Given all the angst and opinion voiced in previous public hearings (and social media) about the city’s transition to District Elections, Monday nights’ meeting took place in a desert. Fewer than half a dozen members of the public were in the room when the hearing, fourth in a series of five, got underway at the posted “time certain” 6:45pm on March 17.
Previous hearings introduced Healdsburg’s council and population to the requirements of building district-based elections for city offices, as required by an unforgiving interpretation of the California Voting Rights Act. In the past Healdsburg, like many cities in California, elected its council members in at-large elections, meaning every eligible voter in the city voted for candidates to fill the seats.
In November, however, the council bowed to the cost of losing a threatened lawsuit by Malibu lawyer Kevin Shenkman accusing violation of the CVRA. It forced the council to switch to holding district elections, where only the voters in a particular district vote for their councilmember.
A compressed period of public hearings began on Dec. 16, with a 90-day requirement to complete the process. Subsequent public hearings, on Jan. 6 and Feb. 18, led to this fourth; it will be followed by the fifth and final hearing in three weeks, on April 7. So the goal of this meeting was to find a single map, if possible, that the council could agree on—a map dividing the City of Healdsburg into five districts, roughly equal in voting population.
One persistent hangnail in the process has been whether or not to follow the council’s initial determination to pursue a five-district, mayor-by-rotation model of governance, as the city currently has, or to adopt an even number of districts with the odd seat, the mayor’s seat, elected by the city at large.
The council has consistently favored the five-district model, in spite of a significant number of residents who expressed through letters and public comment for an at-large mayor. The council did give that model some attention throughout the public hearings, but continued down the tracks toward five districts for the duration of the process.
Zeroing In
That’s what they selected on Monday night. After winnowing through some 80 maps submitted by the public through an online demographer’s tool called DistrictR, and reviewing four maps prepared by the consultant Redistricting Partners based on the various public submissions, the council spent the meeting focused on two maps in particular. Map A was initially proposed by the consultant, and Map D was based on a public submission and elevated to the top tier by councilmember Chris Herrod at the Feb. 18 meeting.
Public comment, which in the past had taken up many minutes, was over in five: only Richard Bird and Jonathan Pearlman had opinions to proffer. The council members frequently began with an aesthetic reaction to the proposed maps, each district in a separate color (fuchsia being one of them, or was that purple?).
Then the perspective became tighter, and narrower. Key points of interest included whether the downtown area should be represented by one council member or more. On this point, City Manager Jeff Kay was called on to explain the risk of a single council member representing a downtown area—that person becomes known as “the downtown councilmember,” fairly or not, and is seen as personally representative of the commercial community.
Two other key factors were agreed upon as well as the splitting of downtown between districts—a strong Latino district to assure minority representation, and a meaningful representation of the southern part of town.
Keeping neighborhoods like the Fitch Mountain Villas undivided; assuring that the neighborhoods to the north of South Fitch Mountain were assigned to the most sensible district; dealing with the challenge of splitting significant streets between one side and the other, such as Matheson Street, Powell or Healdsburg Avenue; and somehow avoiding a long snake-like district on the west side of town were debates the council members discussed among themselves.
Final Choice
The debate was civil, and engaged. The only voices missing were those of the public, which had lost the right to do so by watching the meeting stream at home. (At the end of the meeting, Ariel Kelley brought up the topic of reopening meetings to online viewer comments, and the council agreed to talk about that in the April goal-setting meeting.)
By 8:30pm the council had decided to “move forward” an adjusted Map A as the preferred district map: it avoided the snake-like western district, embraced the south side of town, had four districts touching the downtown area and carved out a strong 62.4% Latino district.
“With the focus primarily on one map, it will hopefully be easier for the community to provide targeted feedback,” Kay said following the meeting.
The proposed district map is now known as Draft Map A. For the next three weeks, public comment is encouraged on that map or other alternates proposed.
The first reading would occur at the Public Hearing on April 7, the final public hearing and the deadline for city action. If passed by the City Council, final adoption would be scheduled for the first City Council meeting in May.
The city has been using healdsburg.gov/districtelections as the short URL for the public information page on the topic since late last year. “We intend to update that page in the coming days with updated information on this map and the process going forward,” Kay said.
Interested citizens are advised to bookmark that page.
