Columbus City Council Residential Districts

Tim Fulton 00:12Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: five years after approving a restructuring of Columbus City Council, voters this fall will see an expanded council where members reside in geographic districts, but one that remains largely the same in terms of who sits in the chamber. This week, Columbus Underground co-founder Walker Evans discusses the change, the lack of participation in the races, and a new resource for Columbusites to explore their respective districts. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. The Confluence Cast is sponsored this week by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or MORPC, featuring stories about local and regional partners that envision and embrace innovative directions in economic prosperity, transportation, sustainability, and an inclusive Central Ohio. MORPC's transformative programming, innovative services, and public policy initiatives are designed to promote and support the vitality and growth in the region. For more information, please visit MORPC.org. Enjoy the interview. I'm sitting down here in person with the co-founder of Columbus Underground, Walker Evans. Walker, how are you, sir?

Walker Evans 01:44Good. How are you, Tim?

Tim Fulton 01:45Doing well, doing well. Sitting down here having a discussion about the changes that are coming to voting in Columbus, Ohio, specifically for Columbus City Council. We are going to a model where city council members have to reside in a specific district in order to be elected. However, all voters will vote for it. Is that the way to say it?

Walker Evans 02:10Yeah, yeah, they're calling it a hybrid model. So we're moving from an at-large system to, like, a hybrid district system, right? Because, like you were saying, in a lot of other cities, districts are voted upon only by people who reside within those districts. And we think of those as ward systems, for the most part — ward, district, borough, depending on the city and the state. They have different names for it.

Tim Fulton 02:31And so as a result of this change, every member of council will be either elected or re-elected this year. Additionally, there will be two new seats.

Walker Evans 02:40Yes. Yeah, we're moving from seven to nine. And it's pretty substantial, because I think it's the first time in, like, 100 years the council has undergone a big change like this, which is pretty wild. Because when you think about seven people representing everyone in the city of Columbus — 100 years ago, we were a much smaller city. We're a little over 900,000 people now. And so when you break that down between seven people, each person represents over 100,000 — what's that, like, 120,000 people? So even just a jump from seven to nine kind of course-corrects for that a little bit.

Tim Fulton 03:12In this model, do we have the potential to go to 15? Is that right? Or do we trash that?

Walker Evans 03:19Well, the reason it's a little confusing is because there have been other proposals to move to a system like this over the past couple of years. And I look back, and I think, actually, the very first episode of this podcast as the Confluence Cast was on the very topic of the ward system that was being proposed in 2016. It was Issue 1. There you are, looking at my history. Yeah, digging deep into Tim's browser history. And, yeah, there was a citizen-led initiative. It failed at the time. But I think council's move to kind of the city-led initiative to move to this was so that they could say, "Okay, this is what more and more people are wanting. How would we do this in a way that maybe makes the most sense," you know, from their point of view.

Tim Fulton 04:02And, like many citizen initiatives, basically they said, "Hey, don't approve that. We've got something different or better for you."

Walker Evans 04:10Well, I think even in 2016, they were just saying, like, "It's not broke, let's not fix what's not broke," sort of a thing. But it wasn't until a couple of years later, when sort of our existing politicians and infrastructure said, "You know, if we're going to make a move to this kind of system, what do we think that it should look like?" Because if you go back and look at the Issue 1 from 2016 — I think it was a 13-member system they were proposing then. It was a 10-district system, and every member would only be voted upon by those in those 10 districts, and then three at-large. That's right. So if you lived in District 5, you'd be voting for your person in District 5, and for the other three at-large. So that was also a hybrid system. And, again, like, every city is different.

Tim Fulton 04:54And in order to draw the map, the city basically appointed a commission, a panel of folks, to figure out different ways to do it. They submitted, in fact, three different maps and guidance systems for how it should go. Council then voted on which map to approve — one that took into account a variety of factors, including neighborhood adjacency.

Walker Evans 05:20Well, basically —

Tim Fulton 05:22Not wanting to split up the individual neighborhoods, as best as possible, as best they can.

Walker Evans 05:29Certainly. But also trying to keep, like, a demographic mix in mind, as best as possible. And population — each district represents the same number of people, as best as possible.

Tim Fulton 05:40Right. And they will redraw the maps every 10 years, but based on that same, basically, model map. Just the same parameters, exactly — just including slightly different census blocks. As I've dived into the data and found, like, here's how this thing is actually constructed.

