|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After hundreds of hours of fierce debate and controversy, Santa Clara County is very close in finalizing its political boundaries.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to advance a variation of the yellow map, known as draft 90195, introduced by Supervisor Cindy Chavez.
The yellow map, which has been considered a controversial option by conservatives, was advanced by a coalition of local civil rights and labor groups.
The yellow map, previously known as the Unity Map, went through several variations. At the Tuesday board meeting, supervisors had nine different maps to consider.
Supervisors Otto Lee, Susan Ellenberg and Chavez voted in favor of the 90195 map. Supervisors Joe Simitian and Mike Wassermann voted against it.
The 90195 map, like the yellow map, creates a “majority-minority” Asian-Pacific Islander district in District 3 and maintains a high Latino influence district in District 2.
It also has a deviation of 4.1% which means it has relatively the same amount of people living in each of the county’s five districts.
Like all maps before the board, it splits San Jose into each of the five districts because of its high population and large city limits.
However, it removes Los Gatos and Almaden Valley from District 1 and places them in District 5 — which has been highly contested by conservative voices in the county — who accused the map of gerrymandering. They argued it would dilute conservative power in District 1 by removing those areas that tend to vote conservative.
The map has also prompted legal questions from opponents because it would exclude two District 1 candidates from running for that district — former San Jose City Council member Johnny Khamis, who represented the Almaden area, and Los Gatos Vice Mayor Rob Rennie.
They argued that Chavez should’ve been barred from voting on the maps because of alleged conflicts of interest since she participated in a fundraiser for District 1 supervisor candidate Morgan Hill Mayor Rich Constantine. They also pointed to her previous employment with the South Bay Labor Council and Working Partnerships USA, which both participated in creating the yellow map.
However, Chavez said the 90195 map was an improvement of the yellow map because it reduces population imbalance in districts, provides better representation to historically marginalized communities in county politics and keeps district boarders compact and clear.
The map unites the Evergreen area in southeast San Jose, doesn’t split the Willow Glen neighborhood and uses Capitol Expressway and the Guadalupe as natural district boundaries.
Wasserman instead advocated for the EE 2.0 Map which was discarded at a meeting last month. However, he said it was worthy of consideration because it had the lowest deviation of any of the maps at 1.2%. The state guideline is 10%.
The county will post the final map by Friday to give the public three days to review the map before it is formally adopted on Dec. 14.
Supervisors directed county surveyors to prepare a description of the revised supervisorial boundaries and asked county counsel to report back with a resolution on Dec. 14 regarding redistricting plans.
I would be interested to hear from Supervisor Simitian why he voted No. I consider him a pair of safe hands. I have no opinion as to the merits of the various maps at this time.
Your “article” doesn’t say *why* the vote was 3-2, it just says “conservatives” objected. I m far from whatever “conservative” seems to mean these days, BUT I agree with the first post–it would be very helpful for me to know why Sup. Simitian voted no. I have long respected him, even if we might disagree on specific issues.
Yes. Joe Simitian’s reasoning is usually good. Weekly, can you report on his comments to augment this story? Thanks.