Council President Griffin Doubles Down on Fairness of Ward Redistricting Map Despite Spate of Criticism

Council President Blaine Griffin defended the newly-released Cleveland ward boundaries at a press conference Tuesday afternoon at City Hall. Credit: Mark Oprea

City Council president Blaine Griffin spearheaded the first public release of an in-progress ward redistricting map Tuesday afternoon at City Hall.

Hinting often at prior criticism, from inside and outside Council, that reached a pitch in recent Monday night meetings, Griffin told the press and public that he was confident the map released Tuesday was done with as much due diligence as possible—and as much public feedback in recent Cleveland history.

Because of federal law and a Cleveland city charter change going back to 2008, City Council has been tasked with redrawing the ward maps to account for a drop in population, which based on recent Census data means losing two seats. Council hired a team of consultants, and opened up phones and email inboxes to the public, to supposedly make the job of redrawing these boundaries to match the city’s 2020 population drop a lot easier.

It’s been anything but.

Along with dozens of supporters waving “Got Maps?” signs at Council meetings, tension flamed when Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer lambasted Griffin on November 25, arguing that the proposed map would cut up neighborhoods like Slavic Village, leading to a kind of political identity crisis. She also specifically laid out evidence that the map was redrawn to gerrymander her out of her district. “Don’t play games with my house, my home and my beloved neighbors,” she said, Axios reported.

“We tried our best to draw natural boundaries,” Griffin told press at Council Chambers on Tuesday, flanked by maps “very close to being completed.”

“Many people wanted us to draw straight lines and nice clean square circles, triangles and shapes,” he added. “However, ladies and gentlemen, population loss in distressed neighborhoods and migration to hot markets and hot neighborhoods made this an incredibly difficult challenge.”

Cleveland’s population has shrunk six percent since 2010, when the map was last redrawn. Seventeen wards have to drop to 15, and Council’s three-man team of consultants had to calculate how to keep the wards at there required headcount—about 25,000 Clevelanders—while trying not to irritate the folks that still live in them. It’s all been complicated by a new state deadline which means the map must be approved in January as opposed to later in 2025.

But to back up to the problems at hand, the released map is a total changeup.

The new maps, shown at City Hall on Tuesday, divide the city up into 15 wards instead of 17—which could mean new political adjustments come late 2025. Credit: Mark Oprea

Downtown Cleveland, now mostly belonging to Ward 3 and its councilman, Kerry McCormack, would be further split up into at least three wards—7, 5 and 8—with divisions at West 9th, Superior Avenue, Chester Avenue and West Huron.

Slavic Village, currently inside half of Maurer’s Ward 12, would be replaced an amalgamation of four wards—2, 3, 5 and 6—that would all have a say on how the neighborhood handles city services and respond to residents that live there.

Griffin was flanked by many councilmembers, but not all. He would need 12 to vote yes on January 6 to pass the map in one reading, something he hinted was likely. Otherwise it would be considered at three meetings.

Maurer, who was not at the press conference Tuesday, represented a kind of rallying cry from Fair Maps pledgers to ensure that Council wasn’t dipping its toes in gerrymandering of any kind, which echoed the concerns around the failure of Issue 1.

Concerns that still remained after Griffin released the maps.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the Council President when I saw it,” Maurer said via a statement on her Facebook page. “I don’t think this map did right by our neighborhoods.”

Splitting up Tremont and Slavic Village, which Ward 12 still has a duty in serving, is, Maurer wrote, good enough reason to be concerned that a rushed job isn’t the best effort.

“I firmly believe in the next two tenants of the Fair Maps Pledge,” she added. “There needs to be genuine community feedback before these maps are passed, and we all need to commit to take this process out of the hands of politicians in future rounds of map-drawing.”

Councilwoman Jasmin Santana expressed a kind of hands-off shrug to Scene on Tuesday. Ward 14, in the new maps, would have its western edge curtailed from West 95th to West 65th, which Santana said means her losing some Hispanic constituents that today are exuberantly represented by her. (Which would go to a new Ward 11, in an effort to create a second Hispanic district.)

“It is what it is,” Santana said.

As Griffin reminded the public on Tuesday, Clevelanders can call or email City Hall to leave feedback on the final ward boundaries before they’re voted into law in January. Although Griffin told press that any changes would be “very minimal.”

After passed into legislation, City Council would head towards a fall election, where incumbents could face off against each other—which Griffin said the redraw aimed to avoid, though if they ran in the districts where they currently live, Maurer would run against Richard Starr while Anthony Hairston would run against Mike Polensek. (Cleveland city candidates need not run in the ward where they live, however.)

What critics have called a rushed process could mean some getting used to for the politically watchful.

Nikki Hudson, the head of Coalition For a Better Cleveland, who lead a pushback campaign critical of the redrawing process, told Scene on Tuesday that she worries how her part of Ward 15 might change with new Council representation.

Especially after Councilwoman Jenny Spencer announced in November that she would not be seeking re-election next year.

“I’m worried that we might be represented by a councilmember that doesn’t quite understand the particular needs of our neighborhood,” Hudson said.

“And that’s across the board,” she added. “Across the city.”