Redistricting Panel Seeks Delicate Balance : Politics: New City Council boundaries must be representative of growing Latino population. Task force presents four plans tonight.

Drawing up new City Council districts in Pasadena is a little like one of those virtuoso balancing acts, with plates twirling, candlesticks teetering and silverware flying.

For the past 10 months, the city’s 15-member Redistricting Task Force has been wrestling with ways to draw seven districts that would not only have roughly equal numbers of residents but would also maximize the voting strength of blacks and Latinos and take into account established neighborhoods.

“It’s a ticklish process,” said William Bogaard, chairman of the 15-member Redistricting Task Force.

Federal law requires the city to redraw its districts every 10 years to conform with new demographic data. Unlike the 1980 redistricting, City Atty. Victor Kaleta said, the city, using 1990 Census figures, must contend with guidelines established by the U.S. Voting Rights Act, two federal court decisions and a ruling by state Atty. Gen. Daniel Lungren.

The guidelines dictate that cities such as Pasadena, with significant Latino populations, create at least one district with the best possible chance for Latino representation on the council.

The same legislation and court decisions require the city to preserve the voting strength of Pasadena’s blacks, who now have two representatives on the council.

The task force--composed of former councilman and mayor Bogaard and two appointees from each current council member--will present its recommendations to the council June 2. The council will make the final decision on the new shape of the Pasadena districting map.

But residents can get a peek tonight at some possible solutions. The task force, which has been conducting neighborhood meetings since February, will present four concepts, or alternative district plans, at a 7:30 p.m. meeting at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St.

Among other things, Bogaard and his fellow appointees have sought to:

* Draw a predominantly Latino district without diluting black voting strength. Latinos, who are concentrated in the center of the city, are now the city’s largest minority, constituting 27% of the population.

* Preserve Colorado Boulevard as Pasadena’s main street by making the long east-west corridor through the middle of the city a boundary in each of the seven districts.

* Give each district a significant shopping area and thus a stake in the city’s business community.

* Keep neighborhoods, particularly those represented by neighborhood associations, intact.

The task force has come up with a variety of scenarios for all of those issues, sometimes sacrificing one goal to achieve another. For example, two of the four concepts abandon the notion of Colorado Boulevard as a mutual boundary for all seven districts. In some cases, traditional neighborhoods have been divided.

But most of the passion generated has focused on the city’s District 1, where well-to-do Linda Vista has been uneasily paired with low-income Northwest Pasadena for 12 years.

Should the two neighborhoods remain unified or should they be separated? Two of the task force’s concepts reconfigure the current District 1 with a line down the Arroyo Seco, separating upper-income neighborhoods on the west side from lower-income neighborhoods on the east, and two maintain it largely as is.

For Councilman Isaac Richard, the first black to represent the district, the issue is clear. To maintain the current District 1 configuration would be gerrymandering and a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he said.

“If they choose (to keep the two neighborhoods together), I’ll initiate the lawsuit myself,” he said.

He and others maintain that, though blacks outnumber whites as a percentage of the population in the current district, white voters turn out in much greater numbers in municipal elections, effectively dominating the district.

“You’ve got poor blacks outvoted by rich whites,” he said. Richard called his own election a fluke, adding that electing a black was “within the realm of possibility, but we’re not interested in what’s possible, we’re interested in empowerment.”

According to census data and voter registration records, blacks constitute more than 50% of the district’s voters. But Richard contends voter registration lists are bloated with the names of people who have moved out of the district but left their names on city voting lists. “They say (black voter registration) is 51% but really it’s at best 41%,” Richard said.

On the other hand, representatives of the Linda Vista-Annandale Assn., with the support of some black homeowners from the eastern side of the arroyo, say the district should be maintained as a racially homogeneous area, with the Rose Bowl at its heart.

“Don’t plantationize me,” said black community leader Gloria Hantrell at a task force meeting, demanding that blacks and whites not be isolated in separate districts.

“We’re not unaware that we have an essentially black-white breakdown,” said Brookes Treidler, a leader in the Linda Vista association. “But that’s been greatly exaggerated as far as the effective operations of the city.”

Some observers say that control of the Rose Bowl--its prestige and moneymaking capacity as well as its potential to be a major neighborhood disturbance--may be at the heart of the fight. The Linda Vista group has opposed this summer’s concert by the heavy metal group Guns N’ Roses.

The alternative would be to attach Linda Vista to other well-to-do neighborhoods south of Colorado Boulevard. “It would become a rich folks’ district,” Treidler said.

But the frustrations of achieving the elusive ideal--a racially balanced City Council, equal numbers of residents in each district and neighborhoods that are not split by district lines--is more apparent elsewhere.

For example, the current District 2 in the north-central part of the city, represented by Vice Mayor Rick Cole (who becomes mayor next week), will apparently be doled out piecemeal to surrounding districts, with little regard for traditional neighborhood boundaries.

Such neighborhood disruption is permitted in order to meet “higher criteria,” such as ensuring that minority voting power not be diminished, said City Atty. Kaleta.

But Cole contends that the task force has catered to Linda Vista while ignoring the middle-class neighborhoods that he represents. “It angers me that one neighborhood of 3,000 people is getting all the attention, while the district I’ve represented for nine years is getting hacked to pieces,” Cole said.

Cole contends that the two concepts that keep Linda Vista attached to Northwest Pasadena pay little attention to the “higher criteria” of maintaining minority voting strength. “Nobody would pay that little group (Linda Vista) a moment’s attention if it weren’t for the political clout they have,” he said.

Ironically, the task force’s primary goal of creating political opportunities for Latinos, radically rearranging established district lines, will probably bear no fruit for many years, members say.

Though each of the concepts includes one heavily Latino district, with up to 63% of the population, Latino voter registration is so low in all of the areas that Latinos have little political influence.

Under the most favorable circumstances, task force members say, the city could draw new lines with a Latino-dominated district that has slightly less than 17% of the registered voters.

“The key is to establish a starting point for the Latinos,” said Councilman Chris Holden, who represents a large segment of the Latino population, “making it as strong for them as we can, then beefing up the numbers of registered voters.”