Walker Evans 05:59Yeah, yeah. Because Central Ohio is growing by 24,000 people per year. That's not all within the city of Columbus boundaries, that's the region. So, I mean, yeah, you fast-forward 10 years, you know, and if you add another 100,000 people to the region, then the district demographics are going to change.

Tim Fulton 06:15And be almost double what they currently are. Yeah, yeah. So at this point, the maps are approved. Franklin County Board of Elections has certified the candidates that are running in each district — each residential district, I want to be explicit about what it is. Spoiler alert: other than Mitchell Brown, who was just recently appointed to Liz Brown's seat — no relation — all of the incumbent city council members are running for the seats. Yes. Some folks have moved in the last couple of years so that they are all in separate districts. So then, additionally — let's do the math again. There were seven city council members, there are now nine, with Mitchell Brown not running, then there are three net-new candidates, right, for those existing seats. I will say also, only two of the districts — is there going to be an election, basically?

Walker Evans 07:14A challenger to the incumbent. Yeah, correct.

Tim Fulton 07:17That's District 4, which is currently Emmanuel Remy's seat, and then Nick Bankston. Why do you believe there are so few folks running for council?

Walker Evans 07:28That's a great question. I've seen some chatter on the social medias saying that, you know, it's because these entrenched incumbent party-toeing Democrats have all the power, and no one feels like they can even run against them. And that's one conclusion that you could come to. The barrier to entry is very low — you need to collect 250 valid signatures 90 days in advance of the primary. That's not that many people. You know, like, you could probably do that on a weekend if you got, like, a small group of people to help you out. You know, I think you could also come to the conclusion that people don't know that this is happening. I was just watching a piece that NBC4 did with council that I think aired last November — it's on YouTube, on the city council YouTube channel. And they did some man-on-the-street sort of stuff, like, "Do you know that city council is changing?" And of course everyone's like, "No, no, I don't know." Which I think kind of speaks more volumes about, like, it's just not getting out there in the news to some degree. But I think a lot of people — you know, the third conclusion, I think, is that they're just fine with the way city council is operating. They don't think too positively or negatively of it to take that much action to run against the current council. And if they have issues with day-to-day life in Columbus, maybe they don't blame it on council as being the source of their day-to-day struggle, their woes. And so I think a lot of people think that, like, they're doing a fine enough job, and kind of it is what it is. I do think it's interesting, for a city as large as Columbus, where — what, the 14th largest city in the nation — the local Republican Party is not running anyone. A lot of the challenges that we've seen to city council — because we have a full Democratic city council, we haven't had a Republican on city council in, like, over a quarter century. We were approaching the quarter-century mark without having ever had a Republican mayor either — haven't had one since the year 2000. The last couple of years, city council challengers have always been other wings of Democrat or leftist groups, saying that, you know, the status-quo Democrats just aren't doing enough, they're not going far enough left, and so they're getting challenged more. I kind of equate it to when you see, like, the Biden administration versus kind of, like, the Bernie — you know, when those kinds of groups are squaring off against each other. That's kind of what we've seen locally over the past several election cycles, I'd say past decade, that we just haven't had Republican challengers. And I think that's interesting.

Tim Fulton 09:59Absolutely. Well, I will insert — when you and I were first having this conversation about "Why is candidate participation so low?" — that I would point back to the city structure at large, that the charter for the city basically is written with a very, very strong mayor. Hence those on city council — yes, they approve the budget, yes, they set the laws as much as they're able to in a Republican-controlled state, but they don't have a whole lot of oversight authority. The individual departments of the city — public safety, zoning — are run by the mayor and the mayor's office.

Walker Evans 10:43That's true, but I think there's a lot of cross-collaboration there that we've seen over the years. And because everyone is kind of the same party, the same Franklin County Democratic Party, you know, squabbles are minor, it's certainly not public. I think everyone kind of is on the same page in terms of how to get stuff done. You know, the opposition to that says, like, "Well, they're all in cahoots, they're all — you know, we're not having good conversations," and things like that. But you don't want to take that in such a far direction that you end up like national politics, where it's like everyone is just obstructionist and nobody gets anything done. And, like, the reason Americans don't like, you know, Congress and the House of Representatives, like, our legislative branch of government — everyone thinks nothing ever gets accomplished, because they're all just fighting with each other. And so we have kind of the polar opposite, which is no fights ever at all.

