Sonoma council reviews draft district maps, hearing narrows focus to 4-vs-5 council districts

The Sonoma City Council on a special meeting evening reviewed consultant and public-drawn draft maps for switching from at-large elections to district-based elections, heard public comment urging attention to West Side neighborhoods, mobile-home communities and fire-risk areas, and voted to continue the public hearing to the council’s regular meeting for further discussion.

The hearing, led by the Mayor, featured a presentation by Paul Mitchell, owner of Redistricting Partners, who unveiled six consultant draft plans and summarized 10 public-submitted maps that met the seven-day posting requirement. “The main criteria we use for drawing districts is born out of the Fair Maps Act and federal and state law,” Mitchell said, adding that maps must balance population, maintain communities of interest, be contiguous and reasonably compact. He described both four-district plans (with an at-large elected mayor) and five-district plans (with a rotating mayor) and explained technical options for line adjustments.

Why it matters: the council is considering whether to adopt district elections to address potential California Voting Rights Act issues and to…