The Los Altos City Council is down to four possible maps in the quest for a final one that will determine which group of residents will be voting for which council candidates beginning in 2026.
Staring down an imminent Oct. 31 deadline for approving the final map, Mayor Jonathan Weinberg said he has scheduled a special council session for next Monday in advance of next Tuesday’s council meeting, when council members are set to make their decision. Both meetings are set for a 7 p.m. start at Los Altos City Hall.
Under the threat of a legal challenge that city would likely lose, council members at their Oct. 8 meeting went through various map iterations that would carve the city into five districts. Councilmembers prioritized districts with similar populations (approximately 6,000 or more each) while trying to keep together established neighborhoods.
“I think we’re actually a lot further apart than I felt right after the (Oct. 8) meeting, so I think we’ve got a ways to go,” Weinberg said Friday.
One challenge is trying to keep the Highlands and Grant Park neighborhoods together since both have students attending Montclaire School in the Cupertino Union School District. Council members are also wrestling with the configuration of three districts in the northern part of town.
Another issue is meeting the Oct. 31 deadline for adopting the new voting districts. The council must adopt an urgency ordinance that will forego the usual time taken with first and second readings of standard ordinances.
The council found itself being forced to switch from an at-large (all residents voting for five candidates) to a by-district format (residents in each district voting for one candidate) after a letter in April from an attorney charging that the city was in violation of the state’s Voting Rights Act for allegedly holding “racially polarized” elections. Although council members and residents disputed the charge, city leaders went ahead with the transition to avoid a costly lawsuit. No city thus far has won in a challenge to the Voting Rights Act. The five-member council needs four votes (a strong majority) for an emergency ordinance to approve a final map, three (a simple majority) for a standard ordinance.
“If it doesn’t look like we’re going be able to get four votes to approve any one plan,, then I’ve got see if I can get three votes on the 22nd because that’s the very last day that we would be able to pass a regular ordinance,” Weinberg said. “If it looks like there is a map that would get at least four council members to agree to it, but it’s not one of the ones that we’ve looked at already, then we would have to have the maps posted for at least another seven days before we vote on them.”
Weinberg was not certain what would happen if the council was still in the process of approving a map after the Oct. 31 deadline.
The Town Crier posed that question to Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman, who
initiated the legal challenge. Shenkman did not respond to a request for comment before the publication’s Monday deadline.
