City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny

[Kevinstat]

What's the fairest least change map of them all guys: version 1, 2 or 3? The washed out green in one of the maps needs to be enhanced if it becomes the one that is used.

By fairest, I assume you mean most comely in presentation.

I like the green of #1, since it provides the best contrast with the cyan of Ward 4.

Can you show the the new alignment of 2nd Street, and eliminate the spur to the button factory?

I like the placement of the ward labels in #1. That shows what people are actually voting on. The existing boundaries are for reference only. Anyone living in Hudson (and their parents and grandparents) would be familiar with the existing wards.

Objectively, what is happening is that Ward 5 is being divided into two wards:

Ward 1: 593 persons moved to Ward 3.
Ward 2: 186 persons moved to Ward 4
Ward 3: 390 persons moved to Ward 6
Ward 4: No deductions.
Ward 5: Split into Ward 5 and Ward 6, 278 persons to Ward 4.

Total shifts 1447.

You are the one that thought that showing the existing wards in red lines, and the new wards in color, was better than my version 1. Thus I did versions 2 and 3 (the only difference is where the text of "ward 3 goes), and now you say you like version 1 best. Color me confused.

I think what Jimrtex would like is to take, say your #3 (the green and cyan in that map aren't that different from #1, and if your using MS Paint or something like that you can't just click a button and make lines appear/disappear and colors change) and move all the ward labels to where they are in your #1 (with the "W" "Ward 4" intentionally straddling the red line at the old 2-4 boundary, "Ward 2" further from the new line with Ward 4 and the "3" in Ward 3 not looking like a "6" or "8" at first glance).

For good measure (with my own preferences here rather than guessing at Jimrtex's), instead of Moving "Ward 1" all the way to where it was in map #1, you could move it to straddle the old 1-3 line.  Having the red lines be dotted rather than solid would also be nice (I realize why you made them thick and solid when they were the new lines), but again it's not like you can just wave a magic wand and have those changes made.

Another possibility, which I think might be the best, is to keep the tints and lines or your #1 and simply change the ward labels to red to match the color of the boundaries (and also move "Ward 1" to go over both pink and blue area).  You could also try to fit a "Proposed wards outlined in red" somewhere, like on the other side of Route "9G/23B" from your colored boxes with "outlined in red" under "Proposed wards".  While some people (like Jimrtex) might prefer the tints to be the new districts and the lines to be the old, no one could argue that such a revised map #1 wouldn't be clear.

[Kevinstat]

I was thinking about your desire to maintain the status quo. The status quo is that the residents of Westwind vote in Ward 4. So how about this alternative?

I like that map, particularly from a selfish political standpoint (well other than for me), but again, we are not crossing Warren Street, and I want to minimize population variances.

How about this?



I used Jimrtex's map above as a basis, with my modifications in Microsoft Paint.  You can ignore where the black lines are.  The background colors are what rules.  Wards 1 and 2 are exactly as in the current Torie plan, and the populations of the other three wards are the same, just switched around.

[Kevinstat]

I was thinking about your desire to maintain the status quo. The status quo is that the residents of Westwind vote in Ward 4. So how about this alternative?

I like that map, particularly from a selfish political standpoint (well other than for me), but again, we are not crossing Warren Street, and I want to minimize population variances.

How about this?



I used Jimrtex's map above as a basis, with my modifications in Microsoft Paint.  You can ignore where the black lines are.  The background colors are what rules.  Wards 1 and 2 are exactly as in the current Torie plan, and the populations of the other three wards are the same, just switched around.

My problem is that it divides (cracks) an apartment complex with a large minority population, and utilizes an alleyway as a ward boundary.

While I welcome your input, my posting of this map was more aimed at Torie.  It gets rid of the split across at least one home in the block around Underhill Pond, while still only shifting territory 4 ways (3 -> 1, 5 -> 3, 5 -> 4 and 2 -> 4).  I wanted to find something you would object to less than the map Torie is currently advocating for, while meeting Torie approval which I placed a higher value on since he's the one who lives in Hudson and is involved "on the ground" in the petition drive to get a five equal population wards (and presumably ditching weighted voting) scheme adopted.

It's probably too late now for Torie to be willing to consider changes in his map based on where he is in the process, but I thought I'd throw this out there to see what he thought.  Who knows, he might be getting pushback about keeping the extension of N 5th St as a ward boundary between Clinton St and Harry Howard Ave, or "Why did you keep that extension [part of the way] but not the 3rd Street extension?", and my alternative could help address those issues.

