Clock Runs Down On Council Redistricting Compromise

A lack of time and a growing acceptance of a proposal to redraw Baltimore County's seven council districts could mean disappointment for the Loch Hill and Woodlawn communities.

The Baltimore County Council is scheduled to hold a hearing on the proposed plan at a work session Tuesday afternoon.

Unlike 10 years ago, this round of the decennial redistricting process has been relatively uncomplicated.

The county's first Redistricting Commission held three lightly-attended hearings and ultimately redrew a map that effectively unifies Perry Hall into one district and Reisterstown into another. Both areas have been split between districts for the past decade. And all of this was done without, according to conventional wisdom, creating hostile districts for the seven incumbents.

Not everyone, however, is pleased with the maps. Community leaders from Randallstown, Woodlawn and Towson areas say they will make one last push to have the new districts drawn in a way that pleases them.

“The bill splits communities,” said Ella White Campbell, executive director of the Liberty Road Community Council. “People are upset for the same reasons all over the county.”

But any hope that the current legislation might be changed before it’s voted on Monday night could be fading.

 about a single Westside precinct. Other council members say options such as splitting precincts to reunite neighborhoods are off the table. Some say the majority of the council believes there is nothing left to do but vote.

“There is a declining will to change the map,” said Councilman David Marks, a Perry Hall Republican. “Most members are comfortable with this map and the clear consensus is to go with it.”

For Campbell and others on the west side, the anger over redistricting is linked to a proposal to move a precinct that votes at Woodlawn High School from Councilman Ken Oliver’s majority minority 4th District into neighboring Councilman Tom Quirk’s 1st District.

Oliver and community leaders say the area has more in common with the Randallstown area than it does with Catonsville and would deprive the 4th District of a significant economic engine—the Social Security complex.

“Something that should have been done with a scalpel was done with a hatchet,” said Julian Jones, who ran against Oliver in 2010 and supports an effort by Oliver to amend the current proposal.

Oliver plans to introduce an amendment Tuesday that would exchange the Woodlawn precinct for one that votes at Featherbed Lane Elementary.

"You can't take my district down from 117,000 to 110,000," Oliver said in an interview last week.

In Towson, Antony Gross expressed concern that the.

The new districts would shift the community of 144 homes and 200 residents from the 5th District, which stretches to Perry Hall and Kingsville, to the 6th District that reaches over to waterfront communities in Essex and Middle River.

Gross said his community has more in common with Towson neighborhoods such as Stoneleigh and Rodgers Forge, which are also dealing with school overcrowding and an influx of college students renting homes in the area.

“We’re adamant that we need to remain in the 5th District,” said Gross, president of the Loch Hill Community Association.

Marks, who currently represents the area, has been meeting with Cathy Bevins, who could be the new councilwoman for the community, to determine if a swap could be made.

Bevins, an Oliver Beach Democrat, said she met with her Republican colleague for at least an hour Monday. Any change in the current proposal would require swapping precincts that keep both districts statistically equal in the eyes of the law.

The target population for each district is 115,293, though courts have allowed for a range between 109,528 and 121,058.

Such a swap would most likely have to occur in the Loch Raven or Perry Hall areas that border both districts and possibly even an additional swap with Dundalk Councilman John Olszewski Sr. just to even things out.

“There’s no plan for us to swap and no plans for me and Johnny to swap,” Bevins said. “We keep looking at it and looking at it. There’s just nowhere for us to go with it.”

Marks, in an interview Monday, agreed with Bevins and said it is unlikely he will introduce an amendment at the work session that moves Loch Hill into his new district.

That disappoints Gross and David Kosak, president of the Greater Towson Council of Community Associations.

Kosak said many who attended a meeting last Thursday between Marks and leaders of the community association umbrella group thought Marks had promised them an announcement today.

“We were led to believe a compromise had been struck,” Kosak said. “If (Marks) is not putting in an amendment, that’s shocking and frustrating.”

Marks said he plans to keep talking with his colleagues right up to the Monday vote about possible changes to the map.

“I think what I am learning is that there are so many ripple effects that have to be considered,” Marks said.

The council vote next week could have ripple effects, too.

Oliver is already promising to mount a legal challenge over the reduction of population in his district if his amendment is not accepted.

“I don’t feel good about it,” Campbell said of the chances the council will approve Oliver’s amendment. She said she was basing her feelings on the “non-verbal responses from the council” during an Aug. 2 hearing.

“I hope I’m wrong in terms of my assessments of their non-verbal communication,” Campbell said.

Campbell said a group of residents might also be planning a referendum challenge over the Woodlawn High School precinct shift.

“If they approve the maps at 11 we’ll be announcing the referendum at 12,” she said.