Here are the initial proposals. New direction has already been provided to the county planners from what I'm hearing. My understanding is that the next iterations should start downtown and work out from there. None of these county supervisory map proposals include city council incumbent addresses. I mean, cmon, how hard is it to do that courtesy for the largest municipality within the county?
Alders from some districts are already run ragged-- especially in the near downtown districts where buildings are older, resident turnover is higher and education levels are lower-- there are weeks that Alders end up spending more hours on council work, constituent services, outreach and doing the necessary monitoring to stay on top of what's going on at city hall than they do or would do on a full time job. It happens in fits and starts but some weeks those with full time day jobs are doing pretty much nothing but work from morning til night. When done right, I'm positive that serving on the Green Bay City Council easily violates minimum wage laws.
The mayor apparently has a different perspective and sent a letter to the county board requesting that the city council be reduced to 11 districts. Consensus among the councilfolk I happened to chat with so far seems to be to increase the size of the council by two to 14 and bump the board up by three. People want to maintain the same districts for the city and county. Why? DeWane, Nicholson, Theisen, Haefs, Zima, Buckly, and VanderLeest both serve or have served on both and like the old way because you can win two jobs by campaigning in one district. I think it's stupid but it's a political reality and no one with the required political juice has the will or, in my view, wisdom to work to change it. Personally, I say who cares what the county districts look like the city should just draw it's own and the county can, if it chooses, adopt those.
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