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The city of Livermore's redistricting process is in full swing, with the second public hearing already under the City Council's belt.
On Monday, the council heard two presentations — the first related to the ongoing public outreach efforts to obtain community input and the second more specifically about the process itself.
As part of the city's outreach, officials are offering all materials related to redistricting in both English and Spanish and they provided the option to translate the hearing to Spanish in real time.
While the city recently drew its current district lines upon switching from an at-large to district-based election system, the city is required to update its district boundaries to ensure that the districts remain substantially equal and still protect the rights of members of communities of interest to vote for candidates of their choice.
Additionally, the 2020 Census has been completed in the time since the current boundaries were drawn and based on the evaluation of the data, the council may find that there could be a need for some changes.
However, the city's demography consultant Michael Wagaman of Wagaman Strategies told the councilmembers during the hearing that they also have the option to keep the existing boundaries as they are legally compliant with the criteria.
Wagaman also said during his presentation that considering communities of interest is significant to the process for purposes of fair representation. A community of interest is a population with common social or economic interests that should be in a single district, such as common assets like schools, shopping areas, housing, employment, culture and language.
The city is providing online mapping tools for residents to review draft maps and to develop and submit their own map proposals. At the time of the hearing, officials said there had been about a dozen submissions of maps so far, however, not many had submitted communities of interest.
In considering the various map options, Wagaman advised the council in his presentation to strive for population equality and focus on the traditional criteria by drawing "contiguous districts that respect communities while using understandable boundaries and are compact when possible."
At the same time, Wagaman advised the council to not use race as the predominant factor in their considerations.
Later in the meeting, Councilmember Trish Munro asked for clarification on how to best approach race in the process and Wagaman provided the example that, "if there is a community that is, among other ways, defined by being heavily Latino or heavily immigrant, etc. The law would generally say that community should be kept whole as it would be considered a community of interest."
However, he said that if there isn't an existing community that's actually connected together but rather people dispersed throughout the city who just happened to check the same race or ethnicity box on the census and the city is making considerations based on that alone, then it would go against the rules and criteria.
Councilmember Brittni Kiick asked the outreach team to work on encouraging more residents to submit their communities of interest. "I'm hoping that we get some more communities of interest because that's the key, not really streets or racial demographics," Kiick said.
Councilmember Bob Carling expressed concern about "disenfranchising a certain number of people," because those who currently reside in Districts 1 and 2 did not vote for a councilmember in 2020 as the Mayoral race is still at-large and Mayor Bob Woerner resides in District 1. Vice Mayor Gina Bonanno was appointed by the existing council to fill Woerner's at-large council seat upon his ascension to mayor.
"If we move the boundary such that they now are in District 3 or 4, they also won't vote for a councilmember in 2022, so I worry about that," Carling said. The terms for Kiick, who represents District 3, and Carling, who represents District 4, do not expire until 2024.
Wagaman said that what Carling described is actually a common "side effect" of having staggered elections and is referred to as deferral. While he said that the council can consider deferral in its process, it can't trump all of the other criteria.
While there was a public comment period during the hearing, there was only one speaker, Karl Wente, who briefly shared gratitude toward the City Council, staff and other officials for their work.
The city is still accepting proposed maps and communities of interest until Monday (Jan. 31) at 5 p.m.
Two more hearings are scheduled for Feb. 14 and March 14, and the council will be asked to adopt the final map at the March 28 regular City Council meeting.
A complete recording of Monday night's hearing is available here.
