Screenshots from Tuesday’s meeting, and also a map (clockwise from top-left): First District Supervisor Rex Bohn, the aforementioned map, Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson, Fourth District Supervisor/Board Chair Virginia Bass and Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone.

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PREVIOUSLY:

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Redistrict? Same as the old districts. 

However flawed the process may have been — and most seem to agree that it was pretty damned flawed — a lot of time and effort went into Humboldt County’s decennial redistricting effort: consultants, an advisory committee, several batches of draft maps and multiple public hearings. But in the end, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors opted to stick with the existing district boundaries, drafted a decade ago. 

It wasn’t for lack of trying from Supervisor Steve Madrone who on Tuesday made a concerted effort to convince his four board colleagues to redraw the line boundaries one of a couple different ways, both of which would have added the City of Blue Lake to the Fifth District (that is to say, ahem, his own district).

In doing so, Madrone renewed the argument he’d begun two weeks earlier, when he introduced a map he’d drawn himself and reasoned that it’s only fair to add Blue Lake to the Fifth, alongside the nearby Glendale community, because the Fifth lacks a sizable incorporated city. His map also would have put Scotia and Rio Dell into the same district.

At today’s meeting, Madrone said the board had received “a significant amount of input” over the past week — six comments from community members who wanted Glendale and Blue Lake to be united in the same district. Bolstered by this influx of feedback, Madrone made a motion to adopt Draft Plan 2, one of two maps prepared for today’s meeting.

That map would place Blue Lake in the Fifth, but in doing so it would render the district drastically overpopulated compared to the other four, as Outpost Editor Hank Sims noted previously. The state allows a population variance of up to 10 percent between the most- and least-populous districts, and Madrone’s preferred Draft Plan 2 would put the county right up against that limit, with the Fifth District containing 9.9 percent more residents than the Fourth. 

Madrone said that this lopsided population didn’t bother him, personally, since it’s within the legal limit, but if it bothered others he suggested a possible fix: lopping off a large swath of rural land at the southern end of the Fifth District, the region south of State Route 299 around Titlow Hill, and giving it to the Third District.

Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson seconded the motion “for the sake of discussion,” but Madrone’s pitch failed to gain much traction. First District Supervisor Rex Bohn said the vast majority of feedback he’s gotten urged the board not to change the lines much, if at all. And he reiterated a conclusion he’d made two weeks ago — that Madrone’s proposal appeared rather self-serving.

“This looks like somebody setting something up,” he said.

Wilson said he’d be reluctant to make the population so unbalanced and also reluctant to redistrict the residents around Titlow Hill so late in the process.

During public comment, Humboldt County Planning Commissioner Thomas Mulder said Madrone’s preferred map looked to him like a politician trying to preserve his seat. 

County staff had failed to publish the two draft maps under consideration today by the legally mandated seven-day minimum before Tuesday’s meeting, which put pressure on the board to settle on a single draft map today, thereby allowing the map to come back for final approval at the Dec. 7 meeting, narrowly beating the state deadline of Dec. 16. 

Madrone pushed back against some of the skepticism, insisting that his motives arose purely from community feedback, not political calculations. He also expressed a desire to see the board to settle on a map unanimously, even if it wasn’t his preferred option, for the sake of unity.

“I’m willing to work with the board,” he said. “I just wish you guys were willing to hear me and hear that [Blue Lake/Glendale] community of interest.”

That comment didn’t sit especially well with Fourth District Supervisor/Board Chair Virginia Bass, who said the matter was more complex than that, adding that she was uneasy with Madrone having created his own map. 

Seeing the writing on the wall, Madrone unhappily rescinded his motion. Bohn then made a motion to keep things exactly as they are, and after a bit more discussion the board voted unanimously to do just that. Thus, the existing map will be brought forward for final approval — and another decade of use — on Dec. 7.