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 improve geographic representation. The decision will affect how residents are grouped for council representation, the cadence and format of mayoral selection, and how small, distinct communities such as mobile-home parks or neighborhoods near the Plaza are represented.

Mitchell presented numerical tradeoffs in the draft maps, noting small population deviations in some five-district drafts (for example, Draft Map A showed a 3.4% total deviation—about 73 people—and a district with roughly 22.9% Latino citizen voting-age population) and larger raw deviations in four-district plans that remain within the state’s allowable thresholds (up to 10% total deviation for local jurisdictions). He said the mapping uses 2020 Census data and five-year American Community Survey estimates for income and homeownership patterns and cautioned that those figures are approximate.

Public commenters and several council members urged that maps keep communities of interest intact. Tom Conlin, a local resident, recommended five districts and cited distinct East/West ethnic concentrations. “I would recommend not going with four districts, but instead going with five,” Conlin said. Cedra Nathan, who said she had walked the city’s 38 miles of streets, emphasized that seniors, elder-care facilities and mobile-home residents are concentrated on the West Side and that maps should facilitate coordinated responses to fire safety and mobility needs.

Several council members described trade-offs between 4- and 5-district options. Council Member Gurney said smaller districts can improve representation but worried councilors might focus narrowly on district interests rather than citywide issues. Vice Mayor Wellender said she preferred five districts and that the current rotating mayor had “worked well to date.” Another council member voiced a preference for four districts to retain an at-large mayoral seat elected by all voters, citing concerns about election costs and the office’s responsibilities.

Council discussion also touched on practical mapping questions: whether to use Broadway or Napa Road as dividing lines, how to treat two detached “islands” of city jurisdiction (attach each to the geographically closest district), and whether recent fire-hazard maps should influence district boundaries in the city’s northern areas. Mitchell said islands should be placed with the most adjacent district and that changes such as moving a single street line can trigger swaps or rotations that cascade across multiple districts, potentially affecting many neighborhoods.

After public comment and council discussion, a council member moved and another seconded a motion to continue the public hearing; the council approved the continuation by voice vote. The Mayor confirmed the special hearing will be continued as part of the council’s regular meeting, and the Zoom instance was to be restarted for viewers.

Next steps: Councilmembers asked staff and the consultant to return with narrowed map options at the fourth hearing—expected to be the meeting where the council reduces the number of draft maps under active consideration (Mitchell recommended narrowing to one or two maps) so that the public can provide targeted feedback on the plans the council is seriously considering.

Credits: Presentation and technical analysis by Paul Mitchell of Redistricting Partners; public comments from residents Tom Conlin, Cedra Nathan, and Armando Zimmerman; procedural direction from the Mayor and the City Manager.