City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny
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  City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny
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jimrtex
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« Reply #450 on: August 03, 2016, 01:34:06 AM »

The group promoting the Toriemander has posted demographic information about the proposed wards.

Some problems:

(1) It shows total population rather than VAP (or both). The DOJ will be interested in VAP when they sue the City of Hudson over their messed up population estimates.

(2) The totals don't add up (for example 1st Ward current version has 593, but their total shows 592 persons).

(3) The way that they allocate split blocks shifts racial groups. For example, the Great Northern Block includes the Firemen's Home. They have attributed it to the 5th Ward, though its status is ambiguous.

The block has 289 persons, 39 of which are black, 186 who are white, and 85 who reside at the Firemen's Home.

The group allocated 85/289 * 39 = 11 black persons to  the 5th Ward.
The group allocated 85/289 * 186 = 55 white persons to the 5th Ward.

But we know that all 85 residents of Firemen's Home are white based on the Group Quarters population. So the group moved 30 non-white persons into the 5th Ward, and kept 30 white persons in the 2nd and 4th wards.

(4) A similar thing happened in Harry Howard's Nose block (12-1012).

A large portion of the population (probably around 80 of 200 total) is in Crosswinds Apartments. There are 59 persons in 12-1011, the interior block of Crosswinds. 36 of the 59 are non-white. We would expect that the persons in the exterior part of the Crosswinds would be of similar ethnicity.

But the group assumed that the entire block made up about 60% single family, and 40% Crosswinds is racially homogeneous.

(5) There appears to be an error in the racial composition of the 4th and 5th wards of the proposed plan. If there was a public display of block allocations, I could probably find the source of the discrepancy.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #451 on: September 17, 2016, 02:51:05 PM »

You may find this interesting.

Hudson weighted voting

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Kevinstat
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« Reply #452 on: September 18, 2016, 07:17:36 AM »

I did, thanks.  (I assume I'm the "you" you were referring to, at least primarily.)

I'm more comfortable with equal population, equal # of representatives & equal vote of elected representatives scenarios (and one can't always help what they're just naturally comfortable with), but all the possibilities you mentioned were interesting.  You make a good point about the limits set by the narrowness of the gridded section of Hudson.  Augusta, Maine, which doesn't have a single gridded section, provides more flexibility in setting ward boundaries, even with some grotesquely large census blocks.  Drawing 10 equal population wards in Augusta would probably require some odd boundaries as well, however.  I see no need to increase the number of wards in Augusta though.

One minor potential error I noticed (although it might not have been) is that the northern end of the "footpath boundary" in Plan 10 is to the west of that in Plans 4, 8, 17 and 18 and the map your Representative Town (City) Meeting proposal.  That last map could also benefit by having different shadings in the two districts on opposite sides of that small Paddock Place boundary or on Worth Ave. (especially since you have other plans with wards/districts that do cross those line segments with other wards/districts or the city limits on either end).  The three blocks "moved" from those other plans to Plan 10 (Blocks 1014, 1015 and 1016 in Census Tract 12) didn't have any people as of the 2010 census, which I checked as I figured you might have been trying to minimize Ward 5's population deficiency and thus overrepresentation (not that it's outside of Constitutional limits) in Plan 10.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #453 on: September 18, 2016, 12:55:47 PM »

I did, thanks.  (I assume I'm the "you" you were referring to, at least primarily.)

I'm more comfortable with equal population, equal # of representatives & equal vote of elected representatives scenarios (and one can't always help what they're just naturally comfortable with), but all the possibilities you mentioned were interesting.  You make a good point about the limits set by the narrowness of the gridded section of Hudson.  Augusta, Maine, which doesn't have a single gridded section, provides more flexibility in setting ward boundaries, even with some grotesquely large census blocks.  Drawing 10 equal population wards in Augusta would probably require some odd boundaries as well, however.  I see no need to increase the number of wards in Augusta though.

One minor potential error I noticed (although it might not have been) is that the northern end of the "footpath boundary" in Plan 10 is to the west of that in Plans 4, 8, 17 and 18 and the map your Representative Town (City) Meeting proposal.  That last map could also benefit by having different shadings in the two districts on opposite sides of that small Paddock Place boundary or on Worth Ave. (especially since you have other plans with wards/districts that do cross those line segments with other wards/districts or the city limits on either end).  The three blocks "moved" from those other plans to Plan 10 (Blocks 1014, 1015 and 1016 in Census Tract 12) didn't have any people as of the 2010 census, which I checked as I figured you might have been trying to minimize Ward 5's population deficiency and thus overrepresentation (not that it's outside of Constitutional limits) in Plan 10.
The footpath is kind of odd. It is barely visible in satellite imagery and appears to peter out in the middle of the playground south of the school. The building was built as a new high school in 1937, at a time when students would be expected to walk to school even if it was on the edge of town. So it might have started out as an informal shortcut, and later improved with some some gravel. I don't know if there is any sort of bridge across the stream above Underhill Pond or not. From the southwest of the school there is a more formal walkway, perhaps asphalt, with a crosswalk across Harry Howard, which has a bike route on its west side.



The census version of the goat path continues all the way to Paddock Place, including a portion that goes through the school. The two blocks corresponding to the west parking lot are present in 1990, 2000, and 2010 censuses. The driveway that connects from the south end of the west parking lot to the east has also been there for all three census. Before 2010, it was shown going further east. It looks like in 2010 it was clipped to its actual extent (it crosses the goat path in 2010, but since it dead ends in the census block to the east, it is not a block boundary. The loop for the east parking lot was added for the 2010 Census.

