The Placer County Board of Supervisors settled several lingering redistricting issues Tuesday, Aug. 23, directing staff to prepare a final map showing proposed boundaries of the five supervisor districts.

The board will hold two public hearings before it adopts final district boundaries on Oct. 11. The first hearing will take place on Sept. 13 and the second will be held Oct. 11. The board will make a final decision after the second hearing.

Both hearings are scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. in the Board of Supervisors Chambers at the County Administrative Center, 175 Fulweiler Ave. in Auburn.

As required by state law, the five board members are tasked with realigning district boundaries to reflect population changes reported in the 2010 Census.

Over the past ten years, the county has added more than 100,000 residents, giving it a total population of almost 350,000 people. Percentage changes by district were:

District 1, a 41.64 percent increase;
District 2, a 111.52 percent increase;
District 3, a 14.82 percent increase;
District 4, a 31.26 percent increase; and
District 5, a 2.10 percent increase.

Populations in the five districts cannot vary by more than 10 percent under one-man, one-vote provisions of the 1965 U.S. Voting Rights Act. In developing redistricting maps, Placer County also is relying on geography, cohesiveness, compactness of territory, communities of interest and other criteria outlined in the California Elections Code.

On Aug. 9, the Board of Supervisors reached consensus on a base map, choosing among five alternatives. At the Aug. 23 meeting, the board fine-tuned the base map by making decisions on several outstanding boundary issues.

Placer County has been working on redistricting since the 2010 census numbers were released in January.