Pasadena Seeks Latino District, Finds It : Redistricting: Officials had talked of redrawing districts to create Latino majority. But census shows District 3 is already 54% Latino.

Officials who had talked about municipal redistricting to create a Latino majority district were surprised to discover that the city already has one, according to preliminary district population figures culled from the 1990 Census.

Latinos make up a majority, 54%, of the population in District 3, the Board of Directors seat held by Chris Holden.

“According to the numbers, there already is a Latino district, and I’m in it,” said Holden, who had earlier suggested redrawing the city’s districts to carve out a Latino majority area. “So, maybe that’s one issue we can check off the agenda.”

A Latino activist cautioned, however, that voter registration figures are more important than raw population figures in ascertaining the likelihood for the district to elect a Latino to the board, which now has six whites and one black.

The numbers were presented to the board Tuesday. The information was compiled by comparing census tracts against district boundaries, said Don Nollar, Pasadena director of planning, building and neighborhood services.

The board plans to create a resident task force to come up with redistricting proposals and will discuss the matter again at 7 p.m. May 14. It will also begin looking for a consultant to help with the work.

Eduardo Sanchez, cultural coordinator at the El Centro de Accion Social in Pasadena, said many Latino activists knew that District 3 had a large Latino population, but the actual percentages were not known.

He said that despite the majority numbers, however, many of the district’s Latinos may not be registered to vote. The new data may spark a voter registration effort, he said.

“There are many Hispanics who are not citizens but can become citizens and vote,” he said. “Their experience in other countries has been that the vote is meaningless, but here the vote is valuable.”

Many of the district’s young American-born Latinos also fail to register to vote, Sanchez said.

Increased voter registration could give the district a political voice to address economic problems in neighborhoods where eight-member Latino families live in one-bedroom apartments, he said.

A decade ago, Latinos were spread throughout the city’s districts in percentages ranging from 10% in District 7 to 34% in District 3. Because they live along the east-west Foothill (210) Freeway, they were not a majority in any of the city’s districts, which run north-south.

But the new data showed that, not only do Latinos make up a majority in one district, they also outnumber blacks in District 2, the area represented by Director Rick Cole.

Meanwhile, the figures show blacks lost ground in District 1, which contains exclusive Linda Vista Annandale and heavily minority Northwest Pasadena. A hotly contested election is under way there for the seat to be vacated by Director John C. Crowley.

Ten years ago, blacks were 53% of the District 1 population. Now they are 42%. Latinos now are 25%, a doubling of their numbers in the district. Anglos are 27% of the District 1 population, down from 35% in 1980.

When the 1990 Census data was released in January, Pasadena city officials were surprised to learn that they had slipped to second place in the San Gabriel Valley behind Pomona’s 131,723 residents. Pasadena has since joined a dozen other cities in a lawsuit alleging an undercount.

City officials also were surprised that blacks had not increased to an estimated 25% of the population as expected, but instead had decreased to 17%. Latinos increased to 27% from 18%, and Anglos slipped to 46%, compared with 65% a decade ago.

But the figures distributed Tuesday were the first the board had seen analyzing how the population changes of the last 10 years affected their districts. According to the data, the districts should have equal populations of 18,799 each. But they vary from 16,701 in Mayor Jess Hughston’s District 5 to 21,442 in Holden’s district.

Crowley said the data shows ethnicity and geography are no longer linked in Pasadena. As a result, he suggested the board consider creating districts based on percentages of racial and ethnic groups in the population.

Holden said the idea of splitting District 1 into two separate districts also needs to be considered. Cole said Pasadena is more diverse than the board.

POPULATION IN DIRECTORS’ DISTRICT

District Total Latino Anglo Black American Asian Other Indian 1 18,664 4,682 5,053 7,869 56 944 60 25% 27% 42% 0.3% 5% 0.3% 2 19,530 7,657 5,739 4,640 104 1,324 66 39% 29% 24% 0.5% 7% 0.3% 3 21,442 11,504 3,230 5,790 53 790 75 54% 15% 27% 0.3% 4% 0.4% 4 18,742 4,096 10,829 2,036 69 1,648 64 22% 58% 11% 0.4% 9% 0.3% 5 16,701 3,085 10,963 831 43 1,751 28 18% 66% 5% 0.3% 10% 0.2% 6 17,635 2,074 13,023 1,023 49 1,444 22 12% 74% 6% 0.3% 8% 0.1% 7 18,581 2,629 12,506 1,075 62 2,272 37 14% 67% 6% 0.3% 12% 0.2%

Source: 1990 U.S. Census; Pasadena Planning, Building and Neighborhood Services Department