WARD MAP COURTESY OF CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL

Cleveland City Council posted this map on its website that includes lines for the current City Council Wards as well as multicolored images of the proposed new City Council Wards. Due to a drop in population, Cleveland City Council must reduce the number of Council Wards from seventeen down to fifteen.

by Bruce Checefsky

     (Plain Press January 2025) City of Cleveland Council Member Rebecca Maurer spoke before the City Council a few days before Thanksgiving about her concern over the redistricting process. Maurer and Council President Blaine Griffin have never seen eye to eye on the mandatory legislative move as required under the City Charter. The new redistricting plan will reduce the city’s current 17 wards to 15. Voters approved the charter amendment in 2008, with two seats eliminated in 2009 and another two in 2013. Cleveland’s population stands at 372,000, according to the 2020 census, down 7% in the last decade and 22% since 2000.

     Maurer, who represents Ward 12, which includes parts of Old Brooklyn, Slavic Village, Brooklyn Centre, and Tremont, wants to remove politicians from the process and get genuine community feedback before the final maps are voted on by City Council.

     “I don’t think this map did right by our neighborhoods. It deeply concerns me that the Forest City section of Slavic Village is still cut off from the rest of Slavic Village, as it was in the first version of this map I saw before Thanksgiving. And from what I can tell, Tremont still isn’t kept together,” she said, referring to maps presented to the City Council for review in November.

     Maurer accused Griffin of targeting her personally and said her home in Slavic Village was marked on the map and redrawn into a ward she does not represent. Her conversations with council leadership led nowhere; Ward 12 is now divided into five pieces, she complained, more than any ward in the city.

     “I won my election for Council because the residents of Ward 12 believed in the message of a more transparent, accountable, and responsible government. My election disrupted the status quo but certainly did not end it,” said Maurer. “Do not play games with my house,” she continued, directing her comments to Council President Griffin. “This is an affront to this body to consider a map that gerrymanders a councilperson’s house. I will not have it.”

     In response, Griffin left the council president’s seat and walked to the floor. Councilman Kerry McCormick took his seat and presided.

     “Whenever someone invokes my name personally, I feel it’s important to respond,” said Griffin, facing the council. He accused Maurer of trying to implode the remapping issue. 

     “Members of this body encouraged me to get rid of Ward 12 because they do not trust the Council member in Ward 12,” he said. “The Council member in Ward 12 is not a team player and often goes to the media to express things outside of being a team player in this body. I did not try to target any Councilperson, but I will say that council lady, your wish is my command. We will make sure you end up exactly where you need to be.”

     In a press conference held a few weeks later at City Hall, Griffin released the latest version of the remapping plan. Maurer was not present. Bob Dykes and the Triad Research Group, consultants for the project, were there along with Dr. Mark Salling from Cleveland State University. Dr. Salling is a senior fellow and research associate at the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs. Griffin maintained his objectivity, stating that at no time did he influence the process.

     “We trusted consultants to do their job,” said Griffin. “No council member had been a target for elimination. The consultants and I tried to un-gerrymander the process that was gerrymandered in the past. False accusations, misinformation, and disinformation have been dangerous to this process.”

     Some changes were made to the map following the November meeting (see clevelandcitycouncil.org for the full map).

     Griffin defends his work, saying the resulting process accurately reflects the city demographics while not advocating for individual council members.

     “This is about trying to make sure that we had a process that we felt was fair and transparent,” he said. “Cleveland is a city that is very tenacious, and we accept these kinds of challenges.”

     Maurer would have liked to remove the map drawing from the Council using an Issue 1-like approach.

     Issue 1, which failed to pass in November, would have created the Ohio Citizens’ Redistricting Commission. The proposed commission included 15 members: 5 from the largest political party, 5 from the second-largest political party, and 5 independents, and would oversee drawing district boundaries used in elections.

     Under the proposed remapping of wards in Cleveland, Ward 12 in the Slavic Village area was one of the most divided. Ward 10, represented by Anthony Hairston, will compete with Ward 8, represented by decades-long Council member Michael D. Polensek, to represent a united Collinwood in 2025. Ward 6, represented by Council President Blaine Griffin, would expand to include a portion of Hough, part of Buckeye-Shaker, and half of Shaker Square.

     AsiaTown, St. Clair-Superior, and Hough neighborhoods, along with the northern half of downtown, would roll into Ward 8; Ohio City, Tremont, and most of the Detroit-Shoreway, including the Flats, the downtown lakefront, and Burke Lakefront Airport, are part of the new Ward 7.

     Ward 12 would extend from Edgewater south to West Boulevard. Ward 14 includes the Stockyards neighborhood, Clark-Fulton, and Brooklyn Centre. Ward 17 changes to a new Ward 15 on the map but remains geographically the same; so does Ward 1 in the Lee-Harvard neighborhood, which will remain the same.

     Griffin said any changes made to the map would be minimal. Anyone interested in providing input can call (216) 714-3006 or submit an online comment at clevelandcitycouncil.org/redistricting. He expects the council to vote on the new map at its Jan. 6 meeting.

     Sources close to City Hall reported to the Plain Press that Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack may not seek re-election. McCormack neither acknowledges nor denies the rumors and has not responded to a request for comment. Jenny Spencer, Ward 15 Council Member representing Edgewater, Cudell, Detroit Shoreway, and parts of the Ohio City and Stockyard neighborhoods, has stated publicly that she will not seek another Council term.

     The ward system has faced criticism over the years, with some arguing that it can contribute to corruption and cronyism in local government. A University of Chicago study finds city governments sometimes redraw ward maps to punish advocates of racial and economic equality, including suppressive redistricting, disciplinary redistricting, remunerative redistricting, and transactional redistricting, according to Robert Vargas, an associate professor of sociology, published in Social Problems, American Journal of Sociology.

     Griffin maintains that no favoritism played a role in decision-making. “These are not our seats,” he said at the close of the redistricting press conference, referencing Maurer’s comments at the November meeting. “I just want to make sure that I defend the process.”