Soledad residents worked for months to bring a referendum to the ballot and motivate voters to reject a five-district map the City Council selected last year. Measure P was rejected by a massive 80-point margin, reflecting the voice of members of the public who had clearly said: No to five districts.
While the referendum is over, the process of transitioning from at-large to district-based elections is not.
Now that the election results are certified, the council will decide how to proceed. Council could adopt one of the four-district maps (with a mayor elected at-large) that were developed last year during the process. (City Attorney Mike Rodriquez noted this is the most cost-effective option, and the fastest, enabling district elections to begin this November.) Second, council could opt to restart the districting process and develop new four-district maps based on Census data. Or third, they could continue with at-large elections, despite a voting rights challenge in 2022 that led to this process to start with. (That option would leave the city vulnerable to a potential lawsuit.)
“I want the community to come out and voice their input. What map do you like?” says Monica Andrade, spokesperson for Soledad Committee for Voting Rights, the group behind the referendum. Andrade, who is married to Councilmember Fernando Cabrera, notes that neighboring Greenfield had an engaging districting process: “The citizen [map] was the one they picked, and I liked that.”
If the council wants district elections to begin to take effect for the general election on Nov. 5, it has to approve the maps and submit them by the end of May. The council is scheduled to discuss the districting process on Wednesday, May 15.
Soledad is also in the process of filling former Councilmember Ben Jimenez Jr.’s vacancy; he resigned on March 25. The city is receiving applications until May 15 and will appoint someone on May 23 to serve for the reminder of Jimenez’s term.