Politics & Government

Alameda County Launches Redistricting Website

Follow the efforts to redraw boundaries for the county's five supervisorial districts. At least three are expected to change substantially.

If you're curious about how might affect your community, the good news is you can now track all the machinations of Alameda County's effort to stencils new boundaries for its five supervisorial districts at the county's official Redistricting 2011 website.

The bad news is there's a lot of work left to do. 

Three out of the five districts are badly off-balance—only the second district (Hayward, Union City, Newark) and fifth district (Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Piedmont, parts of Oakland) remain close to their ideal if obscure size of 302,054 residents. 

Find out what's happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The county's geographically sprawling first district (Pleasanton, Livermore, parts of Dublin, most of Fremont), once sparsely populated, has exploded in the past decade. It now has nearly 30,000 more people than it ought to, while comparatively petite Districts 3 and 4, which together encompass nearly the entire urban unincorporated community in addition to toeholds in Oakland, are more than 5 percent undersized.

District 3 now includes Alameda, San Leandro, San Lorenzo and, again, part of Oakland; District 4 comprises Castro Valley, a portion of Dublin and a large chunk of Oakland. Both will have to pick up extra area, either by horsetrading internally or gobbling up portions of neighboring districts. Because supervisorial districts must be contiguous, insiders say it's likely to be a mix of both. 

Find out what's happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The county believes it can complete the redistricting effort by midsummer, an ambitious plan that would require public hearings to begin by late May. Each community potentially affected by the shift will have an opportunity to give input before final boundaries are drawn. 

Stay tuned to Patch for further updates.


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