Santa Barbara Makes Final Decision On City Council Districting Map

The way the people in Santa Barbara choose their city council members is being shaken up. The City Council members will now be voted on by district. The city is now divided up into six districts as shown in draft 3b, the draft City Council Members voted on.

The reason the city is being divided up into districts is to settle a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged that the city’s at large voting system for City Council members has led to Latino voters not being heard. To settle the lawsuit, the city of Santa Barbara agreed to conduct district elections beginning in November 2015.

“The idea is if the protected class in this case Latinos are concentrated and there is district elections they feel they have a better chance of winning that district then if they were running in a city wide election and had to win against all the voters,” said National Demographic Corporation President, Douglas Johnson.

The new district map divides the city up into six sections. Each section will be divided up into relatively even population totals, with about 14,500 people in each district.

The big difference is the race of the populations in each section. District 1 which is centered around Milpas on the East side and District 3 which is centered on the West side are primarily Hispanic.

“It will be a challenge for the newly elected officials to make sure they keep that city-wide vision in mind while responding to the voters in their area,” said Johnson.

The district dividing won’t come cheap. The city agreed to pay legal fees that could amount to $600,000. Which may have been just a small fraction of the city’s potential liability if the case had gone to trial.

“So this is a way the City Council could settle the case to minimize the cost to the city and also to insure a public input process so the public had a voice in how to draw districts and it wasn’t just a decision of the judge,” said Santa Barbara Director of Administrative Service, Kristine Schmidt.

The final decision on a district map was chosen Monday night by City Council members after hearing the communities input. The City Council chose draft 3b, with a 6 to 1 vote in favor of that draft. The photo in this article reflects the map chosen by council members. It will go before a judge Tuesday morning.