Pressure grows in Foster City for district elections 

“It really drove home the point to me that we don’t have local representation, which we need for every neighborhood. Every neighborhood is diverse and has got its own characteristics and uniqueness,” Lawrence said. 

Lawrence spoke to the council during its meeting Monday, June 3, and provided staff with a letter stating the switch would “align with the principles of the California Voting Rights Act, which aims to combat racially polarized voting and ensure fair representation for all racial and ethnic groups​.” He will likely follow through with legal action if the city does not remedy the issue, he said.

But Vice Mayor Stacy Jimenez said such a change is unnecessary, given the city’s small size and diverse community.

“We are not separated by freeways. We don’t have an ‘other side of the tracks,’” Jimenez said. “I think we, as a council, do a really good job of representing the entire community.”

She also added district elections could backfire by making it harder to recruit candidates and incentivizing councilmembers to focus solely on what is important to their district, not necessarily the entire city. 

“In this election, currently, we only have four candidates, and it was a struggle to even get those four,” she said. 

But some cities throughout the state, including Palmdale, have lost million-dollar cases over the issue. And the threat of a lawsuit, whether explicit or otherwise, has proved an effective strategy in precipitating the switch from at-large to district elections for many cities throughout the county, including San Mateo and Belmont. Nearly all of the county’s jurisdictions now hold district elections for councilmembers. 

District elections are meant to provide representation in communities that are often less resourced and, by extension, often find it hard to compete with deeper-pocketed candidates and groups in more affluent parts of a municipality. 

“There’s a small faction across the city that really controls the politics out here, and I believe that with district elections, we could get around that,” Lawrence said. 

The letter also states that district elections encourage “higher voter turnout and greater civic participation, as residents feel their vote has a direct impact on their immediate community​.”

The discussion has come and gone for many years in Foster City Council meetings, and Lawrence said it didn’t get very far during his tenure. Councilmember Sam Hindi previously indicated interest in further discussing the matter, as well as former Mayor Herb Perez, although it remains to be seen whether a majority of the current council will want to take it up in the near future.