Six groups presented the council with seven different plans for redistricting, one of which was made by the Berkeley Student District Campaign in an attempt to create a student supermajority district. UC Berkeley junior and current redistricting director Noah Efron, senior Michael Manset and junior and ASUC External Affairs Vice President-elect Safeena Mecklai all presented for the BSDC.

Representatives of the BSDC said in the meeting that because the student community is currently divided into four districts, it is difficult for students to have their voices heard on the council. A student supermajority district would allow students to be represented on City Council.

“Twenty-five percent of Berkeley residents are students and they are not represented,”  Manset said during his presentation. “By creating a student district, students will have an institutionalized seat on the council to represent them. Our plan has District 7 remain the student district but increase in size so that 86 percent of students live in the district.”

Mecklai said that if having a student council member is not possible, the council member elected should understand student issues and be in tune with issues in student life.

“If the student community is condensed to one district, students will have more of a voice on the council,” Efron said. “The student community should be seen as a community of interest because while crime has decreased in other districts, in the student community crime has remained the same.

UC Berkeley alumnus Alfred Twu also submitted a redistricting plan and said that a student district should be made so that students could have a voice on the council.  However, Sherry Smith, president of the League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville, said that other communities and neighborhoods should also be considered when redistricting rather than just the student community.

“I can see why students would want a student district because then they would have an impact on the council and the council member elected by them would be responsive to their needs,” Smith said. “However, there are other communities of interest, such as the West Berkeley neighborhood, that should be considered. So what the council must do is weigh all the submitted plans out and possibly merge some together to achieve what is best for the city of Berkeley.”

Berkeley City Council will meet again on May 7 to vote on a redistricting plan and will begin to modify and change the plan once it is chosen.

Contact Seif Abdelghaffar at sabdelghaffar@dailycal.org.

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The Sunshine Ordinance — or city ballot Measure U — seeks to grant citizens access to the same information and records available to city officials as well as provide a sufficient opportunity to comment on issues at open meetings before decisions are finalized.

Though the city’s earlier Open Government Ordinance was adopted in 2011 to meet similar goals of increased public record and meeting access, the new ordinance would replace the current ordinance and create a new oversight committee that could enact harsher punishments — including a lawsuit as a last resort — for officials who do not comply with the new provisions.

“You waste your time lodging a complaint because nothing happens,” said Sunshine Ordinance Commission chair Dean Metzger. “The Sunshine Ordinance has more teeth in it and will get more results.”

The current ordinance cannot enforce because it only creates an advisory commission, he said.

If passed by voters, the ordinance will mandate that legislative decisions be made only in public meetings. Residents would also be allowed to place issues on the City Council meeting agenda, and any person attending the meeting will be given additional time to speak on agenda items.

Additionally, the measure would stipulate that closed council sessions must feature a public session to air public comments about the issues, as enforced by an advisory commission on open government issues that will be appointed by the City Council.

“It’s just really a bizarre, over-the-top measure that’s put together by a lot of people who are paranoid about what’s happening in Berkeley,” said Mayor Tom Bates.

Bates equated the new ordinance with “sunburn,” saying it would be detrimental to the city by diverting money and city labor away from an already overburdened legislative system. The measure is estimated to cost the city up to $1 million to $2 million a year, he said.

“I am all for hearing residents speak, but when you have 100 people show up and you are trying to make a decision, you want to hear from people, and you want them to express themselves, but you have to make a decision in a timely manner,” he said.

Berkeley City Auditor Ann-Marie Hogan said she understands why citizens feel like their voices are not being heard but agreed with Bates by saying that passing this measure would strain the city’s finances.

“I am worried about the way it is going to slow down decision making and create more work for the staff and city,” she said.

Supporters of Measure U say the current ordinance is not enforced and does not hold city officials accountable for “violating citizens’ rights,” a statement released by the Yes on Measure U campaign reads.

