City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny

[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.

[jimrtex]

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.

[jimrtex]

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.

The 110% rule has analogous language in New York constitution with regard to creation of legislative districts. It it intended to avoid splitting smaller towns.

The 5% rule within larger cities and towns is in reference to adjacent districts, not necessarily districts entirely within a town. For example, you might have District 1 take a small portion of the northern part of a town; District 2 consist of the bulk of the town; and District 3 take a small portion of the southern part of the town. The 3 districts must be closely equal in population.

It would be quite rational to keep Livingston as a single district even if it is slightly greater than 5% deviation under the OMOV standard. Ohio has a similar rule for keeping counties with in 90% to 110% of the quota whole.

But far simpler would be to give Hudson one supervisor on a 19-member board, with a weighted vote reflecting their population. This would have the mayor or president of the common council serve on the board of supervisors, where they would represent both the government and people of the city. This would also represent a considerable savings to the county.

Having the legislature dissolve Hudson's city charter is probably too radical to be enacted.

[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.)

[jimrtex]

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.)

I don't know that they were blackmailed so much as duped.

[jimrtex]

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.

[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?

[jimrtex]

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.

[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.

[jimrtex]

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.

I had a communication with the Census Bureau which led met to believe there would be a different set of files for review of changes (2017 BAS files).

I doubt LATFOR was ever in an upright position. At worst, they rolled off a couch.

[jimrtex]

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.

The only changes made in Hudson were the ones that had been proposed by the Census Bureau:

(1) They added the railroad tracks.
(2) They eliminated unnamed "roads" as block boundaries. I would have actually limited driveways.
(3) They eliminated three traffic island blocks, all of which I would have eliminated in a different way. One incorporates a non-existent street that runs through an existent building.

[Torie]

Another map!

[jimrtex]

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%.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Another map!

I'm familiar with parts of Columbia County (close family friends in the area), and I'm surprised that New Lebanon is so high and Chatham is so low. I'd have expected them to be about on par.

[Torie]

Another map!

I'm familiar with parts of Columbia County (close family friends in the area), and I'm surprised that New Lebanon is so high and Chatham is so low. I'd have expected them to be about on par.

It surprised me too. I think some of it has to do with the proximity to I-90, which affects the commute time to Albany. That highway is just north of Kinderhook, and then cuts through Chatham and Canaan. New Lebanon is more remote from the highway, with quite rugged terrain and twisty roads. In addition, it is a bit far from a nice cute village with amenities, like nice restaurants, cultural events, and so forth. The cute villages are Kinderhook, Chatham, and to a lessor extent Valatie (the latter's "perfection" is scarred by a bit of tract development, which is anathema to the Columbia County ethos).

For example, guess where the architect on the Hudson Preservation Commission lives, whose husband is a very successful lawyer in Albany. Yep, you guessed it. Canaan on a beautiful estate (in a home she of course designed). Why? Because of its totally unspoiled rural beauty. There are also horse farms here and there in both Chatham and Canaan near the I-90. When driving through the area recently in one of our blue highway explorations through the most beautiful scenery on earth, I thought on one stretch of road that I was near Lexington Kentucky for a moment (except that the "farms" are more beautiful because of the gently rolling hills setting, rather than being on the flats).

Hillsale is propped up by being within reach of the end of the NYC metro line in Wassaic (very cheap tickets as compared to Amtrak), and it is an easy jaunt to the unspoiled culture filled bourgeoise paradise of Great Barrington, MA.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Great Barrington is one of my least favorite places on Earth. The people there are bougie and divorced from reality even by Birkenstock Belt/Tofu Curtain standards, and the Bard satellite campus for formerly-swottish teenagers there, where I went for three semesters before transferring to my beloved ZooMass Slamherst, is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The rest of the area is lovely.

[Torie]

Great Barrington is one of my least favorite places on Earth. The people there are bougie and divorced from reality even by Birkenstock Belt/Tofu Curtain standards, and the Bard satellite campus for formerly-swottish teenagers there, where I went for three semesters before transferring to my beloved ZooMass Slamherst, is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The rest of the area is lovely.

