City of Lynn elected officials can learn a lesson from the late-fall ward and precinct redistricting snafu, and make clear communication a top priority for 2022.
Angry City Council members listened during their Dec. 14 meeting, as city and state officials explained how two redistricting maps, produced almost simultaneously with assistance from state election officials, failed to synchronize.
In preparing redistricting maps, city and state officials needed to divide Lynn’s population of 101,253 residents as evenly as possible among the precincts.
But politics is the driving force in determining precinct boundaries, and elected officials closely watch redistricting with an eye toward how shifting precinct boundaries deteriorate or strengthen reliable voting bases.
The redistricting map adopted by the Lynn City Council on Oct. 26, and another map signed off on by Gov. Charlie Baker on Nov. 4 were so out of synch that they produced 11 sub-precincts — or precincts within precincts — across the city.
A redistricting “special master” will have to be hired for upwards of $10,000 to reconcile the maps.
It’s a safe bet to say most Lynn residents don’t lose sleep over redistricting. But they do want assurances that elected officials and city workers are communicating. With Mayor-elect Jared Nicholson leading a new administration into City Hall next month, communication standards are sure to be recalibrated.
The overarching communication challenge Nicholson and his staff will face from day one is the same one outgoing Mayor Thomas M. McGee faced: Providing timely and accurate information about COVID-19.
Lynn’s high COVID case rates persisted for months throughout 2020 in part — in our view — because the McGee administration did not launch a full-court press to inform the public about COVID’s seriousness and enforce precautionary measures like mask wearing.
The city’s response improved, with multiple testing and vaccination sites opening this year, and rapidly-distributing information about testing, vaccination and COVID case rates.
Nicholson and his team also face their first winter and the necessity to keep residents informed about plowing and off-street parking options in advance of blizzards.
Transparency has become a fashionably-overused word. But the public’s trust in government is founded on the belief that public officials are doing their work in full view of the public.
We think effective communication is the best way to ensure trust is well founded.
