1. Call to Order & Roll Call
welcome everyone to the October 19th 2022 regular meeting of the San
Francisco elections commission I'm the president Chris jordanick the time is now 604 pm and I call the meeting to
order this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 one Dr Carlton be
good that place San Francisco California as authorized by California government code section
54953e and mayor breed's 45th supplement to her February 25th 2020 emergency
Proclamation it is possible that some members of the elections commission may attend this meeting remotely in that
event those members will participate in info by video remember the public May attend the
meeting to observe and provide public comment at the physical meeting location listed above or online instructions for
providing public comment are on the agenda in addition to participating in real time interested
participants and writing Facebook
meeting
foreign
thank you thank you president jordanick the minutes the minutes of this meeting will
reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 one Dr
Carlton B Goodlett Place San Francisco California 94102
it is possible that some members of the elections commission may attend this meeting remotely
in addition to to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged
to participate in this meeting by submitting comment and writing by 12 pm
on October 19 2022 to martha.dogadillo at SF
gov.org it will be shared with the commission after this message after this
meeting has concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file
public comment will be available on each item on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to
speak comments or opportunities to speak during the public comment period are available via phone by calling
415-655-0001 again the phone number is
415-655-0001 access code is
2496-995-5133 again 2496-995-5133
followed by the pound sign and then press pound again to join as an attendee you will hear a beep when you are
connected to the meeting you will be automatically muted and in listening mode only when your item of Interest
comes up dial Star three to raise your hand to be added to the public comment line you will then hear you have raised
your hand to ask a question please wait until the host calls on you the line will be silent as you wait your
turn to speak ensure you are in a quiet location that
um can you hear me can anybody hear me Lucy
[Music] okay candy can you hear me now in the public
oh Lucy can um
so much I do the Hat
I'm sorry which microphone is being used for
um oh it's this one it's always this one
they still can't hear me um oh they couldn't hear you okay
now okay
okay thank you I'm sorry about that I'm sorry to the public um I I don't really cat couldn't tell
you what the solution was but I hit everything on the panel um so
when your item of Interest comes up dial Star three to raise your hand to be
added to the public comment line you will then hear you have raised your hand to ask a question please wait until the
host calls on you the line will be silent as you wait your turn to speak ensure you are in a quiet location
before you speak mute the sound of any equipment around you including television radio or computer it is
especially important that you mute your computer if you are watching via the web link to prevent feedback and Echo when
you speak when the system message message says your line has been unmuted
this is your turn to speak you are encouraged to state your name clearly as soon as you begin speaking you will have
three minutes to provide your public comment six minutes if you have an interpreter you will hear a bell go off
when you have 30 seconds remaining if you change your mind and wish to withdraw yourself from the public
comment line press star three again you will hear the system say you have lowered your hand when a phone is not
available you can use your computer web browser make sure the participant's side panel is showing by clicking the
participants icon make sure the participants panel is extended in the side panel by pressing the small Arrow
indicated indicator in the panel you should see a list of panelists followed
by a list of attendees at the bottom of the list of enchantees is a small button or icon that looks like a hand press the
hand icon to raise your hand you will be unmuted when you when your when your
time is when it is your time to to comment when you are done with the
comment click the hand icon again to lower your hand once your three minutes have expired
Steph will thank you and you will be muted you will hear your line has been muted public comment instructions are
also available on page six of this agenda thank you commission president Jordan
okay president jordanick vice president Stone
commissioner burn holes here commissioner die and commissioner levolsey
and commissioner is it Hayden Crowley Hayden Crowley
thank you with six in in attendance we meet quorum
foreign
foreign
okay so let's move on to um item number
comment on any issue within the elections commissions General jurisdiction that is not covered by
Technical Difficulties
so I'm still hearing that someone had all of the Commissioners voices are
terrible and that's true that's what I'm hearing also
all I have all the needs all the microphones on what were you suggesting I'm sorry that
didn't turn off um
yeah I'm gonna call
foreign
[Music]
thank you
foreign
it was not before oh that's so weird because I thought the
ones for the car because yeah can you talk into your microphones
no no we want to say can you let me ask you know what hold on for one second please
I know how to ask
yeah so members of the public we are working on getting this um issue taken
care of if you if we can ask you just for a few more minutes of
um patience I apologize for this
one
yeah yeah I'll be up here I don't understand you're supposed to
give up understand contact
if anyone is online and can hear me can you please tell me if you can if you
heard when the Commissioners just spoke put Lucy you're a panelist no we can't
hear the Commissioners you still cannot hear the Commissioners no
please oh my God
no no still tell me about it yes well
yes it is
oh my goodness okay you can check it out for us we'd really appreciate it I'm
sorry okay thank you
foreign
[Music] um
the white background with text yes foreign
[Music]
thank you so you could say well
she's like okay
but I had been to uh
we're down there and put Battery Street California oh
right now oh come up there up on the hill on Nob Hill I didn't know that okay
oh okay yeah like early 2000s because we used to go out to Austin ceremonies
yeah yeah yeah they just gave him like
that the Santa Clara yeah so this is one of the things you got
one right there
okay um any members of the public if you can
tell me if it's working we need to testing testing one two testing
commissioner speaking that can be heard yes Mike said he can hear us
probably awesome this one please I know I said you're famous
in the final version the word version okay everyone
um thank you for Media Services to uh help us sort out the issues so we are I
believe our audio is is functioning correctly now so um secretary dolcadillo can we move on
to item number two general public comment public comment on any issue within the elections commission's
General jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda
so do we have any members of the public uh we do have one hand up and it is Mr chairman Mr Turner I'm going to
and you have three minutes to comment good evening Martha can you hear me Mr
Turner you're unmuted can you hear me hello
that Tech Guy lead hello I can hear you
hear me Martha can you hear me okay
Martha can you hear me hello Martha
they can hear him but we can't
I'm Mr Turner if you could hold on a moment we are um we are not able to hear your voice so
yes test one two test one two this one I knew it okay
Mark Martha can you hear me now okay okay
thank you let's just wait for the media to get
here um Daniel
what did he do came in and we looked at it
it's like you guys are a mess I'm not Stephen here
and a magnet
it's
go ahead
um
thank you
[Music] okay thank you
the yeah you know
foreign
so um
okay thank you everyone for your patience we're still waiting for the um the other people to get here to um help
spread out uh why we're not able to hear that members of the public online
is
thank you so much okay thank you okay thanks you need to go do something
oh no yeah
your speaker hello I see what you're saying
thank you
appreciate the ideas
there's some audio sorry I was reading the news
no it's not about San Francisco
how embarrassing
all right
would you mind turning off the audio on you there because I think there's an echo
they can't hear us no they can hear them there's no there's no once the someone
is um
and there's an echo as well it's for the Republicans under my login
um very nice
Even in our self-service
thank you um can you on you unmute Mr Turner
I'm with Mr Turner yeah I know
we could get an echo hello Mr Turner yes can you hear me oh you can
hear you now and can you hear me I can I I think I can hear everyone is there an
echo okay perfect is what I hear no Echo currently
yeah there we go but now we're going to be looking at me
the whole time yes there will be slides don't worry no
you can put the speakers no because he's standing here the
speaker will be standing over there
you're talking about the presentation yes
I think can I switch it back and forth no I can
hey well because I'm fine just all that sort of here then if you want this one
yeah right there on the same thing
we didn't sleep well done but let's do it well I don't think
I'm sorry and sure enough like turn off your video on your yeah
[Music] just on your own speaker as well it's like maybe you need that just a little
bit different yeah that's why I have new gear and music you should you should stay for a few minutes though seriously
yeah thank you you're not supposed to meet that one or else they won't be near you or you won't be able to hear that
okay okay just okay um uh we're online
the balls time we're here to tell us today okay Mr
2. General Public Comment
Turner you have three minutes to comment I apologize and thank you so much for your patience and everyone else who's
been tuned in thank you very much for your patience thank you Martha can you hear me
yes we can great thank you and no we don't get mad at the people that are
trying to facilitate we do take a a kind of a look at at the vendor maybe that
provides the system and perhaps we should take a look at that moving forward as it seems to be recurring
um but thanks to everyone for uh being here tonight I wanted to welcome the new Commissioners and just give a little
background framing um as some of you uh know certainly and and
hopefully all of you are aware um we have been focused for the last uh 15
years on moving forward open source voting in California
um there are some Heroes that have been involved uh just for to to frame the
issue a fellow by the name of Ronnie Duggar back in the late 80s uh started
speaking to uh the federal government about the issue of software and then
more recently uh from UC Berkeley Henry Brady and a fellow by the name of Alan
Deckert really moved the issue forward um in the year 2000 there was something
called the decorate design created which was an open source ballot printing system Alan Deckert was a worker in uh
for the elections office in Sacramento at the time and that design that
appeared in 2000 is still the state of the art that is what Dominion now calls
their ballot printing system um and and so that design was actually
uh 15 20 years old when when finally it became implemented the
election system security Arena uh just to be blunt is is a cesspool uh for
activism I've been an activist in this space I started off being a
anti-nuclear activist and then my second issue I've had in my life has been
election system security and we predicted that our inability to show the
loser that they clearly lost in election could could cause civil unrest and I
think we saw that in 2020. 30 seconds the
issue of Open Source voting has now been moved forward by New Hampshire and
Mississippi so we're it but this work comes out of California and specifically
San Francisco we haven't been able to move California but New Hampshire and
Mississippi are now implementing the open source systems so we hope we keep
Focus here and keep trying and thank you Mr Speaker I'm sorry we've hit the three
minutes point Thank you thank you
I don't see any other hands raised
I don't see any other hand phrase for comment okay then we'll close public comment and we will move on to item
3. Resolution on Continuation of Remote Meetings
number three discussion possible action and resolution on continuation of remote elections commission meetings
so for this item we have the usual um Memo from the city attorney as well as
the draft the proposed resolution so do we have a motion
motion that we approve or adopt the resolution second
okay is there any Commission of discussion okay seeing none let's open it up to public comment on item number three
I don't see any hands raised okay so then uh take a roll call vote
okay president Jordan how do you vote Yes vice president Stone yes
commissioner burn holes yes commissioner died aye commissioner levolsi yes and
commissioner Hayden Crowley yes okay six in the affirmative it passes okay great
4. Approval of Minutes of Previous Meetings
let's move on to item number four then approval of minutes of previous meetings discussion possible action to approve
minutes for the May 18 2022 elections commission meeting so for this item we have two packet
items we have the the original draft minutes as well as some suggested edits from commissioner died
well commissioner would you like to say anything about your edits yeah I just wanted to make sure it was reflected in
a minute that uh then commissioner Stone and I then commissioner Shapiro and I
were tasked to develop a plan for the registration initiative
commissioner Hayden Crowley uh I won't be voting on this since I wasn't at the meeting but I did have a question about
it did you mean to delete what was there and replace it I'm looking specifically
at item 10 where it looks like you deleted a couple of sentences regarding what the
DCA um exchange was and then added what you
rep uh the um added the paragraph on that this did
you mean to delete this or is this an in addition to uh I I use track changes so let me just
quickly look at what I did since it's been a while since I looked at it um but probably
I did intend to replace it let's see
item 10.
