COCONUT GROVE, Fla. – Miami commissioners met again Thursday to consider some major changes to Miami’s political map. It’s meeting No. 6 and they received an earful from residents who are against the redistricting.
Of all the people that they are hearing from it’s the people who live in Coconut Grove. They feel like if anyone in any Miami neighborhood has something to lose they have the most at stake.
Drawing the districts are supposed to be about neighborhoods and numbers but in Miami City Hall, the conversation broke down around race.
One woman stood up at the podium and pointedly asked the commissioners, “Respectfully, how often and how many times have you knocked on doors in the West Grove?”
Coconut Grove residents have waged a months-long war to stop one plan that splits the neighborhoods into three commission districts.
Lucian Firster, who also stood to speak at the podium, commented that no one has even given a reason why Coconut Grove needs to be split.
Another resident said that there is no denying that “there is an inexplicable link between race property and voting.”
Fear of bias and politicking replaces a void of information for the residents, mostly from Coconut Grove, who are unclear why their historic neighborhoods may be split in the once-a-decade redo of drawing the city of Miami’s 5 commission districts.
Summing it up best, one resident told the commissioners, “We want to keep the Grove whole.”
It was another day of hours upon hours of people at the podium from Coconut Grove with every single one of them asking to keep the neighborhoods and all its people intact in one commission district.
We will see if commissioners listen.