The goat path was a block boundary in 1990, including what is block 1016 in 2010 (bounded on the west by the parking lot; on the south by the driveway; on the east by the goat path; and on the north by Paddock Place.

It was not a block boundary in 2000 but was marked; so apparently someone found it useful enough to get it reinstated for 2010. I think the reason that it runs through the building is that the Census Bureau was able to rectify the locations of actual streets which can be done either automatically, or semiautomatically.

The goat path might simply have been left at its previous location. If you look at the satellite image, the path comes out of the woods further east than shown by the census bureau delineation. If you continue northward from the actual path parallel to the census bureau delineation, you would end up east of the school.

The Census Bureau does not plan to use the goat path as a block boundary in 2020 - which is based on it not having a name.

I'm ambivalent over its use. It is not consistent with other block boundaries, but is useful for placing Crosswinds in Ward 4, without splitting a block. If the Census Bureau recognized addresses ranges as the atom for census geography it would be real helpful, but would probably be extremely difficult to implement USA-wide.

I'm not sure what you are referring to with regard to Plan 18. The purple district, Underhill(5), does cross Paddock Place, and the orange district, Prospect Hill(3) does cross Worth Avenue. To get equality with 10 districts, you really do have to disregard common sense.

Worth Avenue is US 9, and is shown in yellow on the base layer, which might make it look more like a boundary.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #454 on: September 18, 2016, 02:49:09 PM »
« Edited: September 18, 2016, 02:55:19 PM by Kevinstat »

[...]
One minor potential error I noticed (although it might not have been) is that the northern end of the "footpath boundary" in Plan 10 is to the west of that in Plans 4, 8, 17 and 18 and the map [in] your Representative Town (City) Meeting proposal.  That last map [(on page 103)] could also benefit by having different shadings in the two districts on opposite sides of that small Paddock Place boundary or on Worth Ave. (especially since you have other plans with wards/districts that do cross those line segments with other wards/districts or the city limits on either end).[...]
[...]
I'm not sure what you are referring to with regard to Plan 18. The purple district, Underhill(5), does cross Paddock Place, and the orange district, Prospect Hill(3) does cross Worth Avenue. To get equality with 10 districts, you really do have to disregard common sense.

Worth Avenue is US 9, and is shown in yellow on the base layer, which might make it look more like a boundary.
Clarifying what I was referring to regarding the color shadings.  Not Plan 18.

I also just noticed another what seems to be a pair of bordering districts on that same map (on page 103) with the same color shadings: The big north central district and the one bounded by Strawberry Alley, Robinson St, N 3rd St, State Street and N 2nd St, both electing 7 City Meeting members.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #455 on: September 18, 2016, 03:12:09 PM »

The Census Bureau does not plan to use the goat path as a block boundary in 2020 - which is based on it not having a name.

I'm ambivalent over its use. It is not consistent with other block boundaries, but is useful for placing Crosswinds in Ward 4, without splitting a block. If the Census Bureau recognized addresses ranges as the atom for census geography it would be real helpful, but would probably be extremely difficult to implement USA-wide.
Maybe it could be used to the north of the brook/stream/whatever flowing into Underhill Pond (the one not from Oakdale Pond), but not to the south where it would separate maybe one home or maybe not any from the rest of its block if the two streams flowing into Underhill Pond (including the one from Oakdale Pond) are added as block boundaries which I know you and Torie were trying to have happen (Glenwood Blvd. will obviously continue to be a block boundary).
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jimrtex
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« Reply #456 on: September 18, 2016, 03:25:24 PM »

[...]
One minor potential error I noticed (although it might not have been) is that the northern end of the "footpath boundary" in Plan 10 is to the west of that in Plans 4, 8, 17 and 18 and the map [in] your Representative Town (City) Meeting proposal.  That last map [(on page 103)] could also benefit by having different shadings in the two districts on opposite sides of that small Paddock Place boundary or on Worth Ave. (especially since you have other plans with wards/districts that do cross those line segments with other wards/districts or the city limits on either end).[...]
[...]
I'm not sure what you are referring to with regard to Plan 18. The purple district, Underhill(5), does cross Paddock Place, and the orange district, Prospect Hill(3) does cross Worth Avenue. To get equality with 10 districts, you really do have to disregard common sense.

Worth Avenue is US 9, and is shown in yellow on the base layer, which might make it look more like a boundary.
Clarifying what I was referring to regarding the color shadings.  Not Plan 18.

I also just noticed another what seems to be a pair of bordering districts on that same map (on page 103) with the same color shadings: The big north central district and the one bounded by Strawberry Alley, Robinson St, N 3rd St, State Street and N 2nd St, both electing 7 City Meeting members.
When you use QGIS to color based on classification it uses random colors. When there are a lot of classes, it seems like it repeats some colors. I can manually adjust colors, but it is tedious and I tend to miss changes.

I could make Strawberry Lane blue,
the area west of Worth yellow, and
the northern triangle east of Harry Howard reddish.

Can you distinguish the red and purples OK, particularly in the west?

Is there an obvious way to go to a particular page other than using the scroll bar?



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jimrtex
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« Reply #457 on: September 18, 2016, 03:42:34 PM »

The Census Bureau does not plan to use the goat path as a block boundary in 2020 - which is based on it not having a name.

