East Bay council reaffirms redistricting map choice

The Antioch City Council reaffirmed its vote on a redistricting map, chosing a modified version of one drawn by a demographer at a special meeting Friday evening.

Though the Council had voted 3-2 for that same map, Map A, on Tuesday, the vote was redone because there was confusion over which version was being considered that night. A modified Map A was chosen as a finalist on Feb. 22 and was in the council’s agenda packet and displayed on the screen, but Councilwoman Tamisha Torres-Walker used the words “draft Map A,” in her motion, a version drawn by a demographer and previously rejected.

By law, election districts must be redrawn every 10 years to reflect population shifts based on the latest census data. The city adopted its current district boundaries in 2018 when it switched from at-large to district elections.

Several community members who had spoken before returned on Friday to reiterate their disappointment with the redistricting map process, which began last fall and allowed residents to submit their own designs, though none was chosen in the end.

One resident questioned the council’s integrity and accused the council members of gerrymandering to protect certain elected officials.

“It’s become a circus,” she said. “Map 91 was one of the (previous) final two maps and it was beautiful… I believe we deserve an explanation of why that beautiful map was turned down.”

Kathy Cabrera criticized the council for holding a meeting on short notice, suggesting the public didn’t have time to participate.

“The sad reality is even when community members do show up and speak up, especially community members directly affected by some of these redistricting maps, their voices are not heard,” she said.

“Map 521 is a better match, as it not only complies with the guidelines set forth by the Fair Maps Act, which both map A’s do not, but Map 521 district boundaries are easily defined. They do not break up neighborhoods, nor do they (split) communities of interest…”

Former Councilwoman Mary Rocha also was disappointed.

“(Map A modified) does exactly what you want it to do: It cuts around the areas that you wanted to keep one person into the other person’s district,” she said about the map that would move Councilwoman Lori Ogorchock from District 3 to District 4.

Mayor Lamar Thorpe then asked to see the modified Map A and suggested moving some of the lines in Districts 3 and 4 while still trying to keep the population nearly equal. Mayor ProTem Mike Barbanica, however, quickly motioned for vote on Map 521 drawn by a resident, but the motion failed.

Torres-Walker then motioned for the original modified version, the one in their agenda packet that many thought was being voted on on Tuesday.

But Ogorchock suggested the mayor was just looking at keeping percentages of voters equal and not looking at communities of interest.

“It looks like a lake to me,” she said of modified Map A. “I don’t know where the communities of interest are in that map…When you just say move this line and move that line, you don’t know about neighborhoods. You don’t know who’s in there. You don’t know about the HOA general about the schools, you don’t know about the social, economic individuals that live there.”

Ogorchock then insinuated Torres-Walker had purposefully drawn lines that would leave her in another district and announced if that would happen, she would run in the new district.

“I just moved the lines,” Torres-Walker said. “I had no idea where you lived.”

Torres-Walker went on to chastise community members who had referred to certain Black councilmembers as being “ignorant” and called the council a circus. “You do not reference a circus because we are not monkeys and we are not clowns.”

“I’m just tired of the racial references, the constant attacks on my leadership and the leadership of people of color on this council,” she said, adding it was always her intent to make the selection of a redistricting map choice a community process.

Barbanica said he supported Map 91. “I thought it was the best map for the city regardless of where anybody lived,” he said, noting he did not even know where fellow council members lived until days ago.

“Map A modified splits up well-established neighborhoods … How do we justify splitting Mira Vista Hills which was established in 1977?”

“I’ll just wrap up by saying everybody lives in the city of Antioch districts, our mechanism in which people get elected,” the mayor added. “We all represent the entire city.”

Wilson noted she has heard comments from all sides, even if some of them did not speak at that night’s meeting.

“I’ve heard accusations thrown at me, made me think now I know what the witches of Salem, Massachusetts, felt. Accusations that weren’t true. …When we go through this process, not everybody’s going to be happy. We do the best we can.”

The council then voted to approve modified Map A on a 3-to-2 vote with Ogorchock and Barbancia opposed.