County Supervisors' Districts Tweaked to Reflect Census Changes

Following an evaluation of 2010 U.S. Census data, about 3,000 more people in Novato are now represented by Steve Kinsey in the Marin County Supervisors chambers and 3,000 less answer to Judy Arnold.

The supervisors recently approved the boundary change, which takes place after every census to balance the number of people in their representative areas.

Kinsey, the Fourth District supervisor who represents all of West Marin, already represented a sliver of west Novato but embraced the windfall of voters.

“I’m excited to have a bigger piece of Novato,” he said earlier this week. “Novato is a city that benefits from having more than one representative on the board of supervisors. I’m very pleased to be representing the west end of town, and I intend to walk the streets there to say hello to those folks.”

Arnold’s Fifth District had grown by about 6 percent since the 2000 census. She said the census findings were brought before the board in a workshop setting and discussed by the supervisors.

“They gave us two options — in one I would lose most of Indian Valley and the other was that he would take more of west Novato going all the way out to Stafford Lake and the agricultural farmland,” Arnold explained. “The second option was the one chosen.”

Arnold gained the far west portion of Indian Valley, near the end of Wilson Avenue. Kinsey also gained an eastern section of the San Marin neighborhood, off Simmons Lane.