Meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 8; new maps will go into effect for the November 2016 election
Published in the Sept. 2-15, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
The Gavilan Joint Community College District is seeking input at its Sept. 8 meeting on changing the way it elects its governing board of trustees from an “at-large” voting format to one where candidates are elected from districts with boundaries drawn according to demographics determined by federal and state law.
“The Gavilan district currently elects its governing board members through at-large voting,” said Jan Bernstein Chargin, director of public information for Gavilan Community College. “This means that all of the voters in the district can vote on any of the candidates on the ballot regardless of where the voter resides.”
The candidates, however, must reside within one of three trustee areas although they are voted upon by all of the voters in the district, she said.
Since the founding of the district, three trustees have been from San Benito County, and two each from the communities of Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
At the April meeting of the Gavilan College Board of Trustees, the board voted to amend Gavilan’s policy and transition to a system of by-trustee area elections, Bernstein Chargin said. The change will create seven distinct geographic districts, each represented by a single trustee, who is elected by the voters of that district rather than the entire college district.
The first time this new system will be used is planned for the November 2016 election.
She has prepared draft maps showing how trustee areas may be configured. An alternative map was also presented for consideration to the board by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
“The criteria for drawing the district maps include the constitutional and statutory requirements for one-person one-vote, demographic distribution, communities of interest,” Bernstein Chargin said.
Each map has a page summarizing the relevant demographic information, she said.
The summary includes information regarding the total population of each of the proposed trustee areas contained in the draft map along with information as to the demographic make-up of that trustee area, the voting age population in each proposed area, and information regarding the estimated Citizen Voting Age Population for each proposed trustee area based on the most recent release of the American Community Survey (2009-2013).
