San Marcos CISD Board reactivates redistricting committee

The San Marcos Consolidated ISD Board of Trustees voted to reactivate its citizens advisory committee on redistricting to reexamine the configuration of the board.

The board of trustees’ discussion during Monday’s regular meeting regarding the citizens advisory committee on redistricting revolved around a discussion whether to move from its current five districts represented by one board member and two at-large board members to seven single-member districts.

Trustee Miguel Arredondo made a motion to reimpanel the committee to examine seven single-member districts because the previous iteration of the committee recommended seven single-member districts, which the board ultimately voted against.

“Since the committee that existed prior tonight already made a recommendation for 7-0 and the board didn’t take it, if you go back to that meeting a lot of the conversation that was had was, ‘this is a big step. The community doesn’t have enough information. Have we solicited community feedback? Do we need to talk to more people?’ So, based on that feedback at the time, the only hold up is does the community know and have we had enough feedback,” Arredondo said. “So, my motion, the way that it was stated, was that we impanel the committee to meet again to blow the dust off the 7-0 plan because they already have one. They showed it to us at a meeting. But this time they solicit community input and feedback and that the lion share of the work being refining the 7-0 plan that already exists with the attorney and getting the community feedback portion.”

Trustee Brian Shanks asked when the public would become involved: Whether it would be after the board decides to go to seven single-member districts or if they would become involved to determine their desired board configuration.

“I would absolutely prefer to have the public involved to determine if we should have a 7-0 district than making that decision and telling the public,” Trustee Dr. Mari Salmi responded. “I think that’s the reason we voted the way that we did in the previous vote … So, the motion at hand doesn’t include the public to make the decision. It advises the committee to make a plan. I’d prefer to see a committee that engages the public to determine if [7-0] is appropriate.”

Arredondo reiterated that the board previously impaneled the committee which had appointed representatives from each board member and it recommended seven single-member districts.

“This committee recommended unanimously for 7-0,” Arredondo said. “You go back, you look at the footage, people said, ‘We need community input regarding a 7-0 plan.’ This motion captures that. People voted against the 7-0 plan last year because we didn’t have community feedback on a 7-0 plan. You look at the footage, people say, ‘I could probably vote on this if we had more time to consider it or discuss it or if there was more community feedback.’ So, I don’t understand now that we’re unraveling the 7-0 plan and saying well, ‘We need a committee to tell us based on community feedback whether we have a 7-0 plan.’ Like, we already got that.”

Board President Clementine Cantu made it clear that the board ultimately gets to make the final decision regarding its makeup.

“The final vote sits with this board,” Cantu said. “The community can come and tell us what they want but this board makes the final decision. I’ve talked several times to legal counsel about this and he says, ‘You need to decide first if you want to look at the 7-0. But he said once you look at it, you have to decide boundaries. But he said the final vote is all in the hands of the trustees.’”

Arredondo, ultimately, chose to withdraw his original motion and made a new motion to reactivate the citizens advisory committee on seven single-member districts to make a recommendation regarding the board’s configuration for elections.

The board voted unanimously to reactivate the citizens advisory committee.