“The fact that it may take two months for the commissions to make recommendations to the council is not a sunshine issue — that is the commission’s problem,” said former mayor and Measure U proponent Shirley Dean.

Dean added that the estimated cost of the measure was based on a 2010 plan that has since inflated and does not reflect how much it will actually cost Berkeley.

But if the measure passes, the oversight commission would be mandated to run independently of the council. The hypothetical commission would oversee all levels of lawmaking, from the city committees to the mayor’s office, Dean said.

“There are continuing problems of secrecy, especially at the mayor level of city government — even the City Council members do not get information from the mayor,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington.

Though voters will ultimately decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs, Bates said he believes voters will agree with him on the measure.

“People are not going to go for this,” he said. “It’s not going to pass — people see through them.”

Contact Aliyah Mohammed at amohammed@dailycal.org.

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Authors of the six redistricting plans presented their proposals before a group of about 40 community members and four council members — Linda Maio, Gordon Wozniak, Laurie Capitelli and Jesse Arreguin — as well as city staff representatives, at the special meeting moderated by the League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville. This was the first opportunity for the community to view the redistricting plans for Berkeley’s eight City Council districts, which are revised every 10 years to comply with census data and fluctuations in the city’s population.The city charter requires that redistricting proposals must adhere as closely as possible to the 1986 district boundaries and create districts with equal populations of about 14,073 people each and clear boundaries.

The authors of the proposals range from residents trying to preserve neighborhood boundaries to UC Berkeley students hoping to create a student district within the city.

ASUC Vice President of External Affairs Joey Freeman presented the Berkeley Student District Campaign’s proposal but acknowledged that their proposal will never be chosen because it does not comply with the city charter.

“Students have a huge role in making Berkeley what it is,” Freeman said. “Student issues are community issues … this is really a simple matter of fairness and justice.”

The group’s goal is to make a statement with their proposal and to attempt to eventually amend the city charter so that a student district could be possible by putting it on the ballot for the November 2012 election.

Another group of students representing UC Berkeley, Berkeley City College and local high schools also submitted a redistricting proposal. The group, the Maximum Participation Minimum Deviation Coalition, is made up of 10 students who interned with the City Council over the summer.

The coalition’s proposal sticks closely to the 1986 district boundaries with some necessary adjustments for population. The coalition’s proposal deviates from the population goal for each district by at most 35 people, which they said is the smallest margin of deviation of any of the proposals.

“Our main criteria was creating an equal population distribution,” said Berkeley City College student Audrey Gutierrez, who presented the coalition’s proposal at the meeting. “We tried to get as close as possible to the one person/one vote idea.”

Plans for redistricting had to be submitted to the city clerk by Sept. 30. City staff then reviewed the plans. The proposals were then made available on the city website on Nov. 3.

The first public hearing will take place at the City Council’s meeting Tuesday, where the council will be able to review the plans and ask the authors questions. By the second public hearing on Jan. 17, the council will decide which proposal they want city staff to draft into an ordinance.

The ordinance should then be adopted by the council in its first and second readings in February and March.

The final district map must be submitted to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters by April 1 for the November 2012 election.

“Redistricting is a public process in Berkeley,” said Deputy City Clerk Mark Numainville at the beginning of the meeting. This was not always the case, however.

According to Sherry Smith, president of the League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville — an organization open to people of all genders over 18 that promotes political responsibility through informed and active participation — this is essentially the first time that members of the community have been encouraged to submit their own plans since the uproar that resulted from the city’s redistricting proposal in 2000.

Redistricting plans at that time were devised by the city. Many people in Berkeley felt that the city’s proposal was unfairly distributed. The League of Women Voters were involved with the referendum to repeal the districts that the city was trying to create, which prompted the city to redraft their plan.

“It’s much better to have lots and lots of options,” Maio said. “We didn’t have this variety of proposals in the past.”

Maio and Smith also agreed that software improvements have made it much easier for people to access census data and apply it to district maps themselves.

Adelyn Baxter covers city government.

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