District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny is the Greensboro City Council's liaison for redistricting.Greensboro residents got their first opportunity today to give input on the redistricting process for city council districts during a presentation by District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny and Geographical Information Services manager Steve Sherman to the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress.
Matheny, who is the council’s liaison for redistricting, said that the city’s two primary objectives are to ensure that the populations within the five districts are numerically balanced and to maintain two majority-minority districts. The first mandate requires that the population variance between the district with the lowest and highest population be no more than 10 percent. Greensboro’s variance is 9.2 percent, which means that the city is not required to redraw the map. And districts 1 and 2 are currently drawn so that they each have a majority African-American population, so that they are in compliance with the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act.
A show of hands by the representatives of the neighborhood congress and other interested citizens indicated that most favor making no changes to the map, and a number of people questioned the cost to taxpayers of redistricting.
“I would like to know: Why are they wasting our time with this when there’s really no need to do it,” said Marilyn Baird, executive director of NC Occupational Safety and Health. “It’s been working fine. You know, I’m out in the community. People are talking about jobs. People are talking about housing. I want to hear about those things. This to me, you can take it back.”
At-large Councilman Robbie Perkins has previously said that he would like to redistribute at least one precinct currently represented by Matheny into another district so that more district representatives feel they have a stake in downtown development. The redistricting process led by Matheny three years ago shifted one downtown precinct each from districts 1 and 2 to District 3.
Matheny repeated a retort today that districts 1 and 2 do encompass part of downtown: District 1 includes an area to the southwest of a railroad split near the intersection of Eugene and Lee Streets. District 2 encompasses an area of South Elm Street to the south and east of the tracks that includes the Mellow Mushroom, Table 16 and Elsewhere Collaborative. District 3, in contrast includes everything on the South Elm Street corridor northward from Natty Greene’s Pub & Brewing Co., including Triad Stage, the Carolina Theatre, the Greensboro Cultural Center, the Greensboro Historical Museum, the downtown branch library, the CenterPointe high-rise, Center City Park, Lincoln Financial Group building, the VF Corp. headquarters, the Wachovia Tower, the US Trust Building and the Depot.
Today, Matheny signaled a possible willingness to give a little on downtown representation.
“I know [District 1 Councilwoman] Dianne [Bellamy-Small] is fighting hard to get more of downtown,” he said, “and if we can make that work to the betterment and without shifting a lot of precincts, I’ve got no problem with giving more of downtown to Dianne.”
Most of the sentiment at the meeting leaned towards minimizing disruptive change. Jo Isler said after the last round of redistricting she did not receive notification that she had been moved into a new district and only learned of the change when she showed up at the polls to vote during the next election.
Matheny warned that moving one precinct could set off a domino effect, requiring a complicated shuffle of precincts among the five districts.
The new Census numbers currently count 2,457 more people in District 3 than in District 1. Sherman said each precinct holds from 2,000 to 4,000 people. A newly drawn map could conceivably return Precinct G44, whose polling place is at Greensboro College and which lies to the south of Friendly Avenue, to District 1. Whether the transfer would maintain the current balance or push the city beyond the 10 percent threshold depends on how many people live in Precinct G44.
Less ambiguous is Precinct FR3, part of the Cardinal area, which was annexed into the city in 2008. The precinct is currently located in District 5, which is represented by Councilwoman Trudy Wade. Neighboring District 4 holds 4,924 fewer people than District 5, so shifting the precinct would help close the gap. The footprint of Piedmont Triad International Airport makes it appear that precinct FR4, FR5A and FR5B would be stranded were FR3 to be shifted into District 4, but Sherman said there is actually a “land bridge” that would allow to FR4, FR5A and FR5B to remain contiguous with the rest of District 5.
“Mathematically speaking, you could move one precinct and reduce the population variance,” Sherman said, adding that any political considerations are beyond his expertise.
Both District 5 and District 4 currently lean conservative, but in 2009 progressive Joel Landau came within 3.2 percentage points of defeating Mary Rakestraw in District 4. Moving Precinct FR3, which is heavily white and majority Republican, could help Rakestraw consolidate her position in this year’s election, while weakening Wade’s considerable advantage.
Matheny will host a second public input meeting on redistricting on Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events Center.
In other news, the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress voted to request that the city council evaluate all aspects of the impact and cost of various options for disposing of the city’s municipal solid waste and to make public all information generated by private consultants related to solid waste. The city has posted six proposals on its website from private companies for handling its solid waste, including a number that involve reopening the White Street Landfill for waste burial.
The council will receive information from consultant HDR at its meeting on Tuesday, and City Manager Rashad Young is recommending that the council schedule interviews with the private companies.
“It’s not a vote for or against the landfill; it’s what we want to do as a long-term vision for disposing of solid waste in Greensboro,” said Michael Pendergraft, who helped draft the motion.
Some at the meeting spoke out strongly against reopening the landfill.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry, but to me it’s racial inequality,” Mary Lou Zimmerman said. “You’re dumping on people who don’t have the funds to live in $250,000 houses on the west side.”
Goldie Wells, who previously served as District 2 representative on city council, added, “The economic boom that we’ve seen with Wal-Mart and Lowes will be stifled if we reopen the landfill. And with the new Census numbers, our projected numbers show we’re going to be building thousands of new homes in the area."
The lone dissenting vote on the motion came from Kathy Hartsell, who protested that the motion’s request for an investigation of the impacts of various methods of solid waste disposal would impose an unnecessary cost burden on city taxpayers. Hartsell is a political supporter of Wade, who has expressed interest in exploring the potential cost savings of reopening the landfill.
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