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City Council redistricting map arises anger, controversy among civic leaders 1

Woodhaven, which had been united in one district is the first draft of redistricting, is divided again at Forest Parkway and 80th Street, with much of the neighborhood moving into a different district.

 
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Posted: Thursday, November 29, 2012 10:30 am

The latest draft of new City Council district maps that may be the final lines for the next decade, should they be approved, are raising eyebrows, and tempers.

The new maps are the final drafts proposed by the NYC Districting Commission and have been submitted to the City Council, which can approve or reject the proposal by Dec. 7. If no action is taken by the council, the maps are deemed approved.

But pressure is mounting from across the borough — and the city as a whole — for the council to reject the maps and force the NYC Districting Commission back to the drawing board.

The new maps make some key changes from the first draft, notably uniting communities like Maspeth, LeFrak City and Cambria Heights, that had been split under the first draft, while dividing other communities such as Woodhaven, North Flushing and Fresh Meadows, that were united. Some neighborhoods, such as Briarwood, are completely upended and moved into a different district.

The new maps were met with stiff opposition from interest groups and civic leaders, who say the commission did not take communities and demographics into considering when drawing the draft maps.

The Asian American Community Coalition on Redistricting and Democracy is among those blasting the commission’s final draft.

ACCORD criticized a number of the commission’s decisions, including keeping Oakland Gardens and Bayside in two separate districts. Much of Bayside north of Northern Boulevard remains in District 19, while Oakland Gardens is in the 23rd District.

“The residents of Oakland Gardens often identify themselves as living in Bayside,” said James Hong, ACCORD’s representative at the Oct. 10 Queens hearing of the NYC Districting Commission.

But the unification of Bayside and Oakland Gardens was opposed by one of the commission members — former state Sen. Frank Padavan — who represented Bayside in Albany for over 30 years.

The main argument against its unification are the different demographics between the two sections of the neighborhood. Oakland Gardens is mainly a middle-class Jewish and Asian area where most residents live in apartments or condominiums, while Bayside is mostly a white, Christian area, but with a large Asian-American population who live mostly in detached one- and two-family homes.

The MinKwon Center for Community Action, a Flushing-based Asian-American advocacy organization working with ACCORD, slammed the rationale and asked for the City Council to reject the maps.

“Anyone attending the Queens public hearings knew that the community fully supported a united Bayside, with Oakland Gardens as part of it,” said Steven Choi, executive director of the MinKwon Center. “We call on the City Council to take responsibility: the Commission has failed the people of New York City and so the City Council needs to act.”

ACCORD did say it approved of the unification of Elmhurst, home to a growing Asian-American population, into one district.

One of the neighborhoods most affected by the new draft map is Woodhaven, which was completely united into a district represented by Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village) in the first draft of the map. Now, it is divided again, roughly at Forest Parkway, with the west side moving into Crowley’s district and the east side into the district of Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park).

Under the existing map, drawn after the 2000 Census, the western side of Woodhaven is represented by Ulrich and the eastern side with Richmond Hill is in Crowley’s.

Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association President Ed Wendell is urging the Woodhaven’s two council members to reject the proposal when it comes before a vote in the City Council.

“This is an opportunity for City Council Members — both our current representatives, as well as those who might want Woodhaven’s support in the future — to show whether they actually care about our community,” he said in a statement.

A number of changes were made to District 28, represented by Councilman Ruben Wills (D-South Jamaica). Though Rochdale Village remains in the district, the western border is moved from Lefferts Boulevard to 103rd Street in Ozone Park, uniting all of South Richmond Hill in the district and forcing the elimination of portions of South Jamaica and Springfield Gardens.

But Vishnu Mahadeo, president of the Richmond Hill South Economic Development Council, said the commission was discussing an alteration to the maps with the border between the districts being at 112th Street, dividing South Richmond Hill again.

