City Council Adopts Redistricting Plan

by Noam Bramson | May 11, 2011

Following several months of discussion and two public hearings, the City Council voted last night to adopt a redistricting plan that reshapes council district boundaries in conformance with the 2010 Census. You can examine maps, demographics, and other information about the redistricting plan by linking to this PowerPoint presentation.

The plan meets several critical tests by: (1) equalizing population among districts, (2) enhancing opportunities for minority representation, (3) uniting the overwhelming majority of neighborhoods, and (4) increasing the average compactness of New Rochelle’s six districts. I commented much more extensively on the plan and on the redistricting process as a whole in this prior post.

Rather than re-state those earlier observations, let me offer today some new information and share a couple of concluding thoughts.

Legal Expert Affirms Consistency With Voting Rights Act

During the course of the debate over redistricting, some argued that the adopted plan failed to meet the tests of the Voting Rights Act. It was and remains my strong opinion that these arguments lacked merit and were motivated primarily by political intent. Nonetheless, such claims should not be dismissed casually, and the Council decided last week to clear the air by obtaining an independent legal opinion.

For this purpose, the City retained Randolph McLaughlin. Mr. McLaughlin is a well-known civil rights and voting rights attorney, with extensive relevant experience. Here in New Rochelle, Mr. McLaughlin was the chief advocate for the creation of council districts in the early 1990s, and he served as the lead attorney for the plaintiffs who successfully challenged the City’s last redistricting plan in 2003. Mr. McLaughlin’s expertise and history of advocacy in New Rochelle give him unique standing and credibility to opine on this matter.

On Monday, Mr. McLaughlin delivered a memorandum to the City Manager, in which he concluded unequivocally that the plans under consideration by the Council were “consistent with the requirements of Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act].” You can read the full memorandum here.

While some will continue to argue this matter, and while frivolous lawsuits are always a possibility, I believe that the McLaughlin opinion ends whatever serious debate existed on questions of law.

Legitimate Beefs

While I believe that the redistricting plan overall meets the tests of common sense and fairness, it certainly isn’t perfect. Meeting every objective is literally impossible, because many goals are in tension with each other. Therefore, the Council must set priorities and accept trade-offs, about which reasonable people can disagree.

While the plan unites almost all neighborhoods, two neighborhoods are significantly split: Residence Park and Bonnie Crest. In the case of Residence Park, we were able to work with neighborhood leaders to make some positive amendments, but these changes only partially addressed their concerns.

The folks in Residence Park and Bonnie Crest have a legitimate beef. My only response is that uniting these neighborhoods would have produced equally objectionable neighborhood divisions or population imbalances in other parts of New Rochelle. Although I stand by our choice, I feel an enhanced personal responsibility to ensure that these areas do not suffer any diminished quality of representation in the years ahead.

Next Steps

Now that the new lines have been approved, the County Board of Elections will need to work quickly to assign addresses to the right districts in time for the 2011 election process to begin. In addition, a public information campaign will be developed to make sure that voters are aware of their districts and to avoid any confusion when it comes to casting votes.

Glad It’s Over

To be clear, redistricting was a legal obligation. It is important to the basic structure of decision-making in our community, and it demanded the Council’s time and attention.

But I am glad it is over.

I have a strong sense that the issue of redistricting is of far greater interest to those immersed in the political process than it is to those with a more casual interest in politics. And the spectacle of Council Members squabbling over district lines at a time when New Rochelle faces significant challenges and opportunities did not place our City government in an especially favorable light.

Time to move on.

Redistricting Process Moves Forward

by Noam Bramson | Apr 21, 2011

The City is in the midst of redrawing council district boundaries to reflect the results of the 2010 Census. In a prior post on this subject, I described the population and demographic changes in New Rochelle that require us to complete the redistricting process in a timely fashion. I also shared a presentation outlining a draft redistricting plan, submitted by myself and three other members of the City Council.

Yesterday, there were several developments in this process.

First, the Council conducted a public hearing, during which speakers offered support, criticism, and suggestions.

Second, I and the other Council Members who drafted the redistricting proposal introduced amendments to the plan. The revisions are quite small in the context of the overall City map, but may be of great interest to two neighborhoods:

1. in response to input from the Residence Park neighborhood association, we suggested shifting several census blocks, so that the neighborhood is more fully contained within two council districts; and
2. in response to input from residents of Sycamore Park and to comments at our April 8th Council meeting, we suggested uniting the Sycamore Park neighborhood fully within a single council district.

