The Pinal County Board of Supervisors approved revised boundaries for the county’s supervisor districts and Justice of the Peace precincts March 2, based on 2020 Census data and the need to keep all five districts close to equal in terms of population while not splitting recently redrawn voter precincts.
The redistricting process began at the state level with the Independent Redistricting Commission, which adopted new state congressional and legislative districts in January. County officials said all five of the new supervisor districts have around 85,000 residents, and the board can choose to redraw them in as little as two years if those numbers get unbalanced, a real possibility given rapid growth in some areas of the county.
The redrawn districts are in effect for electoral purposes and will be used to elect the next board this fall. They will take effect for county administrative purposes on June 30 and will create major shifts in the current supervisors’ districts for the last six months of 2022, with one supervisor representing a completely different part of the county.
COUNTY SUPERVISORS: DISTRICT 1
With the board’s approval of “map D,” one of three new maps added for consideration in the last week of the process, District 1 moves from the northeast to the west side of the county and combines almost all of the City of Maricopa and the surrounding Hidden Valley area with the Ak-Chin and Gila River Indian communities and northern Coolidge. This was an outcome favored by Maricopa officials and residents, who lobbied the board not to put the City’s Tortosa area into Casa Grande’s district.
Current District 1 Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh was elected from the old District 1, which comprises the Copper Corridor communities on the county’s east side along with the older part of Florence and all of Coolidge. Cavanaugh mentioned that Coolidge Mayor Jon Thompson had just sent a letter protesting that city’s being chopped into three districts, but county officials said there wasn’t time to look at any more options given looming deadlines.
“I wish Coolidge had gotten to us a few hours earlier, we might have been able to come up with something to satisfy both Maricopa and Coolidge,” District 3 Supervisor Steve Miller said.
DISTRICT 2
The populated area represented by District 2 Supervisor Mike Goodman will shrink because of population growth. The district focusing on San Tan Valley and the parts of the Town of Queen Creek in Pinal will lose Magma and Johnson Ranch in San Tan Valley, while stretching almost to Florence Junction in the east to pick up a mostly unpopulated area.
DISTRICT 3
Miller’s district will continue to be focused on Casa Grande but will also include larger most of Eloy and southern and eastern Coolidge, as well as all precincts on the Tohono O’Odham Nation.
DISTRICT 4
Represented by Jeff McClure, this district will no longer stretch from Maricopa in the northwest to Saddlebrooke in the southeast, where he lives. Instead it puts Saddlebrooke and Arizona City with the southern Copper Corridor cities of Oracle, San Manuel and Mammoth while also jutting north to take in most of Florence, plus the Johnson Ranch and Magma developments in San Tan Valley.
DISTRICT 5
Supervisor Jeff Serdy will continue to represent Apache Junction, Gold Canyon and Queen Valley while taking on the northern Copper Corridor communities from Superior down to Winkelman.
JUSTICE OF THE PEACE PRECINCTS
Only one map for the new Justice Court boundaries was proposed by the county, with only minor changes from the existing precincts, and it drew little comment from the public during the redistricting process.
