What’s a white homeowner in West of Twin Peaks have in common with a Filipino family in Oceanview-Merced Heights-Ingleside (OMI)? And what’s someone living on the shores of Lake Merced have to do with a renter living near Golden Gate Park?
Very little — and that’s the problem with mixing these disparate San Franciscans into the same supervisorial district, a crowd of elected officials, residents and activists-all-turned naysayers told the San Francisco Redistricting Task Force on Monday.
What’s a white homeowner in West of Twin Peaks have in common with a Filipino family in Oceanview-Merced Heights-Ingleside (OMI)? And what’s someone living on the shores of Lake Merced have to do with a renter living near Golden Gate Park?
Very little — and that’s the problem with mixing these disparate San Franciscans into the same supervisorial district, a crowd of elected officials, residents and activists-all-turned naysayers told the San Francisco Redistricting Task Force on Monday.
The Task Force began last summer the task of redrawing the city’s eleven supervisorial districts, an effort undertaken every ten years. City law says that each district must be roughly equal in population — but that “communities of interest” and neighborhoods should not be divided when so doing.
A draft map released by the Task Force last week does just that. Among the changes to which supervisors, city commissioners and others objected to Monday:
–The portions of District 11 west of Interstate 280 (including much of what is referred to as OMI) would become District 7.
–Lakeshore in District 7 is ceded to District 4.
–District 6, by far the city’s biggest district by population, loses the Inner Mission to District 8.
–District 8 is widened to include parts of West of Twin Peaks.
–Historically LGBT areas of District 8, which includes the Castro, are given to Districts 5 and 9.
“There’s no reason to divide neighborhoods,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, who noted that the draft plan includes shifting parts of Bernal Heights from District 9 to District 8, and parts of Mission Dolores from District 8 to District 9 — not to mention dividing the gay neighborhood of the Castro (a “community of interest” if ever there was one) into multiple districts.
“To include us in District 5 severs us from the LGBT community we serve,” said Rebecca Rolfe, executive director of the LGBT Center on Market Street.
The draft map does have some sensible moves, such as putting all of the Portola, Lower Haight, and Western Addition neighborhoods into one district. But at Monday’s meeting, the opposition was legion — and there’s many more opposed to the proposals at home, according to public officials.
“Not one of [the Lakeshore residents] wants to be annexed into District 4,” said union organizer F.X. Crowley, who sits on the San Francisco Port Commission.
Residents say they’re concerned that a new supervisor may not be attuned or interested in their new constituents’ worries — which would be a return to reality for some present at Monday’s meeting at Minnie and Lovie Ward Recreation Center in the city’s oft-forgotten OMI, where residents told tales of visiting all eleven supervisors before finding someone willing to find funding for a library or rec center.
“How are they going to react to what’s going on over here?” said Mike Brown, founder of nonprofit Inner City Youth, of the proposal to mix the OMI with St. Francis Wood, Miraloma Park and other parts of District 7.
A 1996 voter initiative split the city into eleven supervisorial districts. Nearly every district is too small in population, except for districts 6, 10, and 11 (too big by 21,585, 5,458, and 6,332 people, respectively).
So some districts must shrink, while others grow — but how to do it? Not by splitting neighborhoods or distinct communities, according to overwhelming public sentiment, though in absence of better ideas, this may be the harsh reality.
The Redistricting Task Force will host another ten meetings — one in each of the supervisorial districts — while it accepts any and all public comment, including citizens’ own proposed district borders. The Task Force is scheduled to submit a final plan to the Board of Supervisors by April 15.
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