[Kevinstat]

These are interesting cases, in the Supreme Court (ie a New York district court)

Matter of Curcio v Boyle 142 Misc.2d 1030 (1989)

and on appeal.

Matter of Curcio v Boyle 147 A.D.2d 194 (1989)

Citizens in Suffolk County had initiated a proposal to switch from a legislature comprised of single-member districts to a board of supervisors using weighted voting. The Suffolk County Charter provides for an initiative procedure. The County Attorney (Boyle) initially approved the petition as sufficient. He later he reversed himself and made a number of claims. The Supreme Court judge wryly observed, "[t]here is no indication as to how these tidbits previously escaped the attention of the County Attorney."

However, the appeals court ultimately rejected the initiative because it did not provide enough details of how the voting weights would be calculated.

"the modified weighted voting standards enunciated and approved by the Court of Appeals in Iannucci v Board of Supervisors, 20 N.Y.2d 244 * * * and in Franklin v Krause, 32 N.Y.2d 234" does not adequately apprise the voters from any of the towns within Suffolk County of precisely how many votes each of their respective Supervisors would cast."

If the petition that the Hudson voters signed did not include the full text of the proposed local law, is the petition legally sufficient?

Paragraph 2 of MHR Section 37 makes clear that it is the signers of the petition who are filing the petition with city clerk. A couple of individuals carrying the signed sheets into the clerk's office are merely agents of the signers. Paragraph 2 requires the proposed law to be "set forth in full" in the petition.

Paragraph 3 requires the additions to be in italics or underlined and deletions to be indicated with strike-throughs or [brackets]. In essence, an initiative is a legislative act, where those who are supporting placing the matter before the governing body the voters are fully informed as what they are supporting.

If the circulated text which voters signed included the entire petition, as required by law, I don't understand why Torie would not let me see it while the petitions were being circulated.

While I'm not thrilled about Torie's map, I'd like to see the referendum happen, so if you can avoid trying to tip off the opposition so they can squelch the referendum, I'd appreciate it.

[Kevinstat]

When Hudson was split between two wards along 3rd Street in 1815, what is now the town of Greenport was part of Hudson, according to Wikipedia.  How did the boundary extend north and south of what is now Hudson?  S 3rd Street (at least now) curves (as State Routes 23B and 9G) when you get into Greenport, and the extension of N 3rd Street into Lorenz Park and Stottville does cross some present roads (including what is now U.S. 9 in the Greenport section of Stottville).  Perhaps back then there were no homes in then-Hudson north of present-day Hudson on the northeast side of the 3rd Street extension.  But in the south, well I'd need to see a map from around 1815 to see what the logical extension of South 3rd Street.  Was there a bridge over the Hudson River in (then) southern Hudson and Catskill back then?  The road (and the 1815 ward boundary before Greenport left in 1837) could have also followed (at least roughly) the course of the present 9G into Livingston, even if there was a forking as there is now between a road crossing the Hudson and one continuing roughly parallel to the river (there's a forking going the other direction to, but no one could argue that the present-day State Route 23 going east and then southeast would be any kind of extension of 3rd Street.

[Kevinstat]

You may find this interesting.

Hudson weighted voting

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.

[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.

[Kevinstat]

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).

[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.

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.

[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.

[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?

[Kevinstat]

"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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[Kevinstat]

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.

MHR § 10.1.a(13)(a)(ii) might provide such a (legally) compelling reason.  See jimrtex's first post on the thread you started on this topic in September (the part beginning with "The MHR does not permit splitting towns with  less than 110% of the quota").  The 19-member case might be worse than Jimrtex said, as Livingston was at only 1.0979/19 of Columbia County's population as of and according to the 2010 census.

With 11 members, the only municipalities which could be split would be Kinderhook and Hudson, both of which would be too big for a district.  With 12 or more members, Clavarack could be (and would have to be) split; with 13 or more, Ghent; with 17 or more, Greenport and Chatham (a district coincident with Greenport would be at +5.62% with 16 members, but apparently up to 10% over is considered to be okay in the case of districts coincident with a municipality in non-weighted New York county legislatures); 20 or more (outside your range), Livingston and Copake (with 19 members, districts coincident with Livingston and Copake would be at +9.79% and +8.86%, respectively).

