The new map for Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors districts places Isla Vista with the eastern Goleta Valley and Santa Barbara, and groups Guadalupe with part of Santa Maria.
These are two major changes compared to the current map, which links Isla Vista and Guadalupe with the Santa Ynez Valley and part of the Lompoc Valley to form a cross-county Third District.
The Santa Barbara County Citizens Independent Redistricting Commission is tasked with choosing a new map for the five supervisorial districts, and the panel picked a final map at the end of a 9-hour meeting on Saturday.
The commission is expected to adopt the map at a Wednesday night meeting.
Scroll down to view the final preferred map in detail and demographic information for each of the five proposed districts.
Santa Barbara County’s five-member Board of Supervisors historically has had two members representing mostly North County communities, two members representing South County communities, and one member representing communities from multiple regions.
The supervisors representing the North County districts have been more conservative and voted together on many issues, while the supervisors representing the South Coast districts have been more liberal and voted together on many issues.
The Third District representative has often been a swing vote on major policy decisions, and the new map boundaries could change the political makeup of that district’s voters. The new Third District map includes Lompoc, the Santa Ynez Valley, and the eastern Goleta Valley.
At Saturday’s meeting, commissioners made modifications from maps submitted by the public and ended up with a final preferred map for five supervisor districts that comply with redistricting rules, like equal populations and keeping communities of interest together, like cities and neighborhoods.
The final map does not look like any of the “focus map” finalists, but combines features included on multiple maps submitted by members of the public, commissioners noted during the meeting.
“We are not bound by the maps as they appear on paper,” commission chairman Glenn Morris said, adding that they focus maps were “starting points” to apply all the lessons of district-drawing from the past year.
Many of the commissioners called the final map a compromise, and said they tried to incorporate as many requests as possible from the hundreds of public commenters.
The Wednesday meeting to adopt the final map will start at 6 p.m. at the County Administration Building’s Planning Commission Room, 123 E. Anapamu St.
All meetings can be viewed live via Zoom, with links on the agenda website here: https://drawsantabarbaracounty.org/calendar-agenda/.
The county redistricting page with the meeting calendar, draft maps and other information is available here: https://drawsantabarbaracounty.org/.
Santa Barbara County Redistricting Commission Plan 822 Preferred Plan Final
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.