I'm ambivalent over its use. It is not consistent with other block boundaries, but is useful for placing Crosswinds in Ward 4, without splitting a block. If the Census Bureau recognized addresses ranges as the atom for census geography it would be real helpful, but would probably be extremely difficult to implement USA-wide.
Maybe it could be used to the north of the brook/stream/whatever flowing into Underhill Pond (the one not from Oakdale Pond), but not to the south where it would separate maybe one home or maybe not any from the rest of its block if the two streams flowing into Underhill Pond (including the one from Oakdale Pond) are added as block boundaries which I know you and Torie were trying to have happen (Glenwood Blvd. will obviously continue to be a block boundary).

You can use the northern stream to Paddock Place (the part that drops down from the east-west street to Oakwood Blvd is part of Paddock Place. On the satellite image, there are a bunch of trees north of the houses on the west side of the street. And then there are trees on east side a bit further south. I think that is probably the real course of the stream. At that point you are close to the divide between the Hudson River and Claverack Creek (which flows south to north parallel to the Hudson), so the "valley" for the stream can be graded into a road dip.

So it does separate the houses on Glenwood, Parkwood, Oakwood, boulevards and Paddock Place, from Crosswinds and the houses between Harry Howard and Underhill Pond.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #458 on: September 18, 2016, 03:49:58 PM »

[...]
One minor potential error I noticed (although it might not have been) is that the northern end of the "footpath boundary" in Plan 10 is to the west of that in Plans 4, 8, 17 and 18 and the map [in] your Representative Town (City) Meeting proposal.  That last map [(on page 103)] could also benefit by having different shadings in the two districts on opposite sides of that small Paddock Place boundary or on Worth Ave. (especially since you have other plans with wards/districts that do cross those line segments with other wards/districts or the city limits on either end).[...]
[...]
I'm not sure what you are referring to with regard to Plan 18. The purple district, Underhill(5), does cross Paddock Place, and the orange district, Prospect Hill(3) does cross Worth Avenue. To get equality with 10 districts, you really do have to disregard common sense.

Worth Avenue is US 9, and is shown in yellow on the base layer, which might make it look more like a boundary.
Clarifying what I was referring to regarding the color shadings.  Not Plan 18.

I also just noticed another what seems to be a pair of bordering districts on that same map (on page 103) with the same color shadings: The big north central district and the one bounded by Strawberry Alley, Robinson St, N 3rd St, State Street and N 2nd St, both electing 7 City Meeting members.
When you use QGIS to color based on classification it uses random colors. When there are a lot of classes, it seems like it repeats some colors. I can manually adjust colors, but it is tedious and I tend to miss changes.

I could make Strawberry Lane blue,
the area west of Worth yellow, and
the northern triangle east of Harry Howard reddish.

Can you distinguish the red and purples OK, particularly in the west?

Is there an obvious way to go to a particular page other than using the scroll bar?
I was able to distinguish between the reds and purples okay, but changing the color of one of the pink/purple/lavenderish blocks entirely in current Ward 1 in that map wouldn't hurt.  The boundary lines being shown helps.  I was just trying to give some constructive advice, but I don't know how wide your intended audience is and how much time making these color changes would take.

As far as going to a particular page, the Outline window helps, although it seems to have certain things as section breaks that you probably didn't mean to be, like the bolded "Vote For Not More Than 19" in the "Representative Town (City) Meeting Section" and even some non-bolded single sentence paragraphs.  I didn't use the Outline window until just now.  I haven't read the whole document, but I have read the whole part starting your "Response to Free and Equal Petition", just before the maps began.  (Interestingly, Alternative Plan 0 is not listed as a section break in the Outline window.)

Anyone with the attention span or interest to read your entire document (or everything once you get to possible solutions, like I did) shouldn't be too deterred by the difficulty in getting where they want to be in the document.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #459 on: September 18, 2016, 04:14:15 PM »
« Edited: September 18, 2016, 04:15:48 PM by Kevinstat »

You can use the northern stream to Paddock Place (the part that drops down from the east-west street to Oakwood Blvd is part of Paddock Place. On the satellite image, there are a bunch of trees north of the houses on the west side of the street. And then there are trees on east side a bit further south. I think that is probably the real course of the stream. At that point you are close to the divide between the Hudson River and Claverack Creek (which flows south to north parallel to the Hudson), so the "valley" for the stream can be graded into a road dip.

So it does separate the houses on Glenwood, Parkwood, Oakwood, boulevards and Paddock Place, from Crosswinds and the houses between Harry Howard and Underhill Pond.
I'm not sure I entirely follow you.  But you might be saying that there are no homes in that "big block" (bounded by Harry Howard Ave., Paddock Place, Oakwood Blvd., Glenwood Blvd., Clinton Streed, 5th Street, either Washington Street or Prospect Street, and Short Street (if you consider the big block to go all the way to Prospect, as it seems it's at the Washington Street intersection that Harry Howard Ave. becomes Short Street)... you might be saying that there are no homes in that block north of the northern stream flowing into Underhill Pond and east of the foot/goat path.  There might also not be any homes in that "big block" between the two streams flowing into Underhill Pond and west of the foot/goat path.  So the path and the northern stream could be equivalent in terms of who is placed in what census block.  Using the path as a ward boundary (at least north of the northern stream) to separate Crosswinds from that other area would look neater on a map, however.  And who knows, there could be some Katrina-like disaster and people would have to take long-term refuge in the gym which I assume is the building on the corner of the "two Paddock Places", north of the stream but east of the foot/goat path.  Okay, I'm being somewhat fanciful there.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #460 on: September 18, 2016, 05:19:55 PM »

You can use the northern stream to Paddock Place (the part that drops down from the east-west street to Oakwood Blvd is part of Paddock Place. On the satellite image, there are a bunch of trees north of the houses on the west side of the street. And then there are trees on east side a bit further south. I think that is probably the real course of the stream. At that point you are close to the divide between the Hudson River and Claverack Creek (which flows south to north parallel to the Hudson), so the "valley" for the stream can be graded into a road dip.

