Among the restrictions the committee had to follow were keeping each new district's population "substantially equal" and working within the municipal wards put in place following the 2000 federal census.
But that was not the major concern of the committee, made up of supervisors Bob Kopisch, Elvis Presley, Jim Robb, Dan Wanish and Russell Kapitz. They focused on keeping towns and villages together as they drafted the proposed map.
The proposed map creates districts that are very close in population size, a key requirement in meeting the "substantially equal" representation clause in both the state and federal constitutions.
The average population in each of the 13 supervisory districts according to the 2000 federal census would be 1,217 citizens. The district made up of the 1st and 2nd wards in the city of Park Falls met that average exactly.
The largest district proposed by the committee would be both wards in the town of Lake, which has a population of 1,319.
The smallest district would have 1,105 residents and would be made up of the entire town and village of Prentice.
The spread between the largest and smallest districts is only 214 persons, a fact not lost on the committee or the architect of the move to reduce the board to 13 members.
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