This has been a somewhat dramatic story, but Houston's City Council finally decided to add two new council seats in order to handle the city's growing population:
The Houston City Council will get two new seats this year, the most fundamental change to the top tier of municipal government since term limits were imposed two decades ago.
The council voted Wednesday to add a 16th and 17th seat, with members chosen by voters in the yet-to-be-drawn districts in November.
The council agreed when census numbers were released last month that the city's shifting population necessitated a redrawing of the map of council districts. But members had been split on whether to expand.
The city charter calls for the council to add two seats when Houston's population reaches 2.1 million. A 1979 referendum put that provision into the charter to codify an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice aimed at giving minority groups a stronger voice at the ballot box.
The 2010 Census count came up 549 people short. A city consultant concluded that the census had missed a spot — actually several spots - and Mayor Annise Parker reported that the count should have been 2,100,017.
Expansion opponents seized on the census number as proof that two new seats were not needed. Underlying the public discussion of whether Houston had hit the mark were elements of party affiliation, council-versus-mayor politics, budgetary considerations and defense of existing districts' turf.
