The last meeting held by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors (BOS) regarding modification of redistricting maps based on the recent Census, was Thursday December 2, 2021.  The Agenda called for a presentation of the maps followed by Public Discussion and a vote by the Supervisors.  Present were District 1 – David Haubert, District 2 – Richard Valle, District 3 – David Brown, and District 4 – Nate Miley.  Keith Carson, District 5, was not present due to a conflicting meeting.

First, viewers were shown the four maps submitted by the public accompanied by a description and discussion.  This transitioned to working with the interactive maps – A1, A2, A3, and their visualization counterpart maps. We saw how changing district boundaries could alter the balance of population among the county’s districts.  The law says that a district’s population can not be balanced to more than 5.0% higher than the others.  A table of racial balance was checked to see that all counties were similarly grouped.

The BOS began their comments and questioning.  Miley felt that Hayward should not be split, while he saw Oakland as good with three supervisors.  Haubert particularly did not want to split Dublin.  Valle saw visualization A1 as the most equitable since every district’s population deviated near 1.0%.  Brown spent time with boundaries for district 3 so as to not split the COI groups.  Communities of Consideration (COI) are important in the consideration and are defined by law. (Election Code Section 2150).

Much of the Public Comment reflected concern for keeping the Tri-Valley cities together. The Mayor of Livermore spoke as did numerous citizens of Pleasanton. The splitting of Dublin was also discussed with objections. A fair number of people added a word or two, including LWVBAE to advocate for an independent citizen’s commission to oversee the preparations for this complex redistricting project which occurs every ten years along with the Census.

–Christine Wenrich