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Houghton County opted for the map drawn by Treasurer Lisa Mattila as it adjusts Board of Commissioner districts to reflect the latest census. The Apportionment Committee kept to five regions, although there were some efforts to bump that number to six.
Clerk Jennifer Kelly was on the group and says that the county will learn in a month if its plans are acceptable.
Mattila’s plan has the lowest variance between the least and most populated districts of those that were considered, which is the main charge of the group. It creates some problems, though. The City of Houghton is too big to get its own district and Hancock is too small. That forced every member of the committee to create zones that merged townships with larger cities. The worry is that residents of smaller municipalities will get drowned out by the larger cities, even though their political and governance preferences could be different.
The Board of Commissioners is directly affected by the work of the Apportionment Committee, but it has no say in the final product.
A copy of Mattila’s plan can be found here.
