La Crosse redistricting committee has about 2 months to redraw local election maps

They have a lot to do, but not much time to do it. 

The people assigned to redistrict Wisconsin for next year’s elections have to complete new district maps by Dec. 1, when candidates can take out papers for the spring elections.

That leaves roughly a two-month work period for the La Crosse Redistricting Committee, which would normally have a six-month window for doing its job.  

City clerk Nikki Elsen lays out the timeline for the committee, from about Sept. 17 to the end of October.    

Census numbers used for drawing maps traditionally come out around April, but because of COVID-19, the local numbers weren’t released until last week.

Elsen expects La Crosse to stick with 13 city council districts, which were reduced from 17 since the 2010 census.            

New census figures for the La Crosse area were just issued last week.

The project might be a little tricky, since the population of La Crosse went down 400 people in a decade, and the county population rose by almost 6,000. 

Both the city council and county board reduced their sizes in recent years, but the 13 La Crosse city districts also double as the first 13 county board districts.