Mahadeo said the goal was to eliminate the Lefferts boundary and unite the neighborhood. Although the new maps do that, the proposal does not go far enough to unite the community.

“It’s a small investment in the Richmond Hill area, they haven’t done much,” he said. “It means that Richmond Hill has been dealt a bad hand yet again.”

He noted that Ulrich, who represents the western half of the neighborhood has been far more responsive to their needs than Wills because Richmond Hill does not have the political clout to challenge him.

Mahadeo said the maps also continue to divide the community from Richmond Hill north of Atlantic Avenue, further diluting the community’s influence. That, he warned, often leads to low voter turnout.

“It takes away the opportunity for the community to get a proper response,” he said. “If you don’t vote as a whole, what will happen is that community will lose out. People are not going to be motivated to come out and vote when they are fragmented.”

The maps also divide South Ozone Park at Lefferts Boulevard, which is unchanged from the previous decade.

“The large Asian American community in South Ozone Park continues to be split in half along Lefferts Boulevard between Districts 28 and 32,” said Richard Davis, executive director of the Indo-Caribbean Alliance. “While the changes in Richmond Hill are promising, our community’s advancement will be significantly constrained due to the division of South Ozone Park.”

The maps have also caused a stir among residents of North Flushing, who question why the border between the 19th and 20th districts, which had previously been north of the Mitchell-Linden complex and now runs along 33rd Avenue. Some have asked why 33rd Avenue — a mostly residential side street — was used as the district border, rather than the larger Northern Boulevard a few blocks south which provides a barrier between North Flushing and the more densely populated, homogeneously Asian-American part south of Northern Boulevard.

The maps have also drawn accusations of incumbent protection, which sparked up after the commission’s executive director, Carl Hum, said incumbents and their relationships to constituents were taken as a “legitimate concern” by the drawing body.

“If relationships matter, why did they basically switch the parts of Woodhaven Elizabeth Crowley and Eric Ulrich represent?” asked WRBA spokesman and Community Board 9 member Alexander Blenkinsopp.

Another Queens member of the commission is Tom Ognibene, a former councilman who held Crowley’s seat and served as minority leader and is a political ally of Ulrich.

Though some have accused the commission of being politically motivated while drawing the maps, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a likely mayoral candidate next year, has denied those claims.

The council has until Dec. 7 to approve or reject the maps, or do nothing, which will automatically make them law.

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Originally Posted by Vish M:
 

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After Christine Quinn request, commission cans City Council redistricting map

Council Speaker Quinn asks for new legislative maps, and will get Comments

 
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Posted: Thursday, December 6, 2012 10:30 am | Updated: 12:09 pm, Thu Dec 6, 2012.

The final draft of the new City Council lines from the NYC Districting Commission made very few people happy, so the commission voted Tuesday to scrap them.

Among those least pleased is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), who in an unprecedented move last week asked the commission to go back to the drawing board after a number of controversies erupted over the draft maps.

The council was expected to vote on the maps before Dec. 7, but a final vote is in limbo as the commission met Tuesday to respond to the issues.

One major sticking point with the new maps is the change in the 34th Council District, one of the few that cross borough lines. The district, represented by term-limited Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Brooklyn) includes Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood. The lines were tweaked in the final draft to include the Bushwick home of embattled Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Brooklyn), who was ousted as chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party and is on thin ice in the state Assembly because of allegations of sexual harassment. Lopez is said to be eyeing a run for Reyna’s soon-to-be vacant council seat, and has been a political foe of Reyna, supporting her 2009 opponent, Maritza Davila, who lost the Democratic primary to Reyna by 223 votes. Davila ran in the general election on the Working Families Party line, receiving a third of the vote.

“I think it was obvious that that was a concern of the public,” Commission Executive Director Carl Hum said of the proposed 34th District.

In order to run for the seat, Lopez would have to move into the district by Jan. 1, 2014. Some saw the relocation of his home into the district as a self-serving move in his favor. That led to Quinn’s decision to ask for a redo.

