As of Feb. 11, several Santa Maria-focused community groups started gathering signatures in support of placing an initiative on the November ballot that would require City Council members to be elected by districts.
The Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) is a lead agency on the campaign. The petition calls for council members to be elected within four districts rather than the city as a whole. Campaign organizers need to collect 2,700 signatures—10 percent of registered voters in Santa Maria—by April 11 to get the initiative on the ballot.
CAUSE spokesperson Hazel Davalos said it’s something they’ve been working on for a while, and the recent debate over putting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Santa Maria coincided with the petition drive.
“It definitely fired people up,” Davalos said. “We’ve been planning this for a year … we want a voice for every neighborhood.”
Davalos said the recent decisions made by the Santa Maria City Council and the city’s planning commission to move forward with development of an immigration enforcement center despite protests is just one example of the inadequate representation in the city’s governing bodies.
A dispute over putting an SA Recycling plant in the middle of town and the approval of oil drilling in Area 9—a plot of land near residential areas within Santa Maria’s city limits—are two other instances when the City Council didn’t listen to community members, Davalos said.
A statement released by CAUSE said that City Council members are usually residents of more affluent areas of the city and that many cities in California are facing lawsuits for having at-large elections that lead to underrepresentation of minority voters.
The city has been sued over the matter in the past, and the federal court ruled in the city’s favor. City Council member Terri Zuniga said one of her concerns about the current petition is the potential for another lawsuit, which could be costly for the city.
Zuniga added that she’s not sure an off-presidential-election year is the best timing to get voter turnout on an issue like this, or that four different districts could produce candidates.
“We can hardly find one person to run for council,” she said.
Battling for district needs and serving the constituencies of four districts, rather than those of the city as a whole could cause more “dissension than already exists” on the council, she said.
“It’s not really something I’m supporting right now because I don’t have all the information I need at the moment, and I have a laundry list of concerns,” Zuniga said. “I have expressed my concerns to the petition’s organizers, and I just have to do more research.”
This article appears in Feb 20-27, 2014.
