Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this special meeting of the Rancho Cordova
City Council. We're going to ask our city clerk to call the roll. Councilmember Donald Terry is
absent. Councilmember Gatewood will be joining us momentarily. This meeting is also noticed at
another location you'll notice on the agenda at the City Hall in Auburn which is where Council
Member Gaitwood will be joining us. Council Member Pulapati, Vice Mayor Sander, Mayor
Butch. Here, thank you very much.
It doesn't say
so on the agenda but we are going to start our meeting tonight with the Pledge of Allegiance.
And in place of an invocation, we will have a moment of heartfelt silence for the people
in Maui who are struggling with the fires that they had just like Northern California has
experienced in Paradise and Caldor Fire.
So if you would rise, please, Michael Yearwood will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
All
right.
Salute, everybody.
Let's be up.
of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible
with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you all.
And a moment of silence.
Thank you.
Please be seated.
Stacy, would you read the technical data, please?
Yes.
So, first of all, I'd like everybody to know that tonight's meeting is being recorded
And it will be available on the city's website within 48 hours of adjournment of this meeting.
And I would also like to talk through the process for providing public comment before we move on to the first item on our agenda at a special meeting, which is what we're having tonight.
citizens wishing to address the Council for any matter on the agenda may do so at the time that
the matter is being discussed. Under the provisions of the California Government Code, the City Council
is prohibited from discussing or taking action on any item, not on the agenda.
To make a public comment, you may submit a speaker card to the City Clerk and the
speaker cards are in the back of the Council chambers. If you are joining us via Zoom and
And then you would like to make a public comment. You are welcome to use the raise hand feature at the bottom of the screen. If you are participating by telephone and you would like to submit a public comment you can press a strict and the number nine to raise your hand.
And for those who are participating by zoom or telephone please wait to be called upon by the city clerk.
We have two items on our agenda this evening, and you'll notice if you have an agenda or there's copies in the back of the room, those are items under 3.1 and 6.1, which is a closed session item.
So we'll be taking public comment at the time that those two items are being heard.
I'd also like to introduce translators this evening. We have translators here who will be translating in both Russian and Spanish, and I would like them to come up to the podium and introduce themselves.
So if anybody is here and needs translation services, they know who to connect with.
Hello, everyone. Good evening. My name is Tatyana Banderchuk. I'm a Ukrainian and Russian interpreter.
If anyone needs interpretation, please go to the table at the end of the room.
Hello, my name is Seresely Viera. I'm a Spanish interpreter.
Si Ali necesita servicios de interpretación en español, por favor se acerca la mesa de atrás. Gracias.
Again, ladies, welcome. Thank you so much.
Okay, the items first item on the agenda tonight is so do you want me to make the public comment announcement or do you want if you've covered it.
I covered it. Okay, great. Go ahead. All right, we're going to go ahead and discuss the first item item 3.1 the subject is a public hearing requesting public input regarding the composition of potential council election districts.
districts, as the city is working to transition from at large to district-based elections for
city council members, and possible continued discussion with and direction to staff and
consultants regarding the number of districts, including whether or not to transition from
an appointed mayor to a directly elected mayor.
So we're going to turn this over to staff.
So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to start Mayor Budge.
Go ahead. So there's a number of speakers tonight. I am the first of those. And then we will transition to our city attorney Adam Lindgren, Maria Chacon-Nistead, our communications director, and Shalice Tilton, who is our consultant this evening.
Tonight's meeting is to provide education and it's to receive public comment regarding
the composition of potential council election districts as the city is working to transition
from an at-large election system to a district-based election system.
Staff would like to highlight what initiated this request for this transition and the
timeline for the process, where we are in this process. And we'd like to be able to
share with you the resources that are available to the public. The city would also like to
be able to gather input to identify the neighborhoods, which will help in the mapping process to
be able to identify the districts. Also, the city council will need to determine the
number of districts and to decide whether or not, as I mentioned earlier in the title,
to transition from an appointed mayor to a directly elected mayor.
So we're going to go ahead and we're going to start with one of the presentations that we shared at the Community Forum, which was on Thursday last week, April or August 10th.
And some of you might not have been able to be there, so we do want to help catch you all up as to where we are in this process and continue to share information with you.
This presentation was recorded and it is also available on the city's website. And so if you were not able to join us, then you will be able to watch it from there.
The presentation that was shared on Thursday last week, August 10th, a couple of goals that we shared were with regards to providing key background information about district based elections and there was a demonstration of the mapping tool.
The agenda for that evening was to discuss a threat of litigation that we had received and what some of those options are for the city.
We talked about the process of a resolution of intent that the council did pass and adopt.
We talked about the timeline that was required by law, public hearings and community forums that the city is conducting, community outreach and information that is available related to this topic.
And there was a demonstration of the mapping tool and chelise tilton tonight will highlight that briefly for us as well.
As we move forward to the next slide,
so on June 7, 2023, the city did receive a letter
from Attorney Scott J. Rafferty, and he asserted that the at-large election system violates
the California Voting Rights Act, and threatens litigation if the city does not transition
voluntarily to a district-based election system.
12 days later, on June 19th, the city council did meet with staff in a closed session,
and that is what took place throughout the month of June.
Also, during that time, we engaged services with a professional demographer,
and Chalice is here tonight representing National Demographics Corporation,
And she will be here to share some information with us as well.
So the city has a couple of options. One is to proceed with the conversion process.
And we have started that.
And I'll talk about that on the next slide.
We also, number two, cannot proceed with the conversion process.
We can assume a risk of a lawsuit, the legal fees that are associated with that.
And we can have the court determine what those districts might be.
Next slide.
On July 17th, the city council did meet in a public setting and a council meeting.
And there was a public discussion with regards to the potential transition from an at large to a district based election system.
The City Council at that time did pass a resolution of intent declaring the city's intention to work through this process and to transition to district-based elections.
Since that time, the City Council has also had a couple of other meetings. One was on August 7th. There was a public hearing that was held, and there was a community forum that was held last week as well.
I can share some of those results with you as what transpired during those meetings, and then I will go ahead and I will turn it over to City Attorney Adam Lindgren to talk about the timeline.
At the City Council meeting last week on August 7th, the City Council did provide direction to help narrow down the number of potential districts down to the following options.
So districts, the numbers that they discussed in open session that also is available to the public.
And you can hear that video online was five districts with a rotating council appointed mayor, six districts with an elected mayor, or seven districts with a rotating council appointed mayor.
We did have a community forum last week on August 10th related to this topic that brought nearly 50 people together here at Rancho Cordova City Hall.
And in a dot exercise that was conducted with those that were in attendance, we received some of the following input as to what they would like to see with regards to the number of districts.
For five council districts with a rotating mayor, 24 members of the public expressed interest.
For six council districts with an at-large elected mayor, four members of the public expressed interest.
And for council districts, for seven council districts with a rotating mayor, two members of the public expressed interest at that meeting.
And so tonight is our second public hearing in this process, and I'm going to turn it over to our city attorney Adam Lindgren to talk through that timeline.
Thank you. Thank you, Stacy. Again, thank you, Mayor, Council, members of the community. Very briefly, the timeline required.
My law is driven, again, by the California Voting Rights Act and we did talk at the workshop
and I would certainly reiterate again here today that the city is taking this process incredibly
seriously and with, and trying to do it in a way that is earnest and diligent and that
that more than meets the requirements of law.
We talked at the workshop about how this is grounded in the recognition by the state that
minority votes were potentially being diluted by at-large elections, and more importantly
and even more historically, rather, it's grounded in the civil rights laws and federal laws
rooted in the Constitution that are aimed at protecting the rights of all voters.
Please pick up.
Sure. I'm sorry. Sure.
And so, again, the law that we're in the process of working through and complying with the
partition pursuant to is an important law that really addresses the rights of, is intended
to address the rights of voters in the state and is rooted in the civil rights movement
of and civil rights laws and a history of efforts to address those issues at the federal level
and then to further address them at the state level. So we, again, the council gave us direction
to begin the process of complying with the petition filed by Mr. Rafferty and we complied
with the 45-day period in which to express the Council expressed its intention to proceed
forward with this process and we're now in the 90-day period and holding those four hearings
and going through the process of soliciting public input before the Council turns to the
issue of discussing itself the maps and deciding upon the maps. Next slide.
We have talked at length already in our prior public hearing in the postcards that have gone out to the council, to the entire community, and we will address in different ways this timeline and schedule again and again so that we hope that the public will clearly understand the timeline and the process.
again, this is driven by the structure of state law and our intention to help the council be in a
position to comply with the petition that Mr. Rafferty filed on behalf of residents in the community
within the timeline that it provides. So this schedule has been created in an attempt to
to maximize opportunities for public input and discussion within that timeframe, and
we are proceeding forward through it. And right now, as the clerk said, in our second
public hearing in that number 4 August 2023 step in this process, with that I'll turn
it over to my colleague Maria to continue our presentation.
Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Council members, members of the community.
Maria Chaconista, Communications and Public Affairs Director.
I will be talking primarily about the public hearings and community forums themselves,
as well as how we, as a city and our city team, our work and our continuing to work
to get the word out to the community. As you can see here, we will be holding a number
of public hearings and community forums, as my colleagues have mentioned. The law does
require that we hold at least four public hearings for the public to provide input.
The city will be holding five public hearings and two community forums for a total of
seven public hearings. Those of you who are participating may get tired of coming
to City Hall, but we hope you still choose to do so.
Each of the seven meetings will have translators for both our Spanish and Russian-speaking guests.
And you can see here we have already met on August 7th and August 10th.
Today is the 14th, and then we have meetings on August 29th, the 30th, the 18th, and
the 2nd.
Each of these meetings have a specific purpose according to the way that this process
process works and so that information is here on the city website as well as in the postcard that you received and also in flyers that have been distributed and I'll talk about that moment.
And if I may, I think you inadvertently the second time you said it said seven hearings and I think you meant seven meetings seven meetings sorry about that seven meetings.
Thank you, Adam.
So our community outreach, the goals of it have been to reach the community
in both a broad and a targeted way and to use channels where we can meet residents where
they are. And so no one way of reaching people was going to really work except for our city-wide
postcard. And as I explained, and I see a few familiar faces in the room here tonight,
I explained at the community forum on Thursday, it takes quite a bit of time and effort to get
a citywide postcard produced, printed to the mailhouse and actually to the post office,
and then into your mailbox. It actually takes about three weeks. We usually allow
four-week period, time period, so that there is a week where people can go to their mailboxes
And actually get the postcards so we knew that it was going to we were going to be working by the hair of our chinny chin chin to get it into the mailboxes and received by folks.
However, we decided to do that because there are seven meetings.
And we wanted to make sure that that you knew about all of the meetings so our understanding is that some people did receive it on Friday some people received it on Saturday some people received on Monday which was the first day of the
hearing. For that reason, we did a broad distribution using some of our digital tools. Those include
our news alerts, which go directly into your inbox, as well as Rancho Cordova News. A little
plug for our digital newsletters here. If you haven't signed up for them, it's very
easy to do so. You just go to cityof RanchoCordova.org and you simply add your email address
and we will send you city news and city events three times a month.
In addition to that, we are on a regular basis prior to each of the meetings putting it on
social media.
We do have several social media channels.
We've got Facebook, Instagram, the channel formerly known as Twitter, which is now
X, and Nextdoor.
We do have a grapevine article that came out on Friday and an ad and public hearing
notices.
We also have a SACB public hearing notice that went in, but I think the biggest effort really
is going into some grassroots, broad community outreach to drive folks to our meetings.
And that is flyers to our diverse community and then flyers to our community partners.
And so these have gone far and wide. They're all over town at this point.
In fact, they're in Takarias now. I just dropped off some this morning.
And so we're continuing to distribute them. They are at the Folsom Community Partnership,
Folsom Cordova Community Partnership. We took out an ad and paid social media on Russian-American media
to reach our Russian-speaking population.
We do have these in Spanish-language businesses.
They're at KP, Viva, Sunrise Indian Market,
Mi Rancho, Halal Mart Market, and Afghan Supermarket.
In addition to that, and I just wanted to,
it's not on the screen, but we did some updated outreach
toward the end of last week.
And I want to thank our partners over at the
the Cordova Recreation and Park District for putting it in all of their public centers.
