The Board of Supervisors of Sacramento County are redrawing their supervisorial district lines based on the 2020 Census. All residents of Sacramento County may therefore wind up represented differently on the Board of Supervisors. For all residents, that bears on which Supervisor handles countywide functions (like public health services, welfare services or the court system) for them. For those of us in the vast unincorporated UnCity - at over 600,000 people it's the largest subordinate political jurisdiction in the county, about the same population as the state of Wyoming - the shifting of Supervisorial lines also pertains to which Supervisor handles municipal affairs (like potholes, land use decisions or stray dogs). Our part of the UnCity is in supervisorial district #3, along with much of the rest of the unincorporated area.

Rest assured, we here in Arden Arcade are not about to get a different Supervisor. Given our central location within the county, our community is highly likely to remain in supervisorial district #3. Besides, our Supervisor is overloaded with municipal headaches and the other Supervisors - who don't have much of a municipal burden - know it. Those other Supervisors are not about to seek out a bigger workload for themselves.  Meanwhile, mostly what will concern us is whether supervisorial distrtict #3 retains pieces of the City of Sacramento, as is the current situation. Having even a tiny part of the City of Sacramento matters because it's easy for a Supervisor to pay attention to the City of Sacramento while pretty much ignoring or just giving lip service to the unincorporated part of the district. That has been our situation in the past and, frankly, was a big reason for formation of the Advocates for Arden Arcade. We are grateful that our current Supervisor has shown much more interest in serving his unincorporated area constituents than his predecessors did. Still, we'll be stuck with the redrawn district boundaries for the next 10 years and there is no assurance that our current Supervisor will hold office for that entire time.

Due to population growth within the county, each Supervisor will gain more constituents. There are three supervisorial district scenarios currently under consideration. Two of them retain the existing portions of the City of Sacramento in supervisorial district #3, while adding unincorporated Gold river. The third one adds Gold River, removes much of North Highlands and Foothill Farms, and removes the City of Sacramento parts, replacing them with the City of Rancho Cordova. It's a fair bet that our Supervisor won't want to add to his workload. And taking on Gold River and Rancho Cordova potentially monkey-wrenches the whole CPAC arrangement. Of course, there's another solution to our Supervisor's workload problem - move the municipal responsibilities away by forming one or more cities. Except, that would require the county to stop resisting municipal incorporations, which some Supervisors don't want to do because they are on a power trip. What an interesting dynamic: the Supervisors thump their chest as though they are King Kong while one of their group gets pounded daily about infrastructure and other municipal complaints and must choose to ignore them or handle them.

The bottom line is that we here in our part of the UnCity should all pay attention to the process and (strongly recommended) participate in it. You can find the proposed district maps at https://redistricting2021.saccounty.net/Pages/DraftMaps.aspx. The Supervisors will be holding hearings for the first round of the draft maps on November 2nd (at their chambers in downtown Sacramento) and Nov. 6th (online) and later in November for subsequent proposals. Perhaps the most useful way to participate is to watch the Nov. 2nd meeting online to hear the consultant's presentation and then comment via the online meeting on Nov. 6th. For more information, go to the bottom part of the page at https://redistricting2021.saccounty.net/Pages/Meetings-Hearings.aspx.