oh those were just Extra Spaces I was just oh just spaces okay I'm sorry because it looked like you were I
couldn't tell yeah I apologize okay so you're just looking to add yeah that that's the main okay and I
think clarified a couple thank you okay um wc24s so this is issue of abstaining
has come up in the past and my understanding is that people are not allowed to abstain is that
yeah so under the sunshine I was I was just looking that up right now actually
um I do believe that
um there are certain exceptions and if the um
the by a majority vote of the members uh you may excuse a member from voting on a
matter for any reason so you may excuse um so it's your priority what you want
to do next yes so we have the option of um entertaining a motion to permit
commissioner who didn't Crowley to abstain or we can um or you would need to vote require that
okay can I restate why I'm abstaining sure I was not present at the meeting so I don't think it's fair for me to vote
okay I have a question we're voting on a herb
standing on this matter only well if someone wants to make a motion we would yeah it would just be for this
one item does anyone have any concerns with this
otherwise I am happy to know my emotion that we allow commissioner
Hayden Crowley to abstain from the program minutes discussion
thank you sorry okay so we have a motion in second so um
before taking a vote we need to take public comment on this item as a whole take a public comment on the
item as a whole
can you hear me now yes great uh it's David pilpel I'm having
computer issues as well it's not just you guys it's everyone um so a couple of things welcome to the
new commissioner hello um on the the question of abstentions uh
usually when a new commissioner joins um that person reviews the the minutes
and just is and generally votes on the the minutes with the understanding that if the
majority of the the body believes that they are a fair representation of what
happened then that's uh good enough whether or not a member is present at a
meeting one generally uh votes it is unusual in my experience for a
commission to excuse an individual commissioner from voting on a particular item uh even something as as minor as
minutes simply because they join the body they're you know there's a normal transition of members and new members
generally just vote on the minutes at the first meeting if they were not present before that meeting on the minutes
themselves I noticed a couple of quick things on the continuation Pages the top
uh has the June date I believe these are the main minutes and not uh the June
minutes so I would correct the continuation pages on item four uh I
think it's clear enough that no action was taken on the uh April uh and I think
also the February draft minutes but just so that it's very clear that the only action taken on item four at that
meeting was to approve the January minutes on item six I would make more
clear reference to the June election by adding the word election at the end of the item whether it's a direct primary
election Consolidated General like whatever that always has the the word election at the end of the thing and on
item 10 if I can pull that up quickly one moment
yeah wrong way darn it um please give me a moment and I'll have it
um on item 10 there was something oh on on
my public comment introduction of Charter amendments at the Board of Supervisors for the November I would insert 2022 election and I'm uh and and
just one more thing not on the minutes but on the previous item because I couldn't get in in time uh there's a
typo in one of the paragraphs towards the end uh should be the elections commission and it says t-h-e-e and um I
think you can make just a minor type of fix t-h-e thank you very much for listening
yeah commissioner Kelly in the interest of not extending this uh discussion any
further I would draw my request and I will vote on the minutes thank you
okay um so do we need does the motion need to be withdrawn as well just for it to be
by the person that made the motion yeah just go ahead and withdraw the motion yeah okay so the motion has been
withdrawn so um on to the minutes themselves oh and there are no other members of the
public there are no other members of the public who okay so on the minutes themselves do we have
further discussion or emotion a motion that we make the typo changes
offline but approve the minutes as it stands that's amended correct yes
okay and then do we have a second second by commissioner died okay um is there
any additional discussion before we take a vote on this motion okay singing none secretary Delgadillo
okay okay yes vice president Stone
or die aye commissioner Lee volsey yes and commissioner Hayden Crowley yes okay
with six in the affirmative the motion passes okay great so let's move on to agenda
5. Director Selection and Hiring Process
item number five selection hiring process for director of Elections position discussion and possible action
regarding the selection hiring process for the position of director of Elections the director of Elections
current five-year term expires at 12 a.m on April 14 2023.
the charter requires that the commission appointed director for the next term at least 30 days before the expiration of
the current term SF Charter section 13 104 the commission may decide either to appoint the
incumbent director to an additional five-year term or to engage in a competitive selection process in which
the incumbent director May participate okay so for this item I just want to
make a few comments before we get started so I'd like to begin this item just by responding to a comment that was
made by a member of the public at the last meeting just by saying I want to emphasize that with this item there's nothing bad or
out of the ordinary going on this is a normal process that our City's Charter says needs to happen every five years
and the reason we're doing it now is that we were advised that it's normal to allow at least six months in case we
want to have a selection process and the last time our commission discussed this topic which was five years ago
our commission wasn't told until February which did not allow us to have
um you know a choice in the matter and I also wanted to comment on the date
there was a little bit of a confusion about the date that director ernst's Germans and it was originally on May
21st which was how it appeared five years ago and then um after the last
meeting I learned from direct currents that he thought it was April 14th but but it's back
it's actually still May 21st so there's no change with the um
the date there so just kind of working backwards 30 days from May 21st
that 30 days before May 21st is basically six months from today just so
people have an understanding of of how much time remains so for today's
item the purpose is primarily for us to learn about the selection process you know what the process looks like what
sorts of options we have and to give ourselves a chance to discuss that and we also have an invited speaker that
will help us in that discussion and I also want to thank Deputy City attorney Flores as well as Deputy City
attorney Rusty for their advice on this topic and I did meet with them yesterday
just to kind of understand more exactly you know the types of things we're allowed to talk about
and I want to say one more thing about the packet item before we open it up to questions and introducing our speaker
and that is um we have a nine page document which outlines the rules for the the hiring
process for the director and the last four of those pages are it's um about
removal for cause which does not apply so it's it's more just the first five pages of that which are relevant for us
so um before we move to our speaker and secretary Delgado can you promote him to
a panelist I already have Okay so I want to give the Commissioners a
chance to ask any questions before we get started with um his presentation
okay so um he is I see okay so I do see Sean
and he is already promoted Sean you can present well let's
we're going to wait just a moment before he starts speaking but um
we're just kind of sorting out the the technical
yeah yes yeah I'm here you can I I can hear you hopefully you all can hear me great
um so Sean just we're gonna just take one minute just to give um the commissioner has a chance to to like
maybe ask questions about the general item before we get into your presentation so um
does anyone have any questions or comments about anything before we get started
okay I did want to just say one thing for commissioner Hayden probably since
you weren't at the last meeting we did also ask director arnt if he wanted to be reappointed and he said yes just so
we're all on the same page thank you okay so um
(5) Invited Speaker: Shawn Sherburne
I want to thank um DCA Florence and Rusty for arranging for our speaker to attend and I want to extend a very
you know appreciative thanks to um our speaker Mr Sean Sherburne and he
is going to be giving us a brief presentation over WebEx and then we'll have an opportunity to
kind of talk with him and ask questions so thank you very much Mr Sherburne and
would you like to get started certainly good evening Commissioners
president Jordan thank you for inviting me um and uh just before I get started
we'll will you be running the PowerPoint on your end of Martha or should I run it
on my end or is it even necessary I think if you could share your screen that would be ideal
you you do have you you have control right now to share oh I'm I'm gonna get
fancy here so yeah and your slides are also a part of
the packet and they're available online for people or at home for all technology as well uh paperworks uh but it looks
like I got the slides up and running um again good evening Commissioners uh Sean Sherburne I'm the assistant
director of Employment Services with the Department of Human Resources and I have
this opportunity I'm grateful for it uh to be able to uh walk you through uh the
city's process for an executive recruitment and so uh with that being said
um just want to reiterate you know the role of the commission um is to conduct a recruitment process
to identify candidates for the director position um what's unique about the Department of
Elections say versus other other department head positions is this
role is governed by a specific set of Civil Service rules rule 114 I'm sure
many of you are familiar with this I've worked around these rules for a
number of years came to the city in 2012
and have had an opportunity to go through several iterations of this as
well as a number of executive searches with other departments as well so I come
to you with a little you know with quite a bit of knowledge around around this front and so really Your Role again you know
identify candidates will interview and evaluate those candidates and then select a director seems pretty simple
but it is a very complex process and it is one that we very much subscribe to
wanting to have an executive Search firm that would help the commission help help
DHR help me navigate this process with you all uh
with that said though there are options if the commission decided it did not want to
move forward with an executive Search firm however most other commissions and
Boards do elect to use an executive Search firm those firms will have a a
wide Network that they can tap into they'll have resources to conduct stakeholder group meetings including
with this group individual meetings with Commissioners with the community and
with other stakeholders um they really an executive Search firm
is really going to have the ability to enhance the diversity of the candidate pool by tapping into that Network
like I said they come with a Rolodex of candidates and I I can't underscore
enough also the confidentiality of candidates is also something because they're not a
department of the city they help promote the confidentiality
but they also help promote a sense that this is a process that is being
conducted by an entity other than the City and County of San Francisco at least an entity
supporting you all I put on the slide that it takes about 16 weeks so about
four months this is from the start of the process to actually
selecting somebody I'd say it more likely than not we've seen these take
about six months to nine months can using this as a starting point to
actually having somebody in a chair um obviously those timelines can be
can be narrowed a little bit based on you know what kind of uh Outreach the
commission decides they would like to take how long the job would be posted how many steps in the process and then
also again because this commission's role is a little bit different in the fact in that at the end of the process
you all are selecting the the director this is very much unlike other commissions where they
select a group of finalists three three or more and then refer that group to the
mayor's office that step doesn't happen here uh so it'll shut some of the time
that we have in this process but um about six months is uh is a good uh
estimate even on an aggressive time frame and you know why is that
um you know from this point once the commission decides whether they want to um bring to bear an executive
recruitment firm um we have a group of five firms already uh we would solicit proposals from them
uh they would meet with you all um you would select the firm they'd help
put together a candidate profile who you all want very much what I've seen with
other commissions as they will meet individually with Commissioners and then collectively as well to get a sense as
to what this body is looking for in a director they will of course then do the
Recruitment and Outreach they will tap into their own network their own Rolodex of names call people solicit names from
you all and from other constituent groups they'll review those candidates and then present them to you all they
will do screen Downs based on factors that this commission feels is prudent
you know is it a certain amount of experience is it experience in a large municipality is there an education
component is there other factors working with certain systems and processes
that they will weigh into those criteria and then interviews vetting the
finalists and then moving forward with an offer for the
selected candidates and I said just a few minutes ago we already
have free five pre-qualified executive search firms that can support uh this
commission um and we would move very quickly uh on that front if that is the uh decision
this commission would like to make as to moving forward with an executive Search firm
and that's I promised it would be a short presentation uh and indeed it is
uh so just because it's short uh on this end um doesn't mean that it isn't a long and
laborous process to get there but it's one that we will do in partnership with
the commission so happy to answer any questions
I have a question thank you for your presentation um my the number one question I had
which I think I may have mentioned in the last meeting or if not I intended to um should the commission end up going
this direction would director arnst also go through the exact same process or would it be simply
based on us just com uh vetting the new candidates that were vetted through the
either the recruitment firm or your department so the commission has a a choice
obviously they can decide to do another five-year term with director Arts the
other option is if they decide to go through an outside firm of course director arms could also uh put his name
in uh into the process as well so he would have to apply just like any other
candidate yes understood yeah commissioner in Crowley yes um
thank you again for your presentation what do these uh executive Search process
what do they typically cost and is that a cost that's incurred by the commission
it would be a cost incurred by the commission um I asked our managing deputy director
earlier today depending on how many elements the commission wants to have in
their process and how much Outreach including how much uh they would like to spend on uh advertising probably about
thirty to fifty thousand dollars um and how many of these
these contracts has the city undertaken in the last year and what and can you
tell me if you say there's a three I'd like to know what the average ramp up
time was between the first day that the decision was made to contract with an
executive Search firm and then when the individual was hired
yeah and I'll work backwards in answering your response uh that's where I got that six to nine months number
from this point where a decision is being made to having someone in the chair was about six to nine months
um I'm sure you all are aware we've had a number of department head uh transitions over the last couple of
years so we have tapped into this network of executive recruiters quite
extensively uh there are five other
departments that are actively seeking executive directors and department heads
at the exact same time so I am I jumped from meetings like this to
other meetings with other commissions as well uh the two that have already met
with us have already decided to move forward with executive search uh firms for the exact reason that they want to
engage stakeholders they want to have a robust Recruitment and Outreach effort and they
want to bring forward as many candidates as possible in this into their process
thank you um are these typically structured as
retained searches then as opposed to contingency searches
well I'm not can you can you reframe that for me a little bit I'm not sure what that sure
um I don't know if this is the thing in the public sector but in the private sector there are contingency search
firms and retained search firms so retained search firm there's usually
a flat fee regardless of whether the search is successful or not and a contingency is
based on whether we like the candidates um
I'd have to to look into to that aspect a little bit more I think what I've seen
from prior executive searches was that if we didn't find a candidate there would be a
contingency and I think this is what you're speaking to that they could go back out um it's all based on a fixed cost
um so but specifically each contract is going to differ and this that would be an important element to evaluate in
