City | 11:45 pm | April 27, 2012 | By

Aldermanic committee approves new ward map

Under a redrawn map approved Thursday night by an aldermanic committee, Ward 1 will stay largely intact.
Under a redrawn map approved Thursday night by an aldermanic committee, Ward 1 will stay largely intact. Photo by Nick Defiesta.

After a month-long redistricting process, New Haven is close to nailing down its new ward map.

The Board of Aldermen’s special redistricting committee met Thursday night and voted to adopt a ward map generated by ARCBridge Consultants, the Virginia-based firm guiding aldermen through the process of redrawing ward boundaries. The map approved by committee keeps Ward 1 largely the same, despite earlier fears that the ward, which houses eight of Yale’s 12 residential colleges and Old Campus, would be split in three to follow state electoral districts. If the map is approved by the full Board of Aldermen, Ward 1 will expand south to Crown Street, between York and College Streets, and east to Orange Street, between Wall and Elm Streets.

The ward map approved by the committee would also split East Rock, currently represented primarily by aldermen from Wards 9 and 10, across five different wards, with Wards 7, 19 and 22 shifting to contain part of the neighborhood.

At Thursday’s meeting, the Board rejected a map which would have moved Ward 29, currently in western New Haven, to the eastern portion of the city, which saw the greatest population growth between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

By city charter, the Board redraw the city’s ward map every 10 years to balance the population within each ward based on new census data. Aldermen must also take into account factors like demographics, natural boundaries, polling locations and aldermen’s places of residence. Aldermen may propose amendments to the approved map until May 21, when the full Board will vote on it.

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