N&R coverage of last night’s confusing Greensboro City Council discussion on its redistricitng plan and the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress’ opposition to the plan.
Let’s go ahead get the real reason for GNC’s opposition to ‘Plan Q’ out of the way. Note the overly dramatic langauge, which has become common around here:
Moreover, Plan Q has a more insidious impact. Under the current districting, Districts 1 and 2 are “majority minority” and Districts 3 and 4 are “majority majority,” whereas District 5 is almost balanced with 47.5% minority population. What this means is that our City’s most likely opportunity to have a third district represented by a minority candidate is in District 5. But Plan Q would dilute the minority population in District 5 down to 41.3%, undermining the prospect of a minority candidate being elected in District 5, and making it unlikely that minority representation on our Council will have any prospect of increasing in the foreseeable future. This is a serious impact, and although some of it is inevitable given that the areas recently annexed by the City have a primarily white population in District 5, Plan Q’s magnification of that dilution relative to Plan B constitutes another serious substantive flaw in Plan Q.
That said, GNC is right to protest Plan Q on the basis that it didn’t receive proper public scrutiny. Council member Trudy Wade argued that Plan Q was simply a minor revision of Plan P, which was available on the Internet for public review. But fellow council member Zack Matheny, who authored Plan Q, appeared to contradict the view when he pouted and talked about how hard he’d hard worked on Plan Q. I can’t say I’m impressed with Matheny so far. He’s taken on the demeanor of a newcomer trying to get things done in a hurry, but his communication skills and ability to grasp issues are considerably lacking compared to veteran members Mike Barber and Robbie Perkins. This situation is evidence of that, in my opinion.
The reasonable action, one that probably would have appeased the Justice Department, would have been to pull Plan Q for reconsideration after the public had time to review it. But Perkins’ motion failed by a 4-5 vote. That’s when thiings got really weird. Council member Dianne Bellamy-Small made the suggestion — it wasn’t a motion —- that the city send all 12 redistricting plans to the Justice Department for review. Again, a motion was never made and it was never voted on. And it was never made clear, at least as far as I could tell, whether or not the Justice Department was also reviewing the city-drawn Plan B, as the GNC believes.
So right now, the Greensboro citizens have no idea what the Justice Department will be reviewing, and I’m not positive the City Council does, either. Geez.
