Report to Mayor and City Council
Tuesday, April 06, 2021
Discussion
SUBJECT:
Title
UPDATE ON CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT REVISION PROCESS RESULTING FROM THE 2020 DECENNIAL CENSUS (CITY COUNCIL)
Body
I. SUMMARY
On August 4, 2020, the City Council adopted Ordinance 20-008, establishing by-district voting for City Council seats in the City of Carson, at a noticed public hearing.
The 2020 City Council elections were held by district, with District 1 (Council Member Hilton) and District 3 (Council Member Hicks) up for reelection. Council Districts 2 (Mayor Pro Tem Dear) and 4 (now-Mayor Davis-Holmes) were designed to remain at-large districts until the current terms for those districts expire in 2022. However, with the election of Mayor Davis-Holmes to the Mayor's seat, the District 4 seat is open, and the City Council has approved placing that seat on the ballot.
Under the terms of the lawsuit and Settlement Agreement with the Southwest Voters Registration Education Project ("SVREP"), which was the impetus for the City to consider district elections, any election conducted after 2020 must be a District election and not at-large in order to conform to the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 (CVRA). Therefore, the election will be held as a district-only election for District 4.
Concurrently, cities and other local governments that are divided into districts or divisions are required to review their current district boundaries and redistrict based on the new population figures from the U.S. Census. The City is now in the process of reviewing the adequacy of the adopted districts against the constitutional standards considering demographic and population changes in Carson shown in the 2020 United States Census and has issued an RFP for a demographer to conduct the update.
Ordinarily, preliminary Census data sufficient to undertake redistricting would be released in March of the year following the Census (last month) to allow the review and update to occur in the s...
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