Reconfiguring Norfolk's council

By Vivian J. Paige

After all the discussion that has taken place about redistricting for the legislature, you might think that Norfolk residents might be interested in how our city is going to be redistricted.

Unfortunately, you would be wrong.

Tuesday night, the Norfolk City Council held a public meeting on the subject and almost no one came. Outside of city staff, there were about 40 attendees. Only seven people spoke, and of the seven, only one used the entire three minutes allotted.

Sixteen minutes after the meeting started, it was over.

Do Norfolk voters have so little interest in how our city will be carved up for the next 10 years that they didn't bother to show up for the meeting? Perhaps, instead, it was that relatively short notice was given. It was posted to the city's website on May 30, which was a holiday, and just over a week prior to the hearing.

Perhaps they never saw the website posting or the brief article in the paper the next day.

Perhaps it was the time of the meeting. Getting to a 6 p.m. meeting when you don't leave work until 5 or later is difficult.

Or perhaps they truly have little interest.

Had they come, they would have seen that no presentation was made by the city of its own redistricting plans. That was surprising - I had expected the public to receive a briefing on the two plans on the city's website and an explanation of the differences. Anyone who hadn't read the plans beforehand was able to view poster-sized maps of them and review written copies of the plan, but that was it.

Had they shown up, they would have seen a presentation of an alternative plan by one speaker, Rodney Jordan. That plan could alter the current racial makeup of the council, from a 5-3 white majority to a 4-4 white/minority split.

I, along with a number of others both known and unknown to me, contributed to the plan. My little piece was helping to prepare a spreadsheet.

Recall, if you will, that Norfolk's eight-member council is composed of a mayor who is elected by the city at large, representatives from two "superwards," each covering half of the city, and representatives from five small wards of equal population.

Norfolk's population is 53 percent minority. The two small wards currently represented by a black councilman will still encompass more than 62 percent of all of the city's black residents under the two plans on the city's website. The other three small wards will, of course, have significant white majorities, encompassing more than 80 percent of the city's white residents.

The plan presented by Jordan would move the pieces just enough to make one of the three majority white wards a toss-up. That ward, as reported in this paper, would have a population of about 45 percent white, 38 percent black and 17 percent other.

How appropriate it would be for Norfolk's growing non-black minority community to have enough voting strength to determine the outcome of a council election. The non-black minority population has increased from 7.5 percent of the city to 9.8 percent in the last 10 years.

In his remarks to the council, Jordan said that he is not a fan of the ward system nor its race-based machinations. But this is what we have, Jordan told the council, and any redistricting plan should be based on "fairness and equity."

Council members would do well to give this proposal serious consideration when they discuss redistricting Tuesday. That Norfolk has such a diverse population is a testament to what a 21st century city we are. We should not be satisfied with maintaining the status quo.

And this could be the first step toward removing Justice Department approval of our redistricting plans in the future.

That is, unless we truly have no interest.

Vivian J. Paige writes about local politics and other topics at blog.vivianpaige.com. Email: blog@vivianpaige.com.