Speaking to a full room of fellow Tarrant County residents Tuesday night, Stacy Melo repeated a sentiment others voiced throughout an hour and a half of public commentary on a proposal to redraw the county’s precinct lines.
Where was the elected official representing the area, and why wasn’t he there to answer their questions?
“Whether you’re for redistricting or against, I want all of you to have the opportunity to speak to your representative,” Melo, vice president of the Tarrant County Young Democrats, told the crowd. “Do you not think that you are entitled to at least that, since he is on your payroll? Your tax dollars paid for whatever it is that he’s doing … He’s supposed to be here listening to you all.”
Melo was near the end of the list of roughly 30 speakers at the Azle ISD administration building. She used the entirety of her allotted three minutes to condemn County Commissioner Manny Ramirez, who was absent from the first of four meetings for the county to hear community input on an unusual mid-decade redistricting process.
“Are you kidding me? What a slap in the face. What cowardice,” Melo said.
Tracey Knight, chief of staff for Ramirez’s office, said in a written statement that Ramirez, a former Fort Worth Police officer, was in Washington D.C. with fellow officers to honor Sgt. Billy Randolph, who died on duty last year after being struck by a car driving the wrong way. Randolph’s name was added to the National Law Enforcement Memorial, Knight said. She declined to comment further.
Republican county commissioners, including Ramirez, voted in April to start a redistricting process they say is long overdue to account for population growth in Tarrant. The county is drawn into four precincts, with each one represented by a commissioner. Judge Tim O’Hare, a Republican who initiated the redistricting proposal, represents the county overall.
Democrats have widely criticized the proposal as an attempt at racial gerrymandering to give Republicans an edge in one of the county’s two Democrat-controlled precincts. Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Democrat up for reelection next year, published five maps of proposed district lines in early May and criticized them as an attempt to draw her out of her seat.
All five of the proposed maps would give Republicans the edge in Simmons’ southern Tarrant County district, according to KERA News. County commissioners hired the conservative law firm Public Interest Legal Foundation to lead the redistricting process.
County commissioners are scheduled to vote on whether to adopt new precinct lines in early June. Leading up to then, county officials are hosting community town hall meetings for residents to review the proposed maps and provide feedback, with one meeting in each precinct.
Attend a redistricting town hall
Tarrant County is hosting three more community town hall meetings to gather resident feedback on the redistricting proposal. Each meeting is open to the public.
- Precinct 1: 6 p.m. May 14 at the Como Community Center in southwest Fort Worth
- Precinct 2: 10 a.m. May 17 at the Tarrant County Subcourthouse in Arlington
- Precinct 3: 6 p.m. May 21 at the Gary Fickes Northeast Courthouse in Hurst
Throughout the meeting, speakers slammed Ramirez for not showing up. Several said they felt unheard, describing what they thought would be an opportunity to speak directly to their elected official as an “echo chamber” of voices clamoring for answers — and voicing outrage.
Other speakers, like Fort Worth resident Harriet Harral, lamented what they saw as a lack of adequate information about the redistricting process, what data was used to draw the proposed precinct maps, and who has been involved in the process. Several said they wished someone had been there to answer questions. Of the roughly 30 speakers, less than five spoke in support of the proposal.
A QR code at the entrance of the meeting room directed those who scanned it to a landing page about redistricting on the county website. Maps of the proposed new precinct lines were on display inside the room, and attendees were given handouts with smaller-scale versions of the maps as well.
“They provided a QR code for people to look at the maps and gave no information, none, not even, ‘We’re working to make representation in the county more equal or more fair,’ that (shows) these maps are better than what exists now,” Harral said. “No, just five maps which look almost exactly the same with no information about what the difference is among them.”
A representative from the Public Interest Legal Foundation was present in the room but did not address the crowd and declined to comment to the Report after the meeting. County staff gave limited opening remarks to explain the rules of the hearing, at which each speaker was given three minutes to make their comments as at county commissioners meetings.
Azle resident Dana Oliver was one of the few to speak in support of redistricting, attracting boos from the crowd. Oliver said “it makes sense” to redraw precinct lines to account for population growth across the county.
“It is not racially motivated, because people moved to different areas all across the county,” Oliver said. “If you think it’s racially motivated, I feel bad for you, I feel sorry for you because you’re believing a lie, and that’s just the way it is.”
Fort Worth resident Dixie Davis said she felt compelled to speak in opposition to what she sees as racial gerrymandering and an attempt to remove Simmons from her precinct seat.
Simmons won her precinct seat in 2022, defeating Republican Andy Nguyen with 51% of the vote. Nguyen, who represented Precinct 2 between 2011 and 2018, lost his re-election campaign to Democrat Devan Allen in 2018. The seat has been represented by a Democrat since then.
Precinct 2 is currently a minority-majority precinct that encompasses Arlington, Dalworthington Gardens, Kennedale, Mansfield, Pantego, and parts of Grand Prairie. Under the proposed maps, the precinct would lose some of Arlington and stretch west through Fort Worth’s southern suburbs, like Crowley and Burleson, and gain Benbrook and White Settlement.
Davis compared the county redistricting proposal to a recent Keller ISD proposal to split the district in two. District officials abandoned the proposal in mid-March after two months of public outcry, multiple lawsuits and proposed state legislation. Davis, a Keller ISD mom who unsuccessfully ran for a school board seat in the May election, said she appreciated that Simmons was an outspoken critic of the plan to split the school district, despite it not being in her precinct.
“I’m out here, kind of repaying the favor,” Davis said. “She came out for us. We need to be there for her, too.”
Davis said the county redistricting proposal feels similar to the school district’s plan to split, saying the elected officials leading each process are “playing politics with people and people’s lives.”
“It’s really about getting to decide where you put people so that you can maintain power — either that’s cutting people out, or packing people into another group,” she said.
Davis, like many other attendees, left the meeting feeling unheard, and without more information than she arrived with. If the next three town halls follow the same format, she isn’t confident that Tarrant residents will get to have a meaningful voice in deciding how and whether to reshape the county’s political landscape.
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.