Redistricting Task Force Meeting

Last night's redistricting task force meeting was interesting in a strange way - tedious, yet somehow riveting.  It was like watching a chess match on TV.  After public comment, we sat quietly while the commission got down to work moving some boundaries and lines across the city to see how things looked.

When looking at the working map, the large numbers for each district are the population that this current configuration contains, while the percentage numbers are how far off from the ideal (average) value they are.  The goal at the moment is to get within ±5%, but ultimately, they have to get to within ±1% of the average in each of the eleven districts.


The results of last night's meeting are on their website now, and will continue to be updated as they work on it. 

Jan 26 Working Draft

The public comments were mostly from D10, but some from other districts as well.  Keeping Potrero Hill part of D10 for historical reasons was suggested by a couple of speakers, although one person suggested PH was too different from the rest of the district, and should be split off.  I'm not sure myself if PH is so much more similar to D6 or D9 for it to join them, though.  One suggestion made by a task force member was to see what would happen if we put Potrero Hill into D6 while leaving the Dogpatch in D10.  It appears that they ended the meeting with this still in their working draft map.  Others insisted on the Portola being recombined into one district.  It appears the working draft continues to split the Portola between D8, D10, and D11.  Every time a line gets moved in one place, it has to get moved somewhere else to accommodate.

The challenge of course is to try to get EVERY district within ±1% of the average district population all while keeping neighborhoods intact, and keeping racial, economic, and geographic interests in mind.  Seeing the process in action (such as the action was) gives one a sense of the daunting task ahead of this committee.

I took a stab at redrawing the lines myself and it ain't easy to get it all right.  My attempt is available at the HealthyCity.org website.  You can make your own attempt and actually have it made public or email a link directly to the task force.   Even if you don't draw your own map, you can still send comments to the task force at rdtf@sfgov.org.

If you'd like to attend a future task force meeting, check out the schedule at:
http://www.sfgov2.org/index.aspx?page=2622