Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin had his hands full the last few weeks as the story of council’s redistricting slipped out of his control.
Griffin must redraw council’s ward lines and cut two council seats to account for Cleveland’s falling population — a requirement of the city charter. He needs a vote of council for the map to pass. Council members have seen a draft map, but it hasn’t been released publicly.
Rebecca Maurer — the Ward 12 newcomer who unseated an incumbent in 2021 — recently gave a floor speech saying she was on the losing end of the map-drawing process. Her house was shoehorned into totally new territory, which she took as a violation of trust, she said.
Griffin retorted that his council colleagues “don’t trust the council member in Ward 12” and feel she runs to the media rather than being a “collective player.” That prompted a ripple of indignation from the following week’s public commenters and a stern tut-tut from the Cleveland.com editorial board.
Maurer isn’t the only member unhappy. Ward 8’s Michael Polensek said he wouldn’t vote for the maps as they stood last Tuesday, though he defended Griffin’s handling of the process. The East Side’s population has been tumbling, and that means a ward cut is coming to Polensek’s corner of town, he said.
“Right now there’s three wards on the Northeast Side,” Polensek told Signal Cleveland. “One’s going.”
Another longstanding factor in Cleveland’s map drawing is the effort to maintain a plurality-Hispanic ward on the West Side. That affects how the rest of the map is drawn. It’s long been believed that diluting Hispanic voters would run Cleveland afoul of the federal Voting Rights Act.
It appeared that the map was still in flux last week. Richard Starr of Ward 5 said he had requested some changes to his new boundaries.
“Nothing is permanent right now,” he said.
