Desert Hot Springs City Council selects new district map

The Desert Hot Springs City Council selected its map for its first district-based elections.

The council approved Map 1.1 during its meeting on Tuesday. Mayor Scott Matas said the map was thought of as the most that kept the most neighborhoods together.

"If you really are trying to separate neighborhoods and make districts of people that are gonna represent their neighborhoods, I think 1.1, the comments that were made by Mr. Anderson, Mr. Ruiz, and those neighborhoods, really accomplished what we needed to accomplish," Matas said.

Matas also said the Mayor position will remain at large, representing the entire city. Desert Hot Springs will have four council districts.

Councilmembers will return on April 19 for a second reading of the motion, and if approved once again, will adopt the map.

Map 1.1 was called the most balanced of the drafts available to the council.

The other map that was considered was map 1, however, as Matas pointed out, it would separate some neighborhoods.

"It's as close as you can possibly get," Mayor Pro Tem Gary Gardner said of the population split for Map 1. "But it ignores neighborhoods."

Desert Hot Springs officials have been working to switch to district-based elections since Nov. 2021, when the city received a letter from attorneys representing the Southwest Voter Registration Project. The group asserted
that the City's at-large election system may violate the CVRA and threatened litigation if the City does
not voluntarily transition to a district-based election system for electing its City Council.

On December 8, 2021, the City Council declared its intent to transition to district elections. Four public workshops were held between February and March to get community input on district maps.

To learn more about the city's process, visit: cityofdhs.org/district-elections