Of course, you could try to get the State Legislature to get rid of the prohibition of splitting towns with less than 110% of the ideal district population.

[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.

Aldermen represent people who live in the same area as they do and elected them, not trees or acres, or cardinal numbers. Most of the voters who elected Alderman Haddad, will, as of January 1, now reside in the 1st Ward. They didn't move, he didn't move, and they elected him.

The voters approved two basic propositions: change the boundaries of the wards to take effect in 2017; and to change the voting procedures to take effect in 2018.

We can't presume that the voters meant something other than what they actually voted for.

p.s. you missed Alderman Moore based on your legal theory.

Oh, Alderman Moore's in the new Ward 3 with Friedman?  Hadn't realized that.

As for everything else, I don't live in Hudson, so why should I care if you try to sabotage the non-weighted voting scheme?  Or if Torie basically blackmailed the voters of Hudson into voting for his plan because the status quo was "untenable"?  (Of course, given the margin, it's tough to argue it only passed because people felt they had to pass it.)

[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.

Aldermen represent people who live in the same area as they do and elected them, not trees or acres, or cardinal numbers. Most of the voters who elected Alderman Haddad, will, as of January 1, now reside in the 1st Ward. They didn't move, he didn't move, and they elected him.

The voters approved two basic propositions: change the boundaries of the wards to take effect in 2017; and to change the voting procedures to take effect in 2018.

We can't presume that the voters meant something other than what they actually voted for.

p.s. you missed Alderman Moore based on your legal theory.

Oh, Alderman Moore's in the new Ward 3 with Friedman?  Hadn't realized that.

As for everything else, I don't live in Hudson, so why should I care if you try to sabotage the non-weighted voting scheme?  Or if Torie basically blackmailed the voters of Hudson into voting for his plan because the status quo was "untenable"?  (Of course, given the margin, it's tough to argue it only passed because people felt they had to pass it.)

The city has budgeted $100,000 for a legal defense. A couple of aldermen want the money shifted to another function. It could be a ploy to leave the city without resources to fight a challenge, forcing the city to accept a settlement to avoid bankrupting the city.

Is there a news article about that?  Or a certain city council meeting I should look for a video of?

[Kevinstat]

A new version of prototype census blocks are out (see the second half of http://www2.census.gov/geo/pvs/bbsp/ (the ones beginning with bbsb_2016) (New York is st36)).  I've yet to come across any difference between the 2016 prototype blocks and the 2015 ones in Hudson, while there have been some changes in Maine (not regarding my Augusta suggestions but the one I had for Manchester and the township boundaries in Aroostook County (they added pretty much all township boundaries, with the exception of the "extensions" of town lines within the Penobscot Reservation, where some maps have their territory parceled out among towns along the river)).  There's still that big honking block along the northern boundary of the city and sprawling blocks around Underhill and Oakdale Ponds (although at least the railroad tracks south of Oakdale Pond are now a block boundary, but that had already been planned as a block boundary).  I don't know if LATFOR fell down on the job or if the changes the Census Bureau has made or is making in Hudson just weren't incorporated into the 2016 prototype census blocks.

[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.

Aldermen represent people who live in the same area as they do and elected them, not trees or acres, or cardinal numbers. Most of the voters who elected Alderman Haddad, will, as of January 1, now reside in the 1st Ward. They didn't move, he didn't move, and they elected him.

The voters approved two basic propositions: change the boundaries of the wards to take effect in 2017; and to change the voting procedures to take effect in 2018.

We can't presume that the voters meant something other than what they actually voted for.

p.s. you missed Alderman Moore based on your legal theory.

Oh, Alderman Moore's in the new Ward 3 with Friedman?  Hadn't realized that.

As for everything else, I don't live in Hudson, so why should I care if you try to sabotage the non-weighted voting scheme?  Or if Torie basically blackmailed the voters of Hudson into voting for his plan because the status quo was "untenable"?  (Of course, given the margin, it's tough to argue it only passed because people felt they had to pass it.)

The city has budgeted $100,000 for a legal defense. A couple of aldermen want the money shifted to another function. It could be a ploy to leave the city without resources to fight a challenge, forcing the city to accept a settlement to avoid bankrupting the city.

Is there a news article about that?  Or a certain city council meeting I should look for a video of?

In the informal meeting this week, there were resolutions filed to change the budget. If you go on the city website, there are the two resolutions under the meeting documents for the common council meeting.

