Adventures In Redistricting: Annex Slice Annexed

Sarah Miller arrived at the Board of Alders chamber with a mission: to reallocate the six blocks of the Annex neighborhood that she represents along with a portion of Fair Haven so that residents don’t have to cross a bridge in order to vote on election day.

That was one of many missions for 12 of New Haven’s 30 New Haven alders Tuesday night as they got down to the once-a-decade task of block-trading and redrawing the boundaries of New Haven’s 30 wards based on the latest census.

That process took place during a redistricting committee session inside City Hall’s Aldermanic Chambers.

Miller found a possible way to reshuffle those blocks on Tuesday night so that her ward will exclusively be in Fair Haven, on one side of the Quinnipiac River.

The working session was the third in a series of meetings to redraw the ward map by the end of May, six months after state assembly boundaries were updated.

The 2020 Census revealed that New Haven grew by 4,244 since 2010, to a population of 134,023 residents. Guided by city law, the committee is aiming to create ward populations within 5 percent of 4,467 constituents — meaning that wards could have as few as 4,243 residents or as many as 4,690 residents.

Some wards, like Newhallville’s Ward 20 and Downtown’s Ward 7, are above that target range as they are currently drawn. Others, like the Hill’s Ward 6 and Westville’s Ward 26, are below that target range. (An accurate list of ward population changes was unavailable at last night’s meeting due to clerical errors, but an overview of how New Haven neighborhoods changed according to the Census can be found here. A map of current ward boundaries is accessible here.)

If the alders fail to meet the May deadline, the mayor is able to appoint a 15‑person redistricting commission that could also alter the number of wards in the city.

As of Tuesday, Redistricting Committee Chair Evelyn Rodriguez said she expects that alders will meet the deadline.

Alders spent three hours on Tuesday night whispering in small groups, poring over old ward maps, and working with the new city GIS (mapping technology) Analyst Jacob Conshick to test out hypothetical new lines.

They emerged with a few tentative barters, all of which need to be tested in a cohesive map and voted on by the full Board of Aders before becoming official boundaries.

Miller represents Ward 14. It currently covers eastern parts of Fair Haven along with a stretch of Quinnipiac Avenue that hooks into the Annex neighborhood where the road meets Fairmont Avenue.

“It’s just so not fair to the people over there” in the Annex, said Miller, who lives in Fair Haven’s Chatham Square section. Residents of the six Annex blocks of her ward have to cross a bridge in order to get to a polling place; election day turnout from that section of the ward tends to be low.

Miller asked Conshick to test out giving a portion of Quinnipiac Avenue and the Annex section to Ward 13 in Fair Haven Heights, while allocating the rest of the Annex part of her ward to Ward 8.

At first, this scenario appeared not to work.

“Realistically, the only thing that 13 can get is two small [census] tracts,” said Conshick. ​“You could give [some tracts] to 8, but then 8 would be over” the limit, and Ward 14 would be under.

“So there’s no way,” Miller said. ​“I see why they did it this way, now.”

Later in the evening, Miller found a solution: Her ward could absorb some parts of Wards 15 and 16 in Fair Haven, shifting neighboring wards westward, and splitting the Annex portion between adjacent Wards 8 and 13. Then, Ward 14 could be exclusively within the Fair Haven peninsula.

“It would be more coherent,” she said. 

That probably won’t be the only shift in ward boundaries to affect the Annex. Ward 17, which is represented by first-term Alder Sal Punzo, is slated to lose some streets to Sal DeCola’s Ward 18 in Morris Cove, which fell under the target population range. Residents of the blocks between Townsend Terrace and Upson Terrace will likely be reclassified as Ward 18 constituents, along with part of Elizabeth Ann Drive.

One of the challenges of that redistricting dilemma, said DeCola, is that since Morris Cove is surrounding on most sides by the Long Island Sound and East Haven, there’s only one direction in which his ward can grow: Northwards. 

Since Punzo’s ward wound up being above the target population range, it won’t need to amass more blocks on the other end to compensate for the blocks that DeCola’s ward needed.

On To The 8-9-10 Mash-Up

Once Miller figured out what to do with the Annex appendage to her ward, she set her sights on a new goal: reducing the overall number of wards in Fair Haven so that it can be easier to collaborate with a distinct unit of neighborhood representatives.

Currently, six alders represent portions of the neighborhood.

“You walk a block and it’s one alder, then another, then another,” Miller noted. Wards 8, 9, and 10 each include a sliver of the northern and western parts of Fair Haven, but all of their representatives live in either Wooster Square or East Rock. 

