Wikimedia Commons, via Berkeleyside

The 2012 and 2013 budget passed at the City Council last night, but debate on supplemental funds was heated.

In the 15 years since Berkeley adopted City Council districts, no student has been elected to the post even though they make up a quarter of the population.

Now a coalition of UC Berkeley student leaders is aiming to change that.

The group hopes to put forward a plan that will reconfigure two City Council districts to make one with a super-majority of students. If that doesn’t work, the leaders may try and put a referendum before Berkeley voters to create a student-dominated district.

“Is this fair to the community?” said Joey Freeman, who as vice-president of external affairs for the Associated Students of the University of California is leading the redistricting effort. “You can make a very good argument there should be someone on the council representing the student interests.”

The catalyst to reconsider this question is the 2010 census. Law requires that the boundaries of all political seats be updated every ten years to reflect population changes. Berkeley’s population increased 9% between 2000 and 2010, going from 102,744 residents to 112,580.

The Berkeley city charter requires there be an equal distribution of residents in each of the city’s eight City Council districts. So the boundaries must be redrawn to put 14,703 residents in each district, up from 12,843. The city has set a September 16^th deadline to receive new plans, but Councilmember Gordon Wozniak has an item on the July 19^th agenda to extend this deadline to November 1. The City Council had already extended the deadline about a month. (Click here to see materials on how to present a new redistricting plan.)

Freeman and others want to use this opportunity to create a student-dominated district, but they are facing significant obstacles. Berkeley’s charter requires all new redistricting plans to comply with three criteria: no change in boundaries can lead to the ousting of a sitting council member; districts shall be equal in size; and new districts shall adhere as closely as possible to the original districts drawn up in 1986.

So the students are faced with a conundrum: if they submit a plan that creates a district with a supermajority of students, it won’t adhere closely to the original 1986 boundaries and will most likely be rejected. (This is what happened in 2002; the Berkeley City Attorney said an ASUC plan was not compliant with the law.) But if they decide to first push for a city charter referendum to allow for a new district, it won’t go on the ballot until the November 2012 election. And the City Council has established a timetable that calls for Berkeley to adopt new council districts by April 2012.

“Students make up one-quarter of Berkeley’s population,” said Kristin Hunziker, a 2009 Cal graduate who was active in Cal Democrats. She is now a political consultant and managed Wozniak’s 2010 re-election campaign. “Berkeley is a university town. We have a lot of university students. They should have representation on city government. There has only been one student who has served on the Berkeley City Council [Nancy Skinner, who was elected in 1984 before there were districts]. There should be more.”

While students live in large numbers in four city council districts, those represented by Wozniak (District 8) and Kriss Worthington (District 7) would be most affected by the students’ plan. But the two councilmen have different approaches about how to solve the situation.