Today each of us has five city councilmembers that are responsible and responsive to each of us. That is about to end as a lawyer from Malibu is exploiting an arcane state election law to force the city to go to district-based seats. You will soon have only one city councilmember who has the electoral need to respond to your concerns. Get over it. State officials like Kevin Mullin (our assemblyman) are good with criticizing B'game for following state law on campaign donation limits, but apparently can't be bothered to change state law to maintain our individual voting power at the status quo. That feels like real work. Get over it.
How to make the best of a terrible situation? Hire a consultant, of course. And so we have. He's come up with three possible maps of districts that attempt to define:
1. relatively equal population size
2. contiguous - districts should not hop/jump (like gerrymandered ones)
3. maintain "communities of interest" (these are undefined, but you can assume it is not model-train hobbyists or your yoga classmates)
4. follow city/county/local government lines
5. keeps districts compact in both appearance and function
You can find maps A, B and C at the city sites I have linked to by letter. Bear in mind there is no indication of which lots are residential (i.e. have voters) and which are commercial, industrial or city or school-owned (i.e. no voters) so the geographic size is not the best indicator. And yes, B'game owns part of the bay--someday voters may live there too if we keep heading to "Buildingame" (hat tip Rob Adams). Perhaps Mrs. Winchester and her house boat, The Ark, will return.
There are three proposals with five districts each, so 15 possible districts that range in size from 6,082 to 6,510. Of course, the long running differences in voter turnout are not considered. For example, 20 years ago in the 2001 election, we had 23 precincts plus absentee voting that 15% of voters used then. The voter turnout varied from 12% in Ray Park/Murchison and 15% in Floribunda/Oak Grove to 36% Lincoln School/Devereaux and 38% in Howard/Rollins. That is a 3:1 swing according to Old Math! So running in different districts will carry different challenges.
The consultant's work goes to great length to assess the ethnic make-up of each of the 15 possible designs-- Latino, Asian, Black and "Other". Those Others seem to be everywhere. You have to wonder what happens if no one wants to run in one of the districts? That would be funny!
The city is very interested in your comments so have at it here. The council will be discussing it this Monday, Nov. 1st and probably well beyond that. We live in interesting times. December 16th update: Here is the map that has been selected-- Map D.
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