New Ward Map Wins Penultimate Approval

A ​“least-change” New Haven ward redistricting map is en route to adoption, after receiving a favorable vote from the aldermanic committee charged with drawing new Census-adjusted ward lines.

Local legislators took that vote Tuesday night during the latest meeting of the Special Committee on Ward Redistricting. The in-person meeting took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

The committee alders voted unanimously in support of a so-called ​“base map” containing proposed new lines for the city’s 30 wards, or local political districts. 

That same vote also recommended approving a proposed new Board of Education district map that would keep the same wards, albeit with new lines, in the local Board of Ed districts they are currently assigned to. 

The proposed redistricting map now advances to the full Board of Alders for two ​“readings” and a final discussion and vote, which is expected to take place at the local legislature’s meeting on May 23.

The proposed map that the redistricting committee unanimously endorsed on Tuesday was exactly the same as the draft version released by the committee on May 3. (Click here to view the proposed new ward lines in detail, and here to view the ward lines as they currently exist.)

As local civics advocate and watchdog Aaron Goode said during the public hearing before Tuesday’s vote, the proposed new lines represent a ​“least-change” approach to redrawing local political boundaries to accommodate for New Haven’s increased population. They prioritize the status quo, largely preserving the shapes and bounds of the city’s current 30 wards, with some tweaks around the edges.

(New Haven’s population increased by 4,244 people — to a total of 134,023 residents — according to the most recent U.S. Census. As Hill Alder and redistricting committee Chair Evelyn Rodriguez explained at the top of Tuesday’s meeting, the new map seeks to fit between 4,243 and 4,690 people in each of the city’s 30 wards, with a per-ward-population goal number of 4,467.)

The committee alders did not discuss any specific street swaps or boundary changes in their brief deliberations before voting unanimously in support of the draft map Tuesday. 

Rather, a few spoke about the challenges of drawing new ward lines while also following all of the goals and requirements of redistricting — including trying to keep each ward in a single state assembly district; keeping as much of an old ward together as possible; keeping current alders in their current wards; avoiding crossing state House, state Senatorial, and Congressional district lines; preserving neighborhood continuity when possible; and not breaking apart U.S. Census blocks.

“We’re not working with individuals. We’re working with numbers,” Board of Alders Majority Leader and Amity/Beaver Hills Alder Richard Furlow said. 

“I think, outside of doing the whole map over again from the ground up and recreating wards, I think that the outcome of what we have here will be good for the next 10 years.”

East Rock Alder Anna Festa agreed. ​“This was a tedious, difficult process,” she said. ​“Of course, we all wanted changes in all of our wards. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so.”

That’s because of ​“the numbers were given” — thanks to the U.S. Census, and the previously drawn and approved state legislative lines.

“We really did what we could, and it was tedious and hard, but I want the public to know that we really did work hard on this in a short time frame,” Festa said. ​“Yes, the city is growing. Unfortunately, we have to go by the numbers we were given in the last Census.”

Rodriguez thanked the public, city staff, and her aldermanic colleagues for all of the work they’d put in over the past few months into making this draft new map. ​“All these discussions made this chamber more alive,” she said. ​“It’s people we’re working with in our wards, but also the law requires that we look at certain numbers.”

Morris Cove Alder and Committee Vice-Chair Sal DeCola pointed out that, if this proposed redistricting map is adopted by the full board, the new lines won’t take effect until 2024. That is: residents will vote in next year’s municipal primaries and general elections for candidates looking to represent these newly drawn wards, but the new lines themselves won’t take effect until 2024.

Click here, here, here, here and here to read previous Independent articles about this year’s redistricting process.

Tweaks & Tinkering

So. What are some of the changes included in this draft map? 

City GIS Analyst and mapping expert Jacob Conshick said he’ll put online a version of the redistricting map that shows how the proposed new lines stack up against the current ward boundaries. For now, based on some ward-by-ward redistricting maps that Conshick showed the Independent after Tuesday’s meeting, some of the street-by-street changes to the proposed map include:

• Ward 6 would take from Ward 7 the two blocks stretching from Chapel Street on the south, Court Street on the north, Orange Street to the west, and Olive Street to the east. Included in those blocks are the apartment tower at 360 State St., and the site of the planned new residential development at 78 Olive St.

• Ward 18 would take from Ward 17 a wide swath of New Haven’s industrial port in the Annex, stretching northwest from Woodward Avenue to Forbes Avenue.

• Ward 21 would take from Ward 22 several blocks of Mansfield Street and Winchester Avenue near the Yale hockey stadium and south of Munson Street.

• Ward 7 would stretch from its current northern border on Trumbull Street north to Cottage Street and Whitney Avenue. It would also give up a few blocks bounded by George Street, Dwight Street, South Frontage Road, and Park Street to Ward 3.

• Ward 26 would take from Ward 25 several blocks bounded by Chapel Street, Alden Avenue, Roger Road, and Forest Road, while Ward 25 would extend east as far as Norton Street and Irving Street in West River.

• Ward 14, meanwhile, would hardly change at all — and would continue to stretch across the Quinnipiac River and into three different neighborhoods: Fair Haven, Fair Haven Heights, and the Annex.