As I mentioned, we have them in some taquerias around town.
We have given them to apartment complex managers and some of our in-language communities.
Our faith community has really stepped up and is also distributing it to their folks.
Rotary and the Elks Lodge is also providing it to their membership.
And we also have it, we will have it at the Rancho Cordova Library. It's not there yet, but it is at the Folsom Lake College Rancho Cordova Center, Ukrainian House, and we'll be getting it to the post office as well.
In addition to that, we have provided flyers to our community partners like the Cordova Community Council, our Chamber, the Explorer Program, Children's Museum, and then all of our school districts.
And we I do want to thank them for sending it out to their membership. So we literally is has gone out to, you know, in every way that we can think of but if you can think of a way that we haven't thought of we are very open to that feedback.
In addition to that, one of the mainstays of getting the word out is making sure that there is a hub of information where everyone can go, and it's a one stop shop for all of the district in information and that is at the city website city branch of Cordova.org forward slash districts.
I'm going to take just a few minutes and walk you through where you can find the information. If I can borrow your.
Stephanie.
So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to walk you all through the ways
in which you can get to the district website as well as where all of the information can
be found. This was very helpful on Thursday when we had our community forum, got a lot
of positive feedback on it, so you can bear with me. I will drive this train and show
you all where you can find the information. Thank you, Persephone.
So this is our city
website, city RanchoCordova.org. You can get directly to the district page if you type
in up here, forward slash districts. There's several ways that you can get to it from
the city website. If you go to the residents tab, you can go to community topics and
you can scroll down here to district-based elections. And if you click there, it'll
take you to the district page. You can also find it.
If you scroll down, we have a fixed
button here on the home page where you can find it. So if you're not looking under residents
and community topics, you can find it right here on the home page. It's also in our
spotlight and it is also on our news page. So several ways to find it on our,
if
home page. So now we're on the district elections web page and all of the information, the feedback
that we've been getting from the community is what if I miss a meeting? What happens then?
Am I out of the loop? Will I not know what's going on? And the answer is simply come to this
page and all of the information will be there for you including videotapes of the meetings
and all of the information that we're providing this evening. So it includes why is this
change occurring, gives you a brief description, and then you can read the letter there. What's the
timeline? You can read the resolution here. The timeline that we just went over is also right here.
How to participate. So you can go to any number of pages on this site. You can go to the schedule
page, which I'm going to go to right now and show you that each of the meetings is
listed here and then over to your right, you can click on any of the background information
and get that.
You can get the agendas, the notice, the presentation, the recording for any of the
meetings that have occurred.
So if
you scroll down further, you will find the seven meetings listed right here and
And you also have links to public transportation if you would like to use that to get to City Hall, and then we also have the postcards here in English, Russian, and Spanish.
So, I think everyone here today is real interested in finding out a little bit more about the maps and the mapping tool. So I'm going to hand it over to Charlize to go over that information for you.
And as we transition, so I would just say one other quick thing about the outreach.
Again, we're very pleased to have NBC here.
And they are one of the most respected and prolific consultants for that have helped other communities make this transition throughout the state.
And when we were presented with their package of tools to engage in public outreach and to do this mapping process, the staff and the city manager recommended that the city use all of them.
And, and beyond using all of their, their, their regular tools plus their supplemental tools that they recommended including the mapping tools some of the mapping tools you'll hear about in just a minute.
Thank you.
And we also asked for additional services, including in-person attendance at all of these
meetings and certainly looked to make sure that we were fully utilizing all of the services
for outreach that they provide to even their most diligent clients.
Thank you. We're going to go ahead and get started with the legal part of it, going
through the same presentation, largely the same that you saw on August 7th. And that
is by design because the law requires that we hold two public hearings before the council
can start to deliberate and discuss bounce. So this is information that was presented on August 7
and then if we have time and if it pleases the council we can just demo some of the tools a little
bit that Maria already showed you how to navigate to.
So when we're talking elections systems,
the city currently has an out-large system. Other terminology you'll hear are from district
district or by district or residence districts. That simply means that the city would go
ahead and draw districts, but and and there would be a candidate from who resides in each
of those districts, but everyone at large votes for that candidate. The problems with
an at large and a from district or residence district is that you would still be subject
potentially to a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit. So the only system that would
resolve the city from being subjected to litigation under the CVRA is a by-district system and
that is the reason why the council adopted its resolution of intention to pursue that
by-district path. In that case, so there will be a certain number of districts that
are drawn. The candidate must be residing that district and only voters within that
district who vote on that particular candidate.
Some things that are not included, although
they do come up and we try to keep the conversation focused on districts, our term limits, council pay,
full-time versus part-time council, and strong mayor, a form of government.
Strong mayor is only available for charter cities and in that case a charter city
could have a strong mayor. The strong mayor would act in a more administrative role and have
administrative duties. There's usually only for cities over 500,000 that pursue that path
there's only a handful in California. You will hear directly elected mayor and you will hear the
term rotating mayor which is what we currently have, where rotating mayor, one of the council
members is selected every year to serve in that capacity. Directly elected mayor, it would be just
what it sounds like to be directly elected. They have no more power or no more responsibility
than what they currently have. So they would currently your mayor has certain duties that
would largely not change if you had a directly elected mayor. The council as your city clerk
already mentioned has narrowed it down to the number of districts to be either five, six or seven.
So it would be only under a six district plan if that were if that a six district plan were
selected that you would have a directly elected mayor. In that case, that person could reside
anywhere in the city and would be voted upon by all members of the city.
Mr. Lingorn already mentioned the California Voting Rights Act. That's why we are here. The
California Voting Rights Act was predicated on the Federal Voting Rights Act. However,
However, it removed two of the tests that jurisdictions must fail in order to face litigation.
And so largely what we have is the California Boarding Rights Act liability is now determined
if there is a presence of racially polarized voting.
California Binding Rights Act has actually been in effect now for over 20 years.
You can see the impact that it has had on jurisdictions financially. Those that have felt that there may not be racial polarized voting and decided to pursue the path of trying to challenge a lawsuit.
Or prior to 2008, you really didn't have a choice to voluntarily convert. You were just prior to 2008, you were just served with a lawsuit and you had no choice but to enter into litigation.
So now that the law has changed and as your city attorney has spelled out, we do have this safe harbor period where the city can avoid these expensive lawsuits and settlements and voluntarily choose to go to voting districts and save that legal expense.
This is just another view of the timeline was already explained to you by Maria.
We are now in the second hearing number two, the official public hearing.
We've already held one community forum in addition to the public hearing that was held on August 7th.
We are asking the public to submit their maps to us by August 18th.
That will give us enough time to get them produced and posted.
The law requires we post them seven days in advance before you consider them at the next hearing on August 29th.
That will be the first time that the council can actually discuss draft maps.
So the council will be seeing the maps the same time as the public sees the maps.
NDC has been tasked with producing all the maps that have been submitted.
They will all be presented to the council in uniform, one uniform format, and all the
maps will be treated equally.
So the first time the council will see the maps, at the same time that the public
we'll see the maps and then we'll deliberate on the maps on August 29th. From then we will have
an additional community forum. Hopefully the council will give us some direction on at least
maybe narrowing down some maps on that August 29th meeting. We'll have our community forum
on August 30th to kind of hone in on those focus maps and then asking for any revisions
to those focus maps. And at the next time that the council will be deliberating on the
final maps will be on September 18th with final selection and adoption, ultimate adoption on
October 2nd. All of this is as Maria pointed out on the city's website.
There are some rules that
we must follow when we draw the maps. The first are the federal laws. The federal laws require
the equal population in each of the districts, whether it's five, six, or seven.
When we talk
Based on, we must use the numbers from the 2020 census.
We recognize there have been new residences built since to the 2020 census.
There could be some problems with possible undercounting.
All those issues are set aside, and we must use the numbers that are provided by the
federal census for this purpose.
We also must abide by the Federal Voting Rights Act, and we cannot draw boundaries
in a way that would dilute the voting strength of our protected class groups and no racial
gerrymandering. So what that means is why waste can be a consideration it cannot be the
predominant or only consideration when you're drawing a map.
California has some criteria
for cities to follow. The city is following those and we will be as NDC consultants we
will point out to the city if we see that there are any maps that are submitted that
may not meet these criteria. Geographically continuous, so each of there must just be
one single solid border for each district. Undivided neighborhoods and communities of
interests, meaning that we want to identify and that's one of the big reasons for this
public caring is you want to hear from the community what those neighborhoods are,
what those communities of interest are so they can be respected. We try for easily
easily identifiable boundaries using major streets, canals, railroads, something you
can, I generally tell my clients if you can describe it, then you've done a pretty good
job at meeting easily identified boundaries.
And then compactness, and compactness, especially when you have odd shaped cities, compactness
isn't always just mean a square block, square blocked map, and sometimes compactness can
look very different depending on the kind of geographic layout of your city and where the
population lies. But what we don't want to do is bypass one group of residents or one group of
people to get to a more distant group of like-minded people. And we can't draw boundaries that favor
or discriminate against political party. Once we've met the federal and state laws,
then we can look at the other traditional principles such as respecting footage choices
and continuity in office, and we can slightly adjust for future growth.
But we do have a limitation when I'm talking about equal population.
They don't need to be exactly equal, but they cannot be no more than a 10% difference
between the least populated district and the greatest populated district.
So when we're talking for counting for future population growth, you can slightly underpopulated district, but you still need to be within that 10% range between the least populated and the greatest populated.
So it's only slight possibility of underpopulated in a district.
When we're with each of the maps that are submitted will be given a demographic summary. So we'll be producing the map in a uniform format and then we'll be also providing various demographic information for each of the districts.
So what you'll see is information on total population, citizen voting age population.
We do have other information on some socioeconomic statistics and what it will be provided for each of the districts.
So if you're submitting a five district math, they'll actually have five separate columns for each of the districts that shows how each of the district is balancing out.
When we're talking about the voting strength of a protected class group, we will look at the citizen voting age population.
That's what the courts look out when they see if a map has been drawn that may dilute the voting strength of our citizen voting age population.
So those are U.S. citizens of 18 years of age and older, not necessarily registered to vote but eligible to vote.
Since we are going forward right at this moment, and that may change later today, but with either five, six, or seven, we give you the ideal population for each of the districts.
And you'll see it on the left-hand side. You'll see it throughout the tools.
But because the population is 79,643 as of the 2020 census, then each of, if you have a five-district plan, you'll want 15,929.
Is your ideal population, give or take a few percentages.
Six, for a six-district plan, 13,274 and a seven-district plan, 11,378.
When
we are looking to draw maps that give consideration to our protected class concentrations,
we do provide some maps that provide an indication of where those particular class groups reside.
We really see some concentration of our Asian American population concentrated around Stone Creek, Tuscany Park, and around Anatolia.
We don't necessarily have any strong, strongly geographic concentrated areas of our Latino or African American community.
So it's, in some jurisdictions it's very obvious and it's just not as obvious when you're looking at these concentration maps.
But you know your neighborhoods.
So what we're really hoping to hear, and I did get a chance to view your previous other two meetings, and we heard a lot of talk about the five, six or seven, we heard a lot of talk about wanting to have diversification.
But we want to really hear about what you think to find your neighborhood, and it's very helpful if you give us some geographic boundaries.
So just as I spoke earlier about easily identifiable boundaries, think along those terms.
So when you're saying that your neighborhood should be kept together, if you can verbalize those boundaries, yes, we all have maps, but everyone has a different idea of what their neighborhood is.
So if you can give geographical boundaries and what neighborhoods may other neighborhoods, maybe adjacent neighborhoods might might want to fit with your neighborhood or not fit with your neighborhood.
All that information is really useful and that's a good use for these public hearings is for us to actually have that information.
So when we're drawing maps and evaluating maps that we have that input from you.
Beyond the geographic boundaries of your neighborhoods, we also want to hear about communities of interest. So there could there could be areas of town that share same same concerns.
Maybe they have concerns about housing or traffic or other environmental concerns.
We want to hear this as well.
So if you can tell us that a community that you align with because you shared the same commonalities,
we absolutely want to hear about this.
