Livingston’s remap plan delayed

LIVINGSTON — The Livingston Parish School Board has deferred action on its proposed reapportionment plan after learning that some of the precinct boundaries are not exactly where board members thought they were.

The Livingston Parish Council, which sets the boundaries of all voting precincts in the parish, adopted its own reapportionment plan last year, officially establishing the precincts in the process, School Board attorney Tom Jones said Thursday.

However, when that plan was challenged in court, the Parish Council reworked it and adopted a modified plan that included changes to some of the precinct boundaries, Jones said.

Those changes came after the School Board began working on its own reapportionment plan, Jones said, so the board’s plan will need a few changes.

The changes will affect precincts in proposed School Board districts 3, 4, 6 and 8, Jones said, and one precinct in proposed District 9 has a different number designation than the legal description attached to it.

The corrections likely will have little effect on the School Board’s proposed district boundaries, unless the board chooses to divide a newly split precinct between two districts, Jones said.

But the changes must be incorporated into the board’s plan, he said.

The parish also does not have a consolidated list of all precincts with the boundary descriptions, Jones said.

Instead, there are only the individual ordinances establishing the boundaries each time a precinct is split or otherwise changed, requiring an extensive search to compile the descriptions, he said.

Jones pulled ordinances dating as far back as 1998 and
created “the only consolidated list in existence,” he said.

He is now working with the Registrar of Voters Office to ensure the precinct boundary descriptions are accurate and complete.

Some discrepancies have already been noted in the descriptions, Jones said, and when the work is complete, the consolidated list will
be presented to the Parish Council for adoption.

The School Board may adopt its reapportionment plan
before then, however, as long as the plan includes the accurate precinct numbers and descriptions, Jones said.