Erie County
As Supervisor's in the 3rd largest municipal subdivision in Erie County, Harborcreek Township files this formal objection to your Pa State House preliminary redistricting map released on December 16, 2021. For nearly 70 years all of Harborcreek Township and school district have been a continuous and complete member of the 4th Legislative House District. Your new map as currently planned for the 2nd and 4th House Districts goes against 3 of the 4 Pennsylvania Constitution requirements for redistricting: compactness, contiguity, and minimal boundary splits. All 3 are blatantly and clearly a violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution. After 7 decades of representation that has worked flawlessly, you've decided to combine PART of rural and suburban Harborcreek Township, an eastern Erie County suburb, with a portion of the urban SOUTHWEST side of the city of Erie? If gerrymandering ever needed a definition this would be it. To say that the citizens of the urban west side of the city of Erie and suburban, rural residents and farmers in eastern and southern Harborcreek Township have different needs from their state government would be a gross understatement. How is ANY legislator rightly expected to reasonably represent this new gerrymandered District 2 with the most obvious competing and differing issues imaginable? No precedent nor common sense would dictate that this unnecessary change is of any positive future benefit to any resident living in this new proposed House District # 2. Quite the opposite. Every single resident of this gerrymandered fantasy will be done a disservice from their trusted State Government, as will the poor State Representative who will be tasked with the impossible burden of representing it. We regard this map as a premeditated attack not only on our community, but also our own Representative Curt Sonney, a Harborcreek native and Chair of the House Education Committee. We strongly ask you to reconsider. Harborcreek Township (Erie County) Supervisors