So it does separate the houses on Glenwood, Parkwood, Oakwood, boulevards and Paddock Place, from Crosswinds and the houses between Harry Howard and Underhill Pond.
I'm not sure I entirely follow you.  But you might be saying that there are no homes in that "big block" (bounded by Harry Howard Ave., Paddock Place, Oakwood Blvd., Glenwood Blvd., Clinton Streed, 5th Street, either Washington Street or Prospect Street, and Short Street (if you consider the big block to go all the way to Prospect, as it seems it's at the Washington Street intersection that Harry Howard Ave. becomes Short Street)... you might be saying that there are no homes in that block north of the northern stream flowing into Underhill Pond and east of the foot/goat path.  There might also not be any homes in that "big block" between the two streams flowing into Underhill Pond and west of the foot/goat path.  So the path and the northern stream could be equivalent in terms of who is placed in what census block.  Using the path as a ward boundary (at least north of the northern stream) to separate Crosswinds from that other area would look neater on a map, however.  And who knows, there could be some Katrina-like disaster and people would have to take long-term refuge in the gym which I assume is the building on the corner of the "two Paddock Places", north of the stream but east of the foot/goat path.  Okay, I'm being somewhat fanciful there.

This would be the block split of the "two blocks" on either side of Glenwood Blvd. I have merged the two parts of Crosswinds. This would not necessarily be what the census bureau would do, but would be what a redistricter could use.



That is a tennis court at the northeast corner. I think Google is getting confused by the tenni-court fences as it tries to construct a pseudo-3D image. Two of the three tiny triangles formed by streets crossing do have census populations. They are literally traffic islands. I don't know if they are mistakes, or homeless persons. Maybe the Census Bureau doesn't like to give people addresses. There is another block that LATFOR placed a single person in. They used a commercial service to convert pre-incarceration addresses to blocks. Either the house was torn down, and the prisoner is a lifer, or they had the wrong address.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #461 on: September 19, 2016, 12:59:12 AM »

When you use QGIS to color based on classification it uses random colors. When there are a lot of classes, it seems like it repeats some colors. I can manually adjust colors, but it is tedious and I tend to miss changes.

I could make Strawberry Lane blue,
the area west of Worth yellow, and
the northern triangle east of Harry Howard reddish.

Can you distinguish the red and purples OK, particularly in the west?

Is there an obvious way to go to a particular page other than using the scroll bar?
I was able to distinguish between the reds and purples okay, but changing the color of one of the pink/purple/lavenderish blocks entirely in current Ward 1 in that map wouldn't hurt.  The boundary lines being shown helps.  I was just trying to give some constructive advice, but I don't know how wide your intended audience is and how much time making these color changes would take.

As far as going to a particular page, the Outline window helps, although it seems to have certain things as section breaks that you probably didn't mean to be, like the bolded "Vote For Not More Than 19" in the "Representative Town (City) Meeting Section" and even some non-bolded single sentence paragraphs.  I didn't use the Outline window until just now.  I haven't read the whole document, but I have read the whole part starting your "Response to Free and Equal Petition", just before the maps began.  (Interestingly, Alternative Plan 0 is not listed as a section break in the Outline window.)

Anyone with the attention span or interest to read your entire document (or everything once you get to possible solutions, like I did) shouldn't be too deterred by the difficulty in getting where they want to be in the document.
I have a Word document that I decided was too big to e-mail. I don't have enough experience with Word to formally structure it into sections so that it just has some text with double spacing and bold type. I loaded that into Google Docs and went through the text to make sure the page breaks weren't too bad. It worked out OK except for the tables, which I had to reduce the font size on to make them fit. Google is pickier about spelling than Word and so I had to make changes in two places.

For the maps I have to go back to QGIS, and then insert them into the Word document and then the  Google document, so if I do something, it will be easier to do with a lot of changes.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #462 on: September 19, 2016, 05:53:59 PM »

The April 16, 2002 common council minutes include the report of the March 27, 2002 Legal Committee meeting.  The committee minutes state that Alderman Cross presented breakdowns and graphs of census data were distributed for the committee members to take home and study.  Is Alderman Cross around?  Are those materials filed somewhere?

Speak of the devil. It turns out that Alderman Cross is Quintin Cross.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #463 on: September 19, 2016, 08:48:48 PM »
« Edited: September 19, 2016, 08:58:18 PM by Kevinstat »

The April 16, 2002 common council minutes include the report of the March 27, 2002 Legal Committee meeting.  The committee minutes state that Alderman Cross presented breakdowns and graphs of census data were distributed for the committee members to take home and study.  Is Alderman Cross around?  Are those materials filed somewhere?

Speak of the devil. It turns out that Alderman Cross is Quintin Cross.

Anyone I should know?  Or any relation to Supervisor Rev. Edward Cross, Sr., the one who felt really betrayed by Torie at the hearing?
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MaxQue
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« Reply #464 on: September 19, 2016, 10:15:59 PM »

The April 16, 2002 common council minutes include the report of the March 27, 2002 Legal Committee meeting.  The committee minutes state that Alderman Cross presented breakdowns and graphs of census data were distributed for the committee members to take home and study.  Is Alderman Cross around?  Are those materials filed somewhere?

Speak of the devil. It turns out that Alderman Cross is Quintin Cross.

