Linn County supervisors tweak election maps

Some Linn County voters — especially those in southern rural parts of the county and in Robins — will switch districts for electing their supervisors starting later this year under new boundaries approved Friday.

The Linn County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to adopt the new district maps, prepared by the nonpartisan state Legislative Services Agency and approved earlier by a temporary redistricting committee.

This fall, two of the three supervisor seats face election. Candidates running for the District 1 seat currently held by Stacey Walker and candidates running for the District 2 seat currently held by Ben Rogers will run for the newly redrawn districts. Walker has announced that he will not be seeking re-election. Supervisor Louie Zumbach does not face re-election this cycle, but will shift to a newly redrawn District 3.

Under the county representation plan, voters can vote for candidates only in their district — not at-large.

The new boundaries put the southern portion of rural Linn County into District 1, which will be an open-seat election without Walker running, instead of in Zumbach’s District 3. That changed portion includes Ely, Fairfax and Putnam township.

Zumbach’s District 3 previously was shaped like a doughnut around the other two supervisor districts in the Cedar Rapids metro area, and covered the majority of all of rural Linn County.

District 2, currently represented by Rogers, will no longer have Robins and Monroe township — they will move to District 3.

Rogers, current chair of the board, said he felt fine with the new district maps.

“There’s only so many ways you can cut the map with three supervisors where Cedar Rapids is in two districts,” Rogers said. “I think this gives adequate representation for Cedar Rapids and for rural, it makes it so one supervisor doesn’t have every square inch of rural. I’m pleased with the map. It’s workable.”

A five-member Temporary Redistricting Commission was appointed by the supervisors last May. The commission reviews the supervisors’ districts and voting precincts in unincorporated Linn County to account for population changes.

Temporary Redistricting Committee Chair and former supervisor Linda Langston said the new map was not one she was entirely happy with. She said when she was a supervisor — when there were five supervisors instead of the current three — the county and the city designed districts to blur the east-west divide in Cedar Rapids. Having that divide didn’t serve the community well, she said.

“We got the map from LSA and it’s depressing,” she said. “LSA typically uses railroads, rivers and other geographic boundaries and it makes total sense, but for this community, it exemplifies what we’ve tried to get away from for the last 20 years.”

She said approving the map is a pragmatic decision since it seems likely the maps could change again in the next few years. There is talk at the Iowa Legislature about the possibility of mandating counties over a certain population to have five supervisors.

“Do I want to go back and ask for another map or do I just take it because I’m pretty sure we’re going to do this again in two years?” Langston asked. “So we’re going to accept the map the way it is because I think it’s only going to be in place for two years.”

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