The Boston City Council will wait one other week to vote on redistricting after an open-meeting grievance from South Boston civic organizations pressed paused on the extremely fraught course of.
City Councilor Liz Breadon, the redistricting chair, mentioned the she had been planning to introduce an amended map and name a vote this week, however as a substitute will plan on doing so subsequent week following the grievance filed Tuesday.
“It would be best for the council staff and law department to prepare an initial response to a complaint prior to voting on this matter,” Breadon mentioned in an announcement she learn to the council on Wednesday.
Several councilors questioned what the purpose was in ready per week, when the grievance gained’t be resolved in that point.
“What exactly are we to have happen in a week?” requested City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo.
City Councilor Kenzie Bok mentioned she had the identical query, however per authorized recommendation, “The good faith effort is for us to write the initial response back” earlier than persevering with.
The grievance in query, first reported Tuesday night within the Herald, alleged three situations of open-meeting regulation points: one on the a public assembly hosted by the NAACP, one other on the Arroyo-Breadon press convention saying a brand new map and one at a South Boston assembly hosted by City Council President Ed Flynn.
“The City Council Redistricting process thus far has been conducted in violation of state laws and guided by an effort to dilute the power of our votes,” the coalition, which incorporates the South Boston Ward 6 Democratic Committee, South Boston Citizens Association, Martin F. McDonough American Legion Post, St. Vincent’s Lower End Neighborhood Association and Old Colony Tenant Association, mentioned in an announcement to the Herald on Tuesday.
Advocates of essentially the most just lately publicized map grumbled audibly on the delay and, exterior of the chambers, pushed again on these characterizations.
“This is a delay tactic because certain councilors don’t feel like they have the vote,” Vanessa Snow of MassVOTE mentioned.
The redistricting course of has been a extremely argumentative and infrequently personally fraught one which’s additional enflamed an already fractured council. Several of the councilors have fumed about proposed adjustments round Dorchester and South Boston within the map that Breadon’s been utilizing as a place to begin for discussions.
Diane Wilkerson, a former state senator concerned within the map push, mentioned she’d organized the NAACP discussion board and made certain not one of the councilors spoke simply so that they wouldn’t break open-meetings regulation, which forbids councilors speaking exterior of public conferences when there’s what quantities to a quorum. She waved apart the concept that a press convention might trigger an issue with this, however mentioned the Southie occasion “absolutely” was a violation.
“And the president convened that meeting,” she mentioned, including that this entire kerfuffle is simply “delaying the inevitable.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”