194th District Roxborough, Manayunk, East Falls
To the members of the Legislative Reapportionment Committee, Thank you for reading our comments. We live in on the borderline between Manayunk and Roxborough in the 194th district and urge you to keep the contiguous communities of Manayunk, Roxborough, and East Falls in one district in the new maps. We belong to both the Manayunk Neighborhood Council and to the Central Roxborough Civic Association. These groups work hard to keep community members aware of the issues in our areas, including an ongoing explosion of population density. We see the links between them first hand. Others before us have mentioned two of the obvious boundaries of the Schuylkill River and the Wissahickon Creek and park within that serve naturally to demarcate the district. We have also lived in Mt. Airy and understand the logic of those who wish to keep Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy within one district as well. We have read articles, attended Town Hall meetings of our 194th representative, Pam DeLissio, heard speakers from The League of Women Voters, Fair Districts, the Committee of Seventy, presentations by citizen map makers, and others we highly respect to learn as much as we could about the process of making fair and just maps. Please consider their years of research and work when you make your decisions. Our voting rights are at stake. It is disturbing to see that there currently persists echoes of the gerrymandering of past decades. We saw Chairman Nordenberg, and the members of the LRC online as they conducted the public hearings and it gave us hope that you will keep partisan gain from affecting the outcome. We thank you for hearing our testimony. Cynthia Mea Schiff and Floyd Glenn