As we wrote yesterday, discussion at tonight’s meeting of the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission will focus largely on two new draft redistricting maps submitted earlier this week:
Draft Plan K2 significantly restructures several council districts in our part of the city, acknowledges local requests to keep the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council area united in a single council district, and moves the Greater Wilshire area into a district to the west with more similar communities of interest.
Draft Plan L outlines a much more traditionally-located version of what would likely be CD 4, keeps the GWNC area largely (but not fully) intact in that district, includes several renter-heavy neighborhoods such as Thai Town, Historic Filipinotown, Los Feliz and Silverlake, and adds a newly united (and also renter-heavy) Koreatown area to the grouping.
But those two plans are very different, and even among those who currently favor one plan or another, the devil is definitely in the details.
For example, while the Hancock Park Homeowners Association has been working hard to rally neighbors to speak in favor of Draft Plan K2 in public comments at tonight’s meeting (both because it unites the full GWNC area, and because it moves the whole area into what would likely be CD5, with other similar communities of interest), at least a couple of adjacent organizations are not quite so enthusiastic yet.
First, the Mid City West Neighborhood Council is objecting to a small mapping adjustment made during the commission’s last meeting on Monday, which moved a small strip at the NC’s northern edge from District J, where the rest of the MCWNC is located, to District G, as shown below. The move was made by the redistricting commissioners to compensate for a slight population imbalance created by another map adjustment that night, but the MCWNC is asking that the split be undone, and that the strip in question be moved back to District J, so the full MCWNC area will be united (as it previously requested) in a single city council district.
Also, the Miracle Mile Residential Association has requested a similar adjustment after noting that Draft Plan K2 leaves part of the Miracle Mile residential area, bordered by Olympic and San Vincente, and La Brea and Hauser, out of District J, where the rest of Miracle Mile is located, and includes it in District H (likely CD 10) instead.
Meanwhile, while local neighborhoods all over the city are similarly digging into the new maps’ fine points, and gearing up to speak up at tonight’s meeting about their specific trees in the very large forest, the LA Times this morning took a more 10,000-foot view of the landscape, and pointed out that Draft Plan K2 would create “extreme makeovers” of the districts of at least two current city council members, CD 4’s Nithya Raman and CD 2’s Paul Krikorian, significantly changing not only boundaries, but the character of their current districts. According to the Times:
“If the commission approves the K2 draft map, roughly three-fourths of the population in Raman’s district would be shifted to the districts of other council members, according to an analysis prepared by her office.
The changes could be even more dramatic for Councilman Paul Krekorian, a veteran politician based in the East Valley.
Under the draft map, Krekorian’s entire district would be moved into neighborhoods he does not currently represent — Winnetka, Lake Balboa and Canoga Park, among others. That would require Krekorian to acquaint himself with those communities’ resources, neighborhood groups and political issues.”
In both cases, under Draft Plan K2, the representatives would be separated from the constituencies that were most responsible for their election, which could significantly change their relationships with their constituents, and perhaps their ability to be reelected in those districts.
In the current CD 4, in particular, Raman was largely elected by voters in areas with high percentages of renters, and Redistricting Commissioner Alexandra Suh, who was appointed by Raman, has argued at several redistricting meetings that the current Plan K2 (and its predecessors Draft Plan K and Draft Plan K Corrected) disenfranchise and dilute the voices of large swaths of renters by splitting neighborhoods such as Koreatown, Thai Town, Historic Filipinotown, Los Feliz, and Silverlake into separate city council districts.
Or, as Raman put it in a statement to the Times, which was reiterated by her staff in an email to the Buzz today, “This map erases the results of an election and denies Angelenos the representation they voted for less than a year ago.”
So Suh has been advocating at the most recent redistricting meetings for a plan – like Draft Plan L – which would keep those renter-heavy areas together in what would likely become the new CD4. And the issue seems to have galvanized some new voices in the overall redistricting discussion. For example, GroundGameLA, one of several progressive political groups that helped elect Raman, posted a Twitter message today calling Draft Plan K “gerrymandering,” and charging that “an unelected commission is trying to take away 73% of our district.” The group is urging its members to turn out in force tonight to lobby in favor of Draft Plan L, which would retain the previous core of CD 4, and – with the addition of a united Koreatown area – create a new district even more strongly focused on renters than in the past.
Which means the stage is set for a big discussion tonight, with both macro and and extremely micro details in play. The Redistricting Commission will discuss both Draft Plans K2 and L at tonight’s meeting, will look at specific boundary changes suggested both by commissioners and members of the public, and will attempt to choose a final one or two draft maps (from all that have been submitted so far) to present to the public for further input at a new series of four more public meetings in October. (At the end of October, the commission will then recommend a single final map to the City Council, where the whole review, comment, and horse trading process will begin anew before a final map is adopted in December, and the new districts go into effect in January.)
If you would like to weigh in on any facet of the redistricting discussion, for or against any of the mapping plans submitted so far, or on any specific details of any of the mapping plans, you can:
- Queue up to speak at tonight’s Zoom meeting, starting at 5 p.m.
- Send a written comment to [email protected]
- Or draw and submit your own map – for a specific community of interest, part of a community, or the city at large – using the city’s public mapping tool at https://districtr.org/plan
[This story was updated after its initial publication to add the statement from City Councilmember Nithya Raman.]
