Jeffries explains wonky transition to new district

Canyon Lake recently learned that the redrawing of the Riverside County District boundaries resulted in the city being assigned to a new district. The assumption was that the shift would happen rather immediately. Instead, according to the city’s current supervisor, Kevin Jeffries, the transition will take years.

Kevin Jeffries

Canyon Lake is currently in District 1, over which Kevin presides. It will be moved to District 2 with the mandatory redrawing of the boundaries. When will this take place? Who will be the district’s supervisor? Here is Kevin’s response:

With the completion of the mandatory redrawing of boundaries for the five County Supervisorial Districts, the bulk of the calls and emails to our office has been…. If not you, who? And when? The short version of the answer is the boundaries will begin changing at the end of 2022 and then again at the end of 2024. The best way to describe the shift is it will be a “phased” handoff which will occur with each election.

New District 1 will have all the city of Riverside, all the city of Perris, nearly half of the city of Jurupa Valley, and the unincorporated communities of Mead Valley, Good Hope, Meadowbrook, and Highgrove.

By the end of 2024, District 1 will no longer represent Lake Elsinore, Wildomar, Canyon Lake, Lakeland Village, Temescal Valley, De Luz, La Cresta, El Cariso, Woodcrest, Lake Hills, Lake Mathews, or Gavilan Hills. An election for the new District 1 will not be held until 2024.

New District 2 will have all of Lake Elsinore City and Lake Elsinore Valley, Canyon Lake, Lakeland Village, El Cariso, Temescal Valley, Woodcrest, Lake Hills, Lake Mathews and Gavilan Hills. Voters in those communities (along with Corona, Norco, Eastvale, and a portion of Jurupa Valley) will be casting votes in June and (possibly) November 2022. District 2 will no longer represent any of the City of Riverside or Highgrove.

New District 3 will pick up Wildomar, De Luz, and La Cresta from District 1 at the end of 2024. They will join Temecula, Murrieta, Menifee, French Valley, Winchester, Green Acres, Homeland, Wine Country, Sage, Anza, Aguanga, and East Hemet. District 3 will no longer represent Hemet or San Jacinto. An election for the new District 3 supervisor will not occur until 2024.You can see the detailed maps of the whole county here: https://tinyurl.com/RivCoSupMaps

The legal explanation to the question: When do I lose my current supervisor?, per our County Counsel, is:

“Although the supervisorial district boundary changes are considered adjusted once a plan proposal has been approved and the necessary implementing ordinance has been adopted, they do not go into effect immediately. California Elections Code section 21506 states in pertinent part: ‘The term of office of any supervisor who has been elected and whose term of office has not expired shall not be affected by any change in the boundaries of the district from which the supervisor was elected.’

“The boundary adjustments to District 1 and District 3 will not take effect until the election that is held in 2024 (for elected supervisor taking office in January 2025), and District 2, 4 and 5 will not take effect until the election that is held in 2022 (for elected supervisor taking office in January 2023).

“As a result, during the elections held in 2022 and 2024, voters will vote according to the new adjusted boundary lines.”

This will create some odd situations in the intervening two years, as some areas will have two supervisors elected to their districts (like Woodcrest and Temescal Valley), and others, like the cities of Menifee and Perris, will technically have none.

Historically, the Board of Supervisors has made agreements among themselves as to how to represent those communities that no longer have an elected supervisor, sometimes formally (as when Supervisor Ashley became “caretaker” of the 4th District following the death of Supervisor Benoit), and sometimes informally.

The board will have to decide how best to do that by the end of next year, when we officially know who the supervisors for the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Districts will be. But to make a long story short, those of you who are currently represented by me will generally be able to call upon me until I retire in late December 2024, though some of you will also be represented by a second supervisor as the transition occurs in 2022 and 2024.