The Madison Common Council unanimously approved a redistricting plan for aldermanic districts Tuesday that will take effect for the spring 2003 Common Council elections.
The Council had to rearrange the districts so they would contain roughly equal numbers of people based on data from the 2000 census.
Districts 4, 5 and 8 currently represented by Alds. Mike Verveer, Tom Powell and Todd Jarrell, respectively, will continue to contain neighborhoods with large student populations.
District 4, currently bordered in the northwest by North Henry Street, will stretch westward to North Frances Street. District 8 will push into areas presently part of District 5, extending from its present southwestern border of Park Street to Randall Avenue. District 5 will move south and west. Southern boundaries of that district west of Randall Avenue will move from University Avenue to Regent Street.
Ald. Brenda Konkel, District 2, will pick up student residents in the Langdon neighborhood, as people living between Langdon Street and Lake Mendota east of Lakelawn Place will become part of her district.
A map of the new district boundaries can be found at the city of Madison's Web site, .
In other actions, the Council delayed a vote on a proposed ordinance making it illegal for landlords to ban tenants from having guests.
Noah Fiedler of the Apartment Association of South Central Wisconsin, a landlord trade group, said he would not support an ordinance to prevent guest bans.
'People don't just wake up in the mornings and say 'I'm going to ban all guests,' they are pushed into having policies,' Fiedler said.
An amended version of the ordinance, which would have stopped short of outlawing guest bans but would have required that all landlords specify what their guest policies are in either a lease or a non-standard rental provisions sheet, was criticized by some supporters of the original ordinance, including Joe Lindstrom of the Progressive Dane Housing Task Force.
'We feel it's a fundamental right that people be able to have guests in their homes,' Lindstrom said. 'The very provision, 'a landlord shall not prohibit' people to have guests was removed.
'Sometimes something we originally supported becomes something we can't stand for, and that's what happened here,' he added.
Fiedler said he supported the amended ordinance to prevent landlords from haphazardly changing their guest policies.
'Let's make sure this is written,' he said.
Verveer, one of the ordinance's two sponsors, said he supported delaying a vote on the resolution because of difficulties involving two key supporters.
'One of my supporters had last-minute concerns and another had a sprained ankle,' Verveer said.
Ald. Kent Palmer, District 15, the ordinance's other sponsor, suffered a sprained ankle Tuesday afternoon and missed the meeting.
