Gilroy Discussing Districting Maps

The city of Gilroy is getting closer to finalizing maps for their new district based elections, in their 4th public hearing on the subject, 4 new maps were shown to city council and the public, with most being slight variations on community submitted maps.

Designers say that changes to community maps are to ensure that they are around the same population size, staying contiguous, to maintain communities of interest, and to keep them easily identifiable and compact.

While many in public comment only had slight suggestions for changes to maps, others brought up more factors to consider when talking about these districts, saying that equitability is an important factor to make sure that less wealthy neighborhoods are still well served by the new district based elections.

The only action directed by the city council on Monday night was to pushback the final decision on the districts to May 19th from its previous deadline on May 5th. 2 more public hearings have been set for this issue on those days ahead of the final decision making process.