Scott Rafferty
Public Hearing #4 - August 19, 2024
The good news is we have an Asian CVAP district, but there is a good reason why we have a 37% Asian CVAP; we have 3 different ways of showing how we can do that. There could be good reasons cause we could go down to the neighborhood and find out that people have very strong opinions on how to organize best, and we could find ways to go above 37% because none of these maps are very aggressive about picking census blocks I think they are all legitimate districts in their own right. So, that is the most important objective (legitimate districts). Once the 37% CVAP district is covered, the remaining issue is what the rest of the map looks like. In the Fair Maps Act, there is a pecking order, and communities of interest come before Cities and CDPs. Now, sometimes cities or CDPs have become very strong communities of interest. That happened in the school district because the only input we got from the school district public was how marginalized all the CDPs felt; they totaled up to 16% of the school district population and passionately wanted to be their own district and supplement a small population from Newark, I mean Hayward. We are in a different situation here because over 48% of the population is from the Unincorporated, and the priority should be on communities of interest, whether those are neighborhoods, socio-economic factors, or political in the sense of shared policy preference in proclivity to vote. It is important in these large populations with low voting propensity to be different than wealthy areas with high propensity. So all these priorities come before you look at boundaries, independent, and they often correlate with additional factors. Alameda County has not relied on the census to update these CDP definitions; instead, it went in its own direction and established general plans and recognized communities, and most of these overlap the census bureau has not updated the CDPs in the last 20 years. And I don’t think they have a lot of independence, especially the boundaries between CDPs, which have a lot of semblances unless they have really strong economic differences or other definable communities of interest that establish distinguished groups. The second principle is that after you satisfy the Asian priority here, it is important to look at other protected groups; I am very pleased to get a 22% black district, which actually surprised me. Which is a really good influence for them, and I think maybe it's Mitchel has done a slightly better job at giving relations influence districts, which is okay. But more generally, this is not primarily about race. It needs to recognize differences in economics and how people use these services. Other things, such as the concentration of children and others, are much more relevant than CDP. Now that we have a smaller set of maps, we can have incremental changes proposed because the very purpose for having a low population variance is you can make changes to achieve a desired goal. I think there are large reasons to oppose the way the board is looking at it and also defend this notion of creating distinct groups and not using them (having the wealthiest group be in one group should be looked at). It is also possible to have two or more districts with other income regardless of CDP. I think we can get more authentic input 3-4 maps to the public but also have an opportunity to revise them based on what we hear. Cause that is what works best in this process previously. I do think that having a district wraps around Castro Valley and combining different parts of the City and Cherryland is something that you should debate and discuss cause the boundaries of the City and Cherryland don’t reflect economic realities. No one should be voting for the CDPs; they are constructs, and nobody has ever voted for them. The largest problem with map D is it splits some Hayward Neighborhood, so I would want you to look at that.