And if you can describe that as well in geographic terms, that helps us as we moving forward
so they make sure that those communities of interest are respected. Also, sometimes in a
community can be benefited from having more than one representative and we want to hear from that
as well. I can give an example of that as maybe a downtown area that maybe there's an
economic growth area that may benefit from having one or two council members. So the
The district boundary lines would be drawn so that there would be two districts that touch that particular area so you have more than one input.
So if there are those areas that could benefit.
We have a lot of feedback from having the maps drawn in such a way that there would be two or more districts that would touch that area. We also want to hear about that as well.
And then we already did a demo of the project website. And this is the shortcut to get to it. You saw, I think, five or six ways to get to your website.
draw RanchoCordova.org. We'll get you directly to the website page.
We have
different tools and as your city attorney mentioned the city council has
made the decision to make everything that's available available to the public
and the council it was important that they met the public at their level so
we have everything from a very basic paper tool where you don't need to
even have a computer you can just pick up a paper map from city hall
here or have one sent to you, and the population numbers are written for you on that map, so
you can actually draw and calculate the proper number of districts.
I'm going to quickly go through the tools just on paper here, and then if the council
would like me to show quickly some tools, we can do that or we can save that for the
next community forum.
On my interactive review map, it works very similar to Google Maps.
This map is live and available now. This is not a map drawing tool,
but it is a tool that you will use when you are evaluating maps,
and it's also very useful when you're drawing maps.
So when you bring up your paper map, sometimes it's difficult to know where the streets are
because we are paying attention to where the population is concentrated, so you can use this
review map in conjunction with it and what will show you where the street lines on you can zoom
in very closely. You can even type in your own address. It also will give you more information too
about census blocks. Census blocks are important. That's the smallest geographic unit that we'll
using to count population for the districts. So if you don't like our paper map and how we
kind of bunch together the population units, you can go to this map and zoom into the census
blocks and get a further breakdown of where the population lies. But we must follow the
boundaries of the census blocks. So that also kind of makes map drawing a little bit interesting.
If we had a perfectly square city with perfectly square city blocks that would not, and the population was evenly distributed, it would be very easy to understand how census blocks are drawn.
When you start drawing your maps and you want a line to go a specific way and it's not doing it for you. It's because the federal government has drawn the census block differently than what you have in mind.
That's why this interactive review map is useful because you can look at the sea though the census block is giant. It's taking up a great big area of maybe an unpopulated area or just an area that is just oddly drawn.
So sometimes it's a little frustrating, especially when you have a city as we do here with a lot of cul-de-sacs. The census blocks lines get a little funky.
So, but we must follow that census block geography so that we can attest to the accuracy of our population counts.
Once maps are drawn, they'll also be uploaded.
And we've met the deadline. So after the next deadline, the deadline for posting the maps, they will be posted also on this interactive review map.
So you'll be able to see the PDFs from the website of the maps that are drawn.
And then you can also go to the interactive review map and zoom in to maps that are submitted.
You can overlap one map on top of another.
So the interactive review map is a useful tool, and it's pretty intuitive because most of us use Google Maps.
The public participation kit is the paper map I spoke of. You can access it from the website or
pick up a hard copy here at City Hall or ask the one be sent to you. And this has population
counts by population units. Population units are created by us. They're groupings of various
census blocks.
If you don't like how it's drawn, again, you can just give us the street where
you want your line to go, you can use the interactive review map to make sure you're
following the line of a census block.
And the online map drawing tool is called Dave's redistricting app.
It's kind of a funky, simplified name.
Dave and his team were actually Microsoft veterans, so they wanted a map that was simple
for the public to use throughout the United States in the districting process.
And they came up with a really good one. And it's easy to use. It's been very popular.
It's one that has risen to the top for us as demographers, as far as the public being able to use.
And there are simple videos for you to watch on how to use it. There's also a printout on how to use it.
And you can't go wrong. So you're not going to mess up a map. So feel free to play around.
Then once you have your map, then you'll be sending it onto the city.
Can I ask you a question at this point?
So you've just shown us the map of the census blocks.
But this map has way fewer areas.
Yes.
So how do we, how do we balance the two, which is more accurate or which, which map includes everything that was on another map.
Okay, when you're talking about what you're seeing on the screen right now and the population
counts, is that what you're referring to or are you referring to the number of districts?
So you said that, no, not districts, has nothing to do with that. You said the census blocks
would be used to count population. Yes. But there were way more census blocks in that
last map. I understand. Then there are groupings here. Yeah, the way the tool works is it's
a little bit tricky. And I can, when we go to Dave's, I can demo it in more in depth.
But what you're seeing right now is what Dave's first shows you the view of precincts,
which are larger than census blocks. And it's really hard to see, but you'll see
towards the top of the screen next to the drawing tools, its precinct is highlighted. That's
the pink that's highlighted. And if you want to get to census blocks, you select blocks
and then you actually have to, what they call, shatter the precinct. So you'll start
to draw your map, you go to where you want and you click on it, it will shatter that
upper layer that's just showing the precinct numbers and it will show you all those
census blocks. So it gets a little tricky. Okay, so let's be a little more simple. So we can jump
through as well. The large one that says 96, just because it's a really big one, can we be assured,
can anybody be assured, that all of the census blocks that include, that work on that other
map included in area 96 add up to 96. Yes. Okay. So the same for 2863 in Stone Creek.
Mm-hmm. Everything that was in the census blocks in 2863 adds up to 2863. Yes.
Okay. I feel like we're talking about area 51 or something.
Mary, if it would be helpful, I did. I did. This was the subject that was discussed at some length.
You're a student comment is imagine at the, the workshop, and I think it'll come up in the demonstration, if you choose to receive the demo.
By the way, I think it was demonstrated and explained what, what she just used what she just described.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah, that was a tricky one for me at first, too.
I was like, how do I see the census blocks?
I selected census blocks, but I'm not seeing it.
You need an overlay.
Yeah, and it's an underlay.
That's the problem.
Is your census blocks, is an underlay of this precinct.
So once you click on it, it gets rid of the overlay,
and then you see that you're underlay of your census blocks.
So you get the more detail.
And what you're seeing on the street now is the precinct's
higher level of the total sum of what's underneath that. Okay. It does help when you're drawing maps
if you can select by precinct just goes faster, but then you can find two at the census block level.
Okay. Yeah, I'm with you. I feel your pain on that because that's one thing I struggled with
this long.
So tonight we will have the public hearing and then it's council's preference
whether you want me to show the demo some of the tools now or after the public hearing. Again,
we really want to hear about your neighborhoods. What are your neighborhoods? Give me those boundaries.
Any preferences on the number of districts five, six, or seven? And then questions about the
mapping tools. And then we do are hoping to get some direction from council on the number
of districts. I know that we have one council member who couldn't make it today, so I'm
not sure that you're ready to move forward, but it does help the public if they can be
focused on a certain number of districts. In the meantime, there's a typo on this page.
That should say five, six, or seven.
Isn't that right?
So last week, on August 7, the council narrowed the options to five, six, or seven.
We will get this changed on this slide.
Our apologies for that.
We'll make sure that it's five, six, or seven.
And that concludes the presentation portion of my presentation.
presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. And then, again, if you want to go ahead and
hold the public hearing, I can do the tools after or do the tools now. It's at your discretion.
What do you suggest?
Did you not go over the tools of the public workshop that you had?
Oh, yes, they went over in detail.
And this entire presentation was done last time as well and at the public meeting?
What you just saw, yes. And the tools that recording of the workshop I understand
is available on the website as well.
In the interest of time, Mayor, would it be better to go to the next steps rather than going looking at the tool again?
Staff said there were 50 people here last time.
So it sounds like the majority of people here probably have seen the demonstration.
If I recall the original account was 49, as of the start of the meeting, we don't know exactly how many stayed for it, but I do think we would probably defer to NDC.
It is really valuable to hear some of the kinds of input they asked for that are relevant to the satisfying the legal criteria of mapping and getting their input on what would satisfy those legal criteria.
So I think we would probably defer to chelise that hearing the public input, if you were to ask what you think having watched all of this process many times, is it most valuable to hear from the public now and if, if time permits to then demonstrate again that the mapping tool after that
would you make that suggestion.
Yes, and that would be the typical course.
Okay, so we'll go to public comment now.
Okay.
Great.
Stacy.
Mayor Budge, can you open the public hearing?
Yes.
Thank you.
The public hearing is open and we're going to go ahead and we're going to start with public comment.
I'll start with speaker cards for those that I have received for individuals who are in the council chambers.
And then I will go to zoom and telephone and then I will read those names that we have received written public comment for via email.
The first person that I have received a speaker card for is Joyce Rosenberg. Joyce, if you'll come forward, you'll have up to three minutes to speak.
week. Following Joyce will be Lisa Laguerre, Faiza Mugol, Joanne Ariane.
Thank you.
And
Darryl Langwell. We'll start with Joyce. Welcome, Joyce. Good evening, Mayor Budge,
council, staff. Thank you for explaining more to me. I didn't understand everything
before I came tonight, so I had less questions than I thought I'd have. However, I do have just
a couple comments. Will, I know that I'm looking beyond everything that you talked about, but
will the voting for the district representatives be in the November election of next year,
or the June election, do you have ideas about that?
So, do we want to take comments and then answer questions,
or do you want to respond to questions as we go along?
Yeah, we'll actually cap for those questions and be able to respond.
Great questions, Joyce.
We'll make a list and we'll answer those.
Everybody wants to know how long they've got to run for office.
And the other thing I wanted to ask about the last meeting, you said that there were 50 people or 49 people.
There were not very many dots on those. How many did you have, like, nine and four and two or something?
Yeah.
Total wasn't even 20. Is that right? So why are people not, I mean, I don't know why people are not, but maybe you do. Why are they not figuring out how many districts they want? It seems like a relatively simple question.
Although, when I think something is simple, obviously it's not. But that was my only, my main question because you all answered everything else I had thought of before I came. So thank you very much.
Super. Thank you, Joyce. Lisa,
good evening.
Good evening. I've actually been on the mapping tool.
So I just want to give you guys the benefit of my sort of inexperience on it.
The first thing is they have provided some templates for five and six and seven districts.
I use those because it sets everything up for you.
So all of your colors, all of your population counts and everything else.
The freeway is very strange on your maps.
So I really couldn't tell that that was the freeway.
But you've asked us to give you the benefit of boundaries.
use Folsom Boulevard as a big boundary. Anything north of Folsom Boulevard has kind of a different
complexion to everything south. So I used Folsom Boulevard as really a demarcator on my on
my maps. I didn't know that I could split a precinct. So I really struggled with some
of those big precincts that I think I got some pretty compact maps. So I did four maps,
two, four, five districts, and then one each or the others. And with respect to the number
of districts, my preference is five. So if anyone's keeping an informal count of what
citizen preferences. My preference is five rotating mayor and the other thing that for
me at least I would like to know is if there is going to be at any point in time a referendum
that's put to the citizens of Rancho Cordova on what we actually want formally for vote
on districts in terms of five, six, seven, I have this impression that our voice and our
preferences may not hold when it comes to the final decision for the districting that's coming up
for the election for November.
So I really would advocate for something that's formalized
that's given to the citizens of Rancho Cordova to vote.
Thanks.
Thank you, Lisa.
We're looking forward to seeing your maps.
Fiza, welcome.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Fiza Mogul.
I'm a resident in the Lincoln Village community.
I lament the lack of a city led opportunity to work in concert with delegates from each underrepresented community in order to draw district boundaries such that the intimate knowledge of their communities could be integrated and respected by our maps.
I wish to be on record as objecting, especially and specifically to the lack of robust diverse in community outreach.
to engage minority populations regarding districting and the use of the map drawing tools.
You've created barriers to participation that are discriminatory, unapproachable to many.
Flyering alone is neither due diligence nor comprehensive of an approach.
Furthermore, I object to the untimely public noticing of every resident regarding the upcoming public hearings and workshops about districting.
sent in the form of this blue postcard, which was not received by many in reasonable time
for public hearing number one, which was August 7. Considering the demographic of underrepresented
communities and the California Voting Rights Act violations that the city stands accused of,
your unwillingness to conduct robust and diverse in-community engagement outreach
is a legal liability as much as it is a missed opportunity. In spite of these
barriers to participation I have managed to create a district map that seems to
comply with the required population counts and standards of deviation which
I did submit today using the Dave mapping tool. Here I present 53 community
signatures of support for a five district split with rotating mayors
as depicted by my design map. So it looks something like this. I did show this to all of my supporters
and I have here the signatures. I have scanned them and sent them to the clerk
a little late so it's not in the binder in the back but you should be receiving those.
