Ravenna’s ward boundaries are one step closer to shifting as a City Council committee is asking the public to chime in on where each ward should begin and end.
Council’s Planning Committee will announce several public meetings during its Aug. 10 session. The idea is to listen to community members, while recognizing that the new wards must be fairly equal in population and cohesiveness, Planning Committee Chairperson Carmen Laudato said.
Council’s four ward council members must live in the ward they represent. Anyone who wants to run for election (or re-election) in the 2027 primaries must pull their petitions for candidacy in late December 2026 or early January 2027. The exact date has not yet been set, but knowing it will be, Laudato wants the maps finalized by the beginning of December.
“We want this to go through an entire legislative process,” she said. “That means three readings in three separate meetings and a public hearing where we take additional public comment. Obviously, that process takes time.”
The Portager first wrote about this issue in April, when council members realized that the city’s ward boundaries hadn’t been redrawn for more than 50 years. That’s a problem because, since 1953, state law has required city councils to redraw ward boundaries every 10 years, basing them on the most recent Census counts.
The wards “shall be as nearly equal in population as possible and composed of contiguous and compact territory, bounded by natural boundaries or street lines,” the law states.
Ravenna’s average ward population should be around 2,831 residents, League of Women Voters of Ohio Program Coordinator Trevor Martin told council in March. In Ravenna, though, Ward 1’s population is 2,203, ward 2 is 3,214, ward 3 is 3,827 and ward 4 is 2,079. That sets Ravenna's population deviancy closer to 62% than it is to the generally accepted 10% threshold, he said.
To right the decades-long wrong, council formed an ad hoc committee, one of whose members is Jennifer Mapes, a Kent State University assistant geography professor who teaches a variety of classes including Mapping, Space & Power and Urban Sustainability. She provided her colleagues with computerized (GIS) mapping software that allows them to explore as many map configurations as they wish.
The committee will ultimately submit the most-favored versions to City Council, which will choose which one it likes best. The map will then make its way to the Portage County Board of Elections, which will officially set the new precinct boundaries.
Wendy DiAlesandro
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.