One of the legal goals for creating new districts, for the Council or any other governmental unit, is to keep what are called "communities of interest" intact. The proposed new Council Districts, to be introduced at the December 5 Council meeting, totally misses the mark where Irvington is concerned.
Jonathan Katz has gone to the trouble of demonstrating clearly how Irvington is divided from its heart into not one, not two, but three different Council districts. Below is his highlighted map.
The yellow-shaded area is Irvington. Pieced together are the proposed new districts 12, 18 and 19.
Irvington is an historic district that is coming back through the inspiring tug and pull of its dedicated, focused, residents. I should say that it at the point of being successful and on the verge of being stably successful. It doesn't need to be mishandled by the new Council map. All efforts should be put forward by Ryan Vaughn, the steam roller behind getting these maps enacted, to correct this grievous error.
For some taste of Irvington here are a couple of interesting links:
The Irvington Buzz
The Irvington Community Council
The Irvington Development Organization
The community of Irvington deserves to be left intact within one Council district with one Councillor as dedicated as these residents are to Irvington.
Some Arguments Just Go On And On…
11 hours ago
2 comments:
When asked about why Irvington was divided into 3 districts (after blathering on and on about keeping "communities of interest" together), David Brooks looked absolutely stunned. As if he was learning about this information for the first time.
I absolutely can't believe that no one has yet to question Brooks on why creating minority-majority districts is in fact, harmful to voters of all stripes. When you "pack" all the minorities (mostly black, but increasingly latinos as well), who tend to vote Democrat, you weaken their influence in other districts and thus guarantee some strong Democrat districts so that Rs have a better shot.
Tonight's public meeting was an aboslute waste of time. The message is clear. Unless you're a lawyer with GOP connections and a $225,000 payment, they don't even want you to try to understand the process.
This highlights something I have found pretty frustrating about this process. These maps are fairly difficult to digest and not at all user friendly. I believe this to have been intentional (or at the least an indication of how rushed the process is) that easy, user friendly electronic maps have not been created.
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