[Mpls] Minneapolis Redistricting

[Bert1956]

Although I may not be able to attend these redistricting meetings during the legislative session or thereafter as I teach a class on the nights most of these meetings are scheduled, I will try to alert the list to known facts from other reliable sources as we go along. 1- Next meeting is tomorrow, Monday, at 220 City Hall at 6 PM. 2 - Staff (two) have been hired to do the work at a lump-sum of $10K each. Staff are Brian Skekleton and Todd Bleese. 3 - Meetings are scheduled as follows:              Meetings with special purposes:              March 14 - diversity community input              March 21 - Public Hearing for general input              April 3 - Acceptance of tentative Ward Plan              April 11 - Public Hearing on Ward Plan              April 12 - Final approval of Ward Plan        Other meetings are also scheduled for March 18, 25, and April 1 (no fooling!), presumable for working sessions. You can check all this out at: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/elections/redistricting_meetings.asp. 4 - Steve Claypatch, a labor Democrat, is the Vice-Chair. 5 - From the dynamic I have observed in the meetings I have attended, I think that the members of this Commission are going to do ( and going to have to do, given the task and the desire not to meet around the clock, and not to draw the maps in the meetings) a lot of the work on their own between meetings, thinking of maps, etc., so I would suggest to Issues list members that if they want input: (warning- opinions follow) -              a - get your thoughts to the Redistricting Commission members              b - pull together your own plans and submit them at public hearings or otherwise. Make them known. Send them to other members on the list. Only by circulating them in public and to the media will anyone ever know about them.              c - Attend the meetings. They are sparsely attended and I didn't see any media there at any time.              d - Promote change. If you go by the principles of compactness and contiguity, etc., you can draw some pretty interesting districts that make sense. For example, one map I've seen from a private person, not a commissioner, could give Uptown, now divided into three wards, a very nice, compact district of its own consisting of an area not more than a mile in radius from Lake and Hennepin. While that may or may not keep the MCDA-defined neighborhoods together, Uptown is certainly a neighborhood of its own. Don't settle for tinkering around the edges or protecting incumbents! Draw and circulate bold maps.            e - The redistricting commission is considering the same issues other bodies are considering regarding  compactness, contiguity, and the like.             Other people from this list need to show up at the meetings and monitor the Commission. Sunshine, not solitude, is democracy's best friend.       Bert Black       King Field