Anyone I should know?  Or any relation to Supervisor Rev. Edward Cross, Sr., the one who felt really betrayed by Torie at the hearing?

A young black guy, which used illegally the credit card of the mayor in 2007 (grand larceny) and stole the City Hall in 2009.

Appeared in court 6 days ago, for illegally using the credit card of his former partner (grand larceny again).
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jimrtex
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« Reply #465 on: September 20, 2016, 12:34:04 AM »

The April 16, 2002 common council minutes include the report of the March 27, 2002 Legal Committee meeting.  The committee minutes state that Alderman Cross presented breakdowns and graphs of census data were distributed for the committee members to take home and study.  Is Alderman Cross around?  Are those materials filed somewhere?

Speak of the devil. It turns out that Alderman Cross is Quintin Cross.

Anyone I should know?  Or any relation to Supervisor Rev. Edward Cross, Sr., the one who felt really betrayed by Torie at the hearing?
I was reviewing the thread, and came across my message from two years ago. One of the oddities is that Hudson had correctly estimated the populations of the ward in the charter, following the 2000 Census. Part of this came when I realized that the only way they could have made that estimate is to have placed the area between Columbia Street and Columbia Turnpike in the 3rd Ward. The 3rd Ward is only ward wholly bound by streets and whose population can be determined directly from census blocks. There is a VTD that corresponds to the 3rd Ward, but does not include the area between the two Columbia's.

In 2002, the Common Council passed a resolution with accurate population estimates, and shipped them off to Dr.Papayanopoulos, who generated a set of voting weights. These were apparently set aside, and a proposal was made for equal-population districts. This was not voted on until November 2003, when it was narrowly defeated. It was not until 2004 that the new weights were actually implemented.

A further coincidence is that Mayor (until 2015) Hallenbeck lives in the Columbia triangle, and lived there when he was elected supervisor for the 3rd Ward by a 7-vote margin. He didn't live in the 3rd Ward, and it is quite possible that his immediate neighbors who also did not live in the 3rd Ward elected him.

Back to the 2014 thread, I had come across minutes from 2002 that probably show how the correct estimates were made. At that time, I had no idea who Alderman Cross was.

This past week a Quintin Cross was arrested, and the Police Commissioner posted some disparaging remarks on the police department's Facebook page, which a good defense lawyer would show as being prejudicial to his client. The mayor asked for an apology from the Police Commissioner, and said if he didn't, she would fire him. The Police Commissioner resigned instead of issuing an apology or being fired.

News articles noted that Quintin Cross was a former alderman.

"speak of the devil" should not be construed as a comment on the character of Quintin Cross, but instead refers to the idiom of conjuring the presence of a friend or relative.
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« Reply #466 on: September 20, 2016, 04:48:51 PM »

"speak of the devil" should not be construed as a comment on the character of Quintin Cross, but instead refers to the idiom of conjuring the presence of a friend or relative.

I understood that figure of speech.  That's why I figured there was something recent and notable that in Hudson involved him, which as it turns out there was.  At first I thought he might be the current Supervisor, whose first name I had forgotten at the time.  I've since learned that Quintin Cross is Supervisor Rev. Ed Cross's nephew.
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« Reply #467 on: November 09, 2016, 08:47:34 PM »
« Edited: November 11, 2016, 08:44:57 AM by Kevinstat »

Hudson Proposition 1 (the "Fair and Equal" referendum) passed overwhelmingly, with slightly different numbers in the Register-Star and the blog The Gossips of Rivertown.  According to a results breakdown in the Gossips entry, it prevailed in every ward and in both sections of the fifth ward, albeit by only 8 votes in precinct 5-2 which I imagine is the one Torie called heavily Pub somewhere way back in this thread (probably largely the Boulevards).  I don't know what ward voters in Crosswinds would have been counted as voting in in this election, if their voting in the wrong ward has been fixed yet.

I've read some chatter online that the existing council (with the weighted vote) will vote to send a referendum for all aldermen being elected at large (thus repealing the "Fair and Equal" plan) in an April referendum, that it will pass and that the interests currently behind Doc Donohue will bankroll a majority in the new council, which will apparently include Abdus Miah who I wouldn't think of as being on Doc Donohue's (or Rick Scelara's) "team" (although he was opposed to the "Fair and Equal" proposal).

What do you, jimrtex, think will happen?
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jimrtex
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« Reply #468 on: November 15, 2016, 11:58:39 AM »

Hudson Proposition 1 (the "Fair and Equal" referendum) passed overwhelmingly, with slightly different numbers in the Register-Star and the blog The Gossips of Rivertown.  According to a results breakdown in the Gossips entry, it prevailed in every ward and in both sections of the fifth ward, albeit by only 8 votes in precinct 5-2 which I imagine is the one Torie called heavily Pub somewhere way back in this thread (probably largely the Boulevards).  I don't know what ward voters in Crosswinds would have been counted as voting in in this election, if their voting in the wrong ward has been fixed yet.

I've read some chatter online that the existing council (with the weighted vote) will vote to send a referendum for all aldermen being elected at large (thus repealing the "Fair and Equal" plan) in an April referendum, that it will pass and that the interests currently behind Doc Donohue will bankroll a majority in the new council, which will apparently include Abdus Miah who I wouldn't think of as being on Doc Donohue's (or Rick Scelara's) "team" (although he was opposed to the "Fair and Equal" proposal).

What do you, jimrtex, think will happen?
(Unofficial) Election results are available on the Columbia County (NY) Board of Elections web site. The Gossips blog appears to have pasted from their results.

