Palm Springs city council holds public meeting on district elections
Palm Springs City Council members hosted a public meeting to get input on the city’s transition to district elections. The resolution was approved unanimously by city council members back in April
Wednesday’s meeting was the first of many public meetings to discuss details regarding district elections in Palm Springs.
The city’s demographer, present his findings of local voting patterns by ethnicity and demographics associated with the location in the city.
“I was surprised to learn that there’s a 25% Latino population in Palm Springs, so I’m sure it will help the minorities,” said Tony Mataras of Palm Springs.
The goal of dividing the more than 44,000 residents into 4 or 5 districts is better representation.
“If we have one person, the mayor, who’s elected by the entire city it might balance out some of the individual interests of the council members elected in the districts,” Mataras added.
Whether the mayor will be a district representative is yet to be determined. The most popular concerns raised were how representatives will be elected.
“Once the districts are formed, how do we then get that district represented,” Amado C. Salinas III of Palm Sprigns told the council.
“I would like to suggest the city changes to a ranked-choice voting procedure for each of these districts,” Kurt W. of Palm Springs added.
Other speakers wanted to know how to encourage more people to get involved in the mapping process.
“As I look around the room, there’s not a lot of people here and not a lot of people talking about the communities. I’m interested in knowing whats going to be done,” Grace G. of Palm Springs told the council.
“We have a full plan on trying to engage the public, a mailing will go out to every single address, with a schedule of hearings,” responded council member Geoff Kors.
Attendees also had the opportunity to learn about an online tool they can use to submit district mappings to their liking. Palm Springs city clerk Anthony Mejia expects this to be a six-month process.
“We’re going to be going through this process until December 31. We will be holding a lot of public hearings and community engagement forums so we expect this will be rolled up by December 19,” Mejia said.
The move from ‘at large’ elections to district elections comes after a non-profit group, created by Mexican-American political activists named ‘Southwest Voter Registration Education Project,’ threatened litigation against the city. The group claimed at-large elections “diminished the ability of Latino residents to impact elections.”
The city has denied the claim and decided to move forward with the request to transition to district elections.
Palm Springs is the third desert city to make the move, the other two are Cathedral City and Indio.
Future meetings and public hearings:
6 pm Wednesday, July 11 6 pm Thursday, Sept. 20 6 pm Thursday, Oct. 4 6 pm Wednesday, Oct. 17 6 pm Wednesday, Nov. 7 6 pm Wednesday, Nov. 21 6 pm Wednesday, Dec. 5
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