Redistricting committee recommends minor changes
As supervisors reviewed suggestions Tuesday, they leaned the same way
SANTA CRUZ >> Santa Cruz County’s redistricting commission presented its first new map options, a step that marks the commission’s first of three interactions with the Board of Supervisors in the coming month.
Those options did not include what was demonstrably the boldest redistricting suggestion propositioned by a member of the public.
On Tuesday, county resident Jim Coffis proposed, through an email to the Advisory Redistricting Commission (ARC), to “really shake up local politics” by drawing the lines concentrically from the Monterey Bay coastline. This way, coastal zone residents are in one district, rural mountain residents are in another and so on.
The ARC acknowledged but did not recommend the submission, calling it “a major rethinking of the makeup of the five supervisorial districts.”
“The commission did not feel comfortable with pushing that forward,” said Assistant County Administrator Elissa Benson, who has been coordinating the redistricting efforts, after Aptos resident Becky Steinbruner questioned why it was not endorsed by the ARC. “It would require extensive community outreach and engagement to see if there was any interest or if people felt it was disruptive to current communities of interest.”
Communities of interest, as defined by the federal elections code, is a contiguous population that shares common social and economic interests best served by a common representative.
In fact, the ARC’s consideration was so thorough that it did not accept several changes proposed by its peers, according to County Administrative Officer Carlos Palacios’ staff report. District 1 representative Cheri O’Neil, for example, suggested redrawing the “Jewel Box” neighborhood to move the portion of the neighborhood in District 2 to District 1. In another instance, District 3 representative Kris Reyes suggested moving the boundaries between District 3 and District 5 at UC Santa Cruz, affecting a population of about 2,400 to even the numbers between the two districts.
“While commissioners expressed respects for these proposals, they did not reach consensus to include them in the recommended plan, primarily due to a sense that there was a lack of or limited public testimony requesting these changes and little time remaining in the public hearing schedule to solicit feedback from those who would be affected,” Palacios wrote.
Commission-certified
The commission offered two district boundary change proposals that incorporated populations from all districts but District 5.
The first would change the western boundary of District 1 to include parts of the East Harbor neighborhoods that are currently in District 3. The proposal would affect approximately 600 residents. Overall, a chart from the county depicted, the districts share similar population breakdowns.
The second proposal would repair the boundaries of District 2 and District 4 that split the Apple Hill neighborhood in unincorporated Watsonville that currently splits residents of Silver Leaf and Green Meadow drives into two different districts. The proposal would affect around 500 people, county staff said. In this case, data shows that the second district has far less of a Latino population than District 4.
In both cases, the proposals reflect what the public has voiced in addition to adhering to redistricting criteria, both federal and state.
If the two proposals were implemented, District 1 would move from less than the census average for the other districts to more than, while District 2 would move from more than the average to less than. District 3 would remain more than the average but become closer to it while District 4 would go from less than the average to more than the average. District 5 would remain less than the average at the same rate as it was since no proposals included altering it. All five districts would be well within the legal limit for proportions of the population, Benson added.
The Board of Supervisors showed general support for the less drastic options.
“(Staff) is not really proposing large changes right now, which is appropriate,” Supervisor Zach Friend said. “The (proposal for) District 2 and District 4 makes a lot of sense from a community of interest standpoint. We should put a marker out there, though, that there was clearly an undercount in this census due to COVID. It was most acute in South County, particularly in Watsonville. I anticipate that with UCSC growth occurring and with the next census (looking) different in Watsonville, the future board will really need to look at maps that are different than what our board is looking at.”
Friend’s fellow south county supervisor, Greg Caput, agreed.
“When you’re counting population, you’re also counting undocumented people and blended families,” Caput said. “It’s really difficult to count them all also because of DACA students that are enrolled at school whether or not they’re counted.”
More resident requests
The county’s redistricting team admitted in its report that it struggled in securing public input in this decade’s effort.
“Based on attendance at the public workshops and the number of community of interest narratives received on the website, there is no question the redistricting subject itself is competing with many other current issues and concerns of residents,” Palacios wrote.
Those who did participate included ideas for all over the county.
Constituents from Scotts Valley wished to unify the city in a single district.
A “Midtown” neighbor asked for its neighborhood, with its roots in the historic Villa de Branciforte township, to be moved to District 1 from District 3 because it has more in common with Live Oak — development style, worker and resident demographics and more.
A Live Oak resident called his jurisdiction “highly urbanized but unincorporated” and “in need of one supervisor to represent us” as Live Oak is not a recognized city and does not have its own council.
Aptos Hills residents asked to be divided in district from Seacliff and Rio del Mar so they could fix their roads in need of resurfacing and drainage infrastructure.
Finally, a few rural residents, such as those in the San Lorenzo Valley, were looking for mostly or exclusively rural districts because of their unique needs.
“Right now we are not going to move forward with additional direction, but I know how hard it is for my colleagues to represent unincorporated areas and to be a full-service government so I’m not interested in moving unincorporated residents from my district into other districts,” Supervisor Ryan Coonerty said. “But perhaps there’s a way to make these numbers more even and prepare for the changes that will be significant, I think, coming forward in the next census.”