Based on federal and state law, municipalities must abide by the following criteria (listed in order of priority)

  1. Equal population as required by the U.S. Constitution
  2. Compliance with the Federal Voting Rights Act
  3. Contiguous
  4. Avoid divisions of communities and neighborhoods to the extent practicable
  5. Follow easily recognized boundaries such as major roads and railroads
  6. Be compact

The adopted map follows all of these criteria in the required priority order. Neighborhoods and communities of interest are kept undivided as much as practicable after compliance with the criteria designated as higher-priority by federal and state law, as detailed in the following district by district descriptions:

  • In the south, District 5’s boundaries are defined by the railroad tracks, 3rd Street, Wheeler Avenue, Foothill Boulevard and the 210 Freeway. The only District 5 border that some might not consider an “easily recognized border” is the two blocks of E Street, but following E Street kept the University of La Verne, a noted community of interest, united.
  • District 1 shares much of that border with District 5, following the same roads and railroads. On the other side of District 1, most of the border is the widely-recognized D Street and 8th Street bordering Bonita High School. Only along I Street and Grove Street are there three city blocks where the borders may not be widely recognized, as there was no widely recognized option nearby that met population balancing requirements and thus I Street and Grove Street were used as a compact way to finish defining that boundary.
  • District 2 follows the same western borders as District 1. On the north side, District 2 had to stop at Amherst Street because of population requirements – going all the way up to the 210 Freeway for the entire length of the border would have put the map out of compliance with federal law. Many of the census blocks on the south side of Amherst Street extend all the way to Foothill Boulevard, so bringing the District 3 border south of Amherst Street would have also involved too many people that would make the map imbalanced. Fruit Street is an easily recognized major road used to step from the freeway to Amherst Street.
  • On its southern border, District 3 follows the freeway and Amherst Street, as noted above. The western border of District 3 is Wheeler Avenue, a major road and easily recognized boundary. The northwest boundary of District 3 ideally would have been Marshall Creek, however that would have left District 4 under-populated by 9% and the map out of compliance with federal law. So the houses bordering Marshall Creek on both the south and north sides of the Creek are united in District 3 to meet federal equal population requirements.
  • Finally, District 4 is bordered by the easily-recognized boundaries of the 210 Freeway, Foothill Boulevard and Wheeler Avenue, with the rest of the District 4/District 3 border as described above.