Bay Village Says Redistricting Committee is Crossing the Line

The Bay Village Homeowners Association is in a tizzy over new city district lines being drafted by the Community Redistricting Advisory Committee, and that's just one of the conundrums the committee is trying to work through before its September deadline.

Two-dozen residents from the Bay Village senior community came out in force Tuesday to the committee's fourth meeting of the year.

Bay Villagers are upset because the newest draft map scoops 84 homes from District 7 and plops them into District 6. The entire community—comprised of single-family homes for residents 55 and older—has been in the seventh district for the last decade, and residents say the change would disenfranchise this part of the neighborhood by effectively making it a small minority in the sixth district.

"[A lawsuit] is under consideration," said Bob Fiorilla, president of the Bay Village Homeowners Association. "Our main purpose is that we don't want it split and to have two council members representing us ... It'll be a lot of confusion."

The committee's goal is to reshape the city's seven districts so that each has between 6,935 and 7,665 people. According to the 2010 census, District 6 only has about 5,300. The committee has to address the shortfall, and, so far, the solution is to grab some homes from the senior neighborhood in the eastern corner of the city.

That doesn't sit well with Bay Village resident Kirby Harris.

"It is going to change our district and split it up so that we will have less power," Harris said.

Voting rights attorney Joaquin Avila broke down the details of the drafts for the audience, emphasizing that any changes must comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This prohibits drawing any districts that would "fragment" or disenfranchise any group based on race. According to the 2010 census, most areas of Watsonville are more than 70 percent Latino—and the city, as a whole, hovers just about 80 percent Latino. This raises the question as to whether the language in Section 2 could protect Bay Village from being split between districts.

New districts are drawn every 10 years to ensure fair and balanced representation for all communities of interest based on population .

Some Bay Villagers recommended using larger roads such as Freedom Boulevard and Rodriguez Street to divide the city into more rectangular chunks. This would require moving larger pieces of the population but could theoretically keep the senior population together.

Committee member Felipe Hernandez responded that those changes would be unnecessarily divisive for District 1, which he represents.

"Rodriguez Street runs right through the middle of the district all the way to the Monterey County line,” he said. "It's been the heart of District 1 for years."

Hernandez said this would leave whole neighborhoods "landlocked" at the edges of the city and away from districts they have common interests with.

“That would be like opening a hornets' nest, and then we wouldn't meet our September deadline.”

Mayor Daniel Dodge said that drawing broad strokes through Watsonville on large streets like Freedom Boulevard won't work, because population density has grown dramatically in Districts 1 and 2 over the past 10 years.

But Dodge faces another complication, as well. Dodge, the District 5 representative on the council, and City Councilman Oscar Rios of District 2, live just a couple of blocks from each other. Even a slight change to these boundary lines could result in a district with two council members and leave the other district with no representation at all.

"We are trying to avoid that," said Hernandez.

Geographic Information Systems coordinator Rex Boyes will produce more drafts that explore other options before the next meeting. He said that, along with compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the census breaks cities into "blocks" of population that he can't divide.

The committee will meet again at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 16. in the City Council Chambers at 275 Main St.