San Jose To Begin Controversial Task of Redrawing Council Districts

SAN JOSE (KCBS) - The San Jose City Council's first meeting of the new year was slated for Tuesday. One of the initial tasks for the councilmembers would be to take up the issue of redrawing council districts.

KCBS' Mike Colgan Reports:

The once-a-decade redrawing of the boundaries is a complicated and often controversial task.

"Any time you start moving boundaries around, people get really interested in seeing where they're going to go, who's living where, what the politics of it are," offered Mayor Chuck Reed. "But it's something required by the Constitution. We will have to do this in a meaningful, professional, straightforward way with no gerrymandering for political gains. That's always a challenge because politics is always around the corner when you're doing redistricting because people are always maneuvering to try and get an advantage of some kind or another."

The challenge would be to keep each of San Jose's districts with roughly the same number of people.

"There's no doubt that our district boundaries will change," Reed declared. "We've had ten years of growth in the City of San Jose. They all need to be reasonably balanced under federal constitutional rules so some districts will shrink in territory and some districts will grow in territory in order to maintain the balance among the ten districts."

District 2 councilman Ash Kalra expected his south San Jose boundary to expand.

"I think it will grow because other districts certainly have added a lot of residents. And so those of us on the outskirts of the city are probably going to grow," he surmised. "Based on the fact that there hasn't been much housing growth in my district and the district sizes are based on population density and so I don't believe my district will get smaller."

The City Council has until Oct. 31 to set the new boundaries.

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