Ald. Michele Smith (43rd) is taking a firm stance against a majority-led redistricting proposal that she says will “completely destroy” the sense of community in her Lincoln Park ward.

Looking ahead at the ward remapping process set to take place in the coming year, Chicago’s aldermen have staked out their preferred boundaries in a pair of proposals submitted to the City Clerk’s office last week.

The two designs on the table come from the City Council’s Latino and Black caucuses. The former, dubbed the “Taxpayer Protection Map,” is supported by 16 aldermen — a minority share against the 32 aldermen signed on to the “For a Better Chicago” plan. Three aldermen have yet to take a side in the debate, and Ald. James Cappleman (46th) is currently sponsoring both proposals.

The supposed goal of the redistricting is to shape the boundaries so that resident populations are rounded out to about 53,000 people per ward. But remapping can often be a touchy process among city politicians, as the shifting of boundaries can potentially dissolve the support of voting blocs within ethnic communities. The city redraws its ward boundaries every 10 years.

In the city’s 43rd Ward, the question of ethnic diversity doesn’t factor too heavily into the remapping; the ward’s residents are currently 84 percent white, and the area’s prohibitively high property values will likely keep it that way for the foreseeable future.

Compared to some wards in the city, both maps would have relatively little impact on the size and shape of the 43rd Ward’s boundaries, which encompasses most of Lincoln Park. Still, the ward’s leader, Ald. Michele Smith, said she will fight for the caucus which she believes will do the most to keep her North Side neighborhood intact.

“I stand for preserving my neighborhood, and for having a redistricting process that fairly represents the geographic boundaries of traditional Chicago neighborhoods,” said Smith, who began her first term in the ward earlier this year.

Smith said that, while “neither of the maps is ideal,” she preferred the Latino Caucus proposal, which, while slightly shrinking the boundaries of the 43rd Ward, would leave its northern border — and thus the ward’s patch of Lincoln Park — comparatively untouched.

The Latino proposal would see a few blocks of Smith’s Lincoln Park (known as the Wrightwood Neighbors area) secede to the 32rd Ward, along with a stretch of Cortland Street and an industrial area currently occupied by the soon-to-be-vacated A. Finkl & Sons steel mill. A small part of the Wrightwood area would also go to the 20th Ward. A portion of the western half of Lincoln Park currently spills into the 32nd Ward along the eastern bank of the Chicago River.

In that scenario, the ward’s southern border would go relatively unchanged, with a few blocks traded to the 42nd Ward around the lakefront area of Old Town.

Under the Black Caucus proposal, the 43rd Ward’s northern boundary would be pulled from Diversey Avenue to Fullerton Avenue and the western border would go from Sheffield Avenue to as far east as Vine Street, landing parts of the ward’s current Lincoln Park territory in the 2nd, 27th, 32nd and 44th Wards. Part of the ward’s southern border, which currently stops short of the Near North Side area, would be redrawn into the Gold Coast and parts of Streeterville.

Smith said she had little doubt that the latter plan would have deleterious effects not only on her ability to deliver city services in her ward such as garbage pickup and snow removal, but on the very character of the district.

“It just completely destroys any sense of the Lincoln Park community that people have been building up for the last 40 years,” she said. “It could essentially deny Lincoln Park residents any kind of unified voice.”

As is generally posited in Latino Caucus map, Lincoln Park, said Smith, should remain divided between the 43rd and 32nd Ward.

“I can’t have everything I want — I’d like to represent the entire 60614 zip code, but that’s too many people, under any circumstances,” she said. “Unless we reduce the number of aldermen, which is beginning to look like a more attractive option every day, that would be at least something that people could see and understand.”

The filings of the two remapping proposals followed two weeks of closed-door negotiations that ended in a stalemate when the 50 City Council leaders were unable to reach an agreement on a new ward map. If a consensus is not reached in City Council, the redistricting could be decided in court, or by a voter referendum. The last remapping referendum was held in 1990.

---

By Tom Tresser from Lincoln Park
Posted: 01/02/2012 10:59 AM

I am completely opposed to this re-map. It is a cynical attempt to scramble the cohesion of a community that has chosen to elect an independent Alderman and would break us up into 4 separate wards, making community planning a chaos. Alderman Mell, leave us alone. We have made our choice and we choose good government, accountability and grassroots civic engagement.

---

By Boyee from Mid-North in Lincoln Park
Posted: 12/22/2011 4:44 PM

I feel it would be good to have all 77 community areas be their own wards. Having the 43 Ward and at Sheffield Ave. not only breaks up a community that is pretty fluid and contiguous until the industrial corridor along Clybourn Ave. If community areas as wards is not attainable, I feel Southport would be a better dividing line between the 43rd and 32nd wards as all of Lincoln Park east of Southport Ave. has a very similar character.