One June 22, the Palm Desert City Council voted to establish five electoral districts in the city, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Nov. 26.
“It has been my goal from the beginning,” said Mayor Kathleen Kelly before calling for the final vote, “to respect the results of Measure B, which includes not just respecting the 53% who voted yes, but by some means to respect the sizeable 47% who said no. We’re in a place where moving forward with districts, and dropping ranked-choice voting, can potentially be embraced by most of our residents—perhaps a sizeable majority of our residents—as a good basis for peace on this issue.”
The vote was unanimous—and with that, after 3 1/2 years of arguments, legal wrangling and obfuscation, the matter was resolved.
“I’m very excited,” said City Councilmember Karina Quintanilla in a recent interview with the Independent; she was one of two plaintiffs in the lawsuit that forced the city to agree to move away from at-large voting in the first place. “Honestly, it took me a few days to let it sink in that, after all of the work, all of the effort, all of the time, it had finally come to fruition. A lot of people put work into this, and I’m really proud of the fact that, even though it took a long time, for me, it was very important to me to save as much taxpayer funding as possible.”
The final vote being unanimous was particularly satisfying, Quintanilla said.
“When you’re campaigning, your campaign (basis) is your ideology and what you hope to accomplish,” she said. “But how often does that come to fruition? How often are politicians able to deliver on campaign promises? So, for me, that was a moment of integrity, to be able to say that we were able to complete this successfully.”
The Independent first covered the fallout from the 2019 lawsuit filed by Quintanilla and Lorraine Salas in a piece published on Jan. 24, 2020. The city had agreed to settle the suit, which was based on the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA), a law that protects the political access of minority groups, by moving to a district-based voting system. But whereas most other cities create equally sized districts, Palm Desert intended to move to a two-district system—one with one representative (and 20 percent of the population), and the other with four (and 80 percent of the population). The city also agreed to move to a ranked-choice voting system, starting in 2022.
During a Jan. 15, 2020, informational meeting, both participating council members and city staff members obfuscated the reality that up to five voting districts were allowable under the terms of the settlement, and instead made it seem like two districts were a done deal.
The city also created additional hurdles for voters who wanted to participate in the re-districting process, including an online map-creation tool that was difficult to use, and a refusal to consider anything other than two-district map options submitted by the public (although five-district submissions would be archived in case the council decided to consider them later).
The Palm Desert City Council succeeded in pushing through the two-district solution in 2020—but some continued to push for five districts, as did Quintanilla, who was elected that year as the sole representative of the new downtown district. As a result, the City Council decided to put a question on the 2022 ballot, a move that some saw as a stalling tactic. Measure B, however, was only advisory—meaning that if a majority of voters chose the five-district solution over the two-district system, the council would not be forced to comply.
Even though Measure B was non-binding, several City Council members quietly launched a committee to fight it, called “No on Measure B Palm Desert Together.” Financial-contribution filings show current Mayor Kathleen Kelly personally donated $975 to the committee, as did the campaigns of Councilmember Gina Nestande and then-Councilmember Sabby Jonathan (who did not run for re-election in 2022).
Gregg Akkerman ran unsuccessfully for a City Council seat in 2022, and intends to run again in 2024. He currently is the chair of the Palm Desert Parks and Recreation Committee. He’s been a proponent of the move to five districts.
“I was particularly frustrated by the fact that in public, the City Council was saying, ‘It’s all about what the people want, and we’ll follow their recommendations,’” Akkerman said. “Yet at the same time, three of the senior council members were the founding donors to the ‘No on B’ movement. That was really frustrating.”
Akkerman claimed the three councilmembers did their best to hide their involvement in the No on Measure B committee.
“Because they donated just under the filing requirement of $1,000, their names were not in print until after the election cycle,” Akkerman said. “I was able finally to view the donor list well after the election, when the filing requirements caught up to them.”
“I was particularly frustrated by the fact that in public, the City Council was saying, ‘It’s all about what the people want, and we’ll follow their recommendations.’ Yet at the same time, three of the senior council members were the founding donors to the ‘No on B’ movement.”
Gregg Akkerman
(California campaign law requires that a “Late Contribution” report be filed within 24 hours of contributions of $1,000 or more during the 90 days preceding, or on the date of, an election, to support or oppose a candidate or ballot measure.)
“Those three all donated exactly $975 each, which is a blatant attempt to avoid the $1,000 trigger,” Akkerman said. “So that left their names off the record until after the election, when the (fourth-quarter) documents have to be filed that have every (donor’s) name in it.”
In November, 53.2% voted in favor of five districts, with 46.8% opposed. The council then referred the issue to a two-person committee to study issue. The committee’s report in April 2023 did nothing to alter the dynamics of the power struggle taking place at City Hall.
It did spawn a series of unusual presentations and remarks during the May 25 City Council meeting. Councilmember Jan Harnik suggested it was unfair to go to five districts before a development of 1,700 planned residences in north Palm Desert was built. Mayor Kathleen Kelly mused about the potential for a hypothetical northern Palm Desert district to double in population in the next three to five years. Both of these were odd concerns, since the area has no current council representation.
Kelly then called for a charter-amendment proposal to be put on the next ballot, mandating a move to more districts when 60% of the projected population growth in the area north of Country Club Drive had taken place. She then offered a proposal to Quintanilla: “If this council is willing to unanimously adopt that (60% new-population trigger) path, or some other path that commits to districts at a time certain, I ask you and your co-plaintiff to consider removing ranked-choice voting now in exchange for that commitment.”
After that meeting, public and legal pressure continued to mount. On May 25, the city received two letters from legal entities urging a transition to five districts—one from Beaman Jacinto Law PC, and the other from the ACLU of Southern California.
Then, finally, on June 22 came the vote to move to five districts in time for the November 2024 election—but a lot must be accomplished between now and then.
According to City Clerk Anthony Mejia, on Aug. 24, city staff intends to present a community outreach plan and a schedule of public hearings/workshops to the City Council for feedback and approval. Between September 2023 and January 2024, council members and city staff will carry out a number of community-outreach efforts and public hearings. In January or February 2024, the City Council will adopt a final map and transmit to the County Registrar of Voters.
In an email to the Independent, Mejia cautioned that he is “still working with (City Attorney Robert Hargreaves) to ensure that we follow the FAIR Maps Act public hearing process. Once I know how many public hearings and workshops are required, I can begin working backwards to ensure that we adopt a map in time for the election. The deadline to adopt a final map is early April 2024, so I am building in a cushion in case additional public hearings are needed.”
Mejia confirmed that the City Council has chosen Douglas Johnson and his National Demographics Corporation to serve as the demographer for this process, as in the initial re-districting process.
Other matters that remain to be determined by the City Council: residency requirements, which new district seats will be filled in which election years—and how the current City Council members will be affected by all of this.
It has been the plan from the beginning for Quintanilla and the Democratic party to sue the PD city and make her city council ultimately Mayor. She dint save the city money she won the law suit with a hefty law suit. She has not delivered what she promised the city makes decisions together as city council. How is it not a conflict of interest for her to become city council and mayor after she sued the city? Can someone explain that one.