MROSD splits the coastside between two wards

Comment 1 by Jonathan Lundell  on  Nov 11  at  2:00am  •  All my comments • 

I'm trying to make out the exact location of the boundary between wards 6 & 7. Near as I can make out, it follows Lobitos Creek Road to Tunitas Creek Road, and then Tunitas up to Skyline. It's a little hard to tell from the map.

My first reaction when the candidate ward boundaries were proposed was the same as Barry's: that we'd want to concentrate the coastside voting power into one ward.

The problem with that is that the entire coastside would still only be 30% of its ward--significant, to be sure, but not enough to control the seat. And it should go without saying that the coastside isn't going to be unanimous in its choice of representative anyway.

The advantage to having more than one ward is that there'll be two board members with coastside constituencies. So if one of them is a bozo, we have someone else to appeal to.

Note also that given the distribution of voters on the coastside, Ward 7 has the lion's share of our 30,000 heads, so the HMB-midcoast voters will have nearly as much influence in Ward 6 as the entire coastside would have had in a single ward.

On balance, I think it's a reasonable solution.

If I'm right about the boundary location, and I'd appreciate a better description of it, I live on the northern boundary of Ward 7, looking across Lobitos Creek to Ward 6.

One of my comments to the district was that it seemed dumb to draw boundaries along creeks, thus splitting drainages into two wards. But I suppose the ward boundaries aren't significant, save for electing board members, so it's not such a big deal.

Comment 2 by Barry Parr  on  Nov 11  at  2:06am  •  All my comments • 

Your point about the the relative coastside population of the two wards is a good one. Of course, by splitting off the southern part of the coast, they've isolated the troublemakers.

But 30% is a pretty big chunk if coastsiders could be expected to take more interest in MROSD than the rest of the ward.

Comment 3 by Mary Bordi  on  Nov 11  at  2:28am  •  All my comments • 

I'm one of those isolated southcoast troublemakers, I guess.

I attended the MROSD meeting and observed the directors as they made their decision. Based on input from the workshops and online poll, they eliminated the scenarios that split the coastside into three or four wards. So the decision was to be--should the coastside become a part of one ward or two?

One of the LAFCo conditions was that the redistricting be completed by a certain date in December (that I failed to take note of...) so there were time constraints. Even so, delaying the final decision for a few days from the November 9 meeting was discussed--and I'll have to admit right here that I was asked directly if I thought that putting off the final decision to a later meeting would be helpful to coastside residents. My thought was: why prolong the misery, er, I mean, mystery? The workshops were not well attended, why not just go ahead and decide? I certainly didn't feel like making an additional trip to the MROSD office to sit through another meeting! So go ahead and blame me if you think it was a hasty decision.

After considering the results of the workshops and the online poll, the directors listened to comments from two coastside speakers and a letter from the Farm Bureau. Rather than try to paraphrase what was said and get it wrong, I'll just state that each of the directors gave his or her reasons for supporting either the one-ward or two-ward configuration for the coastside. I think the other directors gave a lot of thought to what Larry Hassett had to say, because he (as director of Ward 6) is the one that is the closest neighbor to folks who are being annexed and, depending on which scenario was chosen, would be representing either all or part of the coastside.

I should explain that the two-ward scenario that was adopted was presented during the meeting as a new variation of one of the other scenarios, incorporating changes suggested in the workshops. However, the changes all seemed to be on the bay side... The criteria used for the redistricting (major geologic features, census blocks, highways, watersheds, county lines, community boundaries etc.) are probably comprehensible only to an expert in GIS technology. Another consideration was the location of the residence of the current director of a ward. It seemed to some of us plain old "uneddicated" citizens that the scenarios presented should not have been the only options, but not being experts...what do we know?

