Although Solvang held the first of five public hearings on Aug. 9 about how the city will be split up for by-district elections, city elected officials were only clear about one thing: They don’t like it.
“It just seems complicated,” City Councilmember Robert Clarke said during the Aug. 9 meeting. “This attorney out of Malibu, he’s running around suing everybody, and I don’t want to spend a dime on it … so obviously we’re going to have to do this. … It just seems weird for such a small town.”
Last summer, the Solvang City Council voted to transition from at-large to by-district City Council elections after receiving a letter from Malibu-based attorney Kevin Schenkman, who has sent similar letters to other cities and said he represents the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and its members who live in Solvang. Schenkman claimed that the city’s at-large voting system is racially biased and that Latinos, who make up almost 30 percent of the city’s population, have been historically underrepresented on the governing body.
The city hired the National Demographic Corporation, which has done similar work with other California cities, including Buellton, to help them transition. Corporation Consultant Daniel Phillips told the council that the California Voting Rights Act, which was written to encourage by-district elections, made it easier for cities like Solvang to be held liable for “racially polarized voting.”
Hundreds of jurisdictions across the state have gone to court over the matter and settled, with more than $16 million in total settlements and awards so far. Not one jurisdiction has won a case, Phillips said.
He explained that the city needs to be split up into four districts, one per City Council member. And it needs to follow federal and state laws to draw districts that are equal in population, don’t dilute certain protected classes (such as Latinos), aren’t racially gerrymandered, are contiguous, avoid splitting up neighborhoods or communities of interest, are compact, have identifiable boundaries, and don’t favor or discriminate against a political party.
“The idea of these state and federal criteria that I’ve lined out, the intent is to reduce gerrymandering,” Phillips said. “To draw districts that are inherently fair.”
With an estimated population of 6,000 residents, Solvang would be split into districts with about 1,500 people per district, he said.
“ … 23 percent of the city’s voting eligible population is Hispanic, and most of the remainder is white,” Phillips said, adding later that the majority of that demographic is concentrated within the central commercial area of Solvang in higher density housing.
The questions that the city needs to answer before drawing the districts include those about where existing neighborhoods and their boundaries are, where communities of interest are, and whether those areas would benefit from being included in a single district.
Mayor Charlie Uhrig said that Solvang isn’t a very large community with some pockets of voters of color.
“It seems so ridiculous to me to have to break this down by race,” he said.
City Attorney Dave Fleishman said that the purpose of by-district elections is to make the City Council more representative of the city it presides over.
“In practice, it’s more messy than that,” Fleishman said.
The city’s next by-district hearing is Aug. 23, where it will take more public comment from residents about where district lines should be drawn.
This article appears in Aug 12-19, 2021.