Tim Fulton 11:34Yeah. Well, it was interesting, I think, to both of us, when candidates first started doing their petition drives — even the three net-new candidates, that I don't believe were formally endorsed by the Franklin County Democratic Party, they were part of that petition drive as well.

Walker Evans 11:57Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they all work — I mean, they're all the same party. So of course they work together.

Tim Fulton 12:02Well, but arguably, there were conversations — well, all I'm pointing out is, there were very likely conversations about, like, "Yep, we like this woman, Melissa Green, for this net-new seat, District 6 in the southwest. Let's help her by pulling in petitioners, by helping get her on the ballot." And then there's also been some coordinated fundraising activity, seemingly through President Hardin's office. That doesn't feel like a democratic process.

Walker Evans 12:36You just mean in terms of — it doesn't feel like —

Tim Fulton 12:39A democratic process, to put up a slate of candidates without a public conversation about who those candidates are going to be — even a party conversation.

Walker Evans 12:49Sure, sure. And, I mean, that really — you know, I always like to take a step back and look at these, like, is this a Columbus problem, or is this, like, an America problem? And, I mean, what you're talking about is just the way a political party functions. Like, a group of like-minded individuals get together, and they're all going to decide internally how they can work best together, and try and win as a group, versus everybody just kind of being out there on their own, and no one's really collaborating or doing anything in lockstep. So I see where you're coming from with that, but also, like, they're all on the same team, why wouldn't they play as a team, you know what I mean? I just — I do think it's interesting that we don't — the amount of challenges, we're seeing so low. Like, I think that this has been a really big, ongoing process for the past couple of years, to the point where I thought we'd at least see, you know, three or four people per district, like, running, and then we'd have a primary in May, and then the general election.

Tim Fulton 13:45But as it stands right now, we literally don't even have a prima— oh, no?

Walker Evans 13:48No, no. I mean, so districts 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 all only have one person running. So they've basically already won the election.

Tim Fulton 13:58And with only two candidates, you don't need a primary, right?

Walker Evans 14:01So those candidates won't be going in front of voters in May, only in November, between the two. So it's pretty wild that we're in that situation. But, you know, we don't need to go too in-depth with it. But it's almost the same story with Columbus City School Board, is that there are school board seats open, there's very few challengers, everyone's kind of the same party.

Tim Fulton 14:23And then, basically countering my point about the charter, there's only one challenger to Ginther's re-election campaign.

Walker Evans 14:31Right. Which is one more than last time he ran, true. He ran unopposed. True. Yeah. Which, again, just goes back to, you know —

Tim Fulton 14:38And I reached out — it's a participation issue.

Walker Evans 14:40Right. It is, it is. But, again, you know, people complain about Ginther, they think he's not doing enough for their neighborhood or their issues or whatever, but no one is so angry that they're going to, like, mount actual opposition to it. Yeah, I think it's almost, like, just a lack of momentum. You know, everyone is just too lethargic to get that fired up, or they're focused on, like, national political issues, or international. You know, everyone has so many things going on in their lives that, like, when the grocery store is expensive, do you really care to run for city council, like, that's going to change anything at Kroger?

Tim Fulton 15:15Yeah. And this is a net-new thought I — so, reflecting back to the episode we did on the North Graveyard, in the North Market parking lot. Towards the end of that episode, the discussion sort of became around ownership of a problem — that, you know, certainly it's terrible that these folks were buried and then abandoned, and then their remains lie for 150 years under, excuse me, a fucking parking lot.

Walker Evans 15:45Well, and 12 other buildings that were built on top of it over 100 years ago.

Tim Fulton 15:50Yes, that we will likely never rectify that issue. Yeah. But the fact that we now, with the construction of the Merchant Building, have the opportunity to rectify a wrong, and frankly own it, you know, in a respectful way — it feels as though the lack of political participation in the form of candidates is part of Columbus's problem, sure, of what Columbus isn't doing very well.

Walker Evans 16:20Yeah. Well, and just to circle back to the Republican thing — every time we've done a story on this, we've reached out to the GOP, they don't respond to emails. If you go to their website and look at their candidate slate, it's from November 2022. They don't even have any updated information on this year's elections, because they still promote, like, judges, a couple of county things. All that's really gone down. And almost everything for 2022 is about statewide races. So it's just Franklin County Republican support for statewide candidates. They're just trying to get the word out on, like, voting for DeWine or whatever. Interesting. Yeah, but they don't even run city council candidates anymore, which I think speaks a lot more volumes about, you know, they don't think that they can win, so why bother wasting people's time and money, versus being upset and thinking "We have a better plan, we can do something better."