looking at the proposals that we got like we said we have five pre-approved vendors those event those vendors
hopefully each one of them would put a proposal in and that is one thing that I
think because you brought it up and and because it's important that we need to evaluate I have not seen the instance
where we've had unsuccessful recruitments so that's why it's a little bit of a challenge for me to uh to
answer that um but yes I do know that those elements are covered uh in the contracts in the proposals what happens
if I just I can't speak to what this specifically would be because they differ by vendor
yeah just to clarify usually contingent search firms you that you might engage
with multiple search firms at the same time which is probably not the way that it is done in the public sector but
yeah we would pick one one vendor okay I do have I'm sorry I have one more
question um does it often does it happen where you off how often has it happened in the
last year or two where the city has conducted these executive Search
contracts and selected the internal candidate
um so the two that I worked on recently it
was a split one they selected the in an internal person
um actually they selected a commissioner to be the to be their department head uh
and the other one um came from Washington DC so
um I think more often than not we are seeing uh candidates come from internal
uh uh and you know internally in the city either from that department or from
elsewhere um I I'm just thinking I'm trying to think
over the last year when we've had department heads a lot of them have been folks that have moved into interim roles
and then ultimately um were hired permanently
um we have a number of examples of that um but I I think you you see the news as
well uh as we've had department head turnover and transitions over the last couple of
years um you know you you know the puc director came from uh from internal from
the city attorney's office public works as an interim uh director right now
um and then I would say that the other four recruitments that were
that I'm uh speaking with Commissioners about um I have not gotten a sense from them
uh that there are um uh internal candidates I think they're even
um uh going to be challenged to find uh interim folks
thank you so I have a just a couple questions
um so in the Civil in these
civil code rules one of the one of the
sections says um
the names of the candidates who meet the requirements of the job announcement shall be placed on the list of qualified applicants in the order of their scores
there must be a minimum of three qualified applicants so
um how would that work is it would like the DHR um they would evaluate
the candidates against a scoring um rubric or and then can you see a
little bit more about that yeah so uh I I work uh and uh in DHR so obviously I'm
much more familiar with our Civil Service rules um and so
this is you know it's not necessarily analogous to an
eligible list where we would see you know 100 people on a list and rank order because folks took a test
um this is uh very much um you know either you know either the
executive Search firm or uh or DHR will work with the commission to set up uh
scoring rubrics or criteria um just generalizing here it could be as
simple as a management test that already exists um that I as an HR professional would
recommend that your candidates take we've done this for other departments that yields the score it
could be scores that you all provide as part of an interview process those
scores would be tabulated and that would be the rank order I think the thing that you hit on that was most important here
is that in order to fulfill the requirement under this section of the Civil Service
rules it has to at least be three qualified candidates if it were going to
be less than that you would have to go to the Civil Service Commission to get their approval to move forward
with less than three people but I don't imagine that would be the case here I
imagine you would have multiple qualified candidates
so just to follow on um for clarification would it be the
commission that is doing the scoring or DHR that's doing the scoring
the criteria correct we provide the criteria of the scoring of what we want is that correct
so I'll I'll just highlight again those two one is you can take a stand we can push
forward say a standardized management test that we already have we would handle that the other option is
an interview um I would say most commissions most boards would either as a whole interview
candidate or they would select a um a subset of Commissioners to to do those
interviews until there's a finalist um I haven't seen too many instances where the commission or board has asked
other people to conduct those interviews on their behalf um
but you know these are all discussions that would be iterative with the commission about how they would like to
evaluate candidates uh obviously an executive Search firm or DHR would bring
forward ideas I've highlighted two of them management test battery could be one uh interviews could be another how
those interviews are conducted is really um going to be a decision that this
commission would make so so it's up to us basically it just wanted to clarify that yeah we would
help uh you know the executive Search firm or DHR would help in creating
interview questions uh filtering those through uh through the commission you
know making sure that the questions you want to ask are in there and then help uh put together some scoring rubrics
around that so that we have some consistency on that front uh that's going to be standard with any uh
executive Search firm as well okay uh thank you and then my second
question is um one of the topics that has been of interest to the commission especially this past year is is racial
equity and I was wondering if you could maybe talk about some of the ways that the city uses the hiring selection
process to advance the city's goals in that topic yeah and and so
as we go through the process um either again with the executive Search firm or
with DHR anyone who participates and has a role in The Selection process will
need to go through the uh the city's implicit bias and hiring training or
managing implicit bias uh this is true for other commissions I've worked with that have gone through this process
we're going to look at interview questions um uh in you know any one of the executive
search firms are going to have a plethora of questions that will help
assess the candidates um efforts around diversity equity and inclusion which are going to be
important for any uh any candidate at this level
um so all of these things are going to be brought forward making sure that the process itself is as inclusive
um as possible bring forward as many uh candidates as possible and as diverse a
candidate pull as possible and then making sure that as we evaluate the candidates that we have a Dei lens
on that as well so all of those things would come to bear in this process
okay uh thank you I see commissioner bernholtz has her hand up Mr burnholds
thank you president jordanick uh thank you Mr Sherburne free presentation I have two questions how often is it that
a commission or a board that has a director who is um
in place and interested in continuing uh in place uh do they go through this
process is this a common thing or an uncommon thing and my second question is should we
choose not to go through this process uh could you just briefly describe the process by which director Arts would be
offered another contract yeah um I I think you you've set the table for
me on this one this is truly unique to this commission most uh most other instances this this sort of uh
discussion or process would take place because a department head uh has been uh
resigned left separated or um uh their commission or the mayor has
let them go this is truly unique uh for this and to be because of the term that
is applied to uh to your director that it is a five-year term subject to
Renewal and that gets at the second part of your question which is uh the only thing the rule really prescribes is that
you give the current director at least 30 days notice before the end of their
term as to what action you're planning to take whether it's to renew the contract for another five years I'm
sorry renewed the term for another five years um or
um you know if if they're going through this if the commission decides to go through this uh executive recruitment
process um I I would say that the current director would would understand that the
commission is is looking uh at all options at that point but really it's
that 30 days before uh the end of the director's term that um that I think is
what you uh will probably need to take the most notice of and and I know the city attorney's been working with you
all uh to make sure that we stay honest uh uh with those timelines
thank you I just had a follow-up question on that
quickly uh so you said that what's unique about this situation is the
element of the term and the that is subject to Renewal so just so I
understand other commissions and department heads don't have that same five-year term subject to renewal is it
just they serve it okay okay so if it's the pleasure of the appointing officer
it's not a term at all yeah it's not the length of the term That's Unique it's the fact that we have terms subject it
could be a three-year term a four-year term or five years thank you for clarifying
foreign are there any other questions
okay so why don't we um do commission server preferences to
whether we open up for public comment or or um discuss things a little bit more
before we do that okay let's let's open it up to public comment this is item number five
commenting on selection and hiring process for direction for director of Elections position
you're unmuted can you hear me now
yes great uh David philpel again um sorry still having technical issues
so I appreciate the presentation and the discussion I am aware of uh at least a
couple of other uh searches underway I was just uh advised the other day that
the uh director of the ethics commission is leaving and so I'm sure that's uh
creating uh more work for um Anna and Brad in the elections and ethics team
the city attorney's office but I'm sure we'll get through all of that um
uh president jordanick made reference to a nine page memo I don't know if that's an old memo or a new memo if uh that's
uh public or not if it's possible to make that public uh that might help the
rest of us out in the world here um I can't remember and I apologize for that if there was a 2005 Memo from Julie
Maul about the director selection and how all of that works I could go back
and check my old Julie Maul file but I think the commission definitely
has some choices to make about what direction to go whether or not to Simply
offer the position to director arts or to engage in a competitive selection
process um and that's entirely
up to you um I mean it's it's been said before if director Arts is good enough to do the
job and crazy enough to take the job then maybe you should you know jump at that before he changes his mind but
that's entirely uh up to you I think uh regardless of the status of that nine
page memo I think it would be incredibly helpful uh both to you and to the public for the City attorney uh possibly with
DHR to lay out um very clearly which of those selection steps even if it is unique to this
position are appropriate in Open Session and with public comment like the desired
qualities and all of that and which things are absolutely uh in closed session I.E the names and the interview
and probably the scores um so those are my thoughts at this
point about the director selection and I suspect that this will come back to you more than once in next six months or so
I hope that helps thank you very much for listening
um Mr Turner uh you are commenting on the selection and hiring process for
director of Elections position you're unmuted and you have three minutes to comment thank you Martha can you hear me
yes we can thank you uh thank you uh to Mr Sherburne for the presentation I'll
go quicker this time for my three minutes the uh public encourages strongly uh an executive Search firm to
come in and and provide a competitive selection process for reason stated that
racial Equity aspect is obvious and some others we've uh though this is a
nonpartisan issue I myself have put open source voting in the platform along with
my dear friend Christine Pelosi in the California Democratic party platform so
we're hoping San Francisco moves forward with some better technology that sets
precedent for the United States and follows New Hampshire and Mississippi toward better technology we haven't had
much luck with John Ernst it's not John's fault I think he's a good person but uh you know we've had this
relationship with one particular sales person Steve Bennett and there's been a
tremendous amount of negative publicity about Steve Bennett the representative currently for Dominion a previous for
Sequoia that has made public statement that people in San Francisco don't care
about elections that were ignorant and that John and the department is Dominion's well-oiled machine so with
all the negative publicity in the Press we think it is beneficial to have a an
executive Search I know of many people many women some women of color that
would like to be considered for the position and it's no offense to John I just think it behooves uh everybody to
open up the process and let the process begin so thank you for listening
okay is there anyone else I don't see any other hands raised I'm sorry okay thank you Mr Mr Turner um just on Mr
Popo's comment um the nine page document I was referring to was the the only
document that was attached to this item you know prior to the edition of the slides it was the um the Civil Service
rule 114 article 7. so um that that is available for people to be online
so um yeah Mr Sherburne I'm just going to give
the Commissioners one more opportunity to ask questions while you're here um
and then we'll we'll um move on but um I do want to thank you again for you know taking the time to be here for
us and it's very helpful and we appreciate you know the information that you shared
with us thank you so anyone else okay so yeah so we will
um I think the the question portion is completed so um you know thank you again
Mr Sherburn okay so as it stands um I think the plan
was for us to have another closed session um next month
and then I think we will probably have this this same item again
um if if we you know depending on if we make a decision we'd want to have the ability
to you know continue to discuss about the process
so um given Mr sherburne's estimate of timeline and given Where We
Are with the deadline don't we want to start sooner rather than later if we want to
give ourselves options well yes so we that's something we can
talk about right now um so may I jump in on that or were you
gonna sorry go ahead I interrupted again go ahead well I was just going to say that we do
um we can discuss that now it's just that if we have that discussion we would need to limit ourselves to to um
points that are not related to um you know director insta's performance just kind of in the abstract
but um but yeah that's we we can certainly talk about that now but um
so can I can I jump in on that um so I why see the value of time we have a very
big election coming up and I think that should be our top priority and also the
if we're going to have it be a search and the director who's already indicated an interest in being reappointed would
have to then go through that process in the midst of the election and preparing
for the election and then the weeks after the election I don't think that's I personally don't believe that's in the
best interest of the department I would prefer we wait until November
I wholeheartedly agree with that comment I I have a practical comment
does this uh commission have an additional 30 to 50 000 sitting around to invest in this
no no Mr commission actually has a budget
yes so that's um actually
is Sean still around or Mr Sherburne
um yeah do you would you be able to speak to that like um
like you know where would the money come from I guess is the question right I mean typically
with other commissions and Boards it's because the position is vacant so you
highlighted uh a couple other commissions ethics being one of them uh they will have a period of time probably
about six months where they will not have that director position filled and that's typically where they
um will fund these um these efforts it's the attrition
so in other words you're saying that the director's position is vacant and so
they're not paying out salary and they're saving on that salary and in that salary they're investing
okay and we are in a unique position where I do think the Integrity of
Elections is couldn't be more important and I don't
uh if there's if there's I'm not privy to what that's gone on with this commission
but I've not heard just based on the little bit of research I've done that there's been any significant
objection to director arns's performance so there is that I mean
I I I would hate to become the object I understand what the public comment has
been with um Mr Turner is it and his interests I
do think that there is a separate and commissioner um Hayden Crowley my apologies um to interrupt you but um oh
perform I get it excuse me and I apologize no worries um I just wanted to
um stop you before we go into territory where we're not supposed to during Open Session yes um so uh any evaluation of
the director's performance or comments about the director's performance should be reserved for closed session
um and not during Open Session and so I do think that
um there hasn't been a decision has not been made to reappoint or not appoint so I think that is what would happen at the
closed session next month I apologize rookie mistake thank you
so I just wanted to um respond to uh vice president Stone's
comment I completely agree but there's uh the groundwork as Mr Sherman pointed
out of finding an executive Search firm that all that takes time
um so I'm a big believer in preserving options
um I I think that um uh this commission this body has not
um undertaken a competitive selection process for 20 years
um and it's uh it's actually unusual the the what we have uh I think Mr Sherman
