Redwood City adopts district map

Vice Mayor Diane Howard celebrated the adopted map for having so many districts touching the city’s thoroughfares. 

“The reason I like Map 13F is because five of the district boundaries on the north side touch Whipple Avenue, on the south side six of our districts touch Woodside Road, and four districts touch El Camino Real,” Howard said. “We’re really covering Redwood City with all of us. We’re spreading ourselves well, I think.”

Mayor Ian Bain celebrated that map for keeping the city’s neighborhood associations together. 

The city was forced to switch to district elections because a Southern California attorney alleged the city’s at-large system diluted the vote of the city’s Latino population. In the adopted map, one district has a majority Latino population for citizen voting age while two districts have a Latino majority in terms of total population.  

The councilmembers who opposed that map did so in part because it places Redwood Shores and Bair Island in the same district despite contrary requests from many Redwood Shores residents.

“We want to stay by ourselves, we don’t want anybody added to us,” said Ben Ploshay, vice president of the Redwood Shores Community Association.

Mary Morrissey Parden, a former board member of the community association, said the neighborhood should have its own district because of its geography. 

“We consider the Redwood Shores community very unique and the geography of it is a big determination of its uniqueness,” she said. “Redwood Shores should stand as its own district. Please don’t complicate the natural geographic boundaries of Redwood Shores.”

Councilmembers seemed to be on board with the request throughout the process, but some of them ultimately felt the neighborhood was better off combined with Bair Island, at least for the time being.

“At this time I feel [Bair Island and Redwood Shores] have very similar challenges: the levees, airport noise and sea level rise,” said Vice Mayor Diane Howard. “For two years time, I feel coupling these two together will be something that will benefit the Bair Island group.”

But Howard went on to say that Bair Island and Redwood Shores will not be included in the same district when the city is forced to draw new district boundaries in 2020 based on the new census that will be complete that year.

Concerns with the adopted map were not limited to Redwood Shores and Bair Island. Kimberly Koch, a downtown resident who wanted map 21d, felt her neighborhood was not adequately represented in the other finalist maps, including the adopted one.

“The main concern for the downtown neighborhood, we’re getting the feeling that we’re the piggy back, we’re the high school fetal pig that’s being diced and sliced and tagged onto two or three of the other neighborhoods for the sole purpose of bolstering their voting numbers,” she said.

Several speakers also raised concerns with the process of determining district boundaries and a majority of councilmembers seemed interested in turning to an independent redistricting commission in 2020 when the process repeats itself. 

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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