The Votes Are In!
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Education Oct 22, 2021
Photo courtesy of @CD6Nury/Twitter
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One day after the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission submitted its recommendations for a draft map of revised council district boundaries, Council President Nury Martinez blasted the proposals, saying the drastic changes have “confused and alienated thousands.”
The commission sent its map recommendation to the City Council on Thursday night, but it did not define borders for Paul Krekorian’s District 2 and Councilwoman Nithya Raman’s District 4.
“As it stands now drastic changes were made to the map that have confused and alienated thousands and threatened to widen the divides between neighborhoods,” Martinez said in a statement Friday. “While some areas kept their assets and neighborhoods whole, poverty was concentrated in other communities that have already suffered from disinvestment and neglect for generations.”
Martinez said the council would work to ensure the map “does right by all communities and Angelenos.”
The draft map moved forward by the 21-member commission has also been criticized by Raman and Krekorian for drastically redefining their districts, and under the recommendations, one of them would end up with entirely new constituents in the west San Fernando Valley.
If they go through with their present plan, one district gets a Councilmember they never voted for, while another district loses the Councilmember they voted for just last year!
— Paul Krekorian (@PaulKrekorian) October 13, 2021
The commission drafted borders for 13 districts, but left Raman’s and Krekorian’s without labels for who would represent them.
Raman represents parts of Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Hollywood Hills, Hancock Park and Sherman Oaks, among other neighborhoods. Krekorian represents East San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, including North Hollywood, Studio City and Sun Valley.
The draft map sent to the council would have either Krekorian or Raman representing a district that encompasses parts of both their current districts — the Hollywood Hills, North Hollywood, Valley Glenn and part of Los Feliz. The other would represent an entirely new district with areas of Canoga Park, Winnetka, Reseda and Lake Balboa in the west San Fernando Valley.
The commission finalized its recommendations on Thursday evening. The council will have the chance to make changes to the map before adopting final borders for the 15 districts to go into effect on Jan. 1.
“Last night, a sharply divided Redistricting Commission approved an embarrassingly bad proposal for new Council districts that ignores the input of the public and disenfranchises half a million people,” Krekorian said on Thursday. “I am confident that the Council will respect the will of the people instead of the dealmaking of political insiders and reject this unnecessarily divisive and controversial proposal.”
He added that some commissioners “insisted on disrupting the San Fernando Valley with dramatic and unnecessary wholesale changes that effectively cancel last year’s election results in two districts.”
Raman, who was elected last year, tweeted on Oct. 5:
“Last week the L.A. City Redistricting Commission moved forward with a proposed map that effectively `erases’ our district in its current form.”
“This happened despite the fact that the minimal changes in population in L.A. show no basis whatsoever for such drastic shifts,” she added.
The Redistricting Commission uses data from the U.S. Census to update the city’s districts, with each council member getting about 26,000 people to represent.