Yeah, I like edgier places myself, and thus I live on the "wrong" side of the tracks in Hudson, right next to two section 8 houses. Went to Bard eh? Dan and I go there often for concerts, and sometimes lectures. Lots of cute guys. Met some of them too. But I get what you are saying. To spend a fortune, to go to that type of school, strikes me as a bit dubious right of the box. Was in your hood to visit Emily Dickenson's house. She is my first cousin about 5 times removed or something. All that genius being generated on that tiny desk of hers, in that tiny bedroom that she rarely left. Amazing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Great Barrington is one of my least favorite places on Earth. The people there are bougie and divorced from reality even by Birkenstock Belt/Tofu Curtain standards, and the Bard satellite campus for formerly-swottish teenagers there, where I went for three semesters before transferring to my beloved ZooMass Slamherst, is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The rest of the area is lovely.

Yeah, I like edgier places myself, and thus I live on the "wrong" side of the tracks in Hudson, right next to two section 8 houses. Went to Bard eh? Dan and I go there often for concerts, and sometimes lectures. Lots of cute guys. Met some of them too. But I get what you are saying. To spend a fortune, to go to that type of school, strikes me as a bit dubious right of the box. Was in your hood to visit Emily Dickenson's house. She is my first cousin about 5 times removed or something. All that genius being generated on that tiny desk of hers, in that tiny bedroom that she rarely left. Amazing.

You know, I'd be happy to grab drinks (hot, alcoholic, both, or neither) or lunch somewhere in the Berkshires some time if you would.

[jimrtex]

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.

The only changes made in Hudson were the ones that had been proposed by the Census Bureau:

(1) They added the railroad tracks.
(2) They eliminated unnamed "roads" as block boundaries. I would have actually limited driveways.
(3) They eliminated three traffic island blocks, all of which I would have eliminated in a different way. One incorporates a non-existent street that runs through an existent building.

It appears that the verification stage is beginning. There is a mention that new changes might be accepted.

The 2020 Census Redistricting Data Program

There is a Webinar scheduled for next Tuesday.

[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)?

[jimrtex]

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)?

Voting "power" is hypothetical, and the metric that is used in Hudson has twice been rejected by the SCOTUS in one man, one vote decisions. Further, the adjustment of voting weights away from direct proportionality with the population base necessarily violates equal protection, since it ensure control of the legislative body by a minority of the voters.

Use of the wrong population base is clearly also unlawful.

My guess is that if there was judicial consideration of the illegal voting in 2015, that a court would either determine that the results for Wards 3, 4, and 5 were void; or that the effect was inconsequential, and the population base should be determined based on the charter.

[Torie]

Actually last summer, after extensive research,  I determined that the odds were very, very high that Hudson never had legally adopted weighted voting in the first instance back in the early 1970's. It should have been a mandatory referendum, rather than a permissive one, that was never activated by the citizens, so thus no referendum at all. So the vote would have been 5-5 and the proposal would have failed. So that is the real answer. Thank you.

[jimrtex]

Actually last summer, after extensive research,  I determined that the odds were very, very high that Hudson never had legally adopted weighted voting in the first instance back in the early 1970's. It should have been a mandatory referendum, rather than a permissive one, that was never activated by the citizens, so thus no referendum at all. So the vote would have been 5-5 and the proposal would have failed. So that is the real answer. Thank you.

Laches wouldn't apply after 40+ years?

Surely a court would look at the more recent history, where the signatories of petition were prevented from reading the text of what they were advocating, that the city enacted new ward boundaries while permitting the aldermen elected under the old boundaries to continue to be paid and vote, that the petitioners ignored the affirmative requirement with regard to political parties, that the new boundaries violate the Voting Rights Act, etc.

Why hasn't the Board of Elections updated their web site?

[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?

[jimrtex]

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.