King City discusses district-based elections

Equal representation – that was the message Tuesday night at the King City council meeting.

“We want fair representation. We want to make sure that somebody from our community will be sitting on (the) city council,” said King City resident Carlos Victoria.

Victoria has been living in King City for more than 20 years. He said it’s time to ditch the old “at large” election process and he’s not alone.

“Currently King City is a community of almost 90 percent Latino but yet
only have one Latino council member, never had a Latino mayor whatsoever,” said Assembly member Luis Alejo.

Alejo, along with the League of United Latin American Citizens, has been fighting for district elections since last year when the King City Police Department was under fire for a corruption scandal allegedly targeting Latinos.

Not everyone supports the change.

“I may have a favorite candidate who lives across town. I can never vote for that person because they’re not in my neighborhood,” one resident said.

To get more information, the city brought in a demographics specialist. He said the city might be too small to break into districts. With a population just under 13,000, if King City made the switch, it would be the second smallest city in the state to have district-based elections.

Still, residents like Victoria saidthe elections aren’tworking.

“It doesn’t matter (if)it’s a Latino, white, black, we want to have somebody
from our own sector, section of our city,” said Victoria.

Also mentioned, a potentially costly lawsuitif the city doesn’t make the change to district elections.