AFAIK, the voting precincts were not changed. Perhaps Torie was out challenging the right to vote on Tuesday? The two election districts in Ward 5 are really odd. There is a state law that sets a maximum number of registered voters in an election district, so Ward 5 has to have two election districts. It appears that they did a east-west split, perhaps to equalize voters.

5-1 is the area between N 5th Street and N 6th Street AND the triangular area north of Paddock Place, between Harry Howard and the eastern city limits. 5-2 is the Boulevards and the areas along Green Street. But with Crosswinds treated as part of Ward 4, and ED 4-1, this divides 5-1.

5-2 is really not Republican. Clinton carried it C60:T34:O6. Clinton carried Hudson C72:T22:O6. Trump carried the remainder of the county, T49:C45:O6.

It is typical practice to combine polling locations. In Hudson, 1-1, 2-1, and 3-1 voted at one location; 4-1 at another; and 5-1 and 5-2 at a third. This was common throughout the county, and I suspect throughout the state. There is probably some sort of patronage or corruption involved.

The number of registered votes for the proposed wards W1:825; W2:620   W3:751 W4:643 and W5:   761.

In terms of votes cast/ward resident the yield for Ward 1 is 61% greater than for Ward 2. You might recall the least change alternative would have divided Ward 5 into two wards, expanded wards 3 and 4 to the west, and created a west end ward across Warren Street. But because of the turnout differential, you have to have a district that is 62%:38% population split, to have equal number of votes.

This is one reason that the misallocation of Hudson Terrace for the current weights, and the cracking of Hudson Terrace under the new plan is so pernicious.

There is a provision in the Municipal Home Rule law that forbids changes in the structure of a local government more than once per decade beginning with '0'. There is an exception for changing voting weights. I think I recall a case where the changes took effect in year XXX0, though approved prior to that date, that were accepted. So I think a referendum to change to at-large elections may violate that.

See MHR § 10.1(ii)a(13)(f)

It is conceivable that there could be a second change before the first takes effect. I'd think that at-large elections would run afoul of the Voting Rights Act, unless there was some proportional system. If it is possible to make a second change, then they could approve a different map. But I am dubious that they can do so.

Since the current voting weights are unconstitutional, violating equal protection (14th Amendment) the Voting Rights Act, and the 15th Amendment, they could be changed regardless of any mere state or city law.

The Free and Equal people were dishonest in their presentation about the constitutionality of the current weighted voting plan, but that does not make their substitute plan illegal or unconstitutional.

Their petition may have been illegal, in that it apparently did not present the text of the proposed law to the signers of the petition.

MHR §  37.1 and 37.2 make it quite clear that it is the signers of the petition that are proposing the new law, and that their petition should carry the full text of the proposed law. This is fully consistent with the concept of an initiative producing legislation. If the Common Council did not pass the identical bill as proposed, the petitioners could gather more signatures.

MHR § 10.1(ii)a(13)(a)(iii) provides that an apportionment plan "shall provide substantially fair and effective representation for the people of the local government as organized in political parties."

This is an affirmative obligation on the city. The group proposing the plan was overwhelmingly Democratic, and included the vice-chair of the Hudson Democratic Party.

The legislation or the ballot summary did not mention the election of supervisors or any effect on its voting powers. There is a case from Suffolk County where an initiative to switch to weighted voting was blocked because it did not specify the actual voting weights, but only provided the methodology of their calculation.

There is an additional problem in that the current supervisor voting weights (for the whole county) violate equal protection (OMOV) because of the method by which they were calculated.

The interaction between the the common council districts and the supervisor districts is problematic:

MHR § 10.1(ii)a(1) states a [... city ...] may set

"The powers, duties, qualifications, number, mode of selection and removal, terms of office, compensation, hours of work, protection, welfare and safety of its officers and employees, except that cities and towns shall not have such power with respect to members of the legislative body of the county in their capacities as county officers.

A board of supervisors is made up of city and town officers serving in a ex officio capacity (note: "ex officio" does not mean non-voting, though often ex officio officers are non-voting).

What does "such power" mean with respect to city supervisors in their capacity as county officers?

Did any of the other changes related to wards requires a fiscal note?
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« Reply #469 on: November 15, 2016, 08:37:36 PM »
« Edited: November 15, 2016, 08:42:33 PM by Kevinstat »

The interaction between the the common council districts and the supervisor districts is problematic:

MHR § 10.1(ii)a(1) states a [... city ...] may set

"The powers, duties, qualifications, number, mode of selection and removal, terms of office, compensation, hours of work, protection, welfare and safety of its officers and employees, except that cities and towns shall not have such power with respect to members of the legislative body of the county in their capacities as county officers.

A board of supervisors is made up of city and town officers serving in a ex officio capacity (note: "ex officio" does not mean non-voting, though often ex officio officers are non-voting).

What does "such power" mean with respect to city supervisors in their capacity as county officers?

Couldn't one argue that it was Columbia County's fault for setting the election districts for Supervisors in Hudson as wards (which could be changed) rather than the wards as they existed on such and such a date?  Of course the Columbia County BOE wasn't following the actual ward lines entirely anyway.

Otisfield, Maine moved from the first congressional district to the second congressional district when it switched counties from Cumberland County to Oxford County in 1978 (approved by the Legislature in probably 1977 and ratified in a referendum in November 1977), voting for second district candidates beginning in the June 1978 primary even though the switch didn't go into effect until July 4, 1978.  The state law delineating the districts mentioned the counties in each district (none were split at the time, and the difference in 1970 was a few thousand people but that was down from about 40,000 in 1960 and (Maine had not redrawn its congressional districts after the apportionment decisions) so the Legislature just let things be until 1983 and no one challenged it), so when Otisfield changed counties, it changed districts.

