The Providence City Council recently passed a redistricting proposal outlining the city's plan to redraw its 15 wards to account for changes in local demographics. Proposed redistricting plans - a decennial requirement following each census - were controversial this year in part because they will determine allocation of the land made available by the rerouting of Interstate 195.
The council's attempts to delineate the boundaries of the city's wards have come under public scrutiny. A dispute over changes to the representation of the Downtown neighborhood is at the center of the controversy. Downtown is currently split between Ward 11, a central district that also claims Federal Hill and Ward 13, which contains a large part of Upper South Providence. The new lines will consolidate Downtown and place almost all of it in Ward 1 - the same ward that represents the residents and students of Fox Point and parts of College Hill.
Councilman Kevin Jackson - a critic of the redistricting plan and one of the seven dissenting voices in the 8-7 vote that ultimately confirmed the new lines - said he thought the representative of Ward 1, Councilman Seth Yurdin, used his power as council majority leader and the chairman of the Committee on Ward Boundaries to redraw the lines in a way that would incorporate one of the most promising areas of Providence into Ward 1. The relocation of Interstate 195 opened 40 acres of land - including the Jewelry District often touted by the mayor and other officials as one of the great hopes for the city and the center of its future knowledge economy - which will become a part of Yurdin's Ward 1. "It does not take a rocket scientist to figure it out," Jackson said.
About 100 people protested at a public hearing before the council approved the proposal March 26, the Providence Journal reported. Carrying signs with slogans such as "Evil Power Grab" and "Still Waiting for My 40 Acres and a Mule," protesters said the new lines provided Yurdin with too much influence and removed minority neighborhoods from areas with increased economic opportunity, the Journal reported.
Yurdin said he rejects the notion that the redistricting plan benefits his district disproportionately. The redistricting was successful because it corrects a number of problems with the old boundaries, Yurdin said. The new plan creates six wards with a majority Latino population and combines the voices of voters in the Downtown neighborhood to help them speak collectively in support of their interests, he said. Every ward in the East Side, including Ward 1, has experienced a population decrease over the past 10 years, leading to legislative efforts to correct for the change.
"Now the Downtown voters are able to affect who the elected representative is in Ward 1 because they can push as an interest group," Yurdin said. He added that historical precedents support placing Downtown in Ward 1 since the district only became separate as recently as 1990.
But removing land ripe for development from council members who had represented the area unfairly denies them the benefits of seeing expansion within their Ward, Jackson said. College Hill, part of Ward 1, does not need the jobs as much as Ward 11 and Ward 13 do, he added.
"Those are the people who need those potential jobs," Jackson said. "That should have been where that land was continued to be represented."
Councilman Sam Zurier said he did not think the location of a development project will help the particular district any more than the overall city. "When someone wants to put in a development, it should benefit everyone in the city, not just people in a neighborhood," he said.
"If someone wants to start a development in the piece of Downtown that's in my ward, in order to gain my support, they have to produce a benefit for the people in the other sections as well," Zurier said.
"We each as legislators are tasked at looking at the whole picture and serving our constituents and this is a good map for all of our constituents," Yurdin said.
Despite Yurdin's commitment to Providence as a whole, Jackson said it is impossible to separate development and politics. "Let's be honest, anyone who's telling you that politics doesn't play a part in economic development, then they're lying," Jackson said.
Jackson said the whole city benefits from development in any district, but the community inside the specific boundaries stands to receive more from company donations for local projects like social services and arts.