“The most significant concern I have relates to the new lines for District 34,” Quinn said in a Nov. 29 letter to the commission. “Given the Commission’s laudable interest in continuing the public process, I am requesting in the strongest possible terms that the Commission withdraw its submission to the Council to receive additional input from the public.”

One commission member who opposed the changes was former state Sen. Frank Padavan of Bellerose, who denied that Lopez’s home was moved purposely.

“If my life depended on it, I couldn’t tell you where he lives,” Padavan said at the Tuesday meeting. He also slammed the commission for voting on the changes “piecemeal.”

The commission then decided unanimously to scrap the maps and start the process over again. A new round of public hearings will begin in January.

The maps in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan would need to go through preclearance with the U.S. Justice Department to make sure they comply with the Voting Rights Act because of the high minority population in those boroughs. That means the new maps would have to be drawn and approved quickly to have them in time for petitioning to start for the September 2013 primaries.

The now-canned maps were heavily criticized among civic leaders in Queens, notably in Woodhaven, Oakland Gardens and North Flushing, where the commission divided neighborhoods that asked to staytogether.

Earlier, before the commission decided to trash the maps completely, members had made a change to North Flushing’s border, reuniting the Mitchell-Linden complex into one district. It had been split. The borders of North Flushing also changed with the border between the 19th and 20th District being 33rd Avenue, rather than the larger Northern Boulevard a few blocks to the south.

In Woodhaven, the maps had divided the neighborhood at Forest Parkway, despite its having been united in the first round of mapmaking.

The maps also separated Briarwood and Jamaica Hills, as well as Oakland Gardens and Bayside despite local pleas to keep the neighborhoods united. A curious gerrymander of JFK Airport was also in the maps, with the terminals and cargo areas being drawn into the 28th District, represented by Councilman Ruben Wills (D-South Jamaica), while the runways remained in the 31st District, where the entire airport is now.

Because of the redistricting limbo, non-incumbents or potential primary challengers are also in a state of wait and see while candidates wait to find out if they live in the district they want to run in. The shortened time frame may make fundraising and campaigning more difficult for challengers.

But some, including Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone), say ditching the map was an important step toward improving the credibility of the process.

“This morning’s resolution by the Districting Commission is a step in the right direction,” he said. “I am hopeful that deliberations and the next public hearing will lead to the restoration of northern Flushing to the 19th District, so that the single-family homeowners in that area will continue to have a voice in the Council and not be disenfranchised.”

The Asian American Community Coalition on Redistricting and Democracy, which has been pushing for strengthening representation among Asian-majority neighborhoods, praised the decision of the commission to redraw the maps, but noted there had been some improvement from the earlier draft.

“ACCORD has considered a third round to be necessary and welcomes this announcement,” the group said in a statement. “These upcoming hearings will present an opportunity for the Districting Commission to maintain positive changes made in the revised (second) map, further improve boundaries to reflect demographic changes, and in particular, address outstanding issues affecting minority voting rights and Asian American communities.”

ACCORD had praised the new map’s consolidation of Elmhurst, which has a growing Asian-American population, into one district — District 25 currently represented by Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights). They also noted the improvement in Richmond Hill and South Ozone Park, where the border between districs 32 and 28 was moved 17 blocks west to 103rd Street from Lefferts Boulevard. ACCORD said the border should be moved further to Woodhaven Boulevard to unite the Indo-Caribbean and West Indian community in Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park and Ozone Park.

The group also backed the consolidation of Bayside and Oakland Gardens, which remains split between two council districts. Halloran, who represents one of the two districts, said the housing stock in the two neighborhoods are very different and suggested a different potential reason for Oakland Gardens wanting to join his district.

“I can’t fathom why an R3 and R4 zone would want to be in my district other than it’s such a nifty place to be,” he quipped. “They probably just want to have the best councilmember in the city, and I can’t fault them for that.”

Vish M

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