If at least 41 aldermen vote for a compromise map before May 20 as expected, that’s the City Council equivalent of the groundhog not seeing its shadow: They avoid several more weeks of wintry rancor that would have ensued were they faced with putting competing plans before voters in a late June ballot referendum.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, for one, said this week she expects some residual anger after the council adopts a proposed map with 16 majority Black wards and 14 majority Latino wards, one less than the Latino Caucus wanted. But she hopes aldermen can move past it. “My hope is, given where our city is and that most people, frankly, what they care about is public safety, what they care about is jobs, economic development, access to health care, there’s a range of things that are animating the civic discussion at the neighborhood level that have nothing to do with this,” Lightfoot said. “So frankly, I think for all of us as electeds, we ignore the realities of people’s lives at our peril.”Ald.