It appears that in Hudson that the mayor proposes the budget, but the common council may be able to modify it. The $100,000 is mentioned in the mayor's memorandum to the common council. It might be associated with the November budget meeting.

The Common Council passed a resolution zapping the $100,000. Those generally opposed to the Toriemander voted to eliminate the $100,000 that could be used to defend it.

Ironically, it was a narrow majority due to the illegal voting weights used by Hudson. Had lawful weights been used, it would have been a comfortable 53%.

I had missed this post between the two posts with Torie's financial stress map and the ensuing off-topic conversation.

By lawful weights, I assume you mean without any concern for equality in voting power (efforts to equalize that bring Ward 5's relative weight down and Ward 1's up), but do you base it on the actual legal (pre-"Toriemander") wards or what ward people voted in (legally or otherwise) in 2015 (Crosswinds voted in Ward 4, for example)?

[Kevinstat]

Is everything on pace for elections in November for two alderman and one supervisor in each of the redrawn wards?  Or has the Council tried to change anything or has the Columbia County Board of Elections put up any resistance?

[Kevinstat]

Is everything on pace for elections in November for two alderman and one supervisor in each of the redrawn wards?  Or has the Council tried to change anything or has the Columbia County Board of Elections put up any resistance?

The County Board of Elections has apparently updated their database (the state board has new registration figures which show that this has been done). I don't know whether they looked into the inconsistent addresses at Hudson Terrace, where the street address was inconsistent with the apartment unit.

They kept the polling places the same so that many voters will have new voting locations. They really should have switched the new Ward 3 to the fire station, most of the residents were formerly in Ward 5 and it is much closer than the school.

Torie's mentor, Rick Scalera, is running for re-election as supervisor in the truncated 5th Ward.

I can't find any evidence that the Board of Supervisors has addressed the issue of the weighted votes for that body. There was a presentation from the Planning Department of the county about the 2020 Census, which suggests that there is someone there who would know about updating street addresses.

A potential mayoral candidate was arrested for inappropriate touching while collecting signatures.

Torie is collecting signatures to become the Democratic nominee for President of the Common Council. New York has a really byzantine law for nominations.

Rick Scalara was Torie's mentor?  From what I've heard the Fair & Equal initiative had, as one if it's unofficial motivations, limiting Scalara's power (he apparently still has a lot of influence on the Common Council).  Then again, I know Torie doesn't care for Friedman even though they worked together on the Fair & Equal plan.  And he apparently has some pull with Doc Donohue on some issues.  So the alignment on the weighted vote issue could have been atypical.

[Kevinstat]

Torie claimed in a radio interview that it was impossible to unify Hudson Terrace. That is not true.

I just listened to that part of the interview.  In the context I don't think he was making a claim that unifying Hudson Terrace was impossible, although he did use that word.  His interviewer apparently lives in Ward 2, perhaps in the area bounded by 1st Street, Columbia Street, 3rd Street and Warren Street that your March 27 plan would have placed in either the 1st Ward (between 1st and 2nd streets) or the 4th Ward ((south)east of 2nd Street).  He mentioned that that guy might have been moved to the 4th Ward.  He said that the 2nd ward needed to lose population, not gain it, which was true (given that the aim was to have equally populated districts so you could get rid of weighted voting), and how "[when] there's an action, there's a reaction."  In a scale of whoppers told by politicians, Torie's comments barely register in my book.

[Kevinstat]

The alleged inappropriate toucher had his petitions invalidated, leaving Rick Rector as the Democratic nominee for Mayor (I don't know if there's in Hudson when only one candidate would be on the ballot).  Also invalidated were the petitions of incumbent Third Ward Alderman Henry Haddad (!) for the same position in the new First Ward (there are still three candidates for the nomination for two seats there) and of Willette Jones for Second Ward Supervisor.  Jones will still be on the ballot in November as the candidate of the Working Families Party, but the Democratic nominee for that seat in a very Democratic ward will be... Abdus Miah!  I wonder how Supervisors from the sticks will relate to him and his relatively broken English.  There was probably an earlier Gossips article detailing who turned in petitions.

[Kevinstat]

I just saw this earlier Gossips list of candidates, and a narrative follow-up.  So it seems like Rick Rector will be unopposed for Mayor of Hudson, unless the deadline for non-party candidates was later and someone else filed or still has time to file.  The level of cross-party nomination in Hudson is interesting.