PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia City Council on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to new boundaries for district council seats after making some changes to the original redistricting bill.
The changes correct a major error in the first version of the boundaries introduced last week. However, the process of drawing up the boundaries is still being criticized.
Council President Darrell Clarke said the new boundaries close the population gap between the largest district and the smallest district to less than 10% — as required by law — by enlarging the Fourth District in the west and northwest parts of the city and slightly shrinking the Sixth District in the lower northeast.
Related
“We met those guidelines. We established a legal map,” he said.
The new map, though, doesn’t address the criticism that the boundaries were drawn up in secret with little public input. At last week’s public hearing on the original map, witnesses complained about the process, but at least they’d had six days to study the map and comment.
The new map was introduced immediately after public testimony, so comments on the boundaries were moot since witnesses didn’t even know how the boundaries had changed.
Related
"The process this cycle has been disappointing," said Pat Christmas of watchdog group Committee of 70.
“That really doesn’t line up to a real discussion of how folks will be represented in these districts."
Related
"We had public hearings and gave people an opportunity. We actually had people during the course of public testimony telling us that they didn’t have an opportunity to have input while they were giving public testimony. That is input," Clarke said in response.
Clarke said he intends to further amend the map to meet demands that incarcerated people should not be included in the Sixth District, where the city prisons are, but in their home districts.
District maps have to be redrawn every 10 years, to reflect population changes shown in the census. The city charter sets a deadline of February 12 for Council to adopt a new map.
