Say it quietly so you don’t jinx it – but it seems as though San Francisco’s redistricting saga may be slowly approaching the finish line.
At noon, the Redistricting Task Force will meet for what is scheduled to be its final mapping session. After that, the plan is to hold two more meetings in the next week: one to make minor, “clerical” adjustments to the district boundaries, and one to approve the final draft map.
But the broad strokes of the map should be decided by the end of today’s meeting, per advice from the City Attorney’s office.
Of course, we have been here before. In the early morning on Sunday April 10, the task force’s “final” mapping session ended in disaster when four members walked out in protest over the process’ lack of transparency. A map was approved that night by the remaining five members but was later rescinded on Wednesday April 13 when task force chair Rev. Arnold Townsend flipped his vote — causing the task force to blow through its legal deadline.
“I think we just need a little more time,” Townsend said before that vote. “If it requires us yelling at each other a little bit more, maybe that’s what we need to do.”
Multiple activists and one member of the Redistricting Task Force have told Mission Local that Townsend confided in them that he has been under intense pressure from outside political forces to vote in certain ways during the mapping process.
While this final meeting may feel like déjà vu, there are a couple of differences this time around that make another delay less likely.
Firstly: The Department of Elections legally requires a finalized map by May 2 in order to plan for the November election. There is little wiggle room here and the time frame is already tight.
Secondly: The task force is already facing a lawsuit for missing the April 15 deadline. The three plaintiffs, headed up by pro-housing advocate Todd David, wrote in a statement that the deadline was missed because “extreme partisan interests successfully intimidated the Redistricting Task Force” into voting down the prior map.
“The lawsuit is a safety valve,” David tells Mission Local. He said that the lawsuit was most likely to kick in if a map was not approved in today’s meeting, so that a legal map would be adopted before the May 2 deadline one way or another.
David added that the intention was not to advocate for any particular map.
The task force will begin today’s meeting using Map 7, nicknamed the “blow-up map” because task force member J. Michelle Pierce said she would “blow up” the previous draft’s configuration of districts before she made her edits. Given how much the maps have changed throughout this process, it is unknown what the map might look like by the end of the meeting.
Take a look at the maps below to compare the “blow-up map,” the rejected “ethnic suicide” draft map, and the current district boundaries.
Data from the Redistricting Task Force.
Half an hour before today’s meeting, activists will gather on the steps of City Hall advocating for some version of Map 7 to be adopted by the task force. The majority of in-person public comment throughout the process has been in favor of many facets of that map – for instance, keeping the Tenderloin in District 6 and keeping Potrero Hill with Bayview in District 10.
A significant minority of public commenters over the past few weeks liked facets of the draft map rejected on April 13. Some spoke in favor of moving Portola into District 10, and many from District 3 were pleased to have Russian Hill in their district.
The meeting starts at noon. You can follow along on webex with the password ‘comment’.
Dark money manipulators and Snakes sometimes they are one and same!
FOR ALL OF ETERNITY HIS NAME SHALL HERETOFORE BE ARNOLD MOVE MY CAR TOWNSEND. BOOM.