Yes and I have submitted justifications for my boundaries and my reasoning for the way I did
You draw my district, so you will have copies of that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Faiza.
Joanne?
I live in the area of Old Rancho, the original rancho.
I live in the Wine Streets.
And my area is bounded by Coloma Road,
Sunrise, Zinfandel, and Folsom Boulevard.
It contains Cordova High School, Mitchell and Mills Middle Schools, St. John
Vianney Church, and the Food Locker. And I think it's basically the heart of
Rancho Cordova where it started, where everything started.
It lived there since 1971, no, 1970, 1970.
So one of the things that I will have appreciated since I was here before cityhood, the struggle
that we went through to become a city, the prejudice that we experienced from the Board
of supervisors dumping any low-rent project into Rancho Cordova, because who cares? And
we have worked very hard to become an outstanding city, which is, I'm so proud to be a resident
of Rancho Cordova. And I would like us to have no more than five districts. I see the
more districts we have, the more problems we have. I look at Sacramento City and they
have their districts and each person that represents the district is just there for
within a district and they don't get very much done,
at least in my opinion.
I would vote for the five districts
because I think the rotating mayor is really important.
It's important because they serve their term.
They do what's best for the city
in conjunction with the other council members
and nobody gets too much power for too long
because they have been elected over and over again.
So that's, and I've surprised me that Linda and David
both voted for the elected mayor.
I'm not guessing any, that was a joke.
That was a joke.
But so those were my points that I wanted to make.
I have no map to show
and I probably wouldn't be smart enough to navigate
that site anyway. But I hope that you will take my thoughts into consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Joanne.
Next speaker is Daryl Langwell. Daryl will be James Garcia, Sue Garcia, Scott Rafferty, and Sam Bakhta.
Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. Daryl Langwell, Vineyards and Neighborhood.
Welcome, Gerald.
I'm glad this is finally coming about.
I mentioned it a couple of times over the years, asking whom we're going to go to districts
but did not have the wherewithal to force this, and I'm glad somebody finally has.
I'm in favor of a five-member council with a rotating mayor.
And if we are going to have another demonstration of the mapping program, please have somebody
use it that knows how to use it.
And please make sure that there are explanations
that people understand why it's being done that way.
People were told they have to use a, create a login
and a password.
It was not explained to the people why that's necessary,
but you have to do that to keep the map separate.
You can't have me overwriting somebody else's map.
So if there's more demonstrations, please make sure
that the people, that there's enough information
that people know what they're,
why they have to do what they do.
Thank you, Darryl. I know I was concerned about everybody having to do an URL, whatever that is.
I get it. Welcome, James.
Can you hear me okay.
Okay. I'm James Garcia, a member of Stone Creek neighborhood.
First off, I'd like to start off by saying that I'm a favor of a five district map design with a rotating mayor.
I stated this during the regular city council meeting last week on August 7th, and once again voiced my opinion on this choice at the first community forum on August 10th.
Listening to the others that spoke during both events last week, I have concluded that among those that have attended so far, majority has been requesting that we stick to the five district and rotating mayor.
I'm aware that more public hearings and community forums are scheduled, but it would really help
to calm the nerves of many residents to establish a rationale for you on the Council as to why
any of you are in favor of more than five districts. Could it be for self-preservation
of having an opportunity to run for a seat on a Council again?
This is the overwhelming comment I have heard from others in the city when asked
what they thought were the reasons behind the City Council considering more than
the current five council seats. As Scott Rafferty pointed out in his letter to the city,
the current makeup of the city council has three-fifths living in what is only one-fifth
of the population of the city. This does pose what would be considered an unfair representation
of the populace by many. In the event the city council ignores most of the residents
and votes to have more than five districts, including that large mayor, this too would
place an unfair advantage back at the current council as they are used to
running city-wide campaigns. During the 20th anniversary of the city concert
performance at Cordova High, one of the highlighting statements pointed out that
zip code 95742 was in the top three of the entire Sacramento region for
median income. This too adds to the fact that currently three of the city
council members live in this zip code. I wanted to share with you pictures I
I took from the community forum meeting.
Those were in attendance, were given stickers
to place how they wanted.
And again, majority wanted five.
Exactly, it was stated.
24 wanted five districts.
Four wanted the six with that large mayor
and two wanted the council with seven with the rotating.
That's only 30 people.
That means there were at least 19 people
that left that meeting because it took too long.
There was definitely an issue with the map making tool.
the person could not, and even be admitted.
Well, it's been a while.
I forgot how to do this.
So he was not prepared.
As far as other things, I think it's time.
We need change and the people want it.
They want five.
Please stop.
Is there anything else?
Thank you, James.
Sue,
welcome, Sue.
Thank you and good evening.
My name is Sue Garcia.
I have lived in Lincoln Village since 1977.
I've seen a lot of changes, but I want to go on record that I want five districts with
a rotating mayor.
Lincoln Village and a lot of the other areas do not have good representation from our council
members.
And I think it's time that each district has a representative that will support the
needs and desires of the community. So, I am hoping with me going on record that I want
five districts, like I said, and a rotating mayor, that the council members take that into
consideration and go with what the citizens want. Thank you.
Thank you, Sue. Scott?
Scott Rafferty?
Welcome, Scott.
Thank you. And I want to thank you for putting my letter on the Internet. It's not a threat
of litigation. It's just a petition to comply with the law, which the city should have complied
with when it was incorporated, frankly. And it's good law. It's not – it's good for
voters of all races who want more competitive elections. And, you know, racially polarized
There's one.
It's every
And it means that blacks and Latinos and Asians, they have different life experiences and they vote
differently than white people. That's not a bad thing. What's bad is when it doesn't get recognized,
when those voices don't have equal weight. And at large is the ultimate gerrymandering,
because you can't mount a campaign for city-wide office in a city this size if you're living
in an apartment in Corovatown, and you face all the other obstacles of being effective
politically as, you know, when I was lobbied for the 1975 Act to extend Section 5 to California.
And Don Edwards, who was the author of the original Act, told me that I was an idiot
And that I knew nothing about California. Both of those things may well have been true.
But he said, you will never have Latinos vote in California until somebody from their own neighborhood,
in their own language, knocks on the door and tells them why it matters, what they can do on the city council.
That's what this is about. But it's about all neighborhoods.
I mean, the only way anybody has ever left this council is either to run for the assembly
or to pass away or to, by virtue of Ms. Pilipati's unprecedented victory, the first challenge to
be successful in the entire history of the city.
So this isn't about incumbents.
And I take issue with three things that were said.
First of all, continuity in office?
No. This is the Voters' Rights Act. This is about communities selecting people.
It's neutral as to whether they're in common stay or go.
Secondly, the idea of splitting neighborhoods.
Well, your neighbors to the north are fighting to reverse 40 years of precedent in the Ninth Circuit.
I'm sure they spend a million dollars by now, but they're going to lose.
That's antithetical to the Voting Rights Act.
You don't split neighborhoods.
It's not better to have two representatives instead of one, because it means the high turnout
areas outvote the low turnout areas.
And finally, no concentration of blacks and Latinos in the city.
Please go to Cordova Town.
We can build one out of five districts, and that's critical in this case.
One out of five districts is 20% black and 20% Latino.
In Northern California, that is a phenomenal influence district.
One out of seven is for the dilution.
So please get this done and five districts rotating there. There's no reason for that. No reason to do anything else.
Please wrap up your comments.
Thank you.
Thank you, Scott.
Sam Bakhta,
following Sam, will be Lupe Hernandez, Helen Weyland-Bashaw, and Donnell Cummings.
Welcome, Sam.
Madam Mayor, honourable council members and my fellow neighbors, I am here to request you that you
decide on a district, how many districts as soon as possible. I am on the record, I think it's a
good idea to have five districts with the rotating mayor. The reason I'm saying that most of the
them I had five members, five council members. And the reason is that that if you see in our
neighboring cities like Folsom or Aranjok, Helgrove or so forth, most of the cities have
five districts. And as a representation, if you look at it, how many people in the
The Sacramento has almost 60,000 in their one district. Los Angeles has almost 300,000 per district.
And so on, I can go for the statistic and so forth, wherever in the state of California.
Yeah, so if we do fire and rotating members member of the million, we would have about 15,000 members members, people per district and that's not that many so fire with it by doing seven we are narrowing down we are splitting people and neighborhood and so forth in many districts.
In a way, last 20 years, the city council has done good and all members were elected at large.
And everybody feel their own city rather than just the small, small districts.
When you divide in a district, there is some negative effect as well.
And city council has done 20 years of good service.
And I am here, I'm not like other residents who are born here and what not, but I'm here
more than 15 years and this is my city.
And I believe council has done good.
This council and the past council has done good for the city as general, they elected
by every people and we are proud that the elected members for entire city, not just
by 10,000 or 15,000 people.
But we have to follow the rules and I can understand some of the concern of the certain areas that's understandable.
So I agree that we should have a five-day strike with the rotating member.
The rotating member I request is this.
This is also, think about it.
But if it's at large, we will run into similar situations, similar problems, and it would
be challenging.
Again, maybe not right now, it doesn't look like.
But 10 years, 15 years from now, we will facing that problem too.
Please wrap up your comments.
Because that would also involve minorities and ethnicity and whatnot.
or not. So this rotating measure and I request humbly that please decide on a district so
citizen can go step energy for the map. We appreciate your comments. Thank you. Thank
you. Lupe,
welcome Lupe. Good afternoon everybody, mayor, city council, staff, neighbors. I'd
to clarify for this gentleman, we're not going to go at large again. It's going to happen now
as it's happening. We're not going to revisit districtee again because the law has been broken.
We're not in compliance. And I'm trying to explain to him nobody.
It's okay, Lupi. We would like to hear your comments.
Well, my comment is that this is the misinformation and the misinterpretation of what this is
about.
I have two additional neighbors here from the White Rock area, although they're not
directly in the middle of the White Rock area.
This map, I can't even figure out which one's Folsom Boulevard and which one's Highway
50.
I know that I'm in being from Sun River or living in Sun River right now.
I can find where I'm at.
The yellow that you have drawn through here, is that Folsom Boulevard on this map, on
this handout that you gave to us at the last meeting?
We don't know, Lupi.
Nobody knows because, see, and this is the miscommunication that we're having
to deal with right now.
Now, this is my time to speak, and this is what I'm saying, is that our neighbors, our
friends, the folks that do not have access to a computer, they're not online, they're
not able to participate because they don't have the tools.
These meetings need to go in a more remote outreach fashion.
Isn't the library in Rancho Cordova?
No.
Couldn't we use it as a locale?
It does not have any public transportation.
Even having a meeting at the White Rock Community Central and White Rock Road across from White
Rock Elementary, there's a huge population there in the White Rock area that need to
be informed, educated. The postcard went out in English, even though if you say it in English,
you know, and you tell us here that you have interpreters, folks are not, you're not listening
to what the public is saying. I'm not sure if you're turning a deaf ear to what the
What the public is saying, but what are you going to say, Linda?
It does have Spanish and Russian on it.
But it's English.
It's in English.
No, no, no.
At the bottom.
Okay.
Present that on.
Servicios.
And so are these tools, and you know, there's a big disconnect because the individuals
that you're trying to reach, that we're trying to reach, that we want to engage
and bring into the discussion are not being reached.
I don't know how us to say it, you know,
but there is a terrible, there's a disconnect here.
Okay, we appreciate your comments. Would you like to express a preference for a certain
number of districts?
Five districts. Okay.
with a rotating mayor. And it's, you know, I'm just annoyed, frustrated, and just really,
really, I don't, I feel that you're not listening. Thank you, Lupe. Helen.
Hello, everyone. I'm
Helen Bashaw and I live over in the Tiffany area. Welcome, Helen. Hi. I vote for five districts
with a rotating mayor because more people running the city mean more problems. I feel
the current number can address the issues once they are spread out in the appropriate areas.
