A photo can be a thousand words, but in this case of the City Council Bronx Redistricting hearing Held on Thursday August 23rd at Lehman College. You could almost count the Bronxites in the audience on you fingers and toes. In fact you could count the number of Bronx speakers at hearing on both of your hands and still have one finger left over. 10 people signed up to speak with one person who did not speak. Two of the speakers spoke for elected officials not present and there was one city council member and one possible future council member (in 2013) in the sparse audience. After the 9 people spoke the chair of the hearing asked if there was anyone else who did not sign up, but who wanted to say something, and 3 more people came forward to speak of either Queens or Brooklyn. The chair then said that the commission would be taking a 15 minute break, and resume the hearing to see if anyone else who may have come late had anything to say. After about 20 minutes they returned, but there were no more speakers to be had. The hearing was then adjourned less than one hour after it started including the 20 minute break that was taken.
After going over the numbers that were given out I noticed that according to the figures provided after adding and subtracting that there was a large net loss of people citywide. By borough the Bronx however gained over 75,000 people or about half the size of a district, while Manhattan and Staten Island both showed gains of over 1,000 people per borough. Brooklyn lost almost 40.000 people.and Queens lost about 160,000 people, the size of a council district. According to the figures provided the two council districts that lost the most people were the 10th (upper Manhattan including Marble Hill) loosing 23,507 people, and the 45th (Brooklyn, Flatbush & Flatlands) loosing 19,890 people. The two districts that gained the most population were both in the Bronx. The 17th (covering Mott Haven, and Melrose) gaining 20,437 people, and the 16th (Morrisania, Highbridge, and Morris Heights) gaining 17,131 people.The only Bronx council district to show a loss of people was the 14th (Fordham, Kingsbridge Heights, and West Bronx) of 1,044 people.
We spoke to a couple Bronx council members who said that the Bronx delegation is looking for another Bronx City Council seat or at least a majority section of one that covers a part of the Bronx such as the 8th council district which has about 40,000 Bronxites in it.The Marble Hill area which is part of the Bronx mainland, and receives police, fire, EMS, schools, and other Bronx services, could also be easily part of a new Bronx council district.
September 5th is the City Charter mandated deadline for this redistricting commission to release its preliminary plan, and have public hearing on it between October 2nd and 11th of this year. November 5th it goes to the city council, and the council has until November 26th to consider the plan, present any suggestions for the January revised plan, where public hearings are held again before the final plan is submitted to the City Clerk who then submits the revised plan to the Justice Department for pre-clearance early in March of 2013.
