CLEVELAND — As Cleveland City Council nears the end of their redistricting process, residents are calling on council leadership to publicly release the newly-drawn ward map proposals.
Because of population loss over the past decade, the body is required to re-draw ward boundaries, dropping from 17 to 15 city council members in the next election cycle.
“Given the short time left to finalize the map, we should ask what these professionally produced maps look like," Paula Furst said in a public comment at council’s meeting Monday night.
Because of population loss over the past decade, the body is required to re-draw ward boundaries, dropping from 17 to 15 city council members in the next election cycle.
Council leadership is largely responsible for overseeing the redistricting process, and the county board of elections is now requesting the new map by early January. So, it appears time for more public feedback could be running out.
While it has not been finalized or made public, President Blaine Griffin shared a draft map with members last week — sparking a debate with Ward 12 Representative Rebecca Maurer who claims her ward was “carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
“Do not play games with my house,” Maurer said in last Monday’s meeting. “Do not play games with my street. Do not play games with the forest City section of Slavic Village, which so honestly deserves to be kept with the rest of Slavic Village. It is that simple. It is an affront to this body to even consider a map that gerrymanders a councilperson's house.”
Griffin stepped down from the council president’s chair to respond to Maurer last week, saying the proposal is a work in progress.
“The fact that a council member will try to implode this issue as if this was the final document, is absurd,” Griffin said. “Quite frankly, members of this body encouraged me to get rid of Ward 12 because they don't trust the council member in Ward 12. They don't feel that the council member in Ward 12 is a team player.”
Under his leadership, Griffin said the redistricting process in the city of Cleveland is more transparent than ever — promising to work hard to honor existing neighborhoods and use natural boundaries to draw the new map.
For the first time, council held public meetings to get resident input on the process, but it’s unclear if and how that input was used to make the map Griffin is now proposing.
This week, several council members took time to defend Griffin at the end of meeting.
“I understand you have a role to do and making sure this body is moving forward so the city can continue to move forward as council president,” Council member Richard Starr said. “So it's tough for you, Council President.”
Earlier this year, Cleveland City Council unanimously passed a resolution in support of the statewide Citizen’s Not Politicians initiative — which did not pass, but would have given residents the power to draw statehouse districts, rather than legislators.
Maurer and public commenters who took the podium this week are asking council to support a future charter amendment that would similarly seek to expand redistricting power beyond council leadership.