As a result of these changes, council districts 1 and 2 would become slightly more compact, and all but two neighborhoods in New Rochelle would be entirely or significantly united. Our suggested revisions are illustrated here, and our PowerPoint presentation has been revised to incorporate these amendments.

Lastly, two different alternative redistricting plans were released. One is offered on behalf of the Republican Members of the City Council. You can view it here. The other, displayed here, was presented by a group of residents.

I have not yet had an opportunity to examine these alternatives in detail, but will, of course, be open-minded to constructive suggestions. On a cursory inspection, I can see some features in these plans that, in my opinion, make sense and others than don’t. And that’s the be expected. After all, any redistricting plan will involve trade-offs and compromises, none can achieve every desired objective, and as much as every advocate would like to believe that their map is the prettiest, the truth is that all of them are rather funny-looking.

The whole redistricting process can be a little confusing to those who do not follow it closely (a description that probably applies to 99% of our residents). There are a bewildering array of claims and counter-claims, citations of law and statistics, and unfamiliar acronyms, plus a healthy and unfortunate dose of plain old partisan politics. Sometimes the rhetoric gets a little overheated and the facts get pushed aside.

The best approach is to examine a plan in its totality and decide which arrangement best and most fairly accomplishes the greatest number of legitimate community goals. A transparent, professional, clear, and open presentation of goals, features, and methods has been my intent from the beginning, and I hope that our presentation can be helpful is offering some clarity to the discussion.

There will be another public hearing on this issue, tentatively planned for the first week of May, and the Council will (and must) wrap up its work by May 10th at the latest.

City Council Redistricting Proposal Released

by Noam Bramson | Apr 11, 2011

On Friday, the Democratic members of the New Rochelle City Council proposed a draft plan for re-drawing local council district boundaries to conform with the results of the 2010 Census. You can learn about the draft redistricting plan and view maps of the proposed districts in this PowerPoint. You can read a summary of the plan’s features in this media release. And you can review demographic and methodological information in these three tables of statistics and this memorandum from Prof. Andrew Beveridge. If this subject interests you, then the PowerPoint is highly recommended.

The following post is divided into three sections: (1) notes on timing and process, (2) highlights and features of the proposed plan, drawing on some of the content of the power point and media release, and lastly (3) some personal observations about redistricting in New Rochelle.

Timing & Process

Official 2010 Census figures released last month for New Rochelle show that the balance of population among our council districts changed significantly during the past decade, with the largest district now nearly 25% more populous than the smallest. This wide disparity means that the City is legally required to redraw council district boundaries in order to balance district populations, thereby restoring equal representation for all residents.

Redistricting also presents an opportunity to address other legal requirements and community goals, including those related to minority voting rights.

Because a local election will occur this fall for a new four-year council term, the redistricting process must be completed on a tight time frame. New district lines have to be adopted by early May, so that the County Board of Elections can correct its voter and address lists, and so that prospective candidates can adequately plan their campaigns. A delay would keep in place the current unequal council district boundaries until January 2016.

Last month, Council Democrats outlined the general principles that ought to govern new district boundaries and suggested a process intended to be timely, efficient, and open to public scrutiny and input:

• Scores of neighborhood association and civic group leaders have already been invited by letter to offer input on the desired features of a redistricting plan.
• The City’s web page for redistricting provides information to the general public and invites comments to cityclerkinfo@newrochelleny.com.
• The draft redistricting proposal submitted on Friday will be posted on the City website and another round of letters will be distributed to the same wide spectrum of community leaders.
• The City Council will discuss the draft plan in public session on Tuesday, April 12.
• The City Council will hold a public hearing on the draft plan on Wednesday, April 20.
• If changes are made to the draft, revisions will be posted online and an additional public hearing will be held to consider the amended plan.
• The Council will complete its work by May 10th at the very latest.

Highlights & Features

The proposed redistricting plan meets all relevant legal tests and also advances several important community objectives:

Equalize Population Among Districts: The proposed redistricting plan would balance the populations of New Rochelle’s six council districts, so that all are within 5% of the average.

Enhance Opportunities for Minority Representation: The proposed redistricting plan would raise the percentage of Non-Hispanic Blacks within council district three and would increase the African-American majority among district three’s eligible voters to 53%. The proposal would increase the Hispanic population of the most heavily Hispanic district by more than ten percentage points to 62%, with Hispanics comprising roughly a quarter of the district’s eligible voters.

