Common Council Approves New Maps Despite Protests In Buffalo
For the past few weeks members of the Buffalo Common Council and various citizen groups have been reviewing and debating the newly proposed city council district maps that need to be changed as a result of the 2022 US Census.
Every ten years after the US Decennial Census, state and local governments redraw their political boundaries based on how the population has changed since over the decade. This process, known as Restricting, has been happening in the United States since the first US Census was taken in 1790.
The last set of maps that were approved by Councilmembers in May 2022 was met with some pretty intense protests by citizens, many of whom claimed was more gerrymandering, or manipulating the council boundaries to favor one party or class. I have to admit that the shape of the political districts in Buffalo has left me scratching my head.
Those same citizens proposed their own set of maps that were more homogeneous and had a more regular shape, that was more equally balanced and just seem to make a little more sense.
Hundreds of citizens piled into City Hall to urge our lawmakers to approve a district map that fairly represents all citizens in Buffalo, but that doesn't seem to be what happened.
However, the maps that the Buffalo Common Council ultimately voted on and approved unanimously on Tuesday, July 19, 2022, , look quite a bit like the original maps they proposed and just don't seem to make sense.
Have you taken a look at the new city council maps? What do you think of how the districts are shaped?