The city of Santa Clarita is announcing the timeline for the transition to by-district city Council elections.

Pursuant to the terms of last year’s settlement agreement, the city of Santa Clarita will institute district-based elections for the city Council seats, starting with the 2024 city Council election. In this new by-district election system, the city of Santa Clarita will be divided into five districts and each voter within a district may cast one vote for a candidate residing within that same district.

The city of Santa Clarita currently has an at-large election system, which means that registered Santa Clarita voters elect the five city Councilmembers regardless of where the candidates reside in the city.

The city has launched a new website santa-clarita.com/DistrictElections, where you can view a calendar of the transition timeline. The first step will be releasing the starting point map, which was required by the terms of the settlement agreement and was created by the city and plaintiffs, to be posted on Feb. 22, on the website.

Then the public participation opportunities will follow.  The city Council will hold a public hearing on March 1, at 6 p.m. via Zoom and in person at the Newhall Community Center. At this public hearing, the demographer, who will be helping with the technical aspects of map creation and population statistics, will give a presentation on the starting point map, mapping requirements and introduce the community to the public mapping tool, which will allow residents to create and submit their own map with their desired districts.

The city Council will also take comments from the public. The public hearings will be streamed live on Zoom and archived on the website. Spanish translation will be available.

Following the first public hearing, the community will have until April 3, to submit their maps to the demographer.

On April 13, the second public hearing will be held, where the city Council will provide direction to the demographer regarding any changes to the starting point map, based upon the Council’s consideration of public map submissions and public comments. Revised public generated maps are due to the demographer by April 21. Next, on May 3, 2023 the city Council will conduct the first reading of the ordinance adopting the Council District map. The second reading will take place at the regular city Council meeting on May 23.

“It is unfortunate that our city was forced to make the transition to by-district elections, seeing how Santa Clarita has thrived under the current at-large process,” said Mayor Jason Gibbs. “However, we are committed to working with our residents to ensure the transition and map creation is a transparent and collaborative process.”

The five new district boundaries will be determined before the 2024 election. The city has always operated staggered elections, so only two seats will be up in November 2024 and the ordinance adopting the new districts will also establish the order in which district elections will occur. Regular elections will continue to be consolidated with statewide general elections in November of even-numbered years to fill expired city Council terms. Councilmembers serve staggered four-year terms, so the remaining three district seats will be up for election starting in November of 2026. For more information, please visit the website.