Unite Neighborhoods: The proposed redistricting plan would keep more than 95% of New Rochelle’s neighborhoods entirely or substantially whole within single council districts. Several large areas of common interest, such as the West End and the East End, which are split under current district lines, would be united under the proposal.

Establish Compact Boundaries: The proposed redistricting plan would establish district boundaries that are more compact and regular in shape than those currently in place.

Again, you can learn much more in the PowerPoint.

Personal Observations

In most cases, redistricting is a subject about which people close to the political process are semi-obsessed and about which other folks are semi-indifferent. In New Rochelle, the first half of that statement may be true, but the second half probably isn’t. In fact, lots of our residents care intensely about redistricting. Why?

First, there’s our history. Council districts were first established in the early 1990s by public referendum. (Prior to then, council members were elected city-wide, like the mayor.) New Rochelleans supported a district system for a variety of reasons, but the primary motivation was to enhance opportunities for African-American representation on the city council, consistent with the Voting Rights Act. Ten years later, when the original district lines were redrawn after the 2000 Census, similar concerns about minority rights and interests became the basis for a protracted legal dispute that was ultimately settled by the establishment of the present council district boundaries. Issues of racial justice and equal opportunity pack a big intellectual and emotional punch, so it’s not surprising that many of our residents would take a keen interest in this year’s redistricting process.

Second, there’s the immediacy of it all. Sure, we know that boundaries get re-drawn every ten years for Congress and the State Legislature. And we know that those districts often have crazy shapes, inscrutable purposes, and partisan intent. But federal and state districts are comparatively large and tend to take in whole communities. Plus the process is so distant — off in Albany somewhere — that it seems like an abstraction, beyond our ability to follow or influence. By contrast, local council districts feel almost personal. “Why is this neighborhood connected to that neighborhood?” “Why is the house across the street from me in a separate council district?” “How did I end up in a district with a racial or ethnic majority to which I don’t belong?” These are the questions that New Rochelle residents are entitled to ask — and often do ask — about their council districts. When redistricting is so hyper-local, the issue almost literally lands on your front door.

Add the politics of a local election year, and you have a pretty potent brew.

One more thing to keep in mind. The legal requirements, community goals, and physical realities associated with redistricting are often in tension with each other. Many people imagine the ideal redistricting plan to be a series of equally sized boxes and assume that any deviation from such geometry means that something fishy is going on. That’s understandable, until you remember that human beings do not arrange themselves in tidy, evenly-spaced rectangles, minority housing patterns do not conform to neat boundaries, and neighborhoods often have funny shapes. Any redistricting plan entails a long series of trade-offs, and the ideal is never a real option.

So, all in all, not a fun job, and one guaranteed to anger as many people as it pleases. Nonetheless, it is our responsibility to do this. The Census revealed that a huge population gap had opened between council districts during the last decade, far in excess of 20%. We are, therefore, compelled to redistrict by both the demands of the law and by the principle of equal representation.

The colleagues with whom I worked to shape the redistricting plan were all committed to approaching this challenge in a fair, open, and transparent fashion. We have tried to learn the lessons of past mistakes, listen to the objectives and concerns of residents, and apply these as well as possible to a new political map for our city — with the hard, objective count of the Census serving as the final arbiter of what can and should be done.

I have no doubt that our plan will be criticized, maybe even in strident terms. Some of that criticism will be entirely legitimate (our plan is not perfect — there is no perfect plan — and reasonable people can disagree). Some of the criticism will be directed at single elements of the plan that are unfairly extracted and scrutinized in isolation (correcting one objectionable feature may necessitate a cascading sequence of other alterations that are even more objectionable). And some of the criticism will be based on pure partisan politics (I am sure that the talking points branding our plan “an outrageous gerrymander,” or some such phrase, are already written and are ready to be deployed regardless of our plan’s content.)

As you review our proposal and make up your own mind about its merits, I offer only one plea. Don’t think of the plan as a piece of art, to be evaluated by its appeal to the eye. Think of it instead as a jigsaw puzzle. Ask yourself if the pieces fit together logically and if they form a coherent and sensible whole. Judged by this standard, on balance, I think we did a pretty good job.

I welcome your comments.