I don't necessarily believe the Folsom Boulevard should be a dividing line. I believe that if
you kept Lincoln Village with all the other communities near them, they would be in a
the service. I believe Lincoln Village should come with, you should come in the Rancho Cordova
off of Folsom Boulevard, grab the bottom half and the top half, and put that as one district.
Because I believe by bringing Lincoln Village with the people on the other side of Folsom
Boulevard, they'll get a better representation. They might get more funding that they need
by keeping all the communities that are in the same economical status in one area you're not
necessarily going to serve the people you can't we don't know how you're going to split the money
when you come to a five-way split and if you split it just on a five-way split not look at the
economical needs and the repair needs in certain communities it's going to be a disservice to
places like Lincoln Village. I also believe that the Anatola area will be better served
because I only have one person instead of three, which would be good for everybody. I do believe
that we have an outreach to the right group. You have a lot of people here that have been
here before and we're not getting to the minority areas, the areas that we had problems to with
when we hit COVID.
We didn't have computers in areas where the big need was and we didn't have parents that
could navigate the computer systems once we got something to them to be able to assist
their children.
This community should be making plans for its future generation and its future generation
is not equally funded. And I think by bringing Lincoln Village on with the
Tierra Grande area and the outside of Folsom Boulevard, they will have a better
step up. So for that, that's all I'm going to say. Thank you, Helen. Next speaker is
Donnell Cummings. Following Donnell will be Matt Cummings.
Welcome, Donnell.
Good evening, everyone. I support five districts with a rotating mayor. I am asking for the current council to please listen to the citizens who are involved in this process. I wish there were more people, but this is what we have.
The majority of people want the mayor to remain rotating. I understand how difficult and frustrating it must be for you all to have to make this decision.
several of you would likely benefit from choosing a city-wide elected mayor. Please put your personal
opinions and desires aside and listen to the people who have spoken. Maybe it's not a majority of
the population but that's a luxury we do not have time for at this point. The community had
opinions about the apartments in Capitol Village. They were built. The community had opinions
about the Civic Center, CASIS project, and the warehouses in Stone Creek. The
community has felt ignored in each and every case. Being listened to because
it's our right is not the same thing as actually taking action based on that
listening. Please choose either a five district election with a rotating
mayor. Please choose what your constituents want even if you do not
like it. The questions that I would like to add to tonight's discussion.
Is in regards to, and I think someone may have already asked this, but in regards to the election process.
I understand that those that are currently up for election will have their seat for another two years, I believe.
When that seat is up, then that's when we'll change those areas to districts.
But based on the current way that the council is spread out, at what point will we actually start changing the other people and the further out elections
questions to those districts and how is that all going to work?
And then my last question is, what happens if a seat is vacated prior to the term ending
during this process?
Is that going to be an appointment like last time?
Or is it going to be moved to a district vote?
Thank you.
Thank you, Danielle.
Great questions considering the incredible confusion in the city of Sacramento.
I'm sure that's on people's minds.
Matt, welcome.
Good
evening, Rancho Cordova residents. Thank you all for coming out tonight. My name is Matt Cummings,
resident of Capital Village, resident of Lincoln Village as well. Residents since 2001. I am here
tonight to ask three questions that I hope will help hone the conversation and provide
information to the residents who are understandably, noticeably confused about this entire process.
I do want to go back to the 45 days in the communication component because it's been a problem with the city.
Since I served as a planning commissioner.
The letter was was drafted was was sent to us in June. It took us two months to get to this point.
you've referenced that you have spread this flyer all over the place. And you know places like the
Folsom or like the Ranch Criva Library were somehow missed. This kind of public forum, in fact the
first one of these was missed by so many people because they didn't get that document, that flyer
until that Monday. And you're expecting people to come during your dinner time or something
that they don't quite understand, and then explaining it in such a poor way that you
create the confusion that you've seen for this meeting, the public gathering across the way,
and here.
It should have been released two weeks before, and I reject any notion that
you think you did the right thing because there are still places you haven't touched,
and it's a problem that has affected this city with every major decision.
Question number two, regardless of what direction the council takes, why wouldn't the two of
the three M and it's only a residence who serve on this council be forced to give up their positions
the moment the map was approved? Wouldn't this automatically place us in potential legal action?
I think it's important for all of you and the city attorney to explain that very carefully
because you're going to go a whole year with Garrett and then you're going to go two
additional years with Donald Terry and I think it's Siri. So that question needs to be answered. So we have a better understanding of the whole process.
The consultant indicated that differences between the five, six and seven council members was suggested. But is it actually law. I think it's very, very important. It might be the most important question that you're going to get.
But are those numbers, the 1592 difference, the 1327 differences, are those a matter of law or are these suggestions as was proposed during this thing?
I think you need to make that very clear tonight. I am in favor of a five council with a rotating mayor.
But the good news is there appears to be some amount of geographic similarity with some communities
that might not result in them getting broken up.
I certainly hope that doesn't happen.
But based on what this council has done in the past, I am concerned that we do not
have the mental fortitude or the stomach to handle what is coming.
Please wrap up your comments.
I strongly support the five districts and I hope that these questions help to focus
our efforts.
As we move towards the most consequential event since cityhood itself. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Matt.
I'm now going to transition to zoom. I'm going to start with the first speaker, which is Sarah. Sarah, I have unmuted you and you'll have up to three minutes to speak.
Welcome Sarah.
Good evening. Thank you all who spoke prior to me. I'm in agreement with almost all of them. I'm
in the Stone Creek neighborhood and I would also prefer a five district with a rotating mayor.
It was said at the first meeting when we discussed this that there would be some confusion if there
was a rotating mayor. And that statement really threw me because I believe we've had rotating
mayors since the city's inception, if I'm not mistaken. And there hasn't been a problem
all along for people to figure out who the mayor is. And I think it's the most efficient
way. I agree with everyone who spoke about our outreach lacking. We heard about the
the community outreach to meet the residents where they are.
And I find that to be a hypocritical statement.
I think that there is a lot of underrepresented people,
hence this lawsuit.
And those people cannot afford computers.
They can't access all of these things on the internet.
We've had people at this meeting tonight say that
they can't figure out this map.
So there needs to be a better way.
Recently, the city paid a contractor to clean all the mailboxes off in our neighborhood.
Well, why don't they pay contractors to fly or door to door?
I think that would be a great way to spend money and go door to door and pay contractors to go out and talk to these people.
And to explain this process to them and to get them to come to these meetings and hold the meetings where they are.
they can't get to City Hall. It's very difficult for them. So that's all I have.
I apologize for not being there in person tonight. I am getting ready to leave for
three months across the country and so I hope when I get back we have five
districts and no warehouses. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you Sarah.
travel safely. Thank you. The next speaker is Aneel Freddy. Aneel you've been
unmuted and you'll have up to three minutes to speak. Welcome Aneel. Good
evening mayor, council members and my fellow residents. I'm really happy to
see a lot of participation today and coming back to the my comments. See
while the idea of six districts, seven districts seems to offer a close
representation but when you combine with the realistic water turnout it really
poses a challenges for a fair representation and it's a deterrent to
our progress of the city. So I did a lot of math on this one and I believe Dr.
Sanders is very good with his data analysis. He knows the numbers game
very well so this is what I'm thinking. I think shifting to a poor council district and a directly
elected mayor's aligned with the our principle of efficient governance, clear representation and
collective progress. The reason I'm proposing this one think about a situation like the
warehouse one because a one vote can make a difference and that one vote if it is
representing the smaller district that really
deterrent to overall city progress.
So looking at the numbers,
we have only 50% water turnout in Sacramento County.
And if you look at the last election season,
Linda Burge got 13,697 votes.
If it is a smaller district,
And there is only like 6,600 residents. Yes. Can you hear me?
You're cutting in and out.
Okay, let me repeat. So my argument is not to go with the six districts,
council
districts and direct forces a challenge because the special interest groups can definitely have a lot of saying in those kind of things
because they can manipulate the water turnout and with 6,000 people they can
definitely influence, specifically with a few influence. So and this also created
narrowness within our city that's not good for the overall city progress. So I
prefer and I actively advocate for a four council districts and direct the
elected mayor. And again, I'm asking directly elected mayor, it's not like the showman thing,
but having one unified voice, which can bring all these four council districts together,
that really helps. And again, we've been on a rotating there from last 20 years. It worked
for last 20 years, but looking at another 20 years, as a city we are growing, we need
national presence. Now Dr. Sanders is representing at the League of Cities. That's really good having
a one mayor representing for four years that really shows the leadership. So again smaller districts
will pose the challenges about the disappropriate power to a smaller group of special interests.
That's not good. So please keep it for four districts or five districts. My choice is four
Thank you.
The next speaker is Jennifer
Garcia.
Jennifer, you've been unmuted
and you'll have up to three
minutes to speak.
Great.
Jennifer Garcia.
I'm Jennifer Garcia.
I live in the Stone Creek
neighborhood.
I just want to make a comment
first and then I have a
couple of things to say.
You know, if the city would
have adopted this law into
place back in 2003 when we
became a city. We want to be
having this a problem because
this was a law put into place
back into 2001. I just find it
funny that the city can't seem
to follow the law here a lot of
times. But I vote with a lot of
my neighbors that we need to
keep it to five districts and
a rotating mayor. We need to
have a well balanced mixture
of economics. We don't want
to lump together all the
poor people and separate the rich, everyone should have a chance to work together.
I think the best way to separate things is to have a natural border of the freeway.
And that's really where my vote lies.
I'm hoping that by doing this, I believe both Linda and Garrett in the 2024 elections,
your seats would be safe for whatever district you're in.
And the Anatolio really needs to have only one representative.
And so unfortunately we would lose Siri and Donald unless they choose to move at this time, probably to a different district, but I really would like to keep it to five districts and a rotating mayor.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jennifer.
Okay, I do not see any additional hands that are raised in zoom or by telephone. I do not have any other additional speaker cards for this item.
One additional item the city clerk's office did receive six public comments via email.
Those have been distributed to the city council, they have been posted on the city's website and they have been printed and are available in the back of the council chambers and a binder that says public comment.
Those came from the following individuals, James Garcia, Jim Garcia, Lisa Laguerre, Sarah Malone, Marilyn Metzger, and Belinda Rihanda.
And Mayor Butch, there's one additional hand that was just raised in Zoom.
Okay.
So that is Andrew Rush. Andrew, I'm going to go ahead and unmute you and you'll have up to three minutes to speak.
Welcome, Andrew.
Andrew
you're muted.
How about that? Great. Okay my apologies. Good evening Mayor
Budge and council members. I'm in Lincoln Village so call out to the other
Lincoln Village folks. I just came to this so I am not all that familiar with
the maps yet but I will become familiarize myself with them but just
in listening to everything, I know we're required to look at the population as the 2020 census,
but there's large areas that are unbuilt tracks of land. I'm wondering if there's a way we can
match up the zoning with these district blocks, because as you do the five, if you do five districts,
some of those districts are going to grow tremendously over the next decade or two.
And then are we going to redistrict because your your blocked populations are going to go wacky?
So that's a question. So the other thing is business districts aren't I think identified on the map obviously
If they concentrate the large business districts, which of course will center around the freeway because it has access
Those are going to have be able to raise more money than other districts that are just neighborhood
Anyway, I'm just trying to, using GIS, be able to superimpose some of that information
over the map so that people can kind of see that and try to figure out how to do if it's
five districts, seven. I do prefer the rotating mayor. So, more questions than opinion at this
point. I will try to get more time to look into this, but thank you for your time to
Thank you, Andrew. Okay, so we're going to close the public hearing.
And we have a variety of questions and I suspect Micah and Adam and Shalice.
Micah, you want to start us off.
Sure. I'll start us off and I'll let maybe Adam and Chalice fill in the gaps or cover some that I didn't capture.
I got really quick. I'm on from Auburn case anyone wanted to know.
Yes, we saw that Garrett finally welcome.
Yeah, you know it's raining up here and storming.
Well, we don't want to hear any lightning strikes.
Glad you're able to come to us, Council Member.
So, a couple of questions and I'll just start with the which election does this affect and I think the good question and it really is the November 2024 election that it will be the first installment of this of this process and the vote.
