TKC EXCLUSIVE AND BREAKING NEWS!!! KANSAS CITY COUNCILMAN JOHN SHARP DEFENDS HIS REDISTRICTING STRATEGY AND PROPOSES A MAJOR CHARTER CHANGE IN THIS TKC SPECIAL GUEST OP/ED!!!

TKC NOTE: This is VERY REAL news courtesy of Councilman John Sharp regarding the current debate over Council Redistricting and even more changes that COULD HAVE A DRAMATIC IMPACT on the composition of the City Council (i.e. fewer at-large Council members) in the next election.

NOW READ THIS TKC SPECIAL GUEST OP/ED FROM KANSAS CITY COUNCILMAN JOHN SHARP!!!



The people that are the biggest losers from the proposed council redistricting plan are the ethnically diverse residents of the working class neighborhoods in the Ruskin/Hickman Mills area whose area is being cut in half so they won’t have enough votes in either the 5th or 6th Districts to have any real influence. (This is very similar to what was done to the Northeast part of the city in the 2010 council redistricting which chopped it up among three council districts, a fact I publicly made when voting against that unfair plan.)

Have you been to our part of town lately? We have the exact same problems as the rest of the east side and central city – foreclosures, vacant houses, weeds/trash and higher crime rates than more affluent areas. Well over 70% of the students in the Hickman Mills School District qualify for free and reduced lunches. Many of our residents are struggling to pay their mortgages or pay their rent. Many don’t have any health insurance. Many are working two or more so-called part-time jobs just to get by, but have few if any benefits, particularly health insurance. Our neighborhoods are among the most diverse in the city, and most of them now are predominantly African-American.

In fact, if the 2010 redistricting hadn’t added thousands of predominantly Caucasian voters from the Waldo area, the 6th District today would be 49.2% people of color, including 41% African-Americans. It seems that every time people of color come near to achieving majority status in the District, more of them are chopped off to put in the 5th District so they are never allowed to achieve majority status.

All the residents of our area want is to have a real voice in city government and a real voice in electing who represents them on the city council. Right now the 6th District is almost evenly balanced between the ethnically diverse working class neighborhoods that are mainly in the Hickman Mills School District and more affluent and less diverse neighborhoods nearer to the Kansas border. The redistricting plan proposed by the heavily politicized redistricting advisory committee destroys the ethnic and socioeconomic balance of the District by shifting thousands of African-American and working class residents to the 5th District and shifting thousands of much more affluent residents from the 4th to the 6th District in the Ward Parkway corridor.

Residents from the 6th District have attended every hearing of the redistricting advisory committee, submitted a revised map to the committee on October 10 and have almost begged the committee to listen to their concerns and make at least some revisions to the current redistricting proposal from the very start of the process. Yet the committee steadfastly refused to even move any of their proposed boundaries one block, refused to submit more than one map to the city council (even though they were authorized to submit up to three) and generally stonewalled their requests for any modifications, no matter how minor, to the proposed redistricting map.

Every homes association and neighborhood organization in the 6th District that has taken a stand on redistricting opposes the committee’s recommended plan. The same is true for every such group that has taken a position on redistricting in the Waldo and Brookside areas. The Hickman Mills School Board (with a majority of African-American members) unanimously voted to oppose the plan.

I don’t have anything personally to gain from how the council district boundaries are drawn. I can’t run again. I’m term limited. I don’t have any favored candidate to take my place. But I think I do have a responsibility to stand up for the rights of my constituents and neighbors, and I will continue to do so, no matter how much I get bad-mouthed in the process.

I also intend to support an amendment to the city charter to change the way we elect council members to switch from electing six from districts and six at-large. Only having six districts makes them so populous it is difficult for candidates to run a grassroots campaign that stresses knocking on doors. It also makes it next to impossible to draw district boundaries to give Hispanic voters a strong voice in electing who will represent them in any district. The at-large seats favor wealthy candidates and/or candidates with access to large amounts of campaign donations. At-large elections also have frequently been used to effectively disenfranchise minority voters, particularly in the old south. I favor switching to electing eight or nine members of the council from districts and electing three or four at-large.
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