The large number of alders representing Fair Haven can be confusing for residents. It requires several alders to keep track of multiple management team meetings each month. It can be challenging to coordinate among six different alders to work on neighborhood-wide projects, Miller argued.

Several wards also group together constituents on disparate ends of racial and income inequality in New Haven. ​“The issues in East Rock are different from the issues in Fair Haven,” Miller said.

Anna Festa, who represents Ward 10 — which spans parts of East Rock, Cedar Hill, Fair Haven, and Quinnipiac Meadows — said she agrees that ​“it’s doing a disservice to constituents” to create ward lines that slice through a variety of neighborhoods. Festa follows three different management teams. She said she wouldn’t mind rearranging her ward to include fewer neighborhoods. But so far, she hasn’t been able to do so without falling above or below the target population range.

Newhallville Wards Shift West

Meanwhile, a separate group of alders discussed the possibility of shifting the boundaries of Newhallville wards westward.

The census revealed that Newhallville’s Ward 20 grew beyond the target range of constituents — so the ward needs to shrink.

But Brian Wingate, who represents Beaver Hills’ Ward 29, saw a part of his own ward that he felt would fit in better with Ward 20: A few blocks of Newhallville’s Dorman, Willis, Bassett, and West Ivy Streets that currently jut out of his ward, separated from most of his other constituents by Beaver Pond Meadows park.

​“My thing is voting convenience,” said Wingate. He wants to make sure the residents of the Newhallville part of his ward can easily access their polling place.

So Wingate has been working with fellow alders to try and move a row of Newhallville wards west, allowing Ward 20 to envelop the extra blocks of his ward while losing some streets on the eastern side to Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Kim Edwards’ Ward 19.

Wingate also has to account for a population decline in West Hills/West Rock’s Ward 30, which will likely absorb a section near Hard and Stone streets ​“to keep the senior centers together,” Wingate said. In return, Ward 29 might swallow part of Southern Connecticut State University.

Beaver Hills’ Ward 28, meanwhile, might gain a new elderly housing complex: County Street’s Prescott Bush Mall (which was indeed part of the ward back in the 1980s).

Shafiq Abdussabur, the ward’s alder, said he’s excited about that possibility. ​“It would complete the ward,” he said.

The question is how the Beaver Hills/Newhallville plan would mesh with the Fair Haven/Annex/Quinnipiac Meadows alders’ vision. Both Edwards’ Ward 19 and Festa’s Ward 10 would be affected by a reshuffling of Newhallville wards, even though their wards would remain within the target population range as they are. And if Festa’s ward shapeshifts, Fair Haven’s configuration could be affected. 

Edwards and Festa examined a map to examine the repercussions of their neighboring wards’ population changes — and didn’t come to any final answers.

Hill Alders Eye Expansion

In the southern part of the city, two Hill wards — Hill North’s Ward 3, represented by Ron Hurt, and Hill South’s Ward 6, represented by Carmen Rodriguez — fell below the desired population range in the 2020 census. Those wards are likely to expand northward in the direction of Downtown’s overpopulated Ward 7, an L‑shaped ward represented by Eli Sabin that includes a sliver of Wooster Square and hooks into lower East Rock. 

Rodriguez and Sabin analyzed the zig-zag border of their wards, a slinking route from South Frontage Road to Orange Street to Chapel Street. Ward 6 could acquire a few blocks along that corner, as long as it doesn’t cut the two ends of Sabin’s ward off from one another; many parts of Sabin’s ward are just one to two blocks wide and can’t afford to shrink much more.

One added difficulty: the alders have a limited ability to work block by block, because they need to keep whole Census Tracts intact.

On Tuesday, Rodriguez and Sabin hadn’t yet decided how their wards would morph.

As the alders worked, a handful of West Rock constituents watched with a goal of their own: to encourage alders not to split two sides of the same street into different wards. 

Iva Johnson, a Ward 30 Democratic co-chair, and Parkside Drive residents Monica Clark and Von Robinson heard about the redistricting session from Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith. Technically, Clark and Robinson are on the side of Parkside Drive designated as part of Westville’s Ward 27, represented by Richard Furlow. 

Belonging to a different ward from their neighbors across the street can be confusing, said Clark and Robinson. ​“If someone had to organize a block party, you’d have to go through two different alders,” Robinson said.

In the back of the bustling room, Jacob Conshick concentrated on the GIS map before him, fiddling with boundaries at various alders’ requests.

It was Conshick’s fourth week on the job, managing mapping technology as part of the city’s IT team. The redistricting process has thrown him into the deep end right away, he said.

He remained calm and interested in the process as alders peppered him with questions and proposals.

“To me,” he reflected, ​“this is oddly satisfying.”