The Sacramento Redistricting Citizens Advisory Committee finalized its choice of four maps to present to the City Council and began discussion of suggestions for modifications.

With council members on summer recess, the Citizens Advisory Committee worked independently at its Monday meeting on choosing the four maps and discussing the district line modifications to be chosen by the council July 13.

“Bringing three to five maps to the council is what this committee was striving to do,” said Scot Mende, principal planner. “I’m very pleased to see it progressing.”

The committee began its redistricting process on April 25, facing the challenge of choosing from 37 maps submitted.

The committee eliminated the map done by James Reede – the map under consideration last meeting – and finalized its decision of presenting the four maps submitted by residents of Tahoe Park, the Board of the East Sacramento Improvement Association, the African American Leadership Coalition and one anonymous submission to the council.

The committee decided that the four maps chosen were best suited to meet population and community needs.

“I think there are some changes that would be easy to make that would not change the composition of the other districts,” said Committee Member Bill Camp.

Committee members discussed and suggested map modifications based on both population and community interests.

“The majority of Del Paso is kept together in the interest of the Latino population,” said Committee Member Steven Hansen in reference to the map submitted by the African American Leadership Coalition.

“There is no-one-size-fits-all for local governments when it comes to deviations due to the unique situations, populations, topography, geography, etc. of individual cities and counties,” said Supervising Deputy City Attorney Matthew Ruyak. “But there is a 10 percent rule of thumb to population.”

In reference to one of the recommended maps’ pairing of the central city and East Sacramento, Committee Member Miranda Perry said she wanted a variety to give to the council pairing the central city with different areas of the city.

The committee members also expressed concern over one of the maps’ splitting of East Sacramento into three different districts.

“It doesn’t make sense to me to put East Sacramento into three different areas,” Camp said.

The Committee agreed not to rank the maps, but to instead present the council with the maps and their suggested modifications.

“If we have a No. 1, I’m afraid it’s going to diminish a lot of the input, the agreement, the conclusions we’ve come to,” Hansen said.

The committee will decide the suggestions of district modifications to all four maps on July 6, and the four maps with suggested modifications will be presented to council.

“Staff will synthesize the overall themes of the maps to guide the council,” Mende said.

The schedule of advisory committee meetings is available online here.