When the Boston City Council last took up redistricting in 2012, Mayor Tom Menino vetoed two maps for “packing” voters of color into District 4 and weakening their voting power. According to the Dorchester Reporter, Menino wrote at the time that “My concern about the last plan was that it concentrated our many citizens of color into too few districts, and in doing so may limit their equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice” and that “this overconcentration was especially true in District 4.” The final map passed by the council that year was largely aligned with the previous decade’s map.

Much has changed in Boston since then: The council is composed of a majority of people of color, and the map will be approved by the city's first woman and first person of color elected to mayor. But so far, the conversation has touched on many of the same issues as in 2012—councilors have raised packing concerns about District 4 and proposed three maps that preserve the basic structure of the City Council districts from the past several decades. Despite the dramatic shift in the demographics and its increasing focus on racial equity, no proposed maps have sought to substantially alter the demographic breakdown of the map.

The central question facing map-makers is how to split up Dorchester between Districts 3 and District 4. The Council’s target district size is 75,072 - however majority-Dorchester precincts include 121,305 residents. Any map that is drawn will necessarily split Dorchester into two or more districts. Instead of splitting the districts from a North South, as all of the proposed maps currently do, we recommend the eastern half into District 3 and the western half into District 4.

The source of packing concern is the line between Districts 3 and 4. City Councilors do not have the option of maintaining the current map exactly because population growth in District 2 requires them to redraw the lines. While the majority of residents of both District 3 and District 4 are people of color, District 3 has consistently been represented by white councilors, partly because it includes Precinct 16-12, the consistent highest-turnout precinct in the city and one of its most conservative.

Following the wisdom of Menino, our recommendation in drawing these districts more equitably does not require a wholesale reimagination of the council map—it simply requires changing the geographic orientation of the Dorchester split that is inherent to any council map.

This map includes 4 districts where between 70% and 80% of residents are people of color, according to either the total population or the weighted estimate based on precinct-level voter registration. Our map represents an approach to making the overall council map more racially equitable, giving communities of color more opportunity to elect candidates of their choices for the next ten years. Its main departure from the priorities outlined by councilors is that it differs meaningfully from the status quo.

While the status quo bias of incumbent officials toward maintaining existing systems is particularly acute in redistricting—where the elected officials who draw the maps depend on them for their jobs—we see similar dynamics across our equity research, planning, and engagement work. The majority support of the status quo locally and across the Commonwealth continues to create pain points and barriers to equity, where the trade off for advancing racial equity is the “loss” of power and influence. In determining how to split Dorchester, the Council faces a clear distillation of this now common false binary: depart from the status quo to enhance racial equity or preserve the status quo.

Rivera Consulting is a management and strategy consultant firm based in the Boston area. Their full analysis on Boston’s redistricting process can be found here. We are a diverse set of practitioners and our services focus on the intersection of planning, engagement, and equity. Founder and President Wilnelia Rivera is also a nationally recognized social change practitioner and strategist that has taken her lived and professional experience to build a platform where change agents, multi-disciplinary practitioners, and dreamers can come together to problem solve for the future.