Pols, residents rally to keep 6th District intact
This article originally appeared in The Lynn Daily Item on June 21, 2011.
LYNN - The word of the night during the Redistricting Committee public hearing in City Hall Monday was cohesiveness.
Approximately 700 elected officials, business and non-profit owners and residents packed City Hall Auditorium to tell a 13-member panel that cohesiveness was one important reason why the Sixth Congressional District should not be split up.
"I think it would be a travesty to put Lynn in any other district," said Rep. John Tierney (D-Salem), who led off the hearings.
Charged with having to redraw the state map in order to reduce the number of districts from 10 to 9, the Redistricting Committee has been crisscrossing the state holding public hearings and gathering testimony from elected officials, residents and business owners.
Tierney pointed to the Sixth District's natural geographic boundaries, its distinct features and its shared history of nearly 170 years as reasons to keep it together. He noted, as did nearly all of the 50-plus speakers who followed, that culturally and economically the district simply worked well together.
City Council President Timothy Phelan spoke to the fear, also echoed by many, that if Lynn were to become part of a district that included Boston it would become lost in the shadow of the bigger city.
"We are not Boston," he said. "I love the city but I don't want to be part of that city in any congressional district."
He also warned the committee that if a map were drawn that did put Lynn in a district with Boston it would be "an impediment of monumental proportions that will take decades to overcome."
Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll spoke for a panel that included mayors and town managers from Peabody, Saugus, Beverly, Newburyport, Salisbury, Amesbury and Danvers.
She pointed to a spirit of collaboration between the communities that has led to regionalization of services in many areas including police and fire dispatch services.
While elected officials touted cohesiveness, non-profit and business owners along with residents showed ample proof of its existence.
Four different college presidents, from both private and state schools, stood together to lobby to keep the district together for the good of education. Likewise two representatives stood to speak on behalf of a half-dozen different hospitals speaking of the need to keep the district together from a medical standpoint.
Both organizations were afraid that in the shadow of MIT, Harvard and the many teaching hospitals in Boston, they would lose out on state and federal funding. The organizations were also worried that if the district was altered they would lose that singular voice in Washington provided by the one representative from the Sixth District.
Veterans, local action groups, social service organizations were also recognized.
Speakers were by-and-large mindful that the Sixth Congressional District does have to change and offered solutions such as bringing Haverhill, Lawerence and Methuen back into the district's fold. Others suggested that adding Andover, Woburn or even Lexington might be smart moves.
State Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, chairman of the Redistricting Committee, reminded the audience that task before them was not an easy one. Just as Lynn does not want to become part of Boston, smaller communities in the western part of the state didn't want to join Springfield.
"It's very basic," said Lynn resident Drew Russo. "The Sixth District makes sense. We're people that have come together tonight because we work well together."
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