Task Force Settles on Redistricting Plan : City Council: Recommended map creates a predominantly Latino district and retains two “safe” black districts.

After 11 months of deliberations, the Redistricting Task Force has settled on a jigsaw puzzle of a City Council map, with two “safe” black districts and one district with a predominantly Latino population.

The 15-member advisory group has also answered, with surprising one-sided support, the troublesome question of whether the well-to-do hillside neighborhoods west of the Rose Bowl should be separated politically from Northwest Pasadena, a low-income area.

Split them up, the task force advises.

The long-awaited task force recommendation goes Tuesday to the City Council, which will hold a public hearing June 16 on redistricting. The council must come up with a final redistricting plan by July 1 so that the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder will have enough time to prepare precinct maps for next spring’s council election.

Several council members are predicting that the recommended City Council map will be adopted without changes.

“I think it’s going to fly,” said Councilman Isaac Richard.

The task force map, with its meandering district lines and sprawling districts, is in stark contrast to the current City Council map, which looks as if it had been drawn with a T square.

The proposed map--one of four considered recently by the task force--is a painstaking concession to some new requirements in drawing political lines, said task force members.

Unlike earlier redistricting committees, this year’s task force was required to draw a predominantly Latino council district without diluting black representation on the council. There are now two blacks on the seven-member council.

Census figures for 1990 show that Latinos, with 27.3% of the city’s population, are now Pasadena’s largest minority group. Guidelines established by the U.S. Voting Rights Act, two federal court decisions and a ruling by state Atty. Gen. Daniel Lungren dictate that the city must create at least one district that has the best-possible chance for Latino representation.

In order to do that, the task force has constructed in the center of the city an unruly configuration--District C, which has the sprawling outlines of an unfinished Scrabble game--that is more than 58% Latino.

At the same time, the task force has radically redrawn the surrounding districts.

For example, the task force map includes a broad, L-shaped district of upscale neighborhoods along the city’s western end, which covers about a quarter of the city. Some residents are already referring to this as “the rich people’s district.”

The map includes a district in the eastern part of the city in which two incumbent City Council members live, and another one in which no incumbent resides. Taking into account the needs of incumbents was not one of mandates of the task force.

Serving as a kind of touchstone for the seven districts is Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena’s “Main Street.” The boulevard, which runs the full length of the city along an east-west axis, forms part of the boundary for each district.

The task force voted 12-2 May 28 to send Concept B, as the recommended map is known officially, to the council. By then, the group had pared its choices down to four possible maps.

Concept B had a number of virtues going for it, task force members said. Other maps, particularly the ones that left Northwest Pasadena tied to Linda Vista and Annandale, created two predominantly black districts. But those districts also contained, as in the present District 1, large concentrations of Anglos, placing black voters at a disadvantage, task force members said.

Blacks could conceivably outvote their white neighbors, as they did last year when they elected Richard. “But it’s clear that having Linda Vista in the neighborhood (with Northwest Pasadena) makes it more difficult for the minority community’s voice to be heard,” said task force member Chris Sutton.

Any plan that dilutes minority voting power is specifically forbidden by the Voting Rights Act, Sutton said.

In addition, the rejected maps tended, because of the way ethnic groups have settled in particular neighborhoods, to pit blacks against Latinos in a third district. The rejected Concept C had a central Pasadena district with 63% Latino population that would have had an electorate that is 57% black because a smaller percentage of Latinos are registered voters.

The “Latino district” in the recommended map comes closest to maximizing Latino voter registration without overwhelming it with the voting clout of established groups, though, because of the voter registration tendencies, it remains unlikely that a Latino will soon win council election.

The recommended map, drawn with the assistance of PacTech Data and Research, a Pasadena-based computer demographics and political consultant company, also does a better job than the others of preserving “communities of interest,” members said.

By using Colorado Boulevard as a common boundary, Concept B ensures that each council member has a stake in the city’s commercial activity, said task force chairman William Bogaard.

“A model voting district should be balanced in the elements it contains,” Bogaard said. “Single family residential, apartments and townhouses, business and commercial--each elected official should be exposed to the full range of interests in the community.”

The task force’s recommended map, which employs letter designations rather than numbers because it is still unclear which council member will represent which district, seemed to satisfy the broadest range of interests, members said.

If the City Council adopts it, the new City Council map will include:

* District A, a predominantly low-income black district in Northwest Pasadena, separate from the hillside Linda Vista and Annandale neighborhoods but including the Rose Bowl and the Brookside Golf Course. Although Northwest Pasadena loses its affiliation with affluent whites, it keeps the middle-class homeowners along the east side of the Arroyo Seco and gains single-family homeowners along the northern edge of the city. Although only 46% of the area’s population is black, more than 58% of its registered voters are black.

* District B, an ethnically mixed district meandering from Lake Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, around City Hall and up to Northwest Pasadena. This district contains a big chunk of Colorado Boulevard and Old Town Pasadena, as well as a piece of Northwest Pasadena. Although the district is only 39% black, more than 56% of its registered voters are black.

