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During a public hearing on Tuesday afternoon, Mower County Board of Commissioners heard about plans for its upcoming redistricting.

The redistricting comes after the City of Austin finalized their plan in March. The goal is to ensure that around 8,000 people are in each of the five districts.

While not much is changing in the out county, there will be some shifting of the population within Austin better line-up with what the City of Austin had planned for its redistricting.

In particular, the plan that was recommended further accounts for a chunk of land, or “silo” in the Turtle Creek I and II area that was shifted to the south to be included into the 2nd Ward, second precinct of the city’s plan.

In the recommended plan for the county, a good chunk of Austin in the southeast corner of Ward 1 would shift to Ward 4.

In total there were four options presented to the county.

This is also an opportunity for the county to look at how it wants to handle its election of commissioners; whether that would include continuing to hold elections on a staggered basis as to avoid the entire block of commissioners running for office at the same time, or to choose something different.

To view the proposed options to the county’s redistricting visit: https://gisweb.co.mower.mn.us/portal/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=84fef9b605574d82be3c0e5e996bad72.

The county will finalize its redistricting plan at next week’s County Board Meeting.