Officials have had to figure out the next decade of county supervisorial districts in a pinch.

How the five Monterey County supervisorial districts will look for the next 10 years ultimately comes down to how county officials want to cut up Salinas: the political fate of a 3,000-square-mile county determined by the lines drawn through a 23-square-mile city.

Salinas, after all, is the population heart of the region, accounting for more than one-third of the county’s 439,035 people. However, the total number of people living in the county, its cities, unincorporated areas, census blocks and tracts, and the racial makeup of these areas, was information that was delayed for months due to the pandemic’s impact on 2020 Census data collection.

The courts adjusted the timelines accordingly but the deadlines remain tight; the redistricting process, which in 2011 took about five months, has been condensed down to two-and-a-half months at the local level. Cleaned redistricting data was handed down from the state around Sept. 30. The county’s Advisory Redistricting Committee has to make a map recommendation to the Board of Supervisors on Thursday, Dec. 2 in order for the board to vote before the state’s Dec. 15 deadline.

Jane Parker, a former county supervisor and a member of the committee, says the shortened timeline has impacted the public’s ability to engage.

“Everyone is suffering from the lack of time,” Parker says.

Rosemary Soto, a staffer with the county administrative office who is managing the redistricting process, says a combination of the public and redistricting committee members have submitted 12 map proposals. The committee, which will make a final recommendation to the Board of Supervisors this week, has whittled the submission pool down to three map preferences, each of which have their own interpretation of how Salinas should be divided.

Law requires supervisor districts to have similar populations with contiguous boundaries and to prioritize maintaining communities of interest, a redistricting term for neighborhoods, communities or groups that carry similar policy priorities and would benefit from being kept together. In order to keep the population of each of the five districts close, Districts 1, 2, 3 and 4 each require a slice of the Salinas population pie. However, which part of Salinas each will claim is the main debate in front of the committee.

Residents in North County (District 2) have expressed a desire to relinquish much of their existing claim to northwest Salinas in favor of solidifying an identity as a rural district. In District 4, which encompasses Marina, Seaside, Del Rey Oaks and parts of South Salinas, a number of residents, including Marina City Councilmember Kathy Biala, said the district’s Asian and Black voices would be diluted if new maps add more Salinas residents to District 4.

The three maps being considered each shrink District 1’s boundaries – the heart of Salinas – and add southeast Salinas residents to District 3, but offer different interpretations of District 2 and 4’s share of Salinas. Parker says the committee has to be careful in moving too many voters. Taking a voter out of District 3 or 2 – where the last elections were in 2018 – and placing them in Districts 1, 4 or 5 – where the next elections are in 2024 – would mean those voters would have six years between voting.