* District C, a Latino district that stairsteps northward from Colorado Boulevard and Wilson Avenue to Rio Grande Street, then folds back to the west, extending as far as Fair Oaks Avenue. Although the district has a 58% Latino population, less than 17% of the registered voters are Latino. If voters cast ballots along ethnic lines, city political experts say, it is unlikely that a Latino council member would be elected before the end of the century.

* District D, a largely middle-class neighborhood, with single-family homes north of the Foothill Freeway (210) and condominiums and apartments south of the freeway. The city’s Armenian community is concentrated here, including that ethnic group’s commercial strip along Washington Boulevard. The district is 58% white and 21% Latino.

* District E, a middle-class and upper middle-class neighborhood, including the well-to-do Hastings Ranch communities. Most of the district is comprised of single-family homes, although there are apartments and condominiums south of Colorado Boulevard. Two-thirds of the residents, and more than 78% of the registered voters, are white.

* District F, which joins the Linda Vista and Annandale communities with the affluent homes and condominiums in the San Rafael and Orange Grove neighborhoods. The neighborhood includes part of Old Town Pasadena, the highly successful commercial and entertainment area. More than three-quarters of the population is white.

* District G, a well-to-do area of apartments and condominiums, plus a neighborhood of large, expensive homes bordering on San Marino. The district includes Caltech and a major chunk of the city’s commercial sector, both on Colorado Boulevard and on South Lake Avenue. The population is almost 70% white.

Among the most controversial implications of the task force map is that it places the Rose Bowl, which gives Pasadena worldwide recognition, within the sphere of influence of working-class Northwest Pasadena.

Almost since its construction 70 years ago, the Rose Bowl and the events staged there have been dominated by the affluent residents of the city. If the task force recommendation is approved, low-income blacks should have a greater say in the administration of the 101,000-seat stadium.

Linda Vista and Annandale residents, as well as a vocal group of black homeowners on the eastern side of the Arroyo Seco, have fought to keep both sides of the arroyo in a single council district, and they say they plan to speak up vociferously at the council hearing.

“The Arroyo Seco is a gap that runs through the city,” said Cam Currier, vice president of the Linda Vista/Annandale Assn. “Either we bridge that gap and make peace among different communities, or we look at it as a dividing line.”

But black groups from Northwest Pasadena, led by Councilman Richard, have spoken out for a divided district, threatening a Voting Rights lawsuit if the district is not split. They claim that gerrymandered district lines have allowed affluent whites to dominate low-income blacks in municipal elections for 12 years.

Bogaard said that it was strictly geography, not politics, that dictated placing the Rose Bowl in a predominantly black district. The map was drawn using the Arroyo Seco channel, which runs to the west of the stadium. “That’s what came naturally,” he said.

No task force member had suggested that the line be drawn east of the Rose Bowl, he added.

One difficulty in the task force plan is that it places both Councilman William Paparian and Mayor Rick Cole within the boundaries of District D. It also separates Cole from a large part of his current constituency of mostly minority group members.

“About 85% of my district goes away,” Cole said wistfully.

Paparian would not comment on the recommended districts, but he has already declared that he will not run for reelection. Paparian, who is in his second term, favors a two-term limit for the council.

District C, the predominantly Latino district, has no incumbent living within its boundaries. But the other districts appear to match roughly the constituencies that elected Richard in District 1, Chris Holden in District 3, Kathryn Nack in District 6 and William Thomson in District 7.

The council will decide later on the number designations for each district, though City Atty. Victor Kaleta said each council member will continue to represent the numbered district to which he or she was elected, regardless of where the council member’s residence is.

Some council members were distressed at the unruliness of the recommended map. “It’s a shock to see such irregularly shaped council districts,” said Holden, who conceded that the recommended map was “not as bad as some of the concepts they (the task force) were working with.”

Nack said that the size of her would-be southwest district was troubling. “The geographic coverage is so great that it’s almost impossible to handle,” she said. “It’s almost unwieldy.”

But Nack also said that the recommended map was the best of all the concepts considered by the task force.

The consensus this week among the council members appeared to be that, given the demands of the job, the task force has come up with the best possible plan.

“The task force was given a mandate to come up with a plan to increase the influence of minority voters,” Cole said. “I think they did an excellent job.”

Pasadena City Council Redistricting Using demographic information from the 1990 Census, Pasadena must realign its seven City Council districts to guarantee representation of blacks and Latinos. A redistricting task force examined four maps that would have met the goal with differing political ramificaitons and recommended one of those plans, Concept B, to the council. A public hearing will be held June 16. Existing Council Districts Districts 1 and 3 are currently represented by blacks. Black groups in working-class Northwest Pasadena want their neighborhoods split from the well-to-do Linda Vista-Annandale neighborhoods to give blacks greater voting strength. Recommended-Concept B Divides District 1 through the Arroyo Seco, with the Rose Bowl included with Northwest Pasadena and separated from Linda Vista-Annandale. Creates two “safe” black districts and one majority Latino district. All districts border on a portion of Colorado Boulevard. Rejected-Concept C The most similar to the existing configuration, it included only a minor realignment of District 1. Changes focused on the central area, with black population concentrated in Districts A and B but at less than a majority in either. District C had a Latino majority in population but a black majority in registered voters.