Tim Fulton 17:22Or, again, I just — I think that it's almost as though Columbus, Columbusites don't take much ownership, or enough ownership, over the city that they purport to love.

Walker Evans 17:38Well, an interesting stat about Columbus — and, again, this is an America problem, this isn't just Columbus — we just, a couple of years ago, hit the halfway point, the 50% mark, for rentership. So over half of all residents are renters, and that number is climbing. And it's climbing in most cities. Not that renters don't care, right, but there's a bit of a detachment issue sometimes that can come from having a majority renter population versus homeowners, who — I'm generalizing — but are more likely to say, "Oh, there's a pothole there, I'm going to call 311 and get it fixed," or, "Oh, I'm going to go to my neighborhood commission meeting, because I want to have a voice in these kinds of issues." Renters always feel like, "Well, I might move next year, so what do I care what happens here?" Again, that's very general, you know, because, yeah, there are a lot of renters that care, and there's a lot of homeowners that don't, but that could be contributing to maybe a more general trend.

Tim Fulton 18:37Literally, the lack of ownership is due to the lack of ownership.

Walker Evans 18:41And a lot of our population is young. I think the median age in Columbus is, like, 32, which is below the national average. A lot of people have moved here recently, so they just haven't maybe even taken the time to get involved. So that, you know, that I think could be some of the issue.

Tim Fulton 18:56Absolutely. Yeah. I do want to pivot slightly and make sure that we include here in this episode — when we were talking about the districts, this was maybe, like, two months ago at this point, we were joking that the districts need names. Yes. And I volunteered to spin up a website to submit names for the districts. As a result of this, I went kind of hard down a mapping, demographic, census blocks, census tracts, census block groups rabbit hole, yeah, and built a website, ColumbusDistricts.com, where not only can you submit a name for the individual districts — these are suggestions, I do not believe we plan on having folks vote on the names, we don't want to end up with District McDistrict-Face — but we will take those submissions and distribute them and make folks aware of them, and maybe a panel will decide on the best names. Those districts can adopt them or not. In addition to that, the website has a breakdown of demographic information on each district, specifically looking at the neighborhoods that are within the district, the candidate or candidates that are running, the points of interest in the district, the median income of the district, the poverty rate within the district, and then the racial makeup of the district. Yeah, it's a lot of data. It's really great. It's interesting. And shout out to the folks at the City of Columbus that handed off the census block group information that I was able to then pull that information from. So not only can you submit name suggestions, but then also there's a spot on, I think, every page that says, "Do you have a suggestion, something that we should fix?" Maybe there's a point of interest that's not there, maybe you have an image that better represents the district — that's all there. In my head, I went down this rabbit hole because I am personally proud of Columbus, and I think that there's some opportunities to have discussions about what each district may need. And the person who represents each district hopefully has an opportunity to see what they should be working towards.

Walker Evans 21:24Yeah, I think one thing that's really interesting when you start looking at the map and really start to zoom in on different areas — one of the talking points I've heard some of the current council people talk about, with the positivity behind this transition, is that you have representation based on your area, or your neighborhood, or whatever. And they keep saying "neighborhood." But when you look at these districts, they're gigantic. You know, Columbus is a community of probably over 100 neighborhoods, right? 200 neighborhoods. So when you divide that into nine, you end up with very large groups of neighborhoods. So I live in District 7, on the near east side, but that district also includes Fifth by Northwest, Milo-Grogan, Marion Village, Franklinton, you know, which are all very different neighborhoods with, you know, potentially different issues and concerns. It also stretches all the way down and touches Grove City — so everything, like, on the inside of 270, like, on the other side of 270 from Grove City, is also District 7. Like, that's a place I never go. I don't live there, I don't shop there, I don't work there, so I don't go up and down those streets. So, yeah, I think it's a little bit ambitious to say, like, you're going to have true neighborhood representation on council when these districts just represent such large geographic areas.

