Okay, I know this week I said it didn’t matter, but I am starting to get more suspicious after reading a letter against the proposal in the Gargoyle Leader today and even more suspicious after seeing who makes up the committee members.
The bounderies have never concerned me until Mary Glenski pointed this out in her letter;
It did seem strange that the original option L would take away precincts from the Northeast District (4-2 and 4-3) and then add another (3-4) instead when the Northwest District was already low in numbers.
Keeping precincts 4-2 and 4-3 where they now are in the Northeast District enables Precinct 3-4 to be moved to the Central District, which also needs to increase its numbers.
Mary points out early in her letter that the option they rejected and she was for would basically keep the population in each district close to equal. But the options they are proposing would make the populations uneven. So some council members would have to serve more people than others. There are advantages and disadvantages to that I guess, but is it fair? Not sure. And what are the members motives for doing it this way?
I also get more suspicious when I see who the commission members are;
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Susan M. Sabers (Chair)
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Roger Berggren
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Vance Goldammer
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Elaine Roberts
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Joel Rosenthal
Mary points out in her letter;
The charter only requires that “no more than three members may belong to the same political party,” and the districting commission membership complied with this provision.
Yet there are three members who belong to the Republican party. Technically it doesn’t matter what political party the chair belongs to, so why couldn’t this person be a registered independent? She is Republican that is very active in the party.
The other thing that concerns me is that they are all very politically active and given a lot of time and money to their respective parties, that’s what makes this political.
They are all armchair politicians in one way or another even if they are not holding a political office currently.
I can’t understand why it is so hard to appoint members to commissions in Sioux Falls that don’t make everything ‘political’. I find it amusing that they would think this is a ‘fair’ and ‘balanced’ commission with absolutely NO independents on the commission. I also find it humorous that I get accused of ‘playing political games’ with my tax petition when I have been a strong advocate of keeping the drive nonpartisan with many liberals, conservatives and independents supporting the cause. I am an independent who is a strong advocate of keeping party politics out of politics, especially when it comes to serving citizens rights such as taxes and redistricting.
What color is the kettle of the redistricting committee? That answer concerns me.
If my recall serves me, South Dakota recently lost two federal challenges to its perversion of one-man is less than one-vote concerning districting for commissioners in Buffalo and Charles Mix Counties. It would appear here that the Sioux Falls redistricting committee is intent upon driving up needless, frivolous attorney bills for you Sioux Falls taxpayers. It would be foolish to trust the members of this committee any further than you can throw them.
Yeah, how ironic that 2 of the members are big time lawyers? Another is a political consultant (who tried to get me kicked off of KELO Blogs and censor free speech) and the 2 democrats are extremely active in their party, but at least they aren’t blood sucking lawyers.