LOS ANGELES – To explain outrage over Los Angeles’ newly proposed West San Fernando Valley City Council District, Teresa Cedeno invited Spectrum News 1 on a tour that began in her Canoga Park neighborhood, which has no sidewalks.
“We really need more resources invested in our community to nurture it,” she said.
What you need to know
- The new West Valley District, ambiguously referred to as “4-or-2”, includes Canoga Park, Winnetka, Reseda, and Lake Balboa
- The LA Redistribution Commission refused to decide who should represent District “4-or-2”, leaving it between two councilors, Paul Krekorian or Nithya Raman
- The city council will have the option to change the map before the new borders go into effect. January 1st
- Krekorian called the process “fundamentally flawed”
The new West Valley District, ambiguously referred to as “4-or-2,” includes Canoga Park, Winnetka, Reseda, and Lake Balboa. The majority would be Latino, but instead of bolstering their community, Cedeno is upset that the 21-person Redistricting Commission created key landmarks like the Warner Center and instead placed them in District 3, a mainly white district to the south.
“It’s racial segregation, isn’t it? Bring all poor people and low-income people together and just give them leftovers,” Cedeno said. “In the meantime, those with many resources can continue to accumulate resources.”
LA’s 21-person Redistricting Commission declined to decide who should represent “4-or-2”, leaving it to two council members who do not live there: Paul Krekorian or Nithya Raman. The other would represent Hollywood Hills, North Hollywood, Valley Glenn, and parts of Los Feliz.
While Canoga Park voters last voted for the council in 2017, according to the proposed map, Cedeno would not vote again until 2024, a seven-year period between votes.
“The idea of leaving over a quarter of a million people in a district that has no chance to vote for seven years is outrageously anti-democratic,” said Krekorian, who is ready to throw the map away and scrape away.
The city council will have the option to change the map before the new borders go into effect on January 1st.
“I am fully and completely ready for this,” said Krekorian. “I think this process was an embarrassment.”
In a statement on Thursday, the chairman of the commission defended the card in a statement.
“We went through a process that secured the civic participation of over 12,000 Angelenos, who submitted both oral and written testimonies, and for the first time in the history of the city drew the map boundaries in front of the public – not in the back rooms of the town hall “Said Fred Ali. “It was not our job to protect elected officials, their jobs or their political future.”
On the final map, Cedeno was happy to see the commission at least placed their Alma Matter Pierce College in the new West Valley district.
“These are the populations that will be attending,” she said.
After all, what use is it to have power if you don’t have a say in where you live.
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