MROSD's mapping technology is amazing. During a 15 minute break they were able to print out a new map that represented a little "tweaking" that had been discussed during the earlier part of the meeting. (One of the tweaks: The director of Ward 4 had moved from Mountain View to Los Altos, within his ward, but the new line had moved him out of his ward because the new--current--address had not been put into the database.) This was the scenario that was finally adopted, after the directors were able to see it in full color right before their eyes.

If you're unhappy with the decsion just remember, things will no doubt change after the 2010 census, so mark your calendars and plan to attend any workshops they might hold at that time!

I think the idea of two coastside wards probably benefits the Coastside, because the North and South along the coast have very different problems and agendas, and because if we ever get to the planning stages of new trails, which are most likely to be from Skyline to the Sea, the wards will contain all those affected by a particular proposal.

One of the District's major stated criteria in redrawing their Ward boundaries was to consider "community boundaries".

They COULD have included ALL of the mountain and rural residents in one ward -- by putting all of them in their northernmost ward.

Instead, they hatcheted the well-defined, cohesive Kings Mountain community right down its middle, along Tunitas Creek Road. (Kings Mountain is north Skyline, from Hwy.92 south to Bear Gulch and Allen Roads). Wonder why?

Well, Kings Mountain is perhaps the one mountain/rural community that had the greatest potential for substantive political action (due to its population, wealth and effective community organizations).

But now, the northern half of the Kings Mountain community is in Ward 7, completely dominated by bayside and midcoast suburban voters, while the southern half is attached to Ward 6, the one-and-only ward that has EVER had a mountain or rural resident on the bayside MROSD's Board.

(And initially, that Director was the carefully hand-picked appointee of the other Directors, before later running as an incumbent for re-election.)

Thus, the ONLY areas where the District has ANY major land-acquisition or land-control interests -- where it also has almost ALL of its present and planned holdings -- will continue to have any real political possibility of electing, at MOST, only one of the bayside-MROSD's seven elected "representatives."

Consider "majority rule": We saw it in 1930's Germany. We saw it in the South until the late 1960's. And we're seeing it now, in the MROSD.

At the local meetings hosted by the MROSD we learned that the wards were drawn up using the census blocks - to provide the greatest accuracy in knowing the exact population of a given area (usually a city block). The blocks on the coast side cover a large geographical area because the population is so sparse. I have sinced checked the exact block layout around Kings Mountain on the Census website - and it looks very much like the MROSD used the Census Tracts (and not the smaller Groups or discrete Blocks). However they specifically said they used the "blocks" - if they had used Blocks it looks like they could have easily kept the Kings Mtn community in one ward.

In choosing Tract lines the Distric has obviously chosen to dissect the community - I raised this as an issue at the meeting on Skyline. They said the next block (South or North) was "too far away". I didn't understand their reasoning at the time (and didn't know about Tracts, Groups or Blocks) ...and didn't have a census map in my back pocket to verify this. Their answer was unfortunate because we all have access to this census map data online - something they didn't seem to realise. The District has been consistent in showing itself to be web/computer unknowledgable: The web survey on their site forced users into selecting an option - there wasn't a "none of the above" option to allow people to propose something else; I emailed them asking to be added to their e-mailing list and got an email reply (so they had my email address - right?) saying "Can you forward your mailing address?".

When I asked if we could meet again - for them to present more locally-favoured options (such as a variety of maps with less wards to the coast) all I got were blank stares, comments about "no time" and general disinterest.

It was lot to get through in one meeting - residents seemed to have a problem understanding that the District was bound by law in the number and size of the wards. They used the census maps because that is commonly accepted practice when running an election - the cost goes up dramatically if those maps are not used or if a ward is drawn over more than one county.

I went to the meeting with a pretty open mind - as a relatively new resident to meet other residents and the District alike. There were a couple of other local residents that took a very tough line with the District. Some other history there? The District had a difficult job - but that's life. Due to their ~30k population the coastsiders would never have a redistricting plan that would give them a majority in any one ward - and HMB would probably vote differently on a given issue from the south coast anyway (see the annexation vote).

I've had no response to any of my questions to the District thus far.