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Cleveland city councilmen , left to right, Joe Cimperman, Michael Polensek, and Kevin Conwell, view a map showing new council ward districts,Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Council members later voted and approved the new districts, 17 to 2. Cimperman and Polensek voted 'No' on the redistricting,
(Photo by Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland City Council voted to approve its new ward boundaries Tuesday -- bringing an end to months of secrecy over the redistricting process and controversy so intense, it provoked bitter feuds between members, resident protests in council chambers, intervention of state legislators and the threat of legal action on behalf of Hispanic voters.
Council passed the map during a special meeting in a 17 to 2 vote, with Councilmen Joe Cimperman and Mike Polensek voting against it. The new boundaries take effect in January, and all council seats are up for re-election in November. (View the map in the document viewer below. Find more detailed maps on City Council's Web site.)
At the heart of the controversy was the rumor that Council President Martin J. Sweeney tailored an East side ward to satisfy the wishes of Councilman Eugene Miller, even though Miller's ward was among the hardest hit by population loss and could have been dissolved into its neighboring districts.
Instead, Sweeney reassigned the southern portion of Collinwood from Polensek's ward to Miller's to recover population lost in recent years. And Miller's ward appears to be the least compact on the new map, zigzagging westward from Collinwood, through a sliver along the lakefront, then blooming just east of downtown.
The maneuver triggered a domino effect throughout the city. Polensek's ward slices into the historic Glenville neighborhood, and the others are pushed farther west, causing three wards to converge downtown.
The majority of the business district will remain in Cimperman's ward. But a division occurs at East 12th Street, where the southeast quadrant, including PlayhouseSquare, lands in Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland's ward and the northeast area is assigned to Councilman T.J. Dow.
Downtown property owners have assessed a special tax to provide extra cleaning and safety services, and the neighborhood has doubled its population in the past decade. They worry that splitting the area into thirds will destroy their momentum.
Cimperman said in an interview Tuesday that he voted against the map because he believes that downtown should be unified and because residents in Tremont were upset that Cimperman would cease to be their representative when part of that West Side neighborhood becomes Councilman Tony Brancatelli's turf.
"I knew it would pass," Cimperman said. "But I had to vote my conscience, and now I'm ready to move on. We have a lot of work to do."
Council, which redraws the lines every decade following the census, must do so by April 1 or cede the authority to Mayor Frank Jackson. The city charter requires the size of council to shrink from 19 wards to 17 on account of population loss since the last redistricting.
West Side Councilman Jay Westbrook announced this year that he would retire at the end of his term, simplifying boundaries for his West Side colleagues by sacrificing his ward.
But tension brewed on the East Side. And Sweeney, who controls the process, met for months with consultant Bob Dykes behind closed doors and would only show his colleagues their own ward boundaries, which changed dramatically from week to week in some cases.
By the time the final map was unveiled Monday, rumors were rampant.
Sweeney publicly accused Polensek of stealing his ward map from Dykes' office and leaking it to the media.
State Sen. Shirley Smith had circulated letters blasting Sweeney for threatening to divide Glenville, a predominantly black enclave rich in history, and calling for an investigation into the secretive nature of his decision-making process.
And tempers flared at Monday night's council meeting, when Miller called Polensek a bully unwilling to compromise, and Polensek accused Miller of injecting racial issues into the turf war.
Then Sweeney read aloud a letter that Polensek had distributed in south Collinwood, claiming that Sweeney and Miller care little about the neighborhood and advising residents, "Don't get mad. Get even."
Critics of the plan packed the room; some wore strips of duct tape across their mouths, scrawled with the words "No Voice."
In a public hearing before the vote Tuesday, issues of race had taken center stage as council discussed the proposed ward boundaries.
Jose Feliciano, an attorney and the chairman of the Hispanic Roundtable, cautioned members that changes to the Hispanic population in Ward 14 could amount to a violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.
"There currently are no Hispanic councilmen," Feliciano said. "You are proposing to reduce the number of wards from 19 to 17. The likely result of your redistricting is that there will continue to be zero Hispanic councilmen, when Hispanics make up more than 10 percent of the population."
Dykes said the dilution of the Hispanic population is a natural result of adding people to all of the wards.
But he acknowledged Feliciano's concerns and said he would consider ways in the coming days to draw more Hispanic residents into the ward. He said the city charter allows council to tweak the map after its approval, provided members vote to adopt the changes.
One downtown business owner and resident said he worried that the downtown neighborhood's issues would not get the attention they deserve because they are too dissimilar from the kinds of social problems that Councilwoman Cleveland must handle in the rest of her ward.
The comment provoked anger from both Cleveland and Dow, who said they take offense at the suggestion that council members who represent impoverished neighborhoods are incapable of promoting development downtown.
"You don't know my background, my work or where I come from," Cleveland lambasted the commenter. "And obviously you don't know what I do and what I've been doing."
Despite the personal attacks and politicking that reached an apex this week, two longtime East Side councilmen quietly lent their support to the new boundaries -- even though the map condenses their respective wards and pits them against each other on the November ballot.
Councilmen Kevin Conwell and Jeffrey Johnson both said they were willing to forgo their own self-interest if it meant keeping the Glenville neighborhood largely intact.
"I'm not going to argue that the process is wrong just because I don't like the results," Johnson said at the hearing. "This new Ward 9 is a wonderful ward for someone to represent, particularly if they love Glenville and University Circle. That is the reason I'm voting yes -- because the ward that has been hammered out sustains two historic districts."