I'm the person who e-mailed the chief maintainer of Otisfield's GenWeb site about when Otisfield changed congressional districts (that site already had info about Otisfield's succession from Cumberland County), by the way, and the text on the page I provided a link to may have been an exact copy of her reply to me after going to the town office and researching.  That was several computers and e-mail addresses ago for me, though.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #470 on: November 17, 2016, 10:27:01 AM »

The interaction between the the common council districts and the supervisor districts is problematic:

MHR § 10.1(ii)a(1) states a [... city ...] may set

"The powers, duties, qualifications, number, mode of selection and removal, terms of office, compensation, hours of work, protection, welfare and safety of its officers and employees, except that cities and towns shall not have such power with respect to members of the legislative body of the county in their capacities as county officers.

A board of supervisors is made up of city and town officers serving in a ex officio capacity (note: "ex officio" does not mean non-voting, though often ex officio officers are non-voting).

What does "such power" mean with respect to city supervisors in their capacity as county officers?

Couldn't one argue that it was Columbia County's fault for setting the election districts for Supervisors in Hudson as wards (which could be changed) rather than the wards as they existed on such and such a date?  Of course the Columbia County BOE wasn't following the actual ward lines entirely anyway.
Somewhere in this thread, I had made the claim that the city and towns had primary authority for election districts, which the CBOE could set if they failed to do so. The city does have a consulting role in setting of polling locations.

The board of elections does not appear to be responsible to anyone. The political parties each nominate a commissioner. If the county legislative body fails to appoint the nominee, then party members on the legislative body may appoint the commissioner for their party. The governor can remove a commissioner, but it sounds messy and hyperpolitical.

I think it is the responsibility of the city to ensure that the board of election follow their ward boundaries. I wouldn't trust the board of elections to get the new lines correct.

The amazing thing is that the board of elections gave a map of ward boundaries to the city which was not only wrong, but not the map the board of elections uses.

Otisfield, Maine moved from the first congressional district to the second congressional district when it switched counties from Cumberland County to Oxford County in 1978 (approved by the Legislature in probably 1977 and ratified in a referendum in November 1977), voting for second district candidates beginning in the June 1978 primary even though the switch didn't go into effect until July 4, 1978.  The state law delineating the districts mentioned the counties in each district (none were split at the time, and the difference in 1970 was a few thousand people but that was down from about 40,000 in 1960 and (Maine had not redrawn its congressional districts after the apportionment decisions) so the Legislature just let things be until 1983 and no one challenged it), so when Otisfield changed counties, it changed districts.

I'm the person who e-mailed the chief maintainer of Otisfield's GenWeb site about when Otisfield changed congressional districts (that site already had info about Otisfield's succession from Cumberland County), by the way, and the text on the page I provided a link to may have been an exact copy of her reply to me after going to the town office and researching.  That was several computers and e-mail addresses ago for me, though.
Some of these things are just done, and become de facto changes. Ohio's apportionment law was based on districts of whole counties. Since weighted voting was used, district boundaries were only changed for cause (a multicounty district being split once it could elect two senators, or a district being merged into another when it didn't have enough population for a senator). When Ohio's newest county was created, it spanned a senate district line, and thereafter, the senate district split the county.

In Hudson, it is possible that some of the incorrect ward boundaries were due to a map reading error. New York did not participate in the VTD program until 1990. Since VTD's correspond to election districts, not wards, the state board of elections was likely involved. "send us the maps of your election districts". This would have been in the mid-1980s, so Columbia County would not have any sort of GIS program. They would take paper maps, mark them up and send them to Albany.

Some clerk would realize that they didn't match the census geography, and made adjustments, reducing 7 election districts (Ward 3 used to have 2) into 3 VTDs. The boundary between the 4th and 5th wards kind of followed Harry Howard so they followed that. But the VTD boundary comes down to Prospect before going over to 5th Street. So I'm guessing that someone was confused by the block north of Washington, which the Census Bureau doesn't consider to be a block.

Maybe someone made a mistake with Columbia Turnpike, and then when they got an official looking census map decided that it must be right.

The CBOE knew the boundary between the 4th and 5th wards was not on Harry Howard and simply ignored that. The houses that were between Underhill Pond and Harry Howard are numbered up to 86.

There are two houses further up Harry Howard at 106 and 126 that are included in Ward 4 by the board of elections. Perhaps they were included in Ward 4 as a matter of convenience or so they would be in the same ward as the Firemen's Home across the road. The actual ward boundary is barely past 86. There is an undeveloped lot that would be in Ward 5. So the concept could have developed that those houses out on Harry Howard were in Ward 4. At one census, the enumerator for Ward 4, enumerated a couple of houses on Harry Howard, and then wrote that they were in Ward 5. AFAICT, the Census Bureau ignored the note and included them in the Ward 4 population.

There may have been a house located where Crosswinds is now. Crosswinds includes 88-98 Harry Howard Avenue. If 106 was considered to be in Ward 4, and 86 is in Ward 4, then clearly 88-98 Harry Howard Avenue must be in Ward 4.

