Brian Cummins · Alternative Council Redistricting Proposals

March 20th, 2009

redistricting-ward-maps-bc2

The map above is one of two alternative proposals to the consultant’s recommendations being provided this morning at 9:30 am in Council’s Committee Room, 2nd Floor of City Hall, 601 Lakeside Avenue.

It is an attempt to demonstrate what ward boundaries could look like if Council followed the Charter Committee Recommendation language (and Ordinance No. 1321-08) to have wards comprised of contiguous and compact territory, and bounded by natural boundaries, or street lines. Note the red lines represent Statistical Planning Area boundaries.

Note also the map’s ward shapes are more geometric than the proposed recommendations and that there is no jumping of the Cuyahoga Valley to accommodate the needed population gains for wards located east of the Cuyahoga River. For the most part, no neighborhoods are divided more than once and natural boundaries are used much more to correct poor boundaries of past redistricting. This type of reapportionment should be pursued in 2011. We’ll have to wait for the public to get more involved and for more people to demand a common sense, less political way of doing this.

redistricting-ward-maps-bc1
This second map is a tamer version of an alternative. It is a humble proposal that would require relative minor sacrifice from some of my fellow council members in order to save the Old Brooklyn neighborhood from being cut into three wards as opposed to the current two.

I will try to post more on the relative comparisons and merits of my proposed alternatives later in the morning…

So, Council leadership has finally made their move to roll out the redistricting plan for a public presentation this morning and a vote that will follow next Monday, March 23rd that the 7:00 pm Council meeting.

The memo for this morning’s presentation went out only 30 hours in advance. The meeting is being held on a workday morning.

The irony of this silent and secretive comedy is that this all comes to a head during Sunshine Week! That’s the week of the year that we should be celebrating sunshine and open records and meetings on our public processes. No joke.

So after working with Council’s consultants for the past four days, I have these alternative redistricting plans that I will be sharing this morning. A big thanks to my Executive Assistant Johanna Hamm and the staff at Triad Research. Nonetheless, I only received the recommended plan and the two alternative plans we developed late in the afternoon today. We were not allowed to have copies of the maps we were working on this past week.

The gerrymander-like ward boundaries on the recommended plan were too ridiculous to be presented too soon. See below.

recommended-ward-boundaries-2010
The plan being recommended today was a 95% completed final draft that was readied 4-weeks ago. It was discussed in dribs and drabs with clusters of three or four council members and with maps of only sections of the city so no unsuspecting member could be guilty of being able to understand what anything outside our provincial ward areas of the City would look like.

The result? 19 of 21 wards are left almost completely intact with 5% or so of any of their original boundaries altered. The alterations or appendages in most cases were required to add population to wards that lost people over the past decade. And, for the neighborhoods of Mount Pleasant in Ward 3 and Brooklyn Centre and Old Brooklyn in Ward 15? These neighborhoods are taking the impact of the brutish status quo that has left just about all of my colleagues silent in responding to the divisions being made in these two orphaned sections of the City.

I don’t particularly look forward to this morning’s presentations. The meeting was hastily called with barely a notice. The maps released toward the end of the previous day. And, we’ll have another Monday evening meeting next week where again, 19 of my colleagues will likely not speak at all of any concern to what is occurring to three distinct neighborhoods in the city of Cleveland.

Here is the Mount Pleasant, Ward 3 areas and how it is being divided up:

proposed-boundaries-ward-3

And, here is the Brooklyn Centre and Old Brooklyn – Ward 15 areas being proposed to be split into fours:

proposed-ward-15-neighborhoods-2010

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