was saying if we have this Unique Kind of uh situation in San Francisco most
registers are actually elected and so it's actually unusual that there's this five five year contract in the first
place um and uh I just think
in in consideration of the city's you know racial Equity plan that it's
important to open up and consider the possibility of uh
encouraging other candidates who could occupy top spots
and I think this is completely independent of performance so
so again I would just be mindful of the discussions you're having
um because you have not made a decision whether to appoint or not a point
um and this I think was supposed to be informational um well we we have the
we have the option of discussing it as long as we don't I mean this is my understanding for me yesterday but
um I think what
I mean we just need to be careful not to discuss anything related to Performance but um I think
my understanding is that we can we can discuss the question as long as it's not
infringing on that area that's that's what I heard from you
yesterday I think the the question is whether to
engage in a combative selection process or not yeah yes and I think
you should be done should be doing that once you've made the decision to a point
or not reappoint I think it's part of the process of determining if we're going to appoint or
not reappoint though I I know we got into this a little bit last meeting but
I do think that those things are not independent they're not like mutually exclusive
well they could be it's it's my point because sure we could I think that's
what I guess you're to your point it could be happening in parallel is my point right I guess one question I
wanted to pose is just what is the goal um and what what problem are we trying
to solve for because if it's racial Equity then I think we should talk about that and and look at look at our the
policies of the department and look at Equity from a perspective of who's voting and who's turning out and
registration and are the policies that the department are implementing aligning with the needs of the communities that
are often marginalized in our elections I I think if it's you know we and I'm sure I have lots of blind spots but
that's just what I'm thinking at the top of my head if the other goal is more about
um wanting to have a competitive process because it's Unique um and having more opportunity and
competitiveness I think that's a different that's a different goal that's different problem and so it might be who of us as a commission to determine
what our what our goal is in determining this process because in determining if
we're appointing or reappointing because it is a huge undertaking obviously financially and time wise and I think we
just have so many priorities is this the top one or is this the top three one I'm
just I'm not saying yes or no one way or the other it's just something I think we should discuss as a commission
um oh commissioner bernholds you have your hand up I was simply going to say I think it
would be highly irresponsible for com for this commission without any funds to
announce an open search uh one month prior to an election
period
so my question is it seems to me that uh given that we
have a unique process here because of the kind of commission that we are
that the question about budget is a very real and practical one
I would assume it would come from the Department of Elections if if the department of if DHR is not going to
fund it which is what I understood for Mr uh Sherman
is that right this would come from from the Department
yes from elections because we do not as a commission have
an independent budget is that correct yeah that's correct
commissioner Brownells says I would add that that is even amplifies the
inappropriateness of this would be to divert funds from the Department's budget which is woefully underfunded and
we need that money much more for outreach to communities uh about voting
than to position this asserts like this when we really have no dedicated line
item for it uh would and to push it to do it before an election uh when we then
be calling on the department to divert funds would make this amplify the degree to which this is an appropriate in my
opinion I have a question um are we we are exploring so I think
it's a valid question for us to ask where the money would come from if we were to do this
the decision hasn't been made and so as a new commissioner I was going to ask that question where
if this decision was to be made where would the money come from and excuse me is is the budget such that it
would allow this process to go forward without harming the process of Elections
for the city in County that's the information I would like to know but we're exploring is my understanding
so um my suggestion because commissioner Hayden Crowley
um clearly wants to talk about John's performance oh no I don't um well
I'm saying that uh in order to make a decision John's performance is tied to it and so this discussion should be
reserved for closed session where all Commissioners can actually put input into what they you know speak
on what they want to speak on without being stopped by the law the brown act
um so that is why my suggestion is um speak on this during closed session
as it is tied to director John Arts performance
question about budget and money and where money would come from which should be in closed session
um no that could be during Open Session but um you know it it's almost like you all are having little mini
um discussions because we can't fully have this bigger discussion about appointment or not because it's we have
to discuss um Dr arnt's performance and that can only be done in closed session
so so actually we've talked about budget and we've talked about the possibility of opening up a selection process I
don't think anyone's been talking about or direct drivers performance so I
inadvertently flirted with it and I did not intend to do so so and I was only looking at it from
my lens is a first always very practically driven and a budget is
Paramount and that's a good question based on on a lot of what um
commissioner Stone brought up mentioning the other priorities and this is my first meeting and I'm talking way more
than I ever thought I would although I don't know it's somewhat predictable but anyway um I I did I did read over a lot of
I read over the materials I read over the the election plan I've listened to your last meeting and you and the group
has a lot of priorities a lot of priorities a lot of things on the table so I actually do think that that's
something that could come up in the closed session in the context of all of this what and and that our commissioner
Stone articulated so well we have to figure out as well as commissioner
burnhold we have to figure out what is the most important we can't do it all um so
um that's you know that that that I think is something that needs to be
um hashed out fleshed out whatever may I just add um thank you for you
finished right I am finished thank you um I also just was thinking as you were
talking about this element of let's say we do move forward with the
process hypothetically let's say director arnst did not
uh receive the offer we received a different candidate hypothetically let's
say proposition H goes through and other things change legislatively legally that
have enormous implications for the department and we have an entirely new director right after those things are
passed that are we are bound to actually Implement and I know that proposition H
has enormous implications if it is to be passed or just daily administration of
Elections so we would have that person unless they're intimately familiar with
that exact process there would be onboarding into the department and
um and implementing these processes I think it's just another consideration of
thinking about the implications around right now it is not necessarily anything
to do with the like weather makes sense to go through the process or not it's more just a
consideration that we haven't brought up at all so um I think there's always going to be
another election um we only have this responsibility every five years
uh so I think it has to be one of our priorities at this time because it's a
unique time once we're past a certain window it won't be possible for us to make a
different choice and I'm also concerned that um
this discussion about budget is that the implication that we would always be
locked into a decision because we have someone in the job that doesn't seem
like if we're an oversight commission you know we ought to be able to again
look at our options for for the good of uh the city and and for the good of our
elections regardless of uh if there's someone in the job or not so
it's a unique time and I'm just concerned about how much time we have to do it I think we could push it for one meeting but I think we would have to
decide whether to move forward or not no later than the next meeting and my
concern is there's a there's some upfront work just to like figure out the executive search firms and it feel like
that's something that maybe could be started sooner rather than later
my personal feeling is that we you know
there would be an investment no question but is an investment that hasn't been made in 20 years
and so if you look at it that way it's not that much it's a lot less than
searches in the private sector I can tell you that much I guess I mean one of the things that's
running through my mind is that you know the charter was written to have this process every five years and
it doesn't make sense to me that it would be written there if it's not something that
could actually be done like practically so you know um
you know why why would they have this process here where it's if if a commission actually tries to to do the
process it's not um you know it's it's not meant to be used or something
um I I did try to I talked with or you know former
commissioner um Becca Chapel back in June to see if we
could start discussing this because I was concerned that if we didn't have enough time and um you know got pushed back
um some months and I I I I just don't what I guess I don't
like is that if if it's sort of like the circumstances are are forcing one decision to be made and we don't
actually have a chance to to kind of um like
just discuss it on its on its merits and um I mean
you know 75 percent of counties in California the elect that are registered every four years so
and and then all those counties it's not a case where the person's not
replaceable so I think even even in counties where the director is doing really well you
know the voters can they re-elect the person and um I think in um direct currents case we could you
know select direct currents again so it's not you know engaging the process as the
charter has outlined is not um saying anything
[Music] um it's not about the current Department it's just we're we're doing a process
that was prescribed in the charter and we haven't done it for 20 years and I think it it could be useful to um
to go through the exercise and to see um
you know you know if it makes sense as far as the budget issue I think that's something we
could look into um between now and the next meeting um I know there's a lot of money in the
city and um I mean I you know 30 to 50 000 doesn't seem like
much to me relative to you know other things that we've worked on
but um I do think that you know based on what Mr Sherburne said you know it takes
six to nine months we're already at six months now if we um lose a month without doing any
any more leg work were um it's almost like we're making the decision today
and without having had a discussion so I think it would be good if we can
like allow ourselves to um at least explore you have the chance to
yeah explore or discuss it in a way where we're not you know limiting ourselves for the next
meeting but uh we don't have to make a decision today but I have a question this is for
um attorney Flores excuse me um being a new commissioner I just want
to make sure that I'm um this question is appropriate are we allowed to have a
special session between our regular meetings to to have a
discussion and exploration
yes you can always call a special meeting um it has to be
um I believe it's 14 day notice um yes I believe it's some something like
that but I can get back to you but yes you are always allowed to call a special meeting um if I could get that information about
what the rules are for that yeah in a few minutes but you're definitely allowed to call a special meeting
um the time frame I can tell you in a few minutes okay thank you for a special meeting does it need to have uh
unanimous consent to have that special meeting because I imagine we have to vote on if we would have the special
meeting which is what we did for the last special meeting I believe a um a quorum I mean is enough
a quorum of the seats or of the filled positions currently of the seats
so for you it's seven seats so it'd be four thank you
and just a confirmation that it you can schedule a meeting sooner than 14 days
my apologies 14 days is just when you want to change the regular meeting location that you have
um but since that wouldn't be the case it would just be a 72 hour notice uh
required by the brown Act thank you thank you
so um can we assign President jordanick and Vice President
Stone to at least start the process of
looking at what Mr Sherburne has in terms of executive search firms looking at budget
issues I I would be happy to help with that I think in general it might be worth a
conversation on the commission about our budget in general I'm just thinking about budget because us being
us pulling funds from the Department I think probably we all would agree it isn't ideal
um and if we can in some way ahead of the future budgeting process propose an
independent budget that we can as a commission utilize and prioritize I
think that could be a larger conversation of value as well I would just like to make a comment I I
think the reason I asked the question of turning Flores is to see if this was a possibility because I I think it would
behoove us to make a decision before that work goes into effect
the only concern I have about the special meeting which is I asked about voting is that is given
how much is like it's the election is in what two and a half weeks three weeks
and personally I'm really focused on that and I understand the concerns regarding
timing and I I'm actually very supportive of those concerns but I I personally feel that my responsibility
is to the administration of the current election more so than the this topic I
am happy to help explore and support but if we were to vote on having a special meeting I think I would probably vote
against it and so just to clarify under the mayor's
emergency declaration the um you are able to call a meeting within
24 hours um like we did for in April so
thank you
so I mean so there's sort of I mean there's a
couple of things I'm hearing like number one is I I know some people are saying
they don't think we should make a decision until we've we've had a until a later date maybe after the election but
I'm also hearing people say that if we want to even have the possibility of doing this there's certain preparation
that we need to start like basically now but um and is there a possibility we
could do some of the preparation now just so that we don't yeah um like rule out the possibility in
the future you know depending on what we decide um in terms of the election I know that
um Mr Sherburne if if you're still there I'm not sure if he is what would be the
earliest that um the candidates would need to like apply if if we were
um you know to start the process in the next month or so
the earliest job candidates would need to apply yeah oh
um that really would be determined by whatever action this commission wants to
take and how they want to engage uh a search firm like what efforts they want to do I mean a lot of commissions are
going to want to meet uh with uh with the executive Search firm talk about
their interests you know in coming up with you know what are the what are the what's a candidate profile going to look
like so it could I mean it really depends on how iterative this commission wants to get with an executive Search
firm and then how long they want to post a job for and then we can always you
know I think in every effort you hope that you know if you have it open for two three weeks that you'll get a
sufficient number of candidates but the reality is I've seen a number of executive Search efforts leave those
jobs open for people to continue to apply for a month maybe six weeks so I
mean all of that that before even the first candidate can apply is probably at least a couple months out
I would think yeah and I think the other thing is
um and uh commissioner lavalsi may be a better expert on this than me but I I've been
involved with a number of executive searches and one of the key things from a Dei perspective that is always
emphasized is to make sure to to leave it open for some period of time to give people an opportunity to think about it
and apply so I would be in favor of
not cutting it off after two weeks having at least a month
I again would like to um ask that we
decide if um I agree with the Commissioners who brought up the point that
it would behoove us to wait after the election um but we've just heard the rules that we
can have a special um meeting and make a decision and I think
that a decision needs to be made at some point sooner rather than later but I I
do agree it should be made after the election
okay so um
so I guess I guess maybe what we could do is um we could have our closed session
in next month's meeting which will be after the election and in the meantime
I mean I can take it upon myself to do some research into the budget issue to see if if um you know what options
there are there and which will help inform our decision next
month yeah it's a clarifying question Commissioner of Elsie when you were saying special meeting but after the
election or we need to make decision after the election or sorry that you
think we should potentially do a special meeting but you agree after the election is the notion that or is the idea that
perhaps because our next meeting isn't until what November 16th 16th that and