There will be, and I think part of this is a question that was asked later to as far as then what happens then to those who are currently serving and maybe representing citywide, but then we'll have districts that will be basically in November 2026 that will happen as far as that change.
So really, it takes kind of two election cycles to be in a place to where this initiative will
take basically two election cycles, but it starts basically in next November 2024.
And, Micah, if I could add to that, that's because you have council members who have
been elected for a four-year term, and by law, you can't shorten what they were elected to.
So that was another question that was asked as far as impacting
individual current folks who are elected, current Mayor and Council who are elected, and there is law that you cannot affect the current members who were elected in a fair and processed election at that time.
So those will serve out their current terms from a citywide basis, but when those elections come up, it will be in those districts for the 2026.
And that's Linda and Garrett just for clarity.
Yeah, correct.
So, so thinking about the city of thinking about the city of Sacramento, and there are the amazing mishmash they've got down there.
So theoretically, there could be some parts of the city depending on what the maps look like. There could be some parts of the city that either have double representation or no representation.
There will be a period potentially, and I think Charlize, some of those have actually seen this in the city of Sacramento where there might be a period where there is a district that doesn't have a
directly elected representative for that two-year period.
Like the third district.
Correct.
Like he's Sacramento.
Correct.
And that's really just part of the transition process.
So, I mean, that's not really an ability to question as far as to change that.
That's just part of the transition process to go to district-based elections.
Okay.
And actually, every time we redistrict, that same situation can occur.
So when you redistrict for Congress, for example, you could have been elected from
over there, but now you're – if you're in that seat, your district has shifted.
And when you run again, you can end up with sort of like orphaned areas.
It's just an awkwardness of district then.
So that actually brings me to a good point of redistricting. And so I think, you know, part of the last question talked about, you know, what happens of with areas of growth and as we change over time.
This is the beginning of a process that now, every census, the city will go through a redistricting process to balance out the population to the appropriate districts at that time.
So basically every 10 years, the city will do a redistricting process as we move forward to balance the population over that period of time.
So, one of the things I heard Shalise say, which was a little bit different than I understood
it the first time around, was this business about 10% because, as Andrew just pointed
out, we have huge growth occurring east of sunrise.
And so, it's not that a district could allow for 10% more growth, but that there
can't be a disparity any greater than 10 percent between the most populated district
and the least populated district.
So it's not like you can take a district down from 15,000 to 5,000, knowing that 10,000
more people are going to move in in the next four years.
So I'm seeing Charlize Shaker had, yes, that that's the accurate interpretation of
growth population and how to account for it.
Okay.
Okay, any other questions you want to take?
I will take the, as far as what that yellow line is on that map and that is highway 50.
So as we've looked at that map, that is highway 50 on that map, not Folsom Boulevard.
I will also, as far as what the next step in the process is, there was a question
about a referendum or a vote.
This is a process that goes through the city council.
This is not a public vote on number of districts or or maps that is part of the process that's we're going through now for the City Council selecting those those maps and those numbers.
Okay, anything else.
Turn it over to Adam. I'll let him go and I got a couple others.
Adam.
I guess the only other question, and this probably, you know, may not be answered right
away, but how do you defend six or seven or different kind of options?
And I think that's part of the process that we'll go through when we evaluate the maps
is have that conversation about defensible maps under the California Voting Rights Act.
Okay.
Adam?
I think Mike really hit all of the major core legal points.
I would defer to Chalice and Maria regarding a number of comments we heard about public outreach.
Okay.
I also had just a couple of notes that I made before we go to the public outreach portion.
The question was asked the number of population per district based on the five, six or seven scenarios and I'm sorry if I may have not been clear or if I was misleading in my wording, but that is required by law.
that we have nearly equal population in those districts. So those numbers that we
give to you are the targets and again as the mayor has restated you can you can
deviate slightly but your least populated district compared to your
greatest populated district there can be no greater than a 10% difference. So
you need to look at all of your districts as a whole and look at your
So it is a lot that you have to have near equal population.
So we've given you those figures as your target.
We always just try to stay under 5% either greater or lesser than you know you're safe, your map safe, but that's not always possible to do.
And the disadvantage for Rancho is the fact that, well, for any growing city, the fact that we have to use the census data.
census of 2020 and can't use the latest figures from Department of Finance.
Correct.
And then I also just had a couple of other notes that may have been answered, but I just
for clarification, if there is a vacancy, the, as far as, it's appointed in the same
way that it exists now.
So if you can appoint, if you have an ordinance that allows you to appoint, or if you have
a policy logical point or go to an election,
that election law doesn't change.
And also it would be as far as whether the person
needs to reside in the district or not,
it would depend on how the person
who's vacating the position was elected.
So if the person vacating the position was elected
at large, then anyone candidate to fill that vacancy
could also be at large.
I can know, I know in practice, if you're appointed, you usually try to appoint in that given district, but so you always go by how that person was elected.
So let's go back and talk about that one a minute.
So, even though, if there were a vacancy, even though that area may now be covered by a district,
That person would not need to live in that district.
The way the law is written today, correct.
It's different for school districts, but correct.
So if someone who is elected at large vacated their seat, then they could be replaced at large.
I can tell you typically it's a practice you would want to go by someone who is hiding in the district bounties.
It just makes more sense.
But the way the law is written today it doesn't need to be someone from that new district if you're filling a seat that was originally appointed at large.
And I would have to look at this generally generally speaking when when you.
One nuance of this that I would have to look at one. And generally when you have a vacancy you have a choice depending on the exact timing of the vacancy to make the appointment or to send it out to to the voters.
And so one nuance of this that I think I would want to double check is even if you made the
latter choice to send it out to the voters, is it actually Charlize in your experience
that the case that even if they chose to send it out to the voters because the appointment
was for a at large vacancy, it might actually still go out to the voters.
this would be a very strange result, but as an at large election to fill that at large, what would then be a temporary at large vacancy, I'm happy to double check the point and so I don't want to speculate but.
And I, there was just one other, the Mr. Rush asked comments if there could be overlays for zoning and overlays for the business districts and we can make that available as a layer, get that we can work with the planning department if those, any, those types of maps we can make as an overlay if someone wants to use that as their
guide and draw in their maps. It would probably be better to use the general plan designations
than the zoning designations which are typically much more refined, much smaller areas.
Anything
else, Chalice? I think those are the notes that I have and then Maria.
Yeah. Thank you, Mayor Butch. So I think there's, there have been a number of questions about the timing of the postcard and I do want to, I guess, clarify some of the timing.
Once the council passed the resolution of intent on July 17.
That really started the clock for us to move forward with the postcard.
We didn't know how the council would vote.
And so we can't move forward with the postcard until the council decides what they want to do.
And so at that point, we have three weeks to get the postcards into mailboxes.
So when I referenced the time it takes to get the postcard written, translated, printed to the mailhouse,
to them post office and then into mailboxes.
That's truly what I meant when I said it.
We typically take four weeks to do that, and we have three.
So we decided to move forward with the process anyway,
knowing that it would be hitting, you know,
just before or on the timing of the first meeting.
But again, it's about all seven meetings,
not just the one meeting.
And there, we did get some questions at the community forum, you know, about concerning if we missed the first meeting or if we weren't aware of it, would we be out of the loop and again, our role here is to, you know, make the information duplicative versus, you know, adding new information at various meetings.
And also we do have our online tool with all of the information.
And then I think the other question that we had was, you know, meeting people where they are is really a grassroots term.
And it really means going out into the community and delivering information in the ways that people are naturally getting it.
And today, we use data to help guide us in those efforts.
And we have a split city.
Half of our population is under 35 and uses digital means to get information.
And then the other half is in the older population.
And so we employed a two-part strategy,
and that was to send it out far and wide on our digital channels,
social media, et cetera, and then also to identify and deliver to places where we
knew people.
We're already going. And they are multiple. And so we have really, when I say that we truly
have made quite the effort, I can't think of an issue or a moment where we have perhaps maybe
when we were in COVID. But we have taken out paid advertising for our Russian-speaking population
and also partnered with our Spanish-speaking communities. And the whole point is to drive
people to these meetings. We also did look at having meetings in various parts of the city,
and because of our inability to use the, demonstrate the mapping tool, if there wasn't
technology, etc., we did decide to go ahead and have it here. But we did look at Anatolia
again, because they are severely impacted by this decision, and we also have the MAC
booked in the northern portion of the city, but given the great number of people that
we expected, we decided to hold it here so that we could have sufficient space for people
and also so that we could demo the tool.
So those were the decisions that we made at that time, and so hopefully that makes
sense. Through the mayor, if I may, I also remember that at the MAC there was one question
about accessibility. There's a somewhat unpredictable ability to move people with mobility challenges.
The, right, the, the, there's a narrow staircase and an elevator that's erratic and we thought
might not be functioning is, was that an initial consideration? Accessibility? Yes,
that was an initial consideration and then also assassins is playing there so we only were able
to get a portion of the upstairs area which would hold about 25 people and you know we had anywhere
from 40 to 49 folks last Thursday. And there's no overflow I and I will say that the the
suggestion of using a venue outside of the city limits did with all due respect come as a bit
But if a surprise, I think to, to certainly the staff members, I don't know if it came
as a surprise to the consultant, but we had not contemplated selecting venues that would
be outside of the city.
We thought that it didn't, I don't think it occurred to us to suggest community meetings
outside of the city.
No,
I agree.
Maria, could you tell us what social media outreach was then?
Sure.
So, as I mentioned, we do have our four main channels, Facebook, Instagram, X, which used
to be called Twitter, and Nextdoor.
And so we have been providing all of that information multiple times on those channels,
and we will continue to do so before the meetings.
We're driving people to the website so that they can access the information and also
making sure that they understand when the meetings are being held and where the
meetings are being held.
Do we have any data on how well the FACEDAR, how well our website has been accessed?
Yes, we have data for all of our digital tools, including our newsletters, and so I don't
have that in front of me, but I could certainly get it.
Maybe next time it'd be interesting to see a report on that.
Yeah, sure.
When you click throughs or whatever, measure your, how many page views.
Yeah, and we're –
Whatever the mention is.
No, that's a great point.
I didn't mention the fact that we are keeping track and measuring the results
of the – even the grassroots outreach.
So, for example, we've asked our partners to let us know, you know, when they're out
of flyers or postcards, what languages they're out of, and how many they're, you know, they're
able to distribute. They're also distributing it on their social media channels and on their
digital channels. So, we have a lot of data that we can access.
Okay. Any other questions for staff?
Actually, the postcard number, what is it? 20,000, some thousand postcards? What
What is that amount to when we do every mailbox?
Yeah, 33,000.
33,000.
Yeah.
And the community council, our e-mail address was also used.
That's got about what?
20,000 e-mail addresses?
So they have, yeah, they have about 20,000.
They've sent it out twice already.
And we have 10,000 on our list serves.
So we've sent it out multiple times.
But the chambers sent it out, FCCP sent it out, and then Russian American media
sent it out.
So we've had a number of folks.
So with the numbers, whenever you bring those back,
it might be interesting to see what is the response
been to this versus something else
in compared to some other initiative we undertook
and did outreach for?
I mean, the only thing that I can think of
that we've done at this level is when COVID,
when we were trying to get the word out
about our COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
We did paid outreach to our Spanish-speaking and Russian-speaking population.
We also had translators at those events, and then we would also distribute via postcard
and all our digital channels, all our social media channels through our partners, et cetera.
But I think we've even gone beyond that, to be honest, with this outreach.
So, I'll ask you the final question I have, which is a little bit of a tough one.
But there's some activities, you know, humans undertake that you can't easily quantify.
And I think you're working hard to try to quantify communication.
But in general, I mean, in family settings and organizational settings, that's a criticism
that can be applied almost globally.
Is there a way to sort of – do you think we can quantify communication to the point
that you can say, no, we did do a good job here because of this versus that?
Because generally, when you hear communication used as an argument, it's hard to like
what are the numbers for that?
It's sort of like in an organization when you don't want to do something, someone
says insurance or legal or, you know, it's like a catch all, no.
You know, that's a great question. We have a lot of tools that allow us to measure the
success or failure of, you know, various outreach efforts. The thing about data is,
so say for example, we may have sent out the news alert on districting and it may
have been clicked on, right, by, say, 10,000 people. But say there's only 40 people
really care about it and who are really passionate about it, and those are the ones that are
going to show up.
