Report to Mayor and City Council
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Special Orders of the Day
SUBJECT:
Title
PUBLIC HEARING NO. 5 RELATED TO CHANGING FROM AN AT-LARGE TO A BY-DISTRICT SYSTEM FOR ELECTION OF CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS, PURSUANT TO THE CALIFORNIA VOTING RIGHTS ACT (CITY COUNCIL)
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I. SUMMARY
Initial Preliminary Map Discussion
To move from at-large elections to by-district voting the City needs to establish the data necessary to complete the process that meets state and federal requirements for the transition to districts. The City's demographer, David Ely of Compass Demographics, prepared the preliminary Council district maps which were presented in a public hearing at the August 6 City Council meeting. Additionally, the City also received (by the August 6 meeting) four separate submissions from community members who used the Participation Toolkit posted on the City's website; those maps were also discussed at the public hearing. Since August 6 the City has received two additional submissions, which are included in the Exhibits.
The intent when making the presentation of the preliminary Council District maps was once again to elicit input on issues the City Council and community feel need to be prioritized in setting district maps, including the cohesiveness of neighborhoods and communities, other physical and geographic boundaries, and other factors. Robust input on the preliminary district boundaries was impeded by technical problems with the presentation of the maps themselves, as they were not easily readable after being photocopied, and the same problem existed on the video projector screen.
These are the same maps as were provided on August 6, only in a more readable, color-saturated format. The four original citizen-submitted maps are also included, as well as two submitted since August 6. In order for the demographer to refine the Draft maps based on community and City Council direction, there needs to be discussion about specific issues...
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