LA City Council President Martinez is looking for a new body to lead the redistribution process – Daily Breeze

City Council President Nury Martinez said Tuesday, October 26th that Los Angeles “cannot make reasonable progress” on a map proposed by the council’s Redistricting Commission and proposed the establishment of an ad hoc Redistricting Committee, that is the role of the council in the process.

“It is clear that too many voices have yet to be heard across town and that we have an immovable deadline,” said Martinez. “We cannot move sensibly on a map that raises concerns among so many marginalized communities if it will affect the lives of all Angelenos for the next decade. If we are to build a stronger and fairer Los Angeles, we need a map that reflects that. “

On Thursday, the city council’s redistribution commission voted to finalize its recommendations for a draft map of the revised district boundaries, but failed to specify which district would be District 2 and which would be District 4. City council members from these two districts, Paul Krekorian and Nithya Raman, supported Martinez’s motion to set up an ad hoc redistribution commission.

The draft map submitted by the 21-person commission had already been criticized by Raman and Krekorian for drastically redefining their districts, and according to the recommendations, one of them would end up with completely new voters in the western San Fernando Valley.

Raman represents parts of Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Hollywood Hills, Hancock Park and Sherman Oaks, among others. Krekorian represents the East San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, including North Hollywood, Studio City, and Sun Valley.

The draft map sent to the council would include either Krekorian or Raman, representing a borough that spanned parts of their two current boroughs – the Hollywood Hills, North Hollywood, Valley Glen, and part of Los Feliz. The other would represent a completely new district with the areas of Canoga Park, Winnetka, Reseda and Lake Balboa in the west of the San Fernando Valley.

Martinez blew up the card draft on Friday. “As it stands now, drastic changes have been made to the map that have confused and alienated thousands and threatened to widen the neighborhood gap,” she said.

“While some areas kept their assets and their neighborhoods intact, poverty has been concentrated in other communities that have suffered from disinvestment and neglect for generations.”

Martinez said the council will work to ensure the map “gets all churches and Angelenos right”.

The commission finalized its recommendations on Thursday evening.

“Last night, a sharply divided redistribution commission approved an embarrassingly bad proposal for new boroughs that ignores public input and disenfranchises half a million people,” Krekorian said on Friday.

“I am confident that the council will respect the will of the people instead of making the deal from political insiders and rejecting this unnecessarily divisive and controversial proposal.”

Krekorian added that some commissioners “insisted on disrupting the San Fernando Valley with broadly dramatic and unnecessary changes that effectively nullify last year’s election results in two districts.”

Raman, who was elected last year, echoed Martinez and Krekorian, saying the city council will have “an opportunity to restore community confidence in the redistribution process when the card is in front of us.

“I am delighted that so many Angelenos have been activated to speak out to defend their neighborhood and their rights as voters. The public records are clear: this card has unacceptable injustices and needs to be changed, ”Raman added on Friday.

In a statement to the City News Service on Friday, commission chairman Fred Ali defended the card, saying the commission was “very proud to send the card approved at yesterday’s meeting to the city council for review. Our work has been shaped by census data, the federal electoral law and countless hours of public testimony. “

Ali said the commission conducted the trial involving more than 12,000 Los Angeles residents speaking or giving written testimony.

“The Commission has been committed to transparency and equity from the start. The claim that this map focuses poverty in certain communities is obviously incorrect. In final approval of the map, the commission took great care to ensure that traditionally disadvantaged districts contain important assets, “Ali said, adding that it was not the commission’s job to” protect elected officials, their jobs or their political futures. ”

The Redistricting Commission uses data from the U.S. census to update the city’s counties, with each city council member representing approximately 260,000 people. The council will have the opportunity to make changes to the map before the final boundaries are set for the 15 counties, which will go into effect on January 1st.