The ones that are not that engaged are not going to show up, even if they have the information,
even if they've accessed it, which in our minds is the success measure.
People get to choose their level of engagement with their local government, and so our
role really is to promote it to the greatest extent possible to get it deeply in so
that everyone has access to it.
But it's really up to the individual whether they choose to engage.
Yeah, just to, you know, kind of, you know, jump on that kind of a little bit where you could do the best outreach the same way for two different topics, but maybe one topic just has more interest because it affects people maybe where they're at or
And so you could have a very different outcome, you know, based on the same public outreach, just depending on maybe what the topic is.
And so that's what I think is, you know, talked about hard to measure what the success looked like when, you know, engagement or participation may be low, but it might be the topic that people are not interested in.
And so I think trying to figure out that right way to show that work and it's something we need to be focused on and working on from a delivery to our community.
But I think that's something that's very difficult to measure and we'll use the tools we have, but that is a challenge sometimes to get to outcomes.
Any other questions for staff?
Yeah, I got some.
Garrett.
When are we allowed to start playing with the map tool by law, Adam?
Not until the next meeting, the point being that the public gets to come up with maps,
you will then get presented with maps that they've presented, that they've prepared,
and then, and Shilis, I welcome you talking about this, but starting after the next meeting
after the public is exhausted, their time to participate, they won't have exhausted
their time, but you can't do it until after the next meeting. Is that anything to add there?
Yes, the council cannot, as a body, start deliberating on or reviewing maps until after
this public hearing. And I would just say that the council all knows that this is advice we've
given them, you know, in private as well as in public, there's no, you know, this is
something that has been consistently important to us to emphasize that the public has this
opportunity to inform the situation before the council does by law, gets involved in
the actual map making by law.
And that's why it's really so important to see what people think, how you divide
this very oddly shaped city into only five districts.
Really quick, just so the group understands.
So, if the citizens, when they do a district and they redraw all Anatolia,
then that would mean at the next election,
if do we choose when the district is up for an election
or when the citizens give us the map, how does that work?
How do we choose which of the districts go up for election?
I'm sorry.
I don't know your name in the blonde.
But, Sillis, how does that work?
I can answer that, or City Attorney, you can weigh in on it.
It's referred to as sequencing.
So, when we talk about the maps, there will be a proposed sequencing that you'll also be discussing.
We typically don't like to talk about sequencing of all 20, 30, 40 maps until we narrow it down to maybe four or five.
And then we will get into in-depth discussion on the sequencing and sequencing, meaning assigning an election year to that particular district.
So, yes, there could be a case where you have council members paired in a district that have different election years.
and that's when the council, it would be the council's decision on what election year is
assigned to that district. It will be done during the map selection process.
And Council Member Gage would just say very clear of council members starting to talk about
or engage in anything that might be perceived as mapping. I appreciate Celice answering the
question at a general level rather than with respect to any particular potential
actual district that might be drawn for the city.
Correct.
I just didn't really, I didn't know when the, they didn't know the word sequencing.
I'm sorry.
What was your name again?
Chilise?
Chilise.
Yeah.
Sorry about that.
I just wanted to know like how the sequencing and just so my citizens know.
So there, they draw the districts and then they assign when those districts are up
for reelection.
And that's kind of how that goes on suggestions.
Correct.
Well, typically the map is drawn and then when we produce the map, meaning NDC produces the map, we will do proposed sequencing.
And it could be just as it could say, you know, your 2024 districts.
districts, you know, one, two, and three, and 2026, four, and five, if you had five districts.
Sometimes we will leave it even more vague and say, you know, 2022 could be district
one, two, three, or four, or five.
But the point being is it will be on the maps, there will be a proposed sequencing
that the council will define and will actually confirm when they approve the map.
So the residents do not need to assign those election years.
Certainly in their comments, they could make suggestions on what they would prefer for the sequencing.
Ultimately, it would be the council's choice.
For my citizens, I'm going to try to hold office hours again, 8am this Friday on the 18th.
Check my calendar.
So I'll be there.
My question to you guys, which is the one I can't see to wrap my head around.
I understand that you guys don't want to do, you don't want to do a direct elect mayor.
How if we go into districts, do you expect to have representation that would not care about the districts they're in if you don't have at least one of our members being directly elected?
I don't like I agree like I'm not going to really say between five or seven because that's that's I'm listening to all your guys
in your comments and I want to hear from more of you I did hear from some of the people from Anatoly that showed up.
We're wanting to be like we don't want to lose three votes, which I thought was hilarious.
But they were like we don't want to go from from from three to one we want to stay at three and I was like that's hilarious.
I just can't do that, but I'm curious between the five to seven, how do you grab your head around because districts by it by the nature of it, you care most about your own district.
How would you not want to have the tiebreaker vote be someone that's elected by everybody and therefore could be unelected by everybody.
I'll be at the office from 8 to 10, love to hear from you guys at City Hall, top area or shoot me an email.
Sorry, I'm in up here today. I wanted to be there to talk to you guys.
But my thing is just I want to have a generic, I just want to have a discussion just to figure out bounce off you guys because honestly that the concern I have is what happens in Sacramento.
There are areas where they only care about one side or one area. And yeah, right now, because we were direct elect individuals, we still have in our heart, we care about everybody.
But what happens when the only area you care about is the district you're in and you don't care about the other sides of Rancho?
What keeps everything, what keeps us this collegiate kind of group if you don't have one person that if the citizens are upset with that one person, they can't reach out and pull them down
And be like, we need you to care about Lincoln Village.
We need you to care about, right now, about Stone Creek.
We need you to care about this.
And there's no, I just feel like there's no representation
for Rancho as a whole anymore because we're in districts.
So, Garrett, that's a question.
That's a question you're asking people to provide you feedback about.
Yeah, I just want to hear about it.
I just want to hear from my citizens because it's not about,
not about my staff guys.
I appreciate how you're setting this up.
But it's more about, like, if we do this and we draw ourselves into, let's say, we draw ourselves into four, like, a lot of people are four with a mayor that you pass around, what's to make that person care more about the side of the area that he doesn't come from, if there's no.
We get it.
Okay.
Thanks, Garrett.
Thank you.
Okay.
Okay. So do we want to go any further in demonstrating the mapping tool?
Can I make just a couple of comments for you?
First, you know, one of the things I think we can easily address that I heard in the
room was the inadequacy of that paper map. I think perhaps there'd be a way to improve
improve its appearance, make it a little more user friendly, label Highway 50, label
Folsom Boulevard, label Sunrise or Zenfone Metals, whatever sort of, you know, landmarks
could be added to that map.
Because of that prohibition about looking at maps, I have not actually examined that
in any detail.
I've just sort of seen it flashed up on the screen here at meetings.
I'm probably overreacting to that prohibition, but I think it seems reasonable to me that
Maybe we can improve that map. Is there any response on that?
We've gone through variations of this map over the 30 years we've been providing it,
and the streets is always an issue. But the problem is when we started adding streets
and they could no longer see the population numbers or the file got too large, they couldn't
print it out on their computer or had large enough paper to be able to see everything.
So as a solution, and I will be happy to demonstrate this in a few moments or even now, if you'd like, is we have the electronic version of that paper map so that you can actually zoom in very closely and see all the streets.
You can even put a satellite image underneath it if you want.
I guess that what I'm not so worried about is if you, if you're technically capable,
you can zoom in and probably clarify the question, but for the people who aren't, who are just
going to look at a PDF on the website and maybe examine that.
Yeah, the question is about the paper map that you have to print out, not the ability
to manipulate it on the computer.
Maybe a suggestion.
I don't know if you've had the ability to print them on bigger pieces of paper.
And so, we're happy to provide ways, if it's a problem with, as far as seeing
enough information on the map of that size. I think we can maybe think about ways to provide
bigger maps, basically, so you have enough information on the paper.
It was described as yellow, but maybe graphically you, you know, yellow, that sunrise, and blue,
like a highlight marker kind of color doesn't obscure anything. It just adds something to it.
We do rely on the many years of experience by NBC on this effort, but I think there's
always ways to figure out maybe ways to improve on maybe what people are seeing with the actual
printed map.
Yeah.
And just one other general comment, you know, about a third of cities now, about a third
of cities have undertaken this process, about a quarter of school districts have undertaken
this process.
We're next.
It's our turn.
The one thing I worry about going to districts is that district-based behavior that people
I think are assuming happens and I have certainly seen it happen in some jurisdictions. And one of the things that makes jurisdiction strong is when their council works together.
If we allow ourselves to be divided harshly into districts that pose us, you know, one against the other just based on our own district priorities opposed to citywide parties, which by the way all five of whoever's elected will still be voting on all those
citywide issues, that would be a great detriment to sort of the health of the future of this
community.
So I think culturally, we just have to keep that in mind.
Almost everything you work on as a council member and voter as a council member has citywide
impact.
Can you have more focus on your district, certainly, and that's the fundamental success
of cities over counties or other means of governance is attention to detail.
So in that sense, it's not necessarily a bad idea.
And distributing, you know, governance also a good idea. You want everyone represented.
So there are dangers in this process. There are big benefits in this process.
I just want us to sort of keep all of that in mind because we're not going completely one direction in terms of I only care about my district and nothing else.
And we also don't want to be completely the other direction of not caring about a district.
Good point.
Siri, anything?
Are you online? Thank you.
I want to say that I absolutely believe diversity matters. As you know, representation matters. I am proof of that.
But nearly 50% of Rancho Cordova's population is non-white, as one member said during her
speech that she doesn't see the representation in the audience.
Also we are hearing a lot from the public today, but is that, and you're also saying
that it's not reaching all corners of Rancho Cordova.
I have also been doing my due diligence of trying to see what our peer cities are doing,
not just that what is close to Rancho Cordova, but as you know, when a recent study mission
to Austin, and we saw Georgetown, which is a similar city to us, and they have a seven-member
council member, and I asked them, you know, why did they choose to have the seven-member
council members in their city which is pretty similar in population as ours and they said
it's because of a fair distribution of constituents and it promotes a more diverse and inclusive
representation. They also said that smaller districts council members can establish stronger
connections with residents leading to more meaningful interactions. Now I've talked to
council members with seven districts. I've also seen cities with a population of 15,000 which have
five districts. That's their representing 3,000 people. And so there's a wide range. I've also
seen a lot of them favor the rotating mayor. Some have also again made the case for a
directly elected mayor. As you know I am in favor of the rotating mayor but I'm
still on the fence between the five district and the seven districts because
there's just so much scope and with our city growing by leaves and bounds I
think we have to keep that into consideration when we draw our districts.
Thank you. Thank you, Siri. Okay.
And I believe we don't want to, especially because we've
only got three people here and Garrett and Auburn, we don't want to try to refine the
number of districts tonight. We're going to wait and see what kinds of maps people
come back with? I mean it's up to the council but I think we are capable of moving forward
still with the five six and seven options that will be brought forward with the review of the
maps when that time comes so we're comfortable with that as well. Okay we're good with that.
So are we good for tonight? Mayor, I also want to reiterate for those of you having
If I've not looked at the maps, I don't know how difficult it is, but I've heard over and
over again it's probably pretty difficult.
One thing you guys can do is what I've heard is when you draw the maps, just take a screenshot
or take a photo off your screen with your camera and you can save that if you don't
know if it's taken too long to enter a password and have a cabbage patch $234 password.
Save the URL.
I think you can just take a screenshot and then save it.
Okay, draw on the map. No.
Just to draw the maps.
If you do it online, you're supposed to, the consultant says you have to have a URL that distinguishes you from...
No, no, that's what I'm saying. The URL is to distinguish the maps, but do you need a username and password just to play around with the map?
Yes, otherwise you can...
you need to sign up. It's a very easy process, not used any for any other purpose than just
to keep track of what you're working on.
Is there a way you could remove that prop step?
No, that's not possible to remove because you can't manipulate maps that have already
been published. So, you don't want to contaminate
or change someone else's map.
Oh, it's just another password to have to remember.
Yeah, not for very long, he says.
Okay, are we good?
Okay, then we're going to adjourn this meeting.