the election is what two weeks before two no one week before that yeah
um is the I mean is the idea that it would be Nest like a special meeting prior to our general meeting so that
going into that general meeting we've already come to a decision or did you were you not I just want to make
sure I understood what you were saying I think what you're saying is a possibility I'm I'm trying to urge us to
to move forward and make a decision I think
we've we've discussed it in my opinion enough and I I want to engage in a
fruitful discussion where a decision can be made cut it thank you for clarifying
okay so um I think we can push it one more meeting
but not but not yeah so
okay um I think we we know what we need to do now um
is there any last comments before we move on to the next item
just a moment I think um GTA Florida is just for um scheduling purposes I mean you can
have a closed session and an open session item at the next meeting I mean that's possible too so we don't have to meet right before
Thanksgiving okay so thank you everyone thank you
again Mr Sherburne for all your help so let's move on to item number six
redistricting process initiative just
we already took public comment on this item right
yeah um so
okay I guess sure we can open up public comment one more time on item number five
people want to hear more
thank you Tess Welborn um 18 points uh remember that the election is not over it's not certified
for some time after the election uh it's really easy to push aside uh
diversity and Equity issues we've all been there and um
this is maybe not the time to do that but it's okay you could decide to start the process of looking into the search
and so on without having to make a decision about going forward completely you can direct your HR department to
start pulling up search firms and qualifying them
um and you can also as was mentioned uh see how proposition H does
um there may not be an election next year but maybe there will be based on
some initiative or something like that um I personally have objected uh to
civil service and the idea of a six-month vacancy and the failure to do transfer of information and history and
um the loss of knowledge that happens when there is a vacancy period but there
isn't there are issues about that with civil service and of course you can seek additional money from the mayor's office
um I don't know where the open source system is but that may be part of it and I'd point out that you have a number of
new members so I think there's a lot of things in the mix here that I just
wanted to um emphasize or call to your attention thank you
okay thank you I do have two hands raised okay and I'm
sorry Mr Turner you
and I will clear everyone okay so we're good that I there are no other hands
raised okay um
6. Redistricting Process Initiative
so let's move on to item number six redistricting process initiative discussion of possible action regarding
the commission's potential recommendations with respect to the San Francisco redistricting process including historical background in the
proposed project plan okay so I'm going to turn this item over to commissioner dye who has been leading
on this topic thank you um so today uh we are moving on in our
monthly series of learning about redistricting in San Francisco and elsewhere and how we can do it better
and I have invited several guest speakers and I'm going to
(6) Invited Speaker: Angela Calvillo
invite our Clerk of the board Angela calvillo to please come forward thank you for
waiting so patiently my apologies but it's very hard to predict when we're going to start certain items
um Miss galvio had the um uh somewhat unwelcome job of supporting
the redistricting task force uh and did write a report which is posted for the public here and she kindly agreed to
also provide some verbal commentary for us so whenever you're ready
thank you commissioner die members of the commission president jordanick Angela calvillo Clerk of the Board of
Supervisors uh it is my pleasure to be before you you are quite familiar with
the report as commissioner die mentioned it is on the redistricting task force I think that's the 2020 census Dash
redistricting Dash task force website and the clerk of the board has a report
there this is for the public under um uh section c or appendix C and for
anyone who wants to hear more about the thoughts of the office of the clerk of the board please I refer you to that
eight page report but yes I was invited here tonight to to provide some brief
remarks over uh some of our recommendations I I do want to say that
at the outset and that the members of the public and the organizations that work with the public actually contributed a lot to our
unfolding resource resourcing of the task force and they informed our report
so I just want to tell you how valuable their uh advice their criticism was to
the to the process over that eight-month period and uh to begin with it was our
very good friend uh the director of the uh elections John Arts who was staring
down the barrel of four elections and asked us to do more than clerking this time because we clerked the last task
force ten years ago he asked that we would then run the competitive process for the Outreach consultant
um there seems to be now as I feel rested and our report is written and
it's all in the rear view mirror that I can see that because
10 years ago when the when the uh task force met technology was not where it is
today and so the ordinance that we crafted with the help of the city attorney's office did not contain a lot
of some of the the work that technology can do better than the manual work
uh that we I think we we did a lot of that this this time and so there was a
natural tension between wow the ordinance that we wrote um
was sparse in terms of who did what and so uh as the clerk and my team would
come to the redistricting task force meetings to try to provide some clarity over what they could do what could be
next uh what options were there was just so much to get to overload of
information and so perhaps some of you who have watched those meetings you
could see where we were bringing information about what needed still to be tied down uh that just sort of
sometimes went to the Wayside so for our recommendations there are
five categories in our report which I don't want to belabor any of these
recommendations because of the hour if you wanted me to review them with you I certainly could or we could just jump
right into your questions that were most important to this body that I could help
answer at this point why don't we switch to questions I'm
assuming all Commissioners did their homework here it was a very interesting report I'll start so you came up with a
with a number that it costs the clerk's office do you have any guess if you
added the cost to other departments uh what the true cost would be
I um I'm truly only familiar with what with what our cost was what it could be
in the future uh or that would forget that part of it because I don't want to
guess I mean obviously what costs today is going to be exponentially different
10 years from now so um but we did have Partners like osea the office of of community engagement
and immigrant Affairs we obviously John Arts brought a lot of resources to the table as well we utilize the resources
of building management and the sheriff's department in addition to providing some meals from
our department um and I'm sure Eileen McHugh who is
here and as is my assistant and was right by my side every single hour of the redistricting task force probably
could mention a bunch of other departments who assisted us like sfgov TV and it was of course done during a
time when we had to do both in person and remote and so there's a lot of you
know it's typical that you don't have 10 computers sitting around that then you can loan out or hot spots that you can
loan out um and uh repo Repro excuse me that's
our City Printing Company they printed the house signs and the um a lot of our posters and some of our our paperwork
when it was large capacity needs for printing um so we we put up um 600 and something
thousand dollars as you could see it a lot of the management uh that went into this task force they're all on salary so
we never counted the the comp time or the overtime although there were hundreds of hours of that
so um and as you can see I am recommending High management positions for this work because you are working
with department heads you do need responses immediately and you do need to make you need somebody with judgment to
make split-second decisions so that the public can be served the members can be served uh technology can be utilized in
a way that um is in at two o'clock in the morning and you need to get the sound system up and running because it
somehow got knocked offline but um yeah we we found money in our department
we did not ask the board for money because we knew we had um some funds in our department that
were programmed for a completely different project but we reprogrammed it for this project because covet happened
and we we didn't need to utilize those funds to do that project anymore which was a very unusual uh budgeting
experience for us so we were very lucky
uh I just want to commend you on the report I was an extraordinarily comprehensive and I I'd see that it's
addressed to the redistricting task force but how is I mean there's so many
different recommendations in here that are all really important and valuable how will these get executed going
forward beyond our recommendation to perhaps endorse that I mean do you do what will happen I mean it's 10 years
from now in terms of getting funding from the board and the mayor it's quite possible that none of us in
this room will be here in 10 years so I'm I I would recommend that the
elections commission if I could be so bold to put this on your shoulders should codify some of these necessary
requirements to protect the Public's right to know the communities to get the appropriate scope of services
from the Outreach consultant so that there is a wide
there is a wide understanding that the consultant that you choose is going to
bill you a little bit differently than the consultant who build this time around that you know that
there's a lot of delicate intricate details that we're happy to share with
you uh once you've gotten something written we're happy to work it into it in a way that makes sense that doesn't
tie the hands of a future department or Board of Supervisors or commissioned
elections commission but that does put out some sound wave forward because a
lot of the time that went by that was not utilized for redistricting was kind
of it was unfortunately um time past worrying about certain details that perhaps you can solidify going
forward
this wasn't a question it was more just to reiterate something I had said to you Offline that I wanted to mention the
public that um I I personally want to apologize for any trouble that the you
know that is included in this report of your staff and the bandwidth and the labor and the overtime hours that you
specifically just articulated were not incorporated into funding for redistricting and I I can't speak for
everyone but I imagine we all share a deep amount of gratitude for you and your team well thank thank you thank you
kindly we very much appreciate being able to do the work we love doing
this work unfortunately a lot of it needed to be ironed out more so in advance and we
learned and hopefully we will put it to good use so the public doesn't have to
experience that again either yeah thank you so one of the the feeling I got after
reading your report was that you know you had the registering test Force
members that were requesting all these services from you and you guys were scrambling to try to
make it so um so you know my question is about
accountability right because they were in a position where they didn't have an independent budget they
didn't have their own staff they had to rely on your team and many others to do
things so one of the thoughts is do you make them accountable you know give them a
budget and their own staff and their own responsibility for hiring Consultants or
or not because just to give you an example at the state level at the CRC we
had all that right we had a budget we were responsible from day one from Hiring Our Own executive director and
all the staff uh and if we didn't have enough money we had to go beg for more
right so we were accountable for our own budget do you think that's the model to use here or is it too much to ask at a I
think the model that there is a I think a responsibility that the
commission director arance Clerk of the board's office uh the sheriff can lend
all of the agencies that participated in this past redistricting task force
we can look at the reports that they together perhaps we all could Round Table I mean
I'm not I don't that I think I did my time with the redistricting task force so that's the
I have a lot I have a lot of work to do still in my department but I think it is incumbent about the
reason why I'm here today is because I feel a responsibility to making sure the
next process is improved now that we know so much I don't think they knew what we knew what we know today the last
time around technology is so different demands of the city are not so different
but they're louder and so they're some of them are different sure but we can't lose this opportunity as I
think what we need to do is make it the best do what you can what we can to put
out some of the breadcrumbs and sort of minimize the work of the task force and have some of it
spelled out in advance so that they need to focus on what they need to focus on hearing from the public
understanding the community benefit that the housing where the special benefit districts are sort of get the lay of
every district and the agencies and the housing and the historic nature everything the zoning all of that stuff
so that then they can feel like they're making the right decision and leave the administrative stuff or iron it out as
much as possible in advance okay
other questions for Miss cablio did you have a chance to look at the
budgets from the uh the common cost provided I see that the budgets were not
uh um San Francisco was always different
but looking at those budgets they were much uh they weren't as much as they're not using as much money to fund their
redistricting task force I don't think it was ever expected that anyone would use as much money as we
used for the redistricting task force this year I don't ex I don't think to be honest
and Frank I don't believe we thought the Outreach consultant would bill for the
things that were built for uh which did bring up the cost
um uh but once we once we onboarded the Outreach consultant
they were surprised the amount was so low because typically doing Outreach tabling and doing you know the the full
gamut of Outreach was about a million or three million
um so and just on the Outreach consultant um we we got turned down from every
single consultant who worked with uh the city we literally had to beg a consultant to
do this work but no one wanted to do it for a hundred thousand a hundred I think we put 20 of our own up and eventually
some more but no one wanted to do this important work for such little money and
so maybe that is uh what we really need to think about what that scope of services at the very
least should be right and just for everyone's information
Outreach was not part of the budget in the previous cycle if I recall that's correct yeah so
excited any other questions for the clerk
thank you thank you so much for your time thank you for waiting we really appreciate your work
all right we have a second set of speakers um from the um San Francisco Unity map Coalition
um Mr Fernando Marty will be doing most of it I think
and we also have um Emily Lee is a hot backup if necessary
um they uh uh we have posted the the presentation
that they made to the redistricting task force previously so hopefully everyone had a
chance to look at it when uh vice president Stone and I had
originally talked about this we felt it was important to give this Coalition a chance to speak
since they did um a lot of work to get speakers to participate in
the redistricting task force meetings
yes okay then we can do it this way too and hopefully we'll be able to share
some slides soon
and while we're waiting for that I just wanted to highlight a couple of the other
um attachments so one was uh the ordinance that was
passed by the Board of Supervisors officially putting the redistricting task force in
place there were some minor changes and additions including requiring Financial
disclosures and emphasizing that they serve at the pleasure of their appointing authorities okay that were
different from 10 years before presumably and then just a couple of comments on
the um the information that was kindly provided by common cause on the redistricting
budget data This was um in response to some questions from
commissioner bernholtz about the cost of these independent commissions uh so they
did it attempted to get some numbers from a variety of different jurisdictions I
added some detail here about which ones are independent I will note I I'm hoping
people that paid attention to the to the big mess at the city of Los Angeles
where they spent quite a bit on their advisory registering commission and then
the city council ignored that in favor of gerrymandering on their own
um and that was a 1.5 million dollar budget although it did not break out from census
so the challenge of trying to do an Apples to Apples comparison here is that
as you heard from Miss kelvio sometimes salaries over time is not
counted I did want to point out the city of
Sacramento's budget they had a special budget Outreach
budget where they actually gave grants to community-based organizations
so that's a model that might be interesting and and we do that in as a
part of regular elections I know that director Ernst and his Outreach Department do that exact same model and
it's definitely a best practice right yeah and I think that
there's a lot that we do well in the Department of Elections that it would seem like we should just borrow for a
redistricting process and possibly piggyback on since uh it's being done anyway
