Centralia School District Trustees Dennis Salts and Steve Harris
Centralia School District Trustees Steve Harris and Dennis Salts have allegedly admitted to preferring gerrymandered maps that help incumbents, not the community, according to an anonymous source who has been attending Centralia board meetings for the past six months.
Centralia School District Trustees Connor Traut and Art Montez have been pushing for a new district map that best follows the law and keeps the District’s communities together, without consideration to current-Trustee residency.
The Centralia School District is the smallest municipality in Orange County to move to a District-election system, with only 55,000 residents.
Click here for the audio recording of the meeting in question.
Click here to see the Thematic Maps with demographic and socioeconomic data.
Click here to see Map 2b. Click here to see Map 2c.
Pages 89-96 include the maps and data initially presented to the Board in March: http://centralia-ca.schoolloop.com/file/1346930044996/1370800377398/8308139811845728685.pdf
Page 79 compares all maps in April, including maps 2b and 2c: http://centralia-ca.schoolloop.com/file/1346930044996/1370800377398/881380175271402051.pdf
- 48:12 – 50:12 / Initial Presentation and Motion by Trustee Traut
- 58:42 – 1:13:19 / Initial Discussion
- 1:13:20 – 1:14:23 / Vote of Map 2b
- 1:14:24 – 1:27:59 / Second Discussion
- 1:28:00 / Third Motion
- 1:47:00 – 1:49:25 / Final Motion by Trustee Traut
Here are highlights after Trustee Traut’s initial presentation that are important to understand the discussion:
- 1:09:30 / Trustee Salts makes fun of Trustee Traut’s youth
- 1:19:12 / CVAP compared between maps 2b and 4
- 1:24:35 / Residency point by Trustee Montez
- 1:25:05 / Trustees Traut, Salts, Harris, and Montez have dialogue
- 1:29:15 / Anaheim parents want to keep Anaheim together, as in map 4
- 1:33:00 / Traut gave his rationale as to why he felt Plan 2b was the best choice vs. why Map 4 was bad
- 1:37:25 / Lisa Jordan – former Trustee, asks a clarifying question about the division of Map 2b related to keeping communities together.
- 1:39:00 / Trustee Traut mentions that he asked for map 2b at the March public meeting and gives his reason why
- 1:41:30 / Montez points out to not look at residency, in which Montez would keep his seat till 2018 then Harris and Salts would not be able to run in 2016
- 1:43:30 / Montez points out that the demographer has been sued in the past with ABC Unified for having non-legal maps
- 1:45:15 / Member of public points out map 1 is best for Latinos and would rid Harris and Salts but save Montez’s seat
- 1:46:15 / Points out that Harris and Salts can’t run if map 1 is approved