AMHERST — New voting districts that could empower Black, Indigenous and people of color voters in future town elections will go into effect beginning next year.
The Town Council voted 10-1 Monday to endorse the final proposal from the Districting Advisory Board for five voting districts, each of which is made up of two precincts with fewer than 4,000 residents, a requirement of the state. At-Large Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke voted against the plan, and two councilors were absent.
The redistricting was mandated following the 2020 federal census showing Amherst with a population of 39,263.
“I want to thank the Districting Advisory Board for your incredibly hard work,” said Council President Lynn Griesemer, who also called the plan “a jigsaw puzzle that was almost a nightmare.”
A highlight of the redistricting is that the East Hadley Road apartment complexes will no longer be in the same district as Amherst Woods, Amherst Hills and other neighborhoods where some of the town’s most expensive homes are located. Instead, those apartments will be in a new District 3, joined with portions of the University of Massachusetts campus.
The redistricting plan also renumbers the two precincts within each district. No longer will the precincts be numbered 1 to 10; instead, District 1 will have Precincts 1A and 1B, District 2 will have Precincts 2A and 2B, and so on.
Hanneke raised issues with some aspects of the plan, including that residents on Lincoln Avenue, a road that extends from the UMass campus south to Northampton Road, will be divided into three districts.
“It’s concerning for the downtown,” Hanneke said. “I don’t know what to do.”
District 3 Councilor Dorothy Pam, who represents portions of Amherst center, disputed that the change would be detrimental. “I don’t see that as a problem. It’s used to being divided up,” Pam said.
At a previous meeting, Hanneke also raised objections to having college students divided among districts.
But Districting Advisory Board member Tracy Zafian said only 17% of students on campus would be assigned to new districts, compared to 39% of residents overall, and that students would remain spread among four districts, which is the case under the current map.
In a memo, the board also disputed that it was disenfranchising students, especially students who live in dormitories, or discriminating against one particular population group on the basis of age. The memo notes that student representatives “indicated and reiterated that they did not think it was important to keep all of the dorm buildings within a dorm complex in the same district or precinct.”
Though District 3 Councilor George Ryan voted in favor, he said he remains disappointed that the dividing line between District 3, now lumped with the apartment complexes in South Amherst, and District 4, in downtown, was Amity Street, rather than Northampton Road. He said neighborhoods there are more aligned with interests in downtown than in South Amherst.
“The numbers just weren’t working out to extend it to Northampton Road,” Zafian said.
District 5 Councilor Shalini Bahl-Milne, whose precincts currently include the South Amherst apartment complexes including The Boulders, Mill Valley Estates and ReNew Apartments, and wealthier neighborhoods, called it a “mind warp” that her new district would no longer include the diverse populations she has served.
But Griesemer, as a District 2 councilor, said the makeup of districts is already broad and many issues are present. “We have so many different neighborhoods, it really doesn’t matter,” Griesemer said.
To see the map online, go to https://bit.ly/3b9ChIO.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
