I do not believe that an interpretation of "length" and "width" as being based on north-south and east-west coordinates has a chance of being accepted by a court or a jury. The charter is not vague--nothing in it mentions anything about using such coordinates when determining length and width. In the absence of such language, terms must be given their normal plain usage. If you look up length and width in the dictionary you will see that these concepts are not dependent on the object's orientation to geographical points. If we think of a rectangle of a certain length and width and then we rotate that rectangle by 30 degrees, its length and width do not change. The width of my car doesn't change when I angle park it. Absent some specific language in the charter, normal plain definitions of length and width must be used, there is a large body of legal precedent for such an interpretation.
Defining length and width as based on north-south, east-west reference points taken from the actual ward boundaries, as the city will have to do if it tries to defend this point, violates the plain meaning of the charter. My understanding is that the city has not been able to cite any statutes or previous case law to support such a position. Such a definition also would lead to absurd consequences. It would allow for a one-block "wide" ward to stretch from Waite Park in Northeast all the way to Lake Harriet--as long as it was oriented at a 45 degree angle. Wards of the same dimension would become legal or illegal by a shift of the directional axis. Any ward, regardless of its actual length or width, could be made to fit the length and width requirement by rotation. If you were going to allow this definition, why have this language in the city charter at all? This is clearly not what is meant by the charter language and I think it is obvious such a definition is not going to stand up in court. Conor's info on the compactness issue is very interesting, I hadn't seen it laid out this way before. Bruce Shoemaker Holland Neighborhood --__--__-- Message: 17 Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:50:30 -0500 From: Conor Donnelly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Mpls] Redistricting will fail because the Third Ward is Out of Shape B. Shoe wrote: The Minneapolis City Charter (Chap.1,Section 3) reads, "each Ward shall consist of contiguous compact territory not more than twice as long as it is wide, provided that the existence of any lake within any Ward shall not be contrary to this provision." CD: I think the language of this section is deliberately vague on the subject of compactness and complexity. If the terms "long" and "wide" are interpreted to mean North-South vs East-West extent, then the third ward is in compliance. (3.15mi N-S by 3.11mi E-W) Leaving this open to interpretation allows the court to be fairly subjective. Geographers have devised many indexes for measuring shape. The simplest is compaction index (CI). This is a ratio of the area of the shape in question to the area of a circumscribing circle just touching the extent of the shape. CI values range from 0-1 with the lower values representing something like a long thin rectangle, and higher values representing a compact circular shape. See the link below for a map of ward three and some quick measurements. http://www.thomm.com/issues/wardthree.jpg In this case ward three CI is .297 Area of the ward is 2,716 acres Area of the circumscribing circle is 9,150 acres 2,716 / 9,150 = .297 A perfectly rectangular ward shaped twice as long as wide would have a CI of .509 so any shape with a CI less than .50 also fails the test of the Mpls charter. Does this sound right? Conor Donnelly Waitepark TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