And we're going to adjourn to close session.
And again, because this is a special meeting.
Let's see, let's just adjourn this meeting first.
Thank you all for coming in for staying.
So, Stacey, do you want to read the title of the closed sessions?
Yes. There's one closed session and the subject is Conference with Legal Counsel Anticipated Litigation Significant Exposure to Litigation Pursuant to Government Code section 54956.9d21 case relating to a letter from Scott J. Rafferty.
On behalf of neighborhood elections now, received on June 7, 2023 petitioning the city to comply with the California Voting Rights Act, CVRA by beginning the process of transitioning from at large to single member district city council elections for the November 2024 election or potentially be sued under the CVRA.
Okay, so we're going to actually take public comment for this portion of the meeting.
Now?
Yes.
So, do you have anybody signed up for public comment?
I do.
The first individual is Scott Rafferty.
Following Scott Rafferty is James Garcia.
If you're joining us by Zoom or telephone and you'd like to submit public comment for
the closed session topic, please raise your hand.
Scott.
Thank you.
So, this is really an extraordinary evening, frankly, for me personally.
I've never been at one of these meetings that has been so unanimous.
And this is a surprisingly large number of speakers.
It's very gratifying, frankly.
Usually, there are people who are going on and on about how horrible at large this, so we didn't hear that.
We heard one speaker say they won four districts, and you've rolled that out already for good reason.
So, you know, again, I don't threaten litigation, but I don't give up either, so I do have – I'm disappointed that you haven't made a decision to go with five district members.
And I think most of the people here are. And I think it's an unwise decision to let this issue go out, because what you're going to find – I just have a very strong intuition.
And I don't live here, and I don't draw maps before I listen to the community.
But I know a lot about this area because I've worked with the school district and with Folsom.
And I know that the area west of Sunrise Boulevard is fine with four districts.
I don't know what they're going to look like exactly, but that's the right number.
number. It's also the right number because the average population in California that has
more than five members, the average population of the city is 300,000. And very, very few of
them are general lawsuits. So I just wish you would reconsider that. I hate to be the
bearer of bad news, but you're not going to be able to underpopulate Anatolia. And
And I heard someone talk about, we wanted to have this meeting in Anatolia because we're so impacted. But, you know, Anatolia is the high turnout, wealthy area of your city that doesn't have the impediments to participate in politics.
And they've just been benefiting for too long. And where you need to be is in in Cordova town, and empowering those people. That is the most important thing if you.
The Constitution says no more than 10%, but zero is the constitutional goal. That's not a target. That's an outer limit. And if you overpopulate Anatolia, or underpopulate Anatolia in anticipation of future growth, adverse to the under disenfranchised
or Latino and Black minorities that will violate state law,
which says you must use the adjusted census.
And the adjustment means more population,
the state adjusts the population of the poor areas
of the city upward.
And you don't get to consider a population like that.
So I just wish you would listen to your constituents.
Five districts and four of them are gonna be east of,
I'm sorry, west of Sunrise.
Thank you, Scott. Welcome, James.
Evening, Council. I'm James Garcia, member of Stone Creek resident neighborhood. I want to say, well, I understand that the media blitzing of trying to get this meeting attention was been done.
I appreciate that you've tried to get as much participation as possible. It is hard.
I just wish you would have had, possibly have had that card ready to go the moment we knew about this letter.
Because the decision was going to be, ultimately, either fight it or participate.
So you could have had that card ready to go to the printer maybe a little bit faster.
But you did your best. Appreciate it. We've been trying to advertise it as well.
But again, I do believe that we need five districts.
districts. It is appropriate for this size city and all the other cities around us. Five
districts is all you need. Over here, I mentioned LA, 300,000 population per councilmember.
There's no need to go ahead and change. We have five. Keep with five. Sequencing, I strongly
suggest that you keep, once you create your districts, whoever is going to be on
the council long enough. That's going to be Madam Butch as well as Mr. Gatewood. The two of them
are in there for the longest time. They should get to have the longest term without being misrepresented.
Have them be the 2026 election. Put the nonsense and the other three seats are for the 2024.
That's when they're due wherever they reside. Those are the districts that should come up.
do not separate. Don't play games. That's like misleading. That's misjustice for the
rest of the people here. They want representation. If those two seats are in a district that
are separate, which they should be, they need to stay as that election until 2026 when
their seats are due. Don't play games. Thank you.
Thank you, Scott.
Next speaker is Baiza Mughal.
Baiza, welcome.
Hello, again.
I am disappointed to hear that at the conclusion of today's meeting, we have not narrowed
down the number of districts we want to get split into.
Perhaps that was in consideration of the absence of Council Member Terry.
I recall at the last meeting, Council Member Terry was eager for us to narrow down
the amount of districts that we would be considering. And he said something along the lines of,
come on, don't you guys want to know exactly how many maps or districts you would need to include
on your map? So I do know he was in favor of us making that decision sooner, not later.
So if that is the reason for your hesitancy, I ask that you not use that as an excuse.
Also, again, I do have 53 signatures from my community members that are in support of
five districts, rotating mayor or musical mayor, as I like to say.
Imagine those 53 bodies in this room with us today, and you coming away not agreeing
with what the consensus consistently has been up until this point in all the different
formats that you have tried to seek input.
I don't understand why we are not at that conclusion yet.
It is plain and clear that that is what overwhelmingly you are hearing when you are receiving public comment, at least from your English speaking community.
And regarding the outreach, I know it definitely wasn't enough. I've seen this city do a lot more proactive outreach and engagement in retaliation to the Black Student Union at Cordova High when they started protesting having cops on campus.
There was a lot of energy put into social media by the city, putting videos together, gathering kids, making it fun and engaging, I guess, to promote a counter narrative against children.
But something as important as this when we are trying to reach those communities, I think that that maybe bring that same energy to things at this level, and we can do better for sure I don't want to hear more excuses.
Thank you.
Thank you, Faisa.
Next speaker is Matt Cummings, following Matt will be Helen Weyland Basha.
Matt.
Thank you residents for hanging out with us.
Matt Cummings, Capitol Village, can we just first please get past the idea, Garrett,
anybody else?
We are not your residents.
We are not your my people.
Can we just stop with that phrase?
Some people in this room did not vote for you, Garrett, and other people did, but doesn't
make you my residents.
Can we just stop with that, please?
second I think communications is missing the point there are some people in
this room and some people in our community who do not have access to the
internet if you're going to do this big social media I think the one thing we
missed tonight was how do we address people who do not have access to the
internet who may only have a landline I agree that in this time that may be a
very small number but it sounds like from what I'm hearing from the
community, that may be a bigger problem. And so getting the message out is as simple as
walking up to someone's door and dropping off a flyer. You can make that flyer quickly.
When I worked with Dan Skowlin to get him elected and re-elected, we made decisions
very quickly with a small budget. It is entirely possible that the communications division
here, the unit, can organize something to get out the message faster by handing it
out and getting it everywhere. Another point I'd like to make, I do not understand why so
many of you tonight are so fixated on seven council members. Based on the ill will that
you've created in this community, we residents do cannot walk with you down that path because
you have done so much to render our opinions useless that when you start talking about
seven, we start thinking about, well, are you doing that to protect yourselves, to protect
your positions? Because the short and the long of it is, when you come into this situation
in 2024, which is just next year, you're going to have an overwhelming number of people
still representing Anatolia, and representing Anatolia for up to three years from this
point. And so you have to, like, come correct on the idea that we want five districts
and get past this idea that somehow seven makes a difference, unless going through this map and going through the data, it somehow comes out that that's what we need to do.
Final point, as a former teacher, the best way to make this document readable is to take the map, turn it sideways, and there's this whole other side of the page that we can put information on.
and facts about what we're legally entitled to do.
Why are we not talking about that?
That wouldn't allow the map to grow bigger.
We could add more landmarks.
Why we are not talking about that, just I don't get it,
but it's endemic of what this city does.
Thanks.
Thank you, Matt. Helen.
Helen, we're on Basha back again.
First off, I don't wanna see any extension of time limits.
I think we need to go with where we are and keep going.
I heard comments being made by the council that five people that you're
and representing the different districts will mean that you're only going to
concentrate on yours. How many of you have played ball? What about the football
team? Don't you have the quarterback that controls all the people in the
field? That's what your mayor is about. Why do you have a rotating mayor? I
think a person is seasoned by the community by being in a rotating job.
When you put out to have a mayor elected as a single person, you might not get the strongest point, a person, and there might be a, there might be, they might not have the skill sets that they need.
I believe that by rotating through the positions, and you get elected again, you're learning more about the city. You can make better judgments on that.
So, I believe that the majority in here have talked about five districts.
If the city representatives elect to go outside of the five districts with the rotating mayor,
you're not listening to your people.
You're slapping us in the face once again when we have these meetings and we voice
our concerns and then we see what happens.
A good example of this is when we put the bicycle lanes in, the funding required to protect
the bicycle lanes to be at a 45-mile-hour street.
The protective bicycle lane that the council elected for was on Rod Boudre and going up
Routier.
Both are 25-mile-hour streets.
What will happen if the feds ever came back and found out and began to pay them back?
So you need to listen to your people. You didn't listen to your people with that bicycle lane.
We've had problems with congestions on the Rodbo Dew Street. Listen to your people now.
And the majority in here has referenced five people rotating mayor.
There's nothing wrong with that. We're not big like LA.
We're still small enough and you can still work with each other.
If we have problems with people in positions that get power hungry and don't want to cooperate,
they're not part of the team. That's a reflection of your mayor.
Your mayor should have the skill set to be able to keep the team in line, just like your quarterback does.
Thank you.
Thank you, Helen. Anybody else?
That's all the speaker cards that I have for this item, and there are no hands that are raised in Zoom or by telephone,
And no additional emails were submitted for this item.
Okay.
And we're going to.
Sorry.
I was just looking at the speaker cards that I had.
I'm going to speak from here.
We can't nobody can hear you and you need to be at the microphone.
How many times do I have to tell you all.
I get exhausted running back and forth to the podium.
I know that.
Stacy would have brought you a microphone.
You know, that's an afterthought.
I'd like to express that if you're doing outreach,
I was an outreach coordinator for both Sac State
and for a public set of Sacramento Employment and Training
Agency back in the 80s.
And whenever I did outreach, and I didn't have a vehicle at the time, I had a bus pass.
And what I did is that whenever I had information that needed to go out in the neighborhoods, my targeted areas,
what I did is that I'd take Scotch tape or even, you know, however you want to call your tape, it's not always Scotch.
But, and take my flyers to regional transit, I go up, put in my coins, this is a long time ago, obviously, and ask the driver, is it okay to put a flyer so that your writers can read my flyers on employment for youth?
No problem.
Most of the time, you're going to have a good reaction from a public agency, such as regional transit, if you were to put, if we can put plaque board signage on the buses or either at the bus stops or even a temporary signage that's in the bus.
This is the way I recall back in the day when I used to ride the bus.
And they have signage on there.
People can write that information down.
I hope I'm not boring you, Linda.
But the thing of it is that you have to outreach, is outreach, to go out into the neighborhood.
That's how I did my job, without a car, and doing everything by walking, by running,
and by riding regional transit, and by living in Rancho Cordova, and having to
do my outreach in South Sacramento.
It's not, what do you call it, science.
You just have to think outside the box and don't take the easy way, okay?
I don't shop at Viva.
I don't shop at Magantul.
I shop where I can.
And not all ethnics shop in the same stores where we go where it's affordable, okay?
But, you know, the simplest things, even just brainstorming, having a roundtable discussion
with the people that voted for you, I don't see that happening.
It's just something that needs to be screened because someone is not listening.
And again, I agree with Mr. Cummings stop calling us my people, Garrett. Thank you.
Okay. So now we are going to adjourn to closed session and we will there will be a report out.
Good night.
Thanks for 70.
Okay.
Okay, I will call this meeting back to order. The city council has been in closed session for a few minutes. And we'll ask our city attorney for a report out in closed session.
Thank you madam mayor members the council and community this this evening the city council met on one item of anticipated location and received updates from and provided direction to legal.
Thank you, Adam. So we're going to adjourn this meeting tonight in honor of all those poor people in Maui who are struggling mightily. Good night.