According to population data provided by Conshick (see chart above), the newly drawn ward with the largest total population under this proposed redistricting map would be Newhallville’s Ward 20, with 4,689 residents. That would be followed by East Rock’s Ward 9, with 4,682 residents, and Fair Haven’s Ward 15, with 4,680 residents.

The least populous wards would be Upper Westville’s Ward 26, with 4,251 residents, Lower Westville’s Ward 25, with 4,262 residents, and Amity/Beaver Hills/Westville’s Ward 27, with 4,277 residents.

Cleveland Rd. Speaks Out

Before taking their final vote on the proposed new map Tuesday night, the committee alders did give members of the public one more chance to weigh in on the new ward lines.

Several residents from a several-block stretch of Cleveland Road, Oliver Road, and Roger Road in Westville turned out to voice their displeasure with their proposed ward-line shift from Ward 25 to Ward 26. 

“Ward 26 is completely cut off from where we are,” said Cleveland Road resident Ruth Lively. ​“We should share the same alder as we do currently. It would be disenfranchising to move us into another ward.”

Fellow Cleveland Road resident Harriet Friedman agreed.

“Your standards for [redrawing ward lines] had included keeping neighborhoods together,” she said. ​“Not having alders change. Not changing wards.” Preserving the ​“contiguity” of neighborhoods. 

“And that is not what happened” with this proposed map, she said.

Under this proposal, she said, Cleveland Road and Oliver Road are being ​“divided in half” and taken out of their more appropriate neighborhood context of Ward 25.

“It doesn’t make any sense. It’s illogical.”

Friedman said she went door to door on this several-block stretch of Cleveland, Oliver, and Roger Roads, and collected signatures from ​“a majority of houses” that are opposed to the move.

“We have more in common with Lower Westville than we do with Upper Westville,” she continued, citing concerns about speeding, parking and traffic at the nearby Yale Bowl. ​“We want to have community. That seems to be what New Haven wants. You shouldn’t initiate this 10-year-long process of realigning wards and cutting off community.”

Alders did not respond at this hearing. At previous meetings, the change appeared out of two broader factors: The shifting population balance eastward over the past decade, requiring reconfiguring wards to fall within demographic parameters. And the fact that the sliver of West River becoming part of Ward 25 was previously part of Ward 26. That meant people living a stone’s throw from the Ward 23 polling place (Barnard School) traveled all the way to Davis Street School to vote; with this change, at least, they travel not quite as far, to Edgewood School, and are physically closer to other members of their ward, while Ward 26’s other voters are physically closer to Cleveland/Oliver roads than to the eastern side of Edgewood Park.

Carmen Reyes, a resident of Brewery Square in Fair Haven, also spoke up during Tuesday’s public hearing, making one last plea for Ward 14 to stay not have to cross the Quinnipiac River and so many different neighborhoods.

“Quinnipiac Avenue used to belong to Ward 13,” she said. And Downing Street used to be in Ward 14. Because of the last redistricting process, she continued, ​“we lost Downing, we gained Quinnipiac,” and the ward took on its current river- and neighborhood-spanning shape.

“Why can’t that be returned to the way it was before?”

Map Overhaul Needed Soon?

And Aaron Goode, a Fair Haven Heights resident who is also acting with the League of Women Voters and New Haven Votes (among many other civics-boosting organizations around town) praised the alders for all of their work on this map — and pointed out the pros and cons of taking a ​“least-change” approach to redistricting.

On the one hand, ​“continuing the status quo minimizes disruption to voters.” The earlier testimonies of the Ward 25 residents who do not want to be moved to Ward 26 marked a good example of how many residents want the current ward lines to stay the same to the greatest extent possible, he said.

He estimated that, under this proposed new map, only ​“1 to 2 percent of voters” would have a new polling place. He asked for the aldermanic committee and city staff to provide a more accurate count of exactly how many voters will be switching wards and polling places, so that groups like New Haven Votes and the League of Women Voters can best ​“target” those affected groups with information about where they will be voting. (While the alders will be establishing new ward lines through this redistricting process, the Registrar of Voters ultimately decides where polling places will be located for municipal, state, and federal elections.)

On the other hand, Goode continued, pursuing so little changes this round of redistricting ​“locks in some of the problems and inefficiencies in the current map.” Including leaving many voters in the downtown-adjacent wards spread across several different state assembly districts.

And he pointed out that the proposed map ​“is going to be out of proportion the minute it’s adopted” because of all of the new developments slated to go up around town, particularly in Ward 6. (Furlow responded that the committee tried to account for these likely new developments by asking alders representing wards with significant expected population growth to try to lock in new ward lines that would put their wards on the lower end of the allowable population distribution, per the current Census data.)

Eventually, Goode said, the alders and city government will likely have to have a ​“reckoning” with the ward map, given the continued shift of population eastward over the past few decades. 

“Overall population growth cannot be solved by tinkering and tweaking around the edges alone,” said. ​“The whole map will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.” He called on the alders to spend time during the upcoming charter revision process thinking about how to fundamentally change how redistricting is done, to accommodate this potential future overhaul of the city’s local political districts that could be needed.