City offers online tool to draw maps
Public can create maps in redistricting for city
Those in the community who would like to draw a proposed map setting the boundaries for the Porterville City Council’s five districts can now do so. And they can do it online.
Actually the city has provided that option to residents for a number of days now. Originally city officials thought it wouldn’t be until the end of the month before they would be able to provide the chance to draw maps online. But the city was able to provide the option by mid-december.
The City has partnered with Dave’s Redistricting Tool to provide an online mapping experience allowing residents to create and submit their own proposed redrawn Council District maps.
The option to draw a map is at Mapporterville.org. The city has partnered with Dave’s Redistricting Tool to provide the option to draw a map online.
Once on the website, one can click on “Draw A Map” to begin the process. A link is provided on the website to create free account to use the took, allowing one to draw a map.
Detailed instructions for drawing a map is also provided on the website. It’s recommended one downloads the instructions before beginning to draw the map.
It’s also planned for the website to offer a narrated/video version of the instructions soon. There’s also a link that provides a Youtube video on the instructions.
Once an account is created, a search can be done for a template created specifically for Palm Springs. The template has the city of Porterville’s boundaries and 2020 census data necessary to draw a map.
Once finished one can
submit their map to the city’s redistricting consultant by email at stephanie.smith@bbklaw.
The task of drawin a map won’t be easy as several criteria must be followed as the Voting Rights Act must be followed. The districts must also be geographically contiguous, communities of interest must be kept together, the districts must be easily identifiable and as compact as possible and not favor any political party.
The City Council has already held one public hearing on redistricting and will hold three more hearings. The next public hearing will be held at the City Council meeting on January 18.
The consultant working with the city will also provide draft maps at a public hearing to be held at the council’s meeting on February 1. The deadline for the public to submit draft maps is February 2.
At the final public hearing at the council meeting on February 15, the consultant’s maps and maps drawn by the public will be reviewed. The council is scheduled to select and adopt the final map at that meeting.
One challenge in drawing a map will be to make the five districts more evenly divided by population. The deviation of population between the five districts is nearly 15 percent and that number should be 10 percent or less.
The map for the new districts must be submitted to the County Registrar by April 17 and will begin to be used in the November, 2022 election. District 1 represented by Lawana Tate and District 2 represented by Milt Stowe will be up for election in November. When she was appointed to her position, Tate stated she planned to run in the 2022 election.