Lodi council to consider approving final map

The Lodi City Council has narrowed the choices of district voting maps for city council races to just one map and will consider it for approval during Wednesday’s meeting at Carnegie Forum at 7 p.m.

The council will also consider proposed sequencing for elections.

The city made the decision to switch to a district election system after receiving a letter from the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund last October claiming that the city’s at-large system violated the California Voting Rights Act by diluting the Latino vote. The letter threatened litigation if the city did not change its election system.

With the proposed map (Map 119d), District 4 contains a Latino citizen voting age population of 50.6 percent, which meets MALDEF’s request of having at least one district with a Latino citizen voting age population of more than 50 percent. Three districts include the Downtown area, and three districts include the east side. Council members Doug Kuehne, JoAnne Mounce and Alan Nakanishi would be in their own districts while Bob Johnson and Mark Chandler would be in the same district.

If the map is approved, the city has proposed that districts 1,2 and 3 will be up for election in 2018 and districts 4 and 5 will be up for election in 2020.

The map is one of several revisions based on Map 119. Joe Benapfl, an intern at the Lodi Chamber of Commerce, was responsible for drawing Map 119 and Map 119d along with several other variations of the map. Benapfl received input from Chamber President Pat Patrick. Patrick also received guidance on the maps from the chamber board and the chamber’s government relations committee.

“I asked (Joe) to consider a map with the goal of which would be to satisfy the requirements that MALDEF had set out and the request of the city council members,” Patrick said. “He was able to produce a map that achieved those goals, and I believe most importantly the MALDEF goals, because when those are achieved we are out of danger of expensive litigation from the MALDEF organization.”

Some concerns have been raised about the map originating from the chamber, which endorses candidates and has contributed to campaigns in past elections. Patrick sought to address those concerns, saying that the chamber does make endorsements but hasn’t funded a candidate since 2008.

“The chamber is made up of individuals who live in Lodi and who own businesses in Lodi and have invested thousands, if not millions, of their own money in Lodi,” Patrick said. “They also have created jobs. There are currently 750 members in the Chamber of Commerce. If you add up all those employees, there are about 12,000 employees. That’s a lot of individuals, and they belong to the chamber to stay on top of things like this and be a part of the process.”

There is absolutely no political motivation in the way the district lines were drawn, Patrick maintains.

“(MALDEF) wrote the rules on this redistricting and we followed them as best we could,” Patrick said. “The council selected 119d because it had the highest percentage of Hispanic voters in one district, which was 50.6 percent. No other map was that high, and the deviation was also the lowest of any map. It isn’t because the chamber wants soand-so elected.”

Lodi City Council candidate Spencer Rhoads and Councilwoman JoAnne Mounce both expressed concerns about 119d and the fact it was drawn by the chamber.

“This is a map that is approved by MALDEF and created by the Chamber of Commerce,” Mounce said. “It is not a map of the people and I’m really disgusted that we’re more interested in making sure that council members’ seats are safe in their own districts than making sure that we maintain the communities of interest.”

Mounce said she thought that some of the maps submitted by the public could be tweaked to fit MALDEF’s request. She said she has been a fan of districting all along but the districts have to make sense. The districts drawn by the chamber do not, she said.

“They are specifically drawn up to maintain the status quo, and to me that’s not the way we should have gone into this,” she said.

According to Mounce, Map 119d does not highlight the communities of interest. She took issue with District 2 splitting up the Willow Glen neighborhood and wrapping around the northeast section of the city to include some of the industrial area.

“What in the world does Willow Glen have to do with the industrial area off of Cross Avenue? Nothing,” Mounce said. “It splits up all the communities of interest.”

Mounce said that District 5 is another example of combining two areas that have nothing in common. Mounce‘s biggest concern was that at least two council members represent Downtown Lodi. While three districts include the Downtown area, only District 3 includes the Downtown core of School Street and Mounce said she would’ve preferred two districts included in that area.

Due to health issues, Mounce has been unable to attend recent council meetings. She was absent from the special meeting when Map 119d was chosen, and will be absent from Wednesday’s meeting as well. However, she plans to participate by phone.

Rhoads said that while Map 119d is better than the maps produced by the demographer, he isn’t particularly happy that it came from an organization that “recruits, endorses and funds candidates.”

He plans to speak about his concerns at Wednesday’s meeting.

“What precedent does this set for when we go to redistricting in 2020? Are we going to be asking these types of organizations to create maps on behalf of the public again?,” Rhoads asked. “I believe the maps should have come from someone from the public, an actual individual, not an organization, especially one that spawns political candidates.”

Rhoads questioned why the chamber identified themselves as the illustrator of Map 119d at the last meeting, even though the process is supposed to be anonymous.

Rhoads also claimed council members Doug Kuehne and Mark Chandler spoke out in favor of the map because they were endorsed by the chamber in 2014.

Chandler said he chose Map 119d because it reflects more of a neighborhood concept, meets the criteria for a majority minority district and has three districts that include Downtown Lodi.

“For those reasons, we think it’s the best one,” he said

While he supports Map 119d, Chandler said he still feels that districting is going to do a disservice to the residents of Lodi.

“We have no other options and this is the best we could make of a bad situation,” Chandler said. “Forcing this districting, philosophically I don’t agree with, but we have to go there.”

Spencer Dayton, who is also running for city council, said that Map 119d is better than the “gerrymandered maps (117 and 119)” that several members of the public have spoken out against. He said the map puts together the communities of interest better than the other maps.

“I feel like these districts give other people a fair chance to run,” Dayton said. “It brings together people of all walks of life which gives everyone a chance to vote or run if they so choose.”

Dayton noted that Map 119d meets MALDEF’s request, is aligned with the criteria established for drawing districts and doesn’t violate the federal voting rights act.

“It allows us to show the people we really are listening to them. It gives an area on the east side that Councilmember Mounce has been fighting for forever. It’s a good map compared to some of the others.”