The Carlsbad City Council has adopted the official map designating the four districts that will be used to elect City Council members in the 2018 and 2020 elections. The City Council had until early August to adopt the map or face a lawsuit challenging its current way of electing City Council members.
The map was created through the collaboration of two residents who used the public map-drawing tools provided by the city’s professional demographers.
District maps are required to be reviewed every 10 years based on the latest Census. This means that these new district boundaries will be reviewed in 2021 using the 2020 Census data. Based on that review, the district lines could change for the 2022 election.
See a PDF of the map on the city’s website.
See an interactive version of the map that allows you to zoom in and see a satellite view. Where district lines fall on streets, the middle of the street is the dividing line for the district, meaning homes on one side of the street would be in a different district than the opposite side.
Once the ordinance making the map official goes into effect on Aug 24, the San Diego County Registrar of Voters will create a detailed map within its system.
Tuesday’s meeting marked the latest in a series of public meetings since the city received a letter April 5 alleging the city’s method of electing City Council members violated the California Voting Rights Act. Currently City Council members are elected “at large,” which means all voters in the city choose their City Council members. Under the new system, the city will have four City Council districts, with voters in each district electing a Council member who lives in that district. The mayor would continue to be elected “at large,” meaning voters from throughout the city would have an opportunity to vote for that position.
District elections will be phased in, with district one, in the northwest part of the city, and district three, which runs west to east in the middle part of the city scheduled to hold elections in 2018. The other two districts will hold their first elections in 2020. City Council members serve four year terms.
Currently, City Council member elections are staggered every two years. The seats held by Council Members Mark Packard and Michael Schumacher are up for election in 2018. Council Member Mark Packard lives in Council District one, and Council Member Schumacher lives in district three. Council Member Cori Schumacher also lives in district one. Her term ends in 2020. She may run for the district one seat and, if successful, would begin serving that 2018 to 2022 term representing the district, and the City Council would need to fill the remaining two years of her “at large” term. If she chooses not to run in 2018, or if she runs and is not elected to represent district one, she would still serve out her current term as an “at large” City Council member until 2020. To fill an unscheduled City Council vacancy, the City Council may call a special election or appoint someone to fill the remainder of the term.
In all, the city’s demographers prepared four options, and members of the public created 10 maps that would comply with the criteria for districts under federal and state law.
More information about the change to electing City Council members by districts is available on the city’s website, www.carlsbadca.gov/districts.
City Clerk contact
Office of the City Clerk, 760-434-2808 or clerk@carlsbadca.gov
