Council OKs Controversial Redistricting : Remap: The plan is intended to give minorities greater influence, but a community group says the new lines decrease Latino strength.

Over the continuing objections of an influential Latino community group, the City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a controversial council redistricting plan that assures greater influence by minorities.

The new council map, which will be in effect for the next 10 years, includes two districts that should be securely in the hands of black voters and one district whose population is 58% Latino.

The council vote completes a long, contentious process that began last summer, when a 15-member redistricting task force began holding hearings on the subject.

In an eleventh-hour move to delay the vote, El Centro de Accion Social, Pasadena’s major Latino community group, circulated a letter attacking “Concept B,” the task force’s recommended plan, for fragmenting the Latino community.

Lydia Fernandez-Palmer, the group’s executive director, said the new heavily Latino district excluded large segments of the city’s Latino community. She also criticized the district for including only a three-block segment of Colorado Boulevard, the city’s main commercial strip.

“A close examination of Concept B shows that (it) fragments Latino interests and prevents the cohesiveness of political expression of the neighborhoods’ common interest,” said Fernandez-Palmer.

A motion to delay action on the plan for one week was defeated. The city has until Wednesday to submit its plan in order for the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder to prepare precinct maps for next spring’s council election.

Several council members said that in voting for the plan, they were bowing to federal legal mandates.

The Voting Rights Act and federal court decisions have dictated that a new district map provide a maximum opportunity for Latinos, who constitute more than 27% of the city’s population, to elect a Latino, legal experts have said.

At the same time, the new map must preserve black voting strength. Blacks now hold two seats on the seven-member council.

“It’s a really distasteful decision to have to make,” said Councilman William Thomson, looking at a mock-up of the new map, with meandering district lines drawn to maximize black and Latino influence. “Reluctantly and with a lot of regret I support the motion. It’s a sad day for the city of Pasadena and for the country that we’ve come to where we are.”

The question of whether to split upscale Linda Vista from Northwest Pasadena, the focus of most of the redistricting discussions, was resolved by drawing a line between the two disparate communities. The dividing of District 1, as it was designated, represents a clear victory for groups that favored beefing up black voting strength in Northwest Pasadena, as well as for Councilman Isaac Richard, who had pressed for the split.

Councilwoman Kathryn Nack also said she was torn by the decision, having been moved by some black speakers at a public hearing last week who said that dividing the two neighborhoods was tantamount to reintroducing a system of segregation in the city.

“Thousands of people have benefited,” from the city’s aggressive efforts to integrate the public schools, said Nack, whose children were bused to a predominantly black neighborhood school in Altadena in the 1970s.

But the issues have changed markedly since then, Nack said. “The issue in the 1970s and 1980s was desegregation,” Nack said. “That’s not the issue today. The issue today is empowerment. That means that groups that have not been heard have a right to be heard.”

After the vote, the council moved to assign council members to districts. Councilman Jess Hughston was assigned to represent the octopus-like Latino-dominated district near the center of the city, where no council member resides.

Hughston complained Wednesday that his new district is “miles away” from his current district in the northeast corner of Pasadena. “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Hughston, who nevertheless voted for the scheme. “I don’t know how I’m going to represent those people adequately.”

The problem arises because Hughston and Councilman William Paparian both live in the eastern-most district. Task force representatives had previously reported, erroneously, that Paparian and Mayor Rick Cole lived in the same district.

Paparian, a two-term councilman who favors limiting council participation to two four-year terms, and Hughston, who has been on the council for 12 years, have said they are not likely to run again.

But Hughston, who is up for reelection in May, said he had not decided until Tuesday on whether to run again. “This kind of finalizes all of that,” he said. In order to run in the new District 5, Hughston would have to move from his Hastings Ranch home to the new district.

In an interview after the council meeting, Hughston said his exclusion from his old district had been orchestrated by Cole. “Apparently he told (the task force) that I may not run again,” Hughston said.

Cole declined to respond. But at the council meeting he said assigning Hughston to the Latino district offered Latino voters an opportunity “sooner rather than later” to elect a Latino. Paparian, who was reelected last year, does not face an election for three years.