um so those are just a couple of comments and then the other thing to note uh the City of Long Beach notice
they had a three-year budget that's pretty typical with an independent commissioned because there's a recruiting and vetting budget and then
there's the actual operation of it that may span over two budget years and
with that are we almost ready well it's not coming up for some reason while you're doing that uh commissioner die
may I ask a couple of questions about what you just brought up sure the ordinance was extremely helpful actually
I hadn't read through that with the updated changes so I really appreciate you including that obviously I've been
working with Bellevue on this um she asked us to put it there well it's great because I hadn't I hadn't
seen those updates and even though you know this was the first time I had reviewed that one question that is
probably uh obvious is were the task force members
informed of the ordinance with the amended updates that were adopted in
2021 or 2020 whenever that took place perhaps uh Ms kelvio can answer that
yeah or or DCA Flores
DCA Flores no problem I was just asking if the with
the ordinance update that were that was updated I think in 2021
um with the changes for redistricting task force members were the task force
members informed of the newly adopted changes so the ones that commissioner
die had specifically called out for example conflict like exposing uh sorry revealing
Financial disclosure were those components the new additions provided
clearly to the task force members I assume the answer is yes but I just wanted to make sure we have that sorry I
I'm having trouble understanding your question um so the charter contains
um basically the provision for the redistricting task force like how how it
comes about um there were no changes or yeah this is the ordinance
this is an order supervisor's path in June of 2021 I think Miss kelvio might
have the answer okay there was a financial disclosure section I wasn't involved with that ordinance so I
thought um um Angela calvillo Clerk of the board that
ordinance came into being because I requested that our role be codified so
that the Board of Supervisors would uh there's a charter section 2.117 which says Angela will do the clerk of the
board will do all these things and anything the board tells her to do and so I just wanted them to make sure that
they were aware that we were going to be working on the redistricting task force and uh uh Andrew Shin the DCA at the
time actually put in some other updates and the director aren't you might have asked him to add a couple of things as
well but I believe the task force was informed about that because that was
something that I felt responsible for and so in my presentations early on I
believe I've probably spoke about it in public in addition to providing it to them uh in an email and I have
Eileen is checking that out right now we could certainly get back to you on that to confirm thank you
(6) Invited Speakers: Emily Lee and Fernando Martí
all right well Mr Marty great thank you so much Commissioners my
name is Fernando Marti and I'm working with the community Unity map Coalition
and thank you so much uh for taking the time to listen to us and thank you
Angela for all the work that you did I think um we couldn't have done any of what we did
with the redistricting Task Force if not for that support oh I'm sorry I'm so
sorry I'm lost right yes um I was trying to have you come up here we go okay
um so I'll just keep keep going and hopefully we'll we'll get this resolved um
I was involved uh uh 10 years ago with the redistricting uh in a very similar
process of bringing together Community organizations from across the city to
develop a legally conforming map that responded to the communities of Interest
this time around San Francisco Rising Emily Lee is here and other organizations came together to do a
similar process um with I think some very different results as many of you uh heard uh saw
in the news um and oh I see I see the share button again has popped
up so it's because I'm I'm logged into three computers and I really apologize I
have pinned it down to which one it was and what I was trying to do was allowed you to be seen also okay that was my uh
that was my goal all right and apparently it's just I will keep going
um so the the Coalition brought together uh over 50 organizations representing uh
communities from every single District um in the city and we attempted to do
something that was uh to create a map that we could present to the
redistricting task force that kept the communities of Interest together and kept cultural districts together uh as
you know this was a very challenging process um each uh two of the districts had to
uh um shrink tremendously district 6 and District 10. several other districts had
to enlarge and we had a legal limit of five percent uh that we could go from
the mean and using that rubric we were able to create
um a map that was both legally conforming and that protected those communities of
interest in those cultural districts there we go we can't see it but okay
um are you seeing it the presentation no okay I'll keep keep going because I know
I think I know what I'm saying but how about yeah I wasn't that's what I was gonna say
share my screen no okay oh okay
thank you sorry you want me to put it back on slide we're experiencing what I think the
redistricting task force experienced over and over again which were these these same challenges hopefully you all
are not going to be here until 5 a.m um to finish this and I think one of the things that was really important in this
process and you heard a little bit from Angela about uh the challenges around the Outreach process is that we did our
own Outreach um we turned out people we had folks coming to to these meetings at a
particular meeting in April we had over 200 people that came to the meeting to present uh a testimony in support of
this is when there were four different Maps being presented um one of the maps uh was not
um the the unity map that we were hoping would be taken into consideration but it did accomplish many of the goals and I
think one of the the challenges was that uh the redistricting task force did not
at any point actually say let's look at this map the community members have
presented that actually is legally conforming and it was the only map that um uh you know other community members
many community members came out presented maps of their District this was the only version that really said
we're going to look at all 11 districts and present present something I don't know just what page do you want me to go
to here because I can't let's oh here we go um let's just stay here
um just say next when you want me to move okay great thank you um
so this is the map that we presented uh what you see in green are the areas the
very small areas that had to shift in order to re retain that five percent uh
uh plus or minus of uh the mean if you can go to the actually the previous slide
um just to show you sort of one of the organizing principles was looking at
cultural districts um oh now we're back at the beginning
and and
yes can we go back one map well this is page two so the title slide is
oh right that's it's different from what I've got here so never mind um let's jump forward
um because actually with what I had sharing pretty much feedback on this or
no yeah I think that's what's not happening okay but that's it's not going to be possible to share what's on you
I'm about to send it okay great may I ask a question yes uh oh were you about
to jump back in I just while we waited to get the presentation up how long did it take a to build the Coalition of
folks to participate from all 11 districts and be how long did it take to
devise this Unity map that gained all support obviously under the legal
um pretense of what was required for the districts themselves right I think we
started having conversations in December um back when the test the redistricting
task force was being put together we're like oh we're going to have to recreate this thing again from 10 years ago uh a
lot of the relationships already existed um so not just through SF Rising but through other Allied organizations
um but that was the work in January February March and in 2021 of 2022 yes
yes so December 2021 was when these conversations began
um so that by the time um March came around we had a map got it
that we could present to folks thank you the timeline is helpful oh perfect
um and you've got I think that's it if we could jump uh forward and another one
and so this is just a list of the 40 organizations that endorsed uh the the
map and work together um representing organizations from across the city if we could jump to the
next slide uh as I said there was you know there was times when we had over 200 people that came and I'm just gonna
uh quote a couple of um I was trying to pull up today
um some of the numbers um some of the task force members were actually keeping count of the commentary
so uh Jeremy Lee uh um and if folks remember one of the key
pieces was a discussion around um whether the tenderloin should remain
as part of District Six should it be moved uh Jeremy counted that um in the
course from January to the end of March the tenderloin was named in public comments 73 times 62 of those speakers
spoke to maintaining the tenderloin with Soma zero at that point had said that
the tenderloin should be moved out there were other communities that we were very concerned about if you could move to the
next slide um I already talked about those were the ones that needed to shrink and some that
needed to grow the next slide um one of the things that was really key
for our members and for the the communities that we were talking to was the cultural districts many of whom did
not many of those districts did not exist 10 years ago um I believe uh the Little Saigon uh and
the Filipino Heritage Cultural District already existed 10 years ago but many of these were organizing struggles that had
happened over the last 10 years to ensure representation of those particular cultures uh and that was a
key organizing piece for uh how do we maintain those and simultaneously
maintain some of the relationships the relationships that existed in particular uh with the transgender Cultural
District the Filipino Heritage Cultural District and the leather and lgbtq districts as as one maintaining
representation um go to the next slide and so that's that's what I had showed earlier
um those were the major boundaries that we had suggested um in in pink
um in um on April 2nd which was one of the those
big meetings that went to uh three or four in the morning uh when there were
200 people uh waiting to speak uh Task Force member Michelle Pierce kept a tally uh of the map that was closest to
this was just map 4D 118 uh supporters and only 23 supporters for one of the
other Maps um at you know late in in the day there was a vote eight to one for maintaining
that map 4D and then a couple of days later as folks may remember there was a reversal at 3 A.M
um where the task force went back on what it had said um and I think you know without saying
whatever was happening uh it raised a lot of questions a lot of bad press about what was going on behind the
scenes and how those decisions were made um if we could go to the next slide
so given that you know as we looked at what was was happening
um our kind of suggestion was how do we change this in the future and whose
responsibility is it to change this in the future and I think uh it's a different thing than um what the clerk
of the board was talking about uh that is similar to to what what Angela said I think that this is perhaps the body that
really needs to talk about what's going to happen nine years from now or eight and a half years from now when uh this
is going to start uh the next census happens and this process starts again so we could go to our our next slide
um so what was very clear from us is there could be improvements around transparency around the appearance of
conflict of interests and around how we include diverse voices and really listen
to those voices um in the process and make sure that part of this really uh as as part of the
charter maintains uh um the communities of Interest intact so we could go to the
next slide so we just wanted to present as uh the initial suggestions of the
discussions that we've been having we have continued to meet as a coalition to say what would this look like differently how do we take from the best
practices and this is I know that this is an ongoing discussion uh the commissioner die has brought to hear I
think you've all heard from common cause and and from other kind of good government agencies how to do a better
process unfortunately we have a charter that was created before a lot of these
best practices went into effect and we think that now especially you
know once this election is over and you have a little bit of time to breathe that while this is still fresh on
people's minds is when we need to make those changes to our Charter so our
first priority is how do you get a qualified task force and that includes both the composition so how do we have a
task force that really represents the diversity of communities do we have at least 11 members on a task force that
represent the current 11 districts so get that breath so you don't have let's
say two folks from Russian Hill and nobody from the tenderloin sitting on that task force
um we should probably have alternates uh we should probably have a way to ensure that we have underrepresented
communities and we should probably have some minimum qualifications to ensure that there's no conflict of interest
um meaning were you an elected are you planning to be an elected who is redrawing those
boundaries those sorts of minimum qualifications that most other cities already have in place
um the second item around this is what's the selection process I think a lot of what made uh at least the appearance of
conflict of interest was that we had elected officials naming the members of the task force other cities have an
independent auditor an elections commission uh there are examples where there is a randomized process in which
someone like the elections commission can oversee uh but they're you know you pull pull
pull from a pool of qualified candidates through a randomized process that
ensures that representation so that's our first priority our second priority is a fair mapping process
for us the Integrity of communities of interest and of cultural districts was
primary because there wasn't a Clarity in the charter
some task force members thought it should be exact equality of every single
District could be the re the way you do it you know zero deviation we think we
need more clarity in this how do you rank these different criteria um as long as you are maintaining the
federal and state requirements around the legality of the map um and transparency I think we heard a
little bit earlier about um you know how uh the maps may have been changed what were the decisions
what was the thinking how do you justify this um particularly when you're hearing so
much public input in a decision is made that is not reflective of that public
input um and how do we ensure that there's real consensus on that final decision
oftentimes you get a you know a majority you get one person who's becomes the
Swing Vote and everyone's putting pressure on that one person um which is you know is likely to happen
but how do you get something that really ensures a consensus um and then lastly
um the last last slide was just there there's other considerations that we haven't talked so much about internally
within our Coalition but we certainly think are important um one is around the timeline you know
you don't need to wait till uh you get the census data that tells you that you need to um change the the maps to be
able to start putting together a task force to do uh all of that Outreach that needs to happen a robust Outreach to get
qualified members on board one of the most difficult things in this process is that we did not have a draft
map for the public to look at until very very late in the process and that was very different from my experience 10
years ago so we don't have deadlines on the on on the charter for that we only have a
deadline for the very final final map needs to be in by this state um and lastly I think back to uh what
the clerk of the board talked about some Assurance around support funding
training for the task force members many of whom maybe have never been involved with the Roberts rules award or running
a meeting or understanding the mapping process I know that last month you all talked
about for this commission you know is there an opportunity for stipends or reimbursements what does that look like
for trying to get a working class people of color who have families to sit on
these uh task forces that might be running until 5 a.m or 6 a.m the next
day and I think that is it for my presentation there's our contact
information um I have I am working now with the unity Coalition Emily was involved from
the very beginning which is why both of us are here to answer any questions because I was not as involved
thank you so much for allowing us this time thank you thank you so much Mr
Marty and I know um from seeing this at the state level how difficult it is to draw a legally
compliant map that takes the entire area into account
um you know when I we heard testimony at the state level there were tons of people who are very happy to tell you
what their little area should look like and like damn the rest of the state right but actually trying to figure out
the trade-offs so you can you know address your concerns and hopefully address the concerns of other
communities it's actually extraordinarily difficult so that's why we wanted to make sure you had a chance
to to speak about this uh I have a bunch of nerdy questions but I wanted to see
if I wanted to open up to my fellow Commissioners first I also have questions that surprise no
one um thank you so much this is really helpful and I think what's so insightful
about your presentation which I hope I don't believe I've seen I read this ahead of time so if possible to be
