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Council districts change very little
• Ryno, Kline now in District 4
New Ceres council map 2022
This map was adopted on Monday evening to establish new boundary lines for Ceres City Council districts.

The Ceres City Council districts will not be changing much. On Monday the council picked a map out of five options which were each analyzed to ensure they meet the guidelines for districting.

The map was selected at the fourth public hearing in the redistricting process which was required in the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. Census.

Councilwoman Linda Ryno and Councilman Mike Kline favored redrawing lines to keep the city limits west of Highway 99 mostly intact. Making that area as one district was not possible because its population is too great and would not allow the districts to be fairly equal with about 12,366 residents, given Ceres’s new population of 49,464. 

Doug Yoakam of National Demographics Corporation (NDC) explained that districts are deemed equal in size if they don’t vary more than 10 percent between the most populated and least populated districts. The districts as they were originally drawn varied less than 7.1 percent.

The council favored map 103 which has most of the area west of Highway 99 being placed in District 2 and eliminating that district from occupying an area east of Highway 99. However, a narrow finger of District 4 reaches in as far west as Red Haven Lane to ensure there is a balance with the population sizes of the other three districts.

The new map removes Councilwoman Linda Ryno’s residence out of District 2 and places her in Mike Kline’s District 4. That means the two could be running against each other in District 4. Kline said he had no problem being in the same district as Ryno. He said the change will open up someone new for District 2. Ryno agreed.

“It is the most balanced of what we’ve seen,” said Ryno.

Vice Mayor Bret Silveira liked map 103 despite small fingers of District 1 extending into District 3 in north Ceres and the small finger of District 4 leaping across the freeway into District 2.

“103 is definitely as close as we have gotten and are probably are going to get to redistricting that makes sense,” said Silveira. 

Other maps considered on Monday were submitted by Ceres Mayor Javier Lopez, an anonymous citizen and Ceres resident John Osgood. While Yoakam pronounced Osgood’s map “perfect” due to its balance of population, it also placed Ryno, Kline, Casey and Silveira all in District 1. For that reason it was rejected. Osgood said it wasn’t an intentional design.

The city had until April 17 to complete redistricting.

In January, Yoakam suggested that because Ceres has not grown substantially since the boundaries were drawn for the four City Council districts in 2015, no changes were necessary. However, the council decided to proceed with the redistricting process. The public had until Feb. 28 to submit their ideas for new district lines.

The existing districts also “respect” protected classes of voters by not splitting them up or combining them in a way that takes away their opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in a district, according to the Federal Voting Rights Act.

The Census has revealed that the distribution of Latinos is more widespread in Ceres than it was in 2015.