Report of Redistricting Commissioners Confirm 'Unequal Treatment'

A letter from four of thethat was drafting the city commission boundaries confirmed that the commission never saw some of the letters and emails that Studio City residents and other concerned citizens sent to the commission. 

Studio City Neighborhood Council vice president, when hearing that the emails weren’t getting to the commissioners, even delivered a and notes to the commission and made copies for each one of them.

“I sat through the whole meeting to see if the emails were going to be distributed and the box just sat there,” Sarkin said. 

The report, written by Robert Ahn, Bobbie Jean Anderson, Helen Kim and David Roberts, who were appointed by Councilman Eric Garcetti, Councilman Bernard Parks, Controller Wendy Greuel and Councilwoman Jan Perry, respectively, said the redistricting decisions were made illegally.

According to the report (which is also attached in the PDF section above):

For the most part, only written submissions by public members who brought sufficient hard copies to the Commission meetings were circulated to the Commission. Most written public submissions were not circulated to the Commission electronically, even though various Commissioners repeatedly requested electronic circulation of written submissions. But when it came to Toluca Lake's emails requesting inclusion in CD04, not CD02, those email submissions were circulated electronically to every member of the Ad Hoc Line Drawing Committee responsible for drafting the initial boundaries for CD04. The Commission's Executive Director, Andrew Westall, is President of the Greater Toluca Lake Neighborhood Council.

At one point all of Studio City was in the same council district as Toluca Lake, in the newly-drawn CD2. But, community members from Toluca Lake lobbied the commission and asked to be returned back to CD4, Councilman Tom LaBonge's district. 

When the lines were redrawn to move Toluca Lake out, then, Studio City was divided once again into  In the latest maps, Studio City is one of the 29 split neighborhood council districts (66 are not split). A total of 99.4 percent of the Studio City Neighborhood Council area will be in CD 2 while the rest in CD4. Some asking that the area stay in one district.

The letter is also trying to avoid threatened lawsuits over the redistricting boundaries that have upset certain communities. 

We note that, when some stakeholders of Neighborhood Councils made specific requests of the Commission, those requests were adopted in the Final Map Recommendation. For example, when Toluca Lake asked to be moved from CD02 to CD04, that request was adopted in the Final Map Recommendation. When Watts asked to be moved from CD09 to CD15, that request was adopted in the Final Map Recommendation. When the Sunland Tujunga and other foothill communities asked to be united with the communities of Shadow Hills, Lakeview Terrace and Hansen Dam, that request was adopted in the Final Map Recommendation. When the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa complained of being split from LAX, the Commission announced, without even a Commission vote, that that split was an "inadvertent error" and reunited the majority (but not all) of Westchester/Playa with LAX in CD11 in its Final Draft Map. When Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council asked to kept whole, the Commission placed them intact in CD05 in its initial draft map; but when they came back and complained that they didn't want to be whole in CD05, because their mission of preservation was incompatible with other voices in CD05, the Commission agreed to place the Orthodox Jewish community in CD05, and the rest of Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council in CD04.

The concerns from the neighboring Sherman Oaks community was also addressed.

Numerous stakeholders from San Fernando Valley, including the Valley Industry & Commerce Association and the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association (SOHA), asked the Commission to include only one "cross-over" district or, alternatively, a sixth Council District that was more than 50% in the Valley. SOHA was so strongly in support of such a request that it was even willing to tolerate a small split of the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council in order to create a sixth majority Valley Council District. Yet, on February 22, 2012, the Commission refused even to consider the merits of Amendment N, which would have moved the vast bulk of Sherman Oaks NC from CD04 to CD05 and thereby make CD05 a sixth Council District with a majority in the Valley.

See the latest maps here.

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