The Colusa County Board of Supervisors last week released its fourth proposed map to show what the new supervisorial and county voting district boundaries might look like, if adopted.
The Board held the third of multiple public meetings on Monday night to allow those affected by the slight differences in the new lines to provide input.
Colusa County Administrative Officer Wendy Tyler said the Board must approve the new district map by Dec. 14, which gives the public essentially one more opportunity to request changes on Nov. 23, and a first reading of a new ordinance on Dec. 7.
The changes to the districts will also result in changes to the voting precincts, said Colusa County Clerk/Recorder Rose Gallo-Vasquez.
The redistricting process is an exercise required by law every 10 years to keep the voting districts of county, state, and federal districts as equal in population as possible.
Since 2010, Colusa County has grown 479 people to a total population of 21,898, making the target population for each of the five supervisorial districts about 4,372 residents each, give or take 5 percent, said Public Works Director Mike Azevedo.
To absorb the population growth occurring in the Williams and Arbuckle area, along with a decrease in the population of the Maxwell-Stonyford area, county officials propose to shift all five district lines, while trying to keep well-established communities of interest and geographical boundaries intact, as much as possible.
Map D (the fourth proposal), which is online at colusacounty.org, is the closest they’ve come to keeping the lines a “clean” as possible, officials said.
One of the most difficult decisions the board had to make to offset the population growth in District 1 (Arbuckle), was to eliminate the entirety of the Colusa Basin Drain as a “natural boundary” between District 1 and District 2.
District 1 (Arbuckle) will offset it’s growth by giving up residents on the east side (at the southern portion) of the Colusa Basin Drain to District 2 (Colusa-Grimes).
“It would help balance – take a few of the numbers a way from District 1,” Supervisor Denise Carter said. “It makes sense. At some point, we are going to have to cross natural barriers anyway.”
In response to input from the Partnership to Preserve Community Integrity, District 2 will shift the entirety of the Goad Extension (Bridge Street) population to District 5, with District 2 balancing the shift by picking up additional population in the south end of the city around Sioc Street.
Because District 3 (Williams) needed to decrease by about 122 people and District 4 (Maxwell-Stonyford) needed to gain 572 people, the boundaries will shift to keep most of the population residing within the Williams city limits in District 3, and the west side, south to Arbuckle, with District 4 essentially circling the city to pick up additional population on the north and south sides of town, and more of the southeast areas of the city.
The board has set their next public hearings for 11 AM on Tuesday, Nov. 23 (during the board’s regular meeting) in which the revised proposed final map will be presented, and 11 AM on Dec. 7 (during a special meeting), in which the final map will be proposed.
The board anticipates a second reading of the ordinance and adoption of the new boundaries to be concluded at their final public hearing at 11 AM on Dec. 14, during their regular meeting,
Proposal D is available online on the county’s redistricting page, located at countyofcolusa.com.
Azevedo said Tuesday he would continue to try and make the interactive software Colusa County is using to shift populations and draw new boundaries available to the public so people could design their own proposals, without actually saving the changes to the proposed maps.
“Twenty years ago, I was doing all of this on paper,” Azevedo said. ■