Pleasanton, CA is about to be split into two the way Dublin was nearly five years ago, when Alameda County Board Supervisor and Chair Scott Haggerty moved to Silvera Ranch in East Dublin. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors is planning to redraw current district lines at the meeting on June 13th. If approved, District 1 will undergo some major changes. Haggerty, who currently represents District 1, would lose the portion of Pleasanton that is north of Stoneridge Drive and the chunk that is west of I-680 to Supervisor Nate Miley, who represents District 4. The proposed changes are a result of County’s goal of leveling-off each District with roughly 302,000 constituents based on the 2010 Census data. The Board’s proposal to give North Pleasanton to Miley is based on the fact that Haggerty’s District 1 grew by 9.8% in the past decade, while Miley’s District 4, which includes Oakland, shrunk by 5.4% over the same period.

Many residents in Pleasanton are not pleased with the Supervisors’ proposal to split their city in two, because they believe Nate Miley will favor his longtime Oakland constituents over his new ones in Pleasanton. While the split can be seen by some as an undesirable outcome of the redistricting, Dublin has survived a similar split for nearly five years. Haggerty’s District 1 was redrawn to include East Dublin in late 2006 shortly before he bought and moved into a home in East Dublin’s Silvera Ranch with Dublin’s former Vice Mayor and current Councilperson Kasie Hildenbrand.

“Dublin now has two supervisors (Miley and Haggerty), and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” former Dublin Mayor Janet Lockhart said at a recent hearing. “It’s nice to know that there are two supervisors on the county board who are supporting us. We would be concerned about changing this.”

Some Pleasanton residents accuse Board Chair Haggerty of gerrymandering to strengthen his political base by reducing his Pleasanton constituency. While Haggerty’s motive is not clear, the redrawn district lines would favor Haggerty in that many of Pleasanton’s political figures and community leaders have remained cool to him over the years. The row over the Stoneridge Drive extension is one example in which Haggerty has drawn criticism. Others have suggested that Haggerty is splitting up Pleasanton simply to spite Pleasanton Mayor Jennifer Hosterman.

If Haggerty were to keep all of Pleasanton, he would likely need to give up a significant portion of his Fremont constituency. Since Fremont forms the core of Haggerty’s political base, the four-term County Supervisor is unlikely to agree to this alternative.

Given the animosity expressed by many Pleasanton residents towards Haggerty and the allegation that he is masterminding the proposed redistricting, the fact that they want to keep Haggerty as their sole representative on the Board of Supervisors is surprising. Pleasanton’s leadership may simply be looking ahead to the day they can help elect a new Supervisor who they feel can better represent their city, once Haggerty is out of the picture.

As the Pleasanton Weekly has written, “we hope the county supervisors will recognize the political and practical needs to keep the Tri-Valley together as a single, vibrant district in Alameda County. Anything less than this would be a disservice to the community of Pleasanton and an outcome that is reminiscent of Chicago-style politics. We deserve better from our county representatives.”