distributed if it would be great um but I think what's so remarkable is
the sheer volume of communities that were Incorporated uh not just from each
district but also so many different communities of interest that we're able
to participate and the reason that I asked the question about the timeline is how many organizations did you say 85
organizations 50 50 organizations it please it's just
85 were surveyed and like gave us feedback and influenced the kind of
mapping process and then 50 plus organizations actually endorse the final Unity map thank you
um just being able to achieve that and have that in that you know four month period
um puts into perspective the process that took place on the task force
amongst just the members of the task force so one of the questions I have is
you talk you gave recommendations that are actually very helpful and kind of
validate where I think a commissioner die has already kind of been kind of shedding light on this issue from her
own expertise but one question that keeps coming back into my mind is beyond just this element of transparency and
the structural components of membership on the task force and how they become members of the task force how do you
what do you think are the ways that the task force could be held accountable to
community input knowing these numbers of you know I think you had said something about 75 endorsements or a certain uh to
keep the district six together right not separating these communities of interest and zero against so beyond just the
transparency of how decisions are made let's say they happened in the light how what are the ways to hold accountable to
the communities Beyond ensuring that the task force members are representative of those communities and that they are
being talking about these things in the open um
I think one of the things is providing Clarity in the charter language around
both the criteria and the role of input um so you know being able to say in the
charter your task as a task force is to prioritize these things and to prioritize Community input
um it is I think is is key right I think that right now the way the charter is
written it simply says here's a number of factors that you need to look at
um and and I think that then creates a lot more of squishy sound so the explicit we have
talked definitely about criteria and the ranking of criteria but the explicit
codification of community input as a top priority in that ranking so that the
criteria ranking is called out in the charter amendment is what I'm hearing you say right great that's it and then
you know an explicit justification for anything you know who knows you know
District Six might have twice as many people in 10 years as it does today and
and so there might be some hard decisions to be that have to be made um
some of the decisions that happened there was no justification that the
public got about why they went against what had been done before and so I think
also having that Clarity that you need to justify these things if there's something that you know maybe this criteria at some point is infeasible
while still maintaining the five percent and we need to understand why
thank you so um actually one of the
more contentious arguments we had on the California citizens redistricting
commission was in fact about the uh the population deviation
um and a lot of organizations urged us to keep the same deviation we had in our draft
Maps which we had set at plus or minus 2.5 percent or five percent and we
tightened it for the final map and a lot of people were not very happy with us about that but the justification
for the will of the commission ultimately after we argued about it for a long time was that we had very large
districts right a State Senate District or some million people so small deviations a lot of people but in San
Francisco and uh you know by legal precedent
there's usually a lot bigger deviation allowed for legislative maps for example
even at the state level um usually up to 10 percent is considered
rule of thumb so I'm curious if you have a position on whether we it should stick with five
percent or we should allow it to be um more more what legal precedent has
allowed for smaller jurisdictions I don't know that we've talked about going beyond the five percent but I
think you know one of the things uh that that was clear to us is neighborhoods in
San Francisco vary so tremendously by the size of the neighborhood so I think
a Mission district has 50 000 people you know that's a small City in other you
know in other places um and so I think though you know being able to have that that give and take is
really important if we're going to maintain those communities of Interest whole um and to mean and the other thing I
think that that we found in our conversations is there's relationships between those communities
um that are long-standing uh that make sense in terms of representation right
uh some of it has to do with perhaps building stock right you've got a bunch of sros it used to be uh 20 years ago
the division between the Mission District and South America happened at 17th Street
and that was for for population reasons but it was also because the residential
hotels start at 17th Street and go into South of Market and into the tenderloin
so all of those considerations come into play um in terms of maintaining those communities of
interest and so that exactness of population doesn't doesn't quite fit in
there's a so I would be interested for your coalition to discuss this a bit
further because that is you know a lot of people criticized us at the state level for making our population
deviation so tight we had strategic reasons for doing that we were the first commission we wanted it to be kind of
very clean um but like I said um you know legal precedent for local
jurisdictions is much broader 10 I've seen 12 sometimes at the local level and
it's not an issue because you're dealing with smaller numbers so you might only be talking about you know 20 people or
100 people it's not it's not a lot of people at the state the size of California we thought it was a lot of
people so that's why we made our deviation type so that's one question I'd like you to think about um I'd like
um Miss calvio had mentioned benefit districts now you guys mentioned cultural districts we heard you that is
something that's special to San Francisco that would make sense for us to call out distinctly if we agree
um because that's like I said and only in San Francisco thing um what about benefit District site you
didn't mention benefit districts do you see those as different as not as important are they they say they're not
what came up in the organizations that were talking to each other so mostly these were communities of color and
other underrepresented organizations that came together to form those
um yeah I don't know I don't have a comment on on the benefit districts but oftentimes there's an overlap right
there's a tenderloin benefit there's actually a south of Market benefit District um and so those things might
might just be natural overlaps I think a lot of those are around commercial districts and certainly when we talk
about communities of Interest those commercial strips are kind of at the core of a lot of those communities of
interest it's a it's a different lens and it may not be appropriate so I was just curious
um and then uh the panel of former redistricting task force members that we
hosted last month uh when we we asked about decision making uh thresholds uh
and the idea of consensus which you mentioned in your presentation or a
super majority a joke was made that they might still be talking about redistration today if that were a
requirement so do you have any other thoughts on that requirement for consensus you know I I think part of it
is um I think our experience this year was
because the first draft map came so late in the process um they didn't have a lot of time to
actually go back and forth between a 4A and a 4B and a you know whatever it was
um if there is a a process in which the
first draft map starts earlier there is more time to reach consensus that doesn't mean they're going to reach consensus but I think part of the
challenge was they didn't have the time to listen to the different communities uh and and to really pay attention
um in order to reach consensus okay so I'm hearing a couple things I'm hearing
um earlier draft map deadline which is we've heard that from many other groups
um making it a bigger Task Force if you have 11 districts represented that's
already bigger than the nine member task force we have and um it sounds like you're fond of the
idea of randomize selection so so the good news fellow
Commissioners just after commissioner levolsi and I discussed this we're going to
try to ask some speakers for next month's meeting who actually had
experience in a randomized process because that would be very different for San Francisco and maybe be able to share their
experience they're definitely pros and cons for having a randomized process it's certainly a lot cheaper process
but it doesn't allow the kind of vetting that that would be required in another process
uh other questions or the community Unity Coalition I just
said okay is the goal after you collect all of this testimony and experience is to
recommend policy change possibly in the charter Amendment yeah
okay and that would that be something that you would take to the border is that something that you're looking at a Grassroots level but probably uh we've
talked about taking to the board or the mayor I mean hopefully by the time we've gone through this process there's enough
consensus that we need to change it and fix it so um but yeah there are obviously a couple
of different and did you get much have you uh are you aware of much feedback
from the board or the mayor on this particular position have they given any direction on it have they commented on
it not at this point right now we're just going through an education right right
but they're obviously aware of the pitfalls that occur during the process but they didn't comment they didn't say
we got to change this or anything like that I think that there are several members
of the Board of Supervisors that felt strongly I also think the mayor felt strongly and I think
part of the reason that commissioner dye and I had initially collaborated on this was that
many folks had said and had asked the elections commission as a neutral body
to look at this issue when because the task force is appointed by the mayor the
Board of Supervisors and the elections commission and understanding the political implications of all of those
bodies we are the neutral one the partisan body and
um also what commissioner dye has as you can see tremendous experience with this
being able to kind of think through who we should include from like a thought
leadership expertise perspective but also you know how to think about criteria generally and we've there is a
project plan as well I think that commissioner die and commissioner bolsey
are going to be updating that but we should also plan to maybe we can just have that as a recurring attachment on
the packet item as this continues but it has more because it we didn't necessarily determine decide that this
would end in a charter Amendment we kind of it was more of an exploratory process but I think what commissioner die if you
don't mind me translating is saying like the hope is there's enough consensus based on how many
speakers have kind of started to say almost the exact same thing
um that perhaps it could lead to a charter Amendment well it has to translate to votes at the Board of
Supervisors as I say I'm always looking at things from practical standpoint so it's always good to have a fallback
position with your community groups if this is something that you possibly want to take at a Grassroots level and put it
on the ballot sure but I do think that you have to look at it that way because you're investing an awful lot of time and it's not to say that it isn't
worthwhile because I think it is tremendously worthwhile but I do think that you have to have a plan for how you
can implement it because it would be a shame to invest this kind of time and public feedback and so forth and not
have it go anywhere and when you're dealing with politicians as you well know these are the systems that got them
elected so it's hard to change sometimes you think it is easier but sometimes
it's not I will say even if let's say like I think that's very very very fair
I think what I'll speak for myself and that let's say
it doesn't necessarily we don't necessarily have a plan in terms of what
the communities can do or or if the Board of Supervisors is willing to vote on it with the super majority that then
wouldn't get vetoed or all the political implications of that um I do think that what is one of the
biggest concerns for me throughout this process when we had the special hearing when the community members came to us
and asked us to have a special hearing back in March is that the communities
felt silenced they felt that their feedback their input was not being listened to and so even if if this
exercise doesn't land in a charter change I think giving the communities the opportunity to provide
recommendations and having it on record I personally still find Value in that oh absolutely but I also think there's an
opportunity for the communities to make it a charter Amendment yes definitely yeah definitely
our our hope is to go ahead please thank you so much yeah I I think you know
coming from a coalition of folks who both were very involved in this process and have been involved in Charter
amendments and in ballot measures um I think one of the things that's really important for for us is uh to
hear from you all your recommendations um if this is going to go either through
the Board of Supervisors or through a signature petition to have not just
um you know a common cause League of Women Voters um you know advancing Justice ourselves
but have the official body that oversees elections say these are the five six
seven uh reforms that are needed um would would be very good right I
think that's that's what we're looking for you all as as the experts who've been hearing you know both the comments
from the community who are reading the newspapers and then have been getting all this advice from
um folks who've been on the previous task forces and so forth um to say these are the things that need
to happen um and then we can figure out how to make them happen we've got eight years nine years uh to make it happen uh
but I think yeah I think the other thing on the urgency is just sort of what was
in the news around San Francisco's election but more recently around what was going on what's been going on in Los
Angeles right that that we need to make sure as a city that that never happens here
um and that's part of what I think we're trying to to do with this Pro these improvements thank you very much so I have a question
um on that a follow-up to that are you um have you been a part of any conversations with board members or do
you know if there's any appetite there for doing some kind of we've talked to a couple and there's there's interest we
haven't we haven't been doing the rounds I think we're waiting for for this process we do know that there's interest
you know from from a few of them so I'll say that all right thank you sure
other questions um any feedback
um in terms of uh timing on this I so part of this original plan uh
it was to try to get get through this educational process hold public hearing
you know next month uh to get specific proposals and then you know hopefully
decide what to do whether it's a charter Amendment whatever our path forward what we as an elections commissioner wants to
do um we may have extra time because of proper age so
uh there's an argument for taking a little more time for this uh like I said
I'm I'm pretty excited that I'm going to be able to get a couple of speakers next
month from voters not politicians who are the ones who put the ballot measure for that
reformed the process for the state of Michigan uh they basically copied the
California the gold standard but they made some important tweaks including randomized selection so I thought it
would be very interesting for for us to hear why they changed certain things about the California model
um and hopefully one of their independent redistricting Commissioners and then also I've already gotten a
response from the chair of the City of Long Beach if you'll recall from Alice
Miss Alessandra lazana's presentation from common cause a couple months back the City of Long Beach was held up as
one of the most successful independent redistricting bodies this past cycle and
they have alternates which is also something we don't have in San Francisco so I thought it'd be interesting to hear
from them to to give some feedback um if we have a little more time we can
obviously get more input any thoughts in terms of
from the Coalition standpoint in terms of urgency I mean technically like you said we have eight or nine years to get
this done but we don't want to lose momentum either well hoping that probably H passes and we have more time
I think that the question is if it does not pass right um that there would have to be a uh a
process if it goes to the Board of Supervisors for the City attorney to start drafting language for a charter
Amendment and that's going to take some time um and I think you know when we saw the timeline that you had prepared as part
of the the plan uh it seemed very ambitious um you know moving quickly to have
hearings in November to have perhaps an action by you all in December or January
um but I think that's that's probably what would be needed if prop H does does not pass so that then
um and frankly I don't think that um I don't know who would be prepared to
do a signature campaign for on November 2023 election at this point
um so it would probably have to go through the Board of Supervisors and that's a toll you know counting the
votes and you know along with getting it drafted um but if prop H does pass then I think
having that time to really bring in all of the the best practices and the
expertise I think one question for you all as uh elections Commissioners is
um would you know we talked about a Rand possibly a randomized process if it's not a randomized process and we're
