COUNTYWIDE : College District Lines Redrawn and OKd

Rancho Santiago College trustees have approved new district boundaries after complaints from Latino groups whose members opposed an earlier redistricting as unfair.

The trustees on Monday unanimously approved the new boundaries, designed to alleviate the disparity between the numbers of residents each trustee represents.

Under the new plan, the representation target for each trustee will be 72,659 people. A report by Terry McHenry, president of Sacramento-based Educational Research Consultants, showed that trustees had represented as few as 50,894 residents and as many as 91,272.

The report also said that the law requires college districts to redraw boundaries after each census and that the previous districts were so disproportionate that they could have violated both the U.S. and California constitutions.

The new boundaries are aimed at assuring that ethnic group voting strength is not diluted.

Art Montez, representing the Orange County Hispanic Committee for Fair Education, objected to an earlier proposal because it barred individual districts from electing their own representative, in favor of at-large elections.

And while the previous version would have balanced the ratio of residents to trustees, it also would have skewed Latino representation because areas could have unequal proportions of undocumented workers and residents under 18, who cannot vote.

Under the plan approved Monday, District 1 will include the area roughly bounded by Westminster Avenue and 17th Street to the north, Euclid Street to the west, Maple Street to the east and Sunflower Avenue to the south. District 2 will lose all its area west of Grand Avenue and Glassell Street but absorb most the area south of Warner Avenue.

District 3 will remain largely unchanged except for the addition of an area bounded roughly by Orangewood Avenue to the north, Euclid Avenue to the west, Westminster Avenue to the south and Bristol Street to the east.

Under the new plan, the percentage of Latinos--the college district’s largest minority group--will increase 9.7% in District 1, to 73.8%, and increase 3.5% in District 3, to 21.6% The percentage in District 2, which is roughly one-third the size of either of the other two districts, would decrease 2.3%, to 44.9%.

Although the revised version still requires at-large elections for all districts, Montez and Al Chavez, president of the Hispanic Committee, said their group will not challenge the proposal in court.

Chavez told the board before the vote: “We’re happy with it. We can live with it.”