Near North alderman Burt Natarus is an angry man, which is why he drove ten miles to the far northwest side one evening last week to harangue a tiny gathering of people from other parts of town. The scene was a poorly attended public hearing on the ward remap, and Natarus’s animus was directed at the Daley administration’s mapmakers.
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How wrong the gadfly was! In the case of Natarus anyway. Under the administration’s “Equity Map,” Natarus, who considers himself a Daley ally, would lose most of his cozy 42nd Ward for an ungainly strip of territory that wanders six miles out to South Sacramento Avenue before jutting back toward the Loop. It would have a largely unconverted black majority. And to add insult to injury, it would be called the First Ward.
He hauled out written requests for Near North Side public meetings that Mell apparently had ignored; census data showing that his current ward fits remap guidelines nearly perfectly; the current map showing that his ward is limned on three sides by natural boundaries; and a dozen letters from business owners, condo associations, neighborhood groups, and a hospital begging that he be retained as their alderman. He also threatened “a petition drive with thousands and thousands of signatures on short notice.”
–Well yes, I was saying that–
–Now with regard to 48, they respected the natural boundaries of the neighborhoods of 48 in this map?
–That’s true, that’s–
“You make a very valid point,” Natarus began, “that one of the purposes of setting up governmental districts, the reason they should be composite and contiguous, is that you are only dealing–you know it’s hard to deal with politicians–so that you’re only dealing with one or two rather than four or five.” Moments later he concluded, inventively, “In other words you want a dialogue, not a triple-logue or a quadruple-logue, isn’t that right? A dialogue!”
