CEDAR CITY — In the wake of a recent informational meeting regarding the addition of two new school board seats in Iron County, the county commission is expected to vote on its preferred map on Monday.
That gives anyone interested in running for either of the two open seats a little more than two weeks to decide to run and formally register as a candidate, said Iron County Clerk Jonathan Whittaker.
The new deadline window for candidates to file starts at 8 a.m. on Feb. 28 and lasts until 5 p.m. on March 4, according to the newly passed Election Schedule Amendments bill, known as SB 170 in the 2022 Utah Legislative session.
That’s one week earlier than the previous deadline had been, state Sen. Evan Vickers (R-Cedar City) confirmed on Saturday.
During an hourlong public information meeting held Feb. 1 in a conference room at Cedar City’s Festival Hall, Whittaker and other county officials had talked about three proposed maps that redraw the boundaries of the five current school board districts and increase their number to seven.
As previously reported in Cedar City News, the change is necessary according to state law because Iron County School District’s student population reached 10,000 students during the October 2020 head count. That put Iron County just above the threshold of the state’s smallest category in terms of school district size.
After discussing the pros and cons of each of three maps that have received consideration, county officials appeared to be in agreement that the map known as Proposal 3 seemed to be the most favorable option, although further refinement could still take place. An interactive map that shows the various proposals is available online.
Whittaker explained the process by which that third map came about.
“I reached out to Kendal Allan, our new newly hired GIS guru, and I said, ‘Kendal, can you run your techno wizardry and see how close you can balance these precincts, just by the numbers?’” Whittaker told those in attendance during the Feb. 1 meeting.
Whittaker said Allan performed what’s called a gradient symbology, assigning a darker color to areas with higher population density among the county’s voting precincts, which now total 50 after being updated with population figures from the 2020 U.S. Census.
“He made seven distributions because we have seven districts,” Whittaker added. “Mathematically, it falls out.”
The map known as Proposal 3 has a population of 8,593 in its largest district and 7,837 in its smallest, a difference of just 756 people. That’s a total distribution of approximately 8.5%, Whittaker said, well within the target range of 10%.
Whittaker also noted that the Proposal 3 map also features a mixture of rural and urban/suburban areas in five of the seven districts, with two largely urban districts in Cedar City being the exceptions.
“The net effect was that everybody had to share some representation with urban or suburban and rural, with two exceptions,” he said.
Additionally, Whittaker noted, the map also happens to not place any two current school board members within the same district.
That means the two newly created districts, which will likely be known as District 6 and District 7, will each be open to be filled by a new challenger in the November election. For reference, on the Proposal 3 map, the two open districts not represented by a current school board member are the areas indicated by populations numbered 8,207 and 8,593.
In addition, both board president Michelle Lambert, who represents District 4, and board vice president Dale Brinkerhoff, who represents District 5, are also up for re-election this year.
The school board redistricting is listed on the regular agenda for Monday’s regular Iron County Commission meeting, which is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. at the county commission chambers in Parowan. Once a final map has been approved by the commission, Iron County’s seven school board districts will be set and candidates will be able to apply starting on Feb. 28.
Anyone with further questions or who is seeking more information on the filing process is invited to contact the Iron County Clerk’s office at 435-477-8340.
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