Simi Valley switches to by-district council election system starting in 2020

Ventura

Threatened with a lawsuit by a Latino voter participation group, Simi Valley has become one of the latest cities in Ventura County to switch from a citywide system of electing City Council members to a district-by-district method.

The mayor will still be elected citywide, also known as at-large.

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The City Council adopted an ordinance Dec. 10 formally establishing the new by-district system, entailing four geographic council election districts, starting in 2020.

District 1 is in the northeast part of the city, District 2 in the southeast, District 3 in the west and District 4 in the southwest.

One council member will be elected from each district. Candidates must reside in and be registered voters of the district in which they are running.

Districts 1 and 3 will elect members beginning in the November 2020 general municipal election. Districts 2 and 4 will elect members beginning in the November 2022 election. Council members serve four-year terms.

The fifth member of the council, the mayor, will be elected by all city voters to a two-year term. The next mayoral election will be in November 2020.

“The council adopted an ordinance transitioning from an at-large election system to a by-district election system that provides the district boundaries on a map and creates the election sequencing for when each district will come up for election,” City Clerk Ky Spangler said Friday.

The council considered establishing six districts but eventually went with four.

Other cities switch too

Simi Valley becomes one of the latest cities in the county to switch from an at-large system to a by-district system. Ojai did so the night after Simi Valley did. Oxnard and Ventura’s new by-district systems debuted for the Nov. 6 election.

Like Simi Valley, those cities were threatened with litigation over their at-large systems, which opponents argue violate the California Voting Rights Act by diluting the minority vote. A by-district system, advocates argue, would help remedy that, giving minority candidates a better chance to be elected.

Also threatened with litigation, a number of school districts in the county have switched to by-district systems, too, including Santa Paula Unified and Ventura Unified. The Simi Valley Unified School District is in the process of moving to by-district elections.

Simi Valley was threatened with a lawsuit in early August in a letter from lawyers for the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. Founded in 1974, the group says it is the largest and oldest nonpartisan Latino voter participation organization in the U.S.

The letter said the group would sue Simi Valley if it didn’t voluntarily switch to a by-district system, contending the at-large system was racially polarized, watering down the city’s Latino vote.

In the letter, Malibu-based attorney Kevin Shenkman, representing the Southwest group, said data shows Latinos make up about 23.29 percent of Simi Valley’s population.

Prior to the Nov. 6 election, only one Latino, Glen Becerra, had ever been elected to the Simi Valley City Council since the city incorporated in 1969. Becerra, elected to five four-year terms under the citywide system, retired from the council earlier this month after 20 years.

Ruth Luevanos became the first Latina ever elected to the council on Nov. 6, also under the at-large system. One of her first actions after being sworn in last week and seated on the dais, was to vote to adopt the ordinance establishing the by-district system.

No choice

The Southwest group’s letter seemingly was spurred by the City Council’s decision in April, and again in June, to become the only council in Ventura County to come out in support of the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California’s emotionally charged sanctuary state law.

Shenkman said the council’s stance was “shameful” and “only serves to perpetuate fear amongst Latinos, who feel ... unrepresented in Simi Valley.”

Three weeks after being threatened with the lawsuit, the City Council voted unanimously to start the process of transitioning to a district-by-district method.

Council members said they essentially had no choice in the matter, given the city allegedly was in violation of the Voting Rights Act. But council members also said they didn’t oppose moving to a district system.

“We really don’t have a choice,” said council member Dee Dee Cavanaugh. “It’s a no-win situation” for the city to fight the threatened lawsuit, since, according to Spangler and City Attorney Lonnie Eldridge, every other city that has fought such litigation has lost, spending considerable legal fees in the process.

Becerra concurred, saying, “It’s probably the direction that we will need to go.”