The Gilroy municipal council adds another public audience to its distribution process to allow more residents to weigh and give the council more time to deliberate on the decisions that will change the face of the Gilroy elections for the years to come.
“We would then like to have (time) to go back and speak with the voters and speak between us,” said the mayor of Gilroy, Greg Bozzo, at the meeting on Monday. “The key advantage is … to have two weeks to really understand and speak to the public before making a decision on the cards.”
The council voted to start the distribution process at the end of February. This decision was made after Gilroy received a letter threatening legal action under California Voting Rights Act if the city has not moved to the district elections, where residents of different sectors of a city vote for a single member of the municipal council to represent their district.
No city has won legal action against distribution under state electoral law, and some, including Santa Clara, had to pay millions of legal costs after trying to fight it.
Under the State Voting Act, the city can avoid these heavy legal costs by creating voting districts in a 90 -day window – May 27 for Gilroy – and welcoming at least five public hearings.
While the Council was originally to make decisions on district cards last Monday, they kept the decision.
A large part of the ongoing discussions focused on how the distribution would affect the is heavily Latin’s side of Gilroy, which was cited in the letter threatening the pursuit as a momentum for the passage in the districts.
Many cards offered have created a single district to the east of the Monterey road to try to unite the region in a single block of voting. Some, however, argued that the East side had different communities with different needs, holding both more densely packaged residential areas as well as more rural rural areas.
“I do not agree with the fact that the East Side is a whole section … It is like” Oh, you live on the other side of the tracks “,” said the member of the Dion Bracco Council at the meeting on Monday, arguing that the proposed cards divided the communities with the same interests and brought together some who would not have much in common.
Others, however, thought differently. The resident of Gilroy, Sally Armendariz, said that she lived on the east side for generations and argued that separation from the east side “would completely divide the Latin community”.
“I think it’s just that our community sticks together,” she said.
The distribution discussion will continue during public hearings on May 5 and 19. At the meeting of May 19, the Council will approve a final card and decide which three districts will have elections in 2026 and which will wait until 2028. The deadline to offer cards to consider is on April 28 at 10 a.m. More information on the distribution process, links to districts and districts and a form to submit public comments are available on cityofgilry.org/ond.
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