Council boundaries haven't always been a gerrymandered mess

REDISTRICTING wasn't always this way.

When the current city charter was adopted by Philadelphia voters in 1951, it divided the city into 10 City Council districts, combining groups of whole wards, apparently based on simple geography.

Four wards in South Philadelphia were combined for a single South Philadelphia Council seat, 16 smaller wards combined for a single Center City district, two big wards covering all of Northeast Philadelphia became the Northeast Philadelphia seat, etc.

But Council began dividing wards after the 1970 census, and every redistricting since has led to more splintering of the city's wards and neighborhoods - motivated less by population shifts than by incumbent Council members trying to make their districts more politically secure.

The most severe results are visible in three Council districts:

* The 7th, represented by Maria Quinones-Sanchez. In the 1950s, it was a compact group of four wards in North Central Philadelphia. Sixty years later, it's been transformed into a weird-looking Rorschach test. The bulk of its population lies in its original North Central area, now heavily Hispanic. Then it heads north for three miles, sometimes just a block wide, before reaching another population center, the 56th ward in Rhawnhurst.

The link to the 56th ward was helpful to Rick Mariano, the councilman in 2001, who was friendly with ward leader John Sabatina and struggling to hold on to the seat despite a burgeoning Hispanic population, which was eager to replace Mariano with one of its own.

Mariano was re-elected in 2003 but lost the seat three years later, when he was convicted of allowing a metal-processing business inside his district to buy him a $5,400 gym membership and pay $23,445 toward his credit-card bills. A contributing factor: Council paychecks had been shut off for five months because of members' inability to reach accord on a redistricting plan.

* The 5th District, represented by Darrell Clarke. Its population is concentrated in North Philadelphia, between Vine Street and Lehigh Avenue, but a Center City extension takes it as far south as Rittenhouse Square, and a northern loop, just blocks wide, takes it up to Castor Avenue and Oxford Circle in the lower Northeast.

Center City territory is coveted by many Council members for its potential fundraising value. Not only are residents wealthier, but developers and other businessmen are more likely to need Council action on their projects, and by tradition, each district Council member is given strong deference on projects inside his or her district.

* The 1st District, held by retiring Councilman Frank DiCicco. It runs from Oregon Avenue in South Philadelphia to Center City, between the Delaware River and Broad Street, then hikes north through Northern Liberties and Port Richmond, curls away from the river toward Kensington, and then wraps itself around Quinones-Sanchez's district, more than nine miles from where it started.

A 2006 study by a Philadelphia software development firm, Azavea Inc., came up with an index to measure the distortion of political boundaries for political gain - a practice known as "gerrymandering," named for a Massachusetts governor named Elbridge Gerry who was held responsible for a congressional district whose shape reminded people of a salamander.

Azavea studied electoral districts in more than 50 U.S. cities and described the 5th and 7th districts as among the most gerrymandered in the nation. The firm put the 1st District in its top 20.