The supervisor for Ward 4 was absolutely certain that Crosswinds was in Ward 4, and may actually believe that it was built where it was so it could be in Ward 4, rather than simply one of very few locations suitable for building an apartment complex (you could do in the older part of the city, but that would mean knocking down existing buildings).
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Torie
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« Reply #471 on: December 01, 2016, 11:23:54 AM »

Now that Hudson has new wards under its belt, it's time to move on to a Columbia County legislative map. Commencing in about  a year from now, one of my projects will be to begin a serious dialogue regarding Columbia County dumping its crazed governmental system, that has no chief executive, and where little gets done competently, or often not at all (as in a codification of its laws, contract maintenance (the sales tax agreement with Hudson expired 10 years ago, and nobody seems to care (yeah sales taxes are also another one of my projects, and I am on it), etc., etc., and the system needs to go. Now that the modus operandi of getting matters on the ballot by petition has been perfected, that will be a weapon in the arsenal if the Supervisors stonewall on the issue.

So I am interested in seeing a legislative map for Columbia County, with no less than 11 districts, and no more than 19. The exact number would be largely driven by what makes for the best map. Since population changes are so sluggish in Columbia County, a map should have a relatively long half life as to its basic design I would think.

The constraints are to split as few towns as possible, and no town, or Hudson, would have more than one chop if at all possible. Tri-chops would be a big demerit, and there would need to be compelling reasons to go there. And yes, the chop in Hudson cannot involve the 2nd ward being appended to Greenport. That would not work politically, as it would neuter persons of color. The same is also almost as true for the 4th ward. So the chop for Hudson would probably need to involve the 5th ward, although it could perhaps be the 3rd ward in a pinch, or a combo of the two.

Thanks.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #472 on: December 01, 2016, 07:54:18 PM »

Now that Hudson has new wards under its belt, it's time to move on to a Columbia County legislative map. Commencing in about  a year from now, one of my projects will be to begin a serious dialogue regarding Columbia County dumping its crazed governmental system, that has no chief executive, and where little gets done competently, or often not at all (as in a codification of its laws, contract maintenance (the sales tax agreement with Hudson expired 10 years ago, and nobody seems to care (yeah sales taxes are also another one of my projects, and I am on it), etc., etc., and the system needs to go. Now that the modus operandi of getting matters on the ballot by petition has been perfected, that will be a weapon in the arsenal if the Supervisors stonewall on the issue.

So I am interested in seeing a legislative map for Columbia County, with no less than 11 districts, and no more than 19. The exact number would be largely driven by what makes for the best map. Since population changes are so sluggish in Columbia County, a map should have a relatively long half life as to its basic design I would think.

The constraints are to split as few towns as possible, and no town, or Hudson, would have more than one chop if at all possible. Tri-chops would be a big demerit, and there would need to be compelling reasons to go there. And yes, the chop in Hudson cannot involve the 2nd ward being appended to Greenport. That would not work politically, as it would neuter persons of color. The same is also almost as true for the 4th ward. So the chop for Hudson would probably need to involve the 5th ward, although it could perhaps be the 3rd ward in a pinch, or a combo of the two.
You may want to look at MHR $ 33.6.

In general there is no initiative power for municipalities other than cities under the MHR. There have been legislative attempts to provide the initiative to all levels of government, but none have succeeded. County charters may also provide for an initiative.

You could probably challenge any appointment or election to a charter commission that was contrary to OMOV. You may recall that one concern of Lomezo v WMCA is that a constitutional revision convention for New York would be elected by senate districts, and since the senate districts were malapportioned, they might be unwilling to change the malapportionment (this is the general reason that apportionment was determined to be judiciable, the political process did not lead to self correction).

Of course under a charter commission, you couldn't draft the charter in secret.
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« Reply #473 on: December 02, 2016, 02:11:30 AM »

Under the Hudson City Charter, ward officers, aldermen and supervisors must live in their wards.

The ward boundaries will change on January 1, 2017, resulting in supervisors Cross and Sterling, and aldermen Rector, O'Hara, and Friedman no longer living in their wards, creating five vacancies.

The intent of the initiative may have been for the new boundaries to take effect on January 1, 2018; except for purposes of the election of officers whose term takes into effect on that date. But it appears that the legal counsel for the backers of the initiative was negligent.

Can the City of Hudson:

(1) Ignore what its charter says;

(2) Pass an resolution interpreting it (in effect, rewriting the transitional language); or

(3) Attempt to enforce the vacancy provisions, and wait for a court to stop them?
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« Reply #474 on: December 10, 2016, 11:35:24 AM »
« Edited: December 10, 2016, 11:39:43 AM by Kevinstat »

Under the Hudson City Charter, ward officers, aldermen and supervisors must live in their wards.

The ward boundaries will change on January 1, 2017, resulting in supervisors Cross and Sterling Moore, and aldermen Rector, O'Hara, and Friedman alderman Haddad no longer living in their wards, creating five vacancies.

The intent of the initiative may have been for the new boundaries to take effect on January 1, 2018; except for purposes of the election of officers whose term takes into effect on that date. But it appears that the legal counsel for the backers of the initiative was negligent.

Can the City of Hudson:

(1) Ignore what its charter says;

(2) Pass an resolution interpreting it (in effect, rewriting the transitional language); or

(3) Attempt to enforce the vacancy provisions, and wait for a court to stop them?

Fixed that for you.  If you're going to go full-blown legalistic, I think the juxtaposition of numbers of the new wards and the numbers of the wards the aldermen were elected to represent would matter, rather than which ward was the main predecessor/successor of which other ward.

My guess is that (1) ends up happening.  Some aldermen may try for (2), but die-hard opponents of the Fair and Equal plan may try to use that as a bargaining chip to bring back weighted voting, and that whole effort could fall apart.
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