Grossmont-Cuyamaca Moves to District Elections for Governing Board Trustees

Public hearings will be held Nov. 15 and Dec. 13 on the new areas being proposed for election of the five Governing Board members for the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District.

Trustees have been elected at-large by voters in the more than 1,100-square-mile East County district that stretches from the East County cities of El Cajon, La Mesa, Lemon Grove and Santee to the Imperial County line. Beginning in the 2012 elections, the district will be divided into five trustee areas and voters in those areas will elect a trustee to represent them.

District elections will begin with the June 2012 primary. The top two vote-getters in the primary will face each other in the November 2012 general election.

The college district is one of many government agencies around California that are revising their elections process to comply with the California Voting Rights Act of 2001. District elections provide greater assurance that minority populations are equitably represented at the voting booth.

The public is invited to comment on the proposals at a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Cuyamaca College student center, 900 Rancho San Diego Parkway, El Cajon, CA. A second public hearing will be held Dec. 13 at Griffin Gate at Grossmont College, 8800 Grossmont College Dr., El Cajon. Maps and directions to Cuyamaca College are available at www.cuyamaca.edu,  and directions for Grossmont College can be found at www.grossmont.edu. 

The college district hired consultants from National Demographics Corp. to draw up the maps creating five trustee areas with approximately equal populations. Almost 465,000 people live in the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, with about 90 percent of them residing west of Alpine. According to the 2010 census, the district is 60 percent white, 25 percent Hispanic, 7 percent African-American, 5 percent Asian and 3 percent other.

In drawing the boundary lines, the consultants considered factors including already-established communities such as the East County cities, natural boundaries such as canyons or highways, and creating trustee areas with compact, contiguous territory as much as possible.

More information about redistricting, including the proposed district maps and census data, is available at www.gcccd.edu.

–Taken from a press release from the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District.