Tim Fulton 22:41So I'm going to counter you slightly, okay, in that I think folks who live in districts that are outside of District 7 view where you live — you live in King-Lincoln Bronzeville — folks that live outside of downtown do kind of consider that the same as Franklinton. You know, I will point out, though, there's districts like District 2, where it is just totally geographically bisected by Upper Arlington and Hilliard, and then basically the other half of that population live south of it, and it's just this nice little strip along 33 that allows that to be one district. Yeah. So, all that being said, I think folks should look at the maps — the maps are done, yeah, let's, you know, let's not go crazy about it, right — but look at it, see where your district is. There's a link on the site for folks to go back to the city's map so that they can literally just type in their address to see what district it is, get familiar with the candidate that will be representing you, unless you live in District 4 or 5, that will be determined in the fall. And, yeah, I hope that there's some engagement here, and that comes in the form of, "Hey, we'd really like to see median age," or, "Hey, you forgot about this," or literally just coming up with a name that represents the place in which you live. I think the only candidate — shout out to Chris Wyche, for his website refers to District 1 as the Crown District, because it's at the top. Because it is at the top. I will say that it is also one of the richest districts, in terms of median income and folks experiencing poverty, in that they don't. Yeah, two of them. Yeah. So, yeah.

Walker Evans 24:29Curious to see what the names are, because the districts are not, like, nice, clean shapes, so they don't look like anything, you know. They just look like blobs. But what's the —

Tim Fulton 24:39One is — District 4, District 4 is an L. Okay, so that could be "the L," I don't know. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. Yeah. So, cool. Again, that's ColumbusDistricts.com. Please do submit. Walker, I want to give you the opportunity — you've been on before and talked about the things that Columbus does well, and Columbus doesn't do so well. Anything for us this week?

Walker Evans 25:03Um, I mean, my opinions on these things change all the time. I can't remember what I said before, so I doubt anyone listening even remembers if I don't remember. I think the thing that Columbus does well is that it is a city that is very easy to get involved with. Meaning, if you have an interest in a topic, you raise your hand and you have a seat at the table, you know, whether that's a nonprofit you want to be involved in, if you want to be involved in your neighborhood, you know, especially with young people — I don't think there's a lot of barriers to entry for a lot of those kinds of things. Of course, your mileage may vary on this topic, depending. But I think a lot of people just want to see young, interested people engaged in the process, whatever that may be, which I think is great. Something that we don't do well — and maybe this is just because I pay attention to this too much for my own good on social media — is that we don't do a good enough job of recognizing what problems are uniquely our own, and what problems are state problems or America problems. I see people all the time complaining about, like, "Columbus City Schools are terrible." And it's like, yeah, so are major city school districts in every major city in America, and that's because America does not fund public education to the level that it should. So, not that that's an excuse why we shouldn't be focused on that problem, but our problems are not our own uniquely. And so maybe sometimes, looking outward, you can find better solutions than looking inward. People complain about our transit system, and it's like, unless you live in, you know, one of, like, five major US cities, the transit system sucks all across —

Tim Fulton 26:45Well, but we are the largest metropolitan area without a fixed transit system.

Walker Evans 26:52Okay, that is true. But, you know, people complain about our existing bus infrastructure, and it's like, we're kind of par for the course in America, you know, unless you look outside of America for, you know, real transit systems. Most major cities just do not have the transit. People complain about how, you know, we have an affordable housing problem, and, again, every major city in America has an affordable housing problem right now. These are not unique Columbus problems. We do need to address them. But I think this sort of, like, self-shaming of, like, "We should be ashamed of ourselves because we have this problem" is maybe not the whole story.

Tim Fulton 27:26As always, I don't know if I completely agree with you, but that's fair. See, where I thought you were going to go is, "Columbus is great because everyone has the opportunity to participate." What I thought you were going to go for was, "Well, Columbus is not doing so well" is having people participate.

Walker Evans 27:44Oh, sure. I mean, well, that would be the opposite of it.

Tim Fulton 27:46Yeah, that's where I wanted you to go. But, again —

Walker Evans 27:48I think that's — I keep this in — I think that's an American problem. I think when you look at, like, your average person who just wants to sit at home and watch Netflix and order Chipotle, like, that's every city all across the United States. That's — you know, I think people are having the same conversations you and I are having right now in Nashville, and Chicago, and Atlanta, and Denver, and Charlotte, and everywhere else in between, you know. It's easy to not be involved, especially coming out of the pandemic, when we all developed some bad habits about just staying at home and doing nothing.

Tim Fulton 28:22Walker, yes, thank you for your time.

Walker Evans 28:24You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Tim Fulton 28:37Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of The Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite elected official. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. Special thanks this week to Caroline Thompson. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.