trying to take it out of uh the electeds uh having a direct sort of say on the
task force is would the elections commission who now selects three of
three three be that appointing body and if not then
is there a randomized process that kind of takes on that role and I think
we would also be interested in your thoughts on other bodies that might you know potentially be selectors so for
example um in Sacramento it's the ethics commission um and the County of Los Angeles it's
the registrar right so they're you know a bunch of different appointing bodies
that are you know not elected officials so there's more discussions to be had on
that I think that we do see you all as perhaps the most
nonpartisan of bodies that already have that expertise on elections and how this
works so that's been our starting point right
uh if there are no other questions I want to thank all of our speakers who've waited
a long time to speak we really appreciate um your presentation and the work that you
did during the redistricting cycle is absolutely amazing the number of speakers that you galvanized and as
someone who is familiar with how difficult it is to get people to engage
it's really incredible for the underrepresented communities that that your Coalition serves so thank you thank
you thank you so um we have not taken public comment on
this item correct so let's let's do that now let's open it up to public comment on agenda item
number six redistricting process initiative okay so we do have two
um persons whose hands are raised and I will start with Mr
how did you oh yes yes in person commenters go first sorry about that
Tesla born again and I was a member of the um Community Coalition but I'm speaking
for myself here on a couple of points I think that having alternates
will be useful having 11 members or specifying maybe one member per District
in case of the abundance in the future of we need to have 13 districts or
something like that um I look forward to um
uh clarifying what the task force member's responsibilities and Duties are
so that we don't have a task force member say but it's my duty to my family to include visitation Valley in District
10. uh you know things like that just you know are inappropriate
um so there's a lot more suggestions I know that the Coalition can offer and I
really appreciate your openness to moving this process the sooner the
better in some ways but it does take time and if we do have a little more time but let's not put it off for two
years our memories can fade other priorities can come up so
I really appreciate and thank you for putting this elevating this to
uh or importance now thank you thank you
anyone else we do have two callers online that are um wait that have raised their hands so
Mr Turner you're commenting on redistricting process initiative you
have three minutes to comment s thank you Martha can you hear me yes we can very good and thanks to the
speakers um for the great presentation and for making their way through the technology
issues um uh I just wanted to point out a few uh phrases that I heard from the
speakers who who uh so eloquently stated their position and and I think it is the
position of the public um they mentioned transparency and they
mentioned conflict of interest and they mentioned outside
interference and when I earlier tonight bluntly referenced uh Cesspool I I
didn't mean to over speak but I think we can all recognize that there are
predispositions occurring here and um this is not science like our issue of
the technology this is this is something that is very gritty and and it's
appreciated that everybody is putting their time um into this to make sure that the
people are properly represented and and again we get back to these Equity issues
there's always going to be money concerns and there's always going to be another election looming so these are
what we call throwaway lines that are used to get in the way of of progress
for the people and sometimes it takes courage and fortitude and so I just
wanted to say on behalf of the public thank you to the speakers thank you
okay so we do have a caller J Lee you are commenting on redistricting
process initiative you're unmuted and you have three minutes to comment
uh good evening Commissioners my name is Jeremy Lee I was a member of this most
recent redistricting task force um I will not provide my opinions on any
of this I don't want to color your process um but I will just say that I am
incredibly encouraged by the discussions that I'm hearing and just want to say you you all are on the right track
um and I also want to just give a huge thank you to uh clerk calvio who was
just an amazing leader throughout this entire redistricting process her and her
staff just went above and beyond so uh just want to say thank you
okay next caller is you are commenting on redistricting
process initiative you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment
hi good evening uh this is Dan today from the legal and voters San Francisco I just wanted to thank everyone who
presented tonight um I also want to add about um how
um you know in thinking about possible you know reform is to also think about
what's going on on the state level possibly and how there might be possible State reform I think some of something
to consider about what happened this print cycle is how San Francisco was exempt from a lot of the really great
reform that came about from the fair map pack they came in a 20 that that got
passed in 2019 2021. um I think one of the things that we the
San Francisco wasn't able to um there was a um you know
a criteria on map drawing on the uh Through the Fair math fact that
unfortunately we were exempt from uh by uh election codes
um section 21621e that basically um we that said that we unfortunately
had something in our Charter uh that made it so that we were exempt from you know using that criteria which you know
other jurisdictions like Long Beach use um in this current cycle and I think
something to consider is to also think about well what are we exempt from that
maybe we can try to make ourselves unexempt from you know in order to get
some of the you know nice uh reform from uh that happened on the state level thank you
I don't see any other hands raised
okay thank you to all the speakers um close public comment
um vice president's attorney do you have a comment or oh I don't think that the
public is able to see us anymore um
based on my personal tech support [Laughter]
okay so I think the what happened is the webcam laptop was shut down is that
no it looks so actually um I I was thinking we could take a five
minute break after this item so maybe or can they hear us at least yes yes why
don't secretary why don't why don't we work on this during the break and then okay
let's just finish this item so um commissioner died was there
anything else you wanted to address before we move on uh no I I have my plan for next
month and I'm hoping for our page passes okay well although yeah
well um well crazy we have more time yeah great so let's um let's move on to the next
item but but before we do that let's take a five minute break um it's it's been three hours since 6
p.m and then um so be back here at 9 13.
yeah um president jordanick yes commissioner I'm going to have to
step out I've been spiking a fever uh so if you're taking a break I will uh
leave the meeting at this point unfortunately um feel better yeah we wish you we wish
you well and thanks for um yeah thank you for two very important presentations and I'm sorry to miss the remaining
agenda commissioner bernholds man just um add one thing before you jump off obviously
I I'm really sorry to hear that but if there are items especially as pertains to agenda 7 which was mine but I want to
encourage if you wanted to put something in writing or anything just so you don't feel that it's
you have to be excluded from the conversation I welcome that as well thank you I am very much uh regretting
that I won't whether we won't get to those I was hoping to take a break after them but um yeah I thank you for all of
your work on those issues and I I hope it's a productive conversation
thank you commissioner bernholds um so let's take a break now for five
Short Break
minutes oh
perfect Tuesday
okay
okay
motion to restrictions
but three year old kids in front of
foreign
closet
foreign
two
foreign
foreign
deserve okay
what would it be okay yeah
foreign
foreign
foreign
testing
oh yeah yeah okay um
I wish there was a way to test the audio before we start the meeting but um
I will just okay the the time is now 9 20 p.m we are
7. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, Justice Initiatives
resuming the meeting after a short break and for the record it was 908 PM when we
took a break started taking a break so um in Secretary Delgado it looks like
one of the members of the public is not muted on the in the pianos or
okay so let's move on to agenda item number seven diversity Equity inclusion
belonging Justice initiatives discussion possible action regarding Dei
BJ initiatives for the commission and Department of Elections including a proposed resolution of land
acknowledgment to be read at the beginning of each election's commission meeting okay so um on this item I'm going to
turn it over to vice president Stone and vice president Stone I want to thank you for all the work that you put into this
I also want to thank commissioner bernholz for the work that she did on
this um who had to depart from the meeting um so vice president Stone yeah
to want to thank her work on this I um she really
handed the Baton after initiating the the work uh I put
primarily everything that I wanted to say in the memo so I'm hopeful that it
was uh valuable to folks mostly because I wanted to be able to provide some
context about land acknowledgments what they are um also the context of the ramaytosh
lone people um the original inhabitants of this land and also be able to explain the previous
conversation around land acknowledgments for the elections commission and be fully transparent about why it stalled
which I believe had come up when we first talked about this more recently I think it must have been in our April
meeting um and so I tried to be fairly objective with what the concerns were at the time
um and uh and if anyone has any questions about that I welcome them but
the big thing I just really wanted to call out is that bless you
um is that I in collaborating with the association of
the ramayana alone and with the American Indian Cultural District in San Francisco bless you
um one of the most important takeaways and I included this in the best practices
um uh page is that a land acknowledgment is not just a land acknowledgment it's
an entry point for continued conversations collaboration and
partnership with the community and so this is more of a first step it is not
the end um and uh we have started to talk about different ways that the elections
commission can be supportive um but should any folks be interested in
um learning more supporting more I think it's going to be something that we should continue to commit to as we
commit to I hope um acknowledging the land in every meeting
um and that is was by far the biggest takeaway I had from our conversations so that's really
where I'll leave it I'm hopeful the memo was informative and if anyone has any questions I welcome that otherwise I
would love to motion we approved the resolution as drafted
I'll second it great okay so we have a motion in a
second um does anyone want to make any comments on the anything on this topic
okay let's um I'm also supportive let's open it up to
public comments this is agenda item number seven
two persons excuse me with their hands raised um caller you are going to comment on
diversity Equity inclusion belonging Justice initiatives
you are unmuted and you have three minutes to comment uh great I'm back on the computer it's
David philpel again I'm I'm sorry I stepped away for a second and I heard there was a motion but I didn't hear what the motion was can you just restate
it very quickly the motion was to adopt the resolution
that was attached to the packet got it okay so on the uh resolution
um I read it carefully um I thought there was at least one typo in the italicized paragraph the third
line uh indigenous stewards of this land I think that should be and in accordance
with their Traditions um so that's just a typo I have concerns
about the last few words of the italicized paragraph um I would probably end it with
relatives of the uh Rama Community period because I'm not sure what
affirming their Sovereign rights as first people means and what the implications are and I think that was
the concern of commissioner Jung last year I also had concerns about the
fourth paragraph the whereas it says acknowledges that the city and county was founded on unseated territory and
continues to participate in the Erasure and exclusion of the uh issues of Ohlone
peoples I don't know what that's based on and I don't I'm not sure I would
agree with that in general terms um and I'm sorry the the resolution
speaks to the beginning of commission meetings but it doesn't say anything about committee meeting so I'm not sure
if this but also buy the BowTech or any other committees that this commission might establish if you do adopt this I
would review it periodically I would probably not amend the bylaws to require it but I think it can just be a practice
that you adopt by this resolution in general terms if I have a moment here I
I really think that this raises other concerns for me and possibly for others I I think frankly all people have
Grievances and history and when you start down a process to acknowledge this
particular concern it doesn't address any other grievances
in history that people or communities um have and so I'm I'm just concerned
that we could spend a lot of time on 30 seconds everyone's thank you on everyone's grievances uh
and history and I'm not sure um if that helps if it does great
um if this land acknowledgment helps move us somewhere great um but I I as I say I'm just concerned
about the the various other grievances in history that we all have on various
issues that's all those are my thoughts thanks for listening
so we do have another caller oh Mr Turner I you are going to comment on
diversity Equity inclusion belonging Justice initiatives
you are unmuted and you have 30 seconds three minutes to comment thank you Martha can you hear me
yes we can thank you uh this seems to be a recurring theme tonight and I'm very
proud to stand in the tradition of my family heritage and completely support
this resolution um as it is written uh with whatever typos Mr pillpal may have mentioned but
certainly the substance is beautiful and proper and I want to thank you and I
feel proud to be able to chime in on this particular issue because this is unusual for us on the technology
security side to to be able to make a a nice sweeping comment but we stand as
the public in complete support of the resolution thank you
okay thank you yeah no other colors with their hands up
okay so is there any uh additional discussion before we take a vote
may I am sure uh
that's why I really appreciate the thoroughness with the typos and I absolutely can address those should we
um move forward with the resolution I also would recommend should uh I would
love to hear what the other Commissioners think to include this on in bowpack so I appreciate that addition as well
um and I also agree at reviewing it periodically would be valuable and I would recommend in collaboration with
the ramay tush alone and the American Indian Cultural District to ensure that
the language still aligns with their current um perspective uh I will say I did call
I did respond to those concerns regarding uh sovereignty original people
in my memo um and though they're just to reiterate
those are the the strong Sentiments of the community that those are
specifically words and sentiments that should be incorporated in the land acknowledgment and it has been vetted
and approved multiple times by the city attorney's office by multiple city city
Deputy City attorneys by our current Deputy City attorney by the Board of
Supervisors that languages used and most importantly I think
it's important that we invest in grievances for many communities that have been harmed this
is just one initiative of hopefully many more that we prioritize on this Commission
okay anyone else okay secretary Delgado you want to take
the roll call vote excuse me okay president your daughter how do you vote Yes vice president Stone yes
commissioner guy I commissioner Lee ballsy yes and
commissioner Hayden Crowley yes okay with five in the affirmative in passes
okay great and um just there was one other packet document for
this item and I just want to just mention for one minute my I was supposed to research commissioner compensation
and you can see a table I included and the compensation range it ranged from
no money to like 25 50 100 or 200 per
meeting or some some databyte per month but just to give people an idea
um so there's that and then was so is there any other um thing you wanted to discuss during
this item one question I had regarding compensation thank you for putting that together uh were there any other
uh considerations or components I believe commissioner dye had brought up in our bopek meeting that
um you know exploring other avenues such as travel costs things like that so as
to not be direct directly compensation do you know if those are
um are those are maybe not necessarily outlined
um per se but for example do other commissions have budget that they could put toward supporting Commissioners yes
so I I did not research that I I did the documents that I looked at I did come
across the health insurance benefit that we're familiar with but I don't know if um there are other like reimbursements
or anything cool it might be something if and we can talk about this down the line as we continue to talk about
compensation or other Equity initiatives um sorry
oh oh no um I you know if we do start talking
about having an independent budget that is just for the commission maybe that's a line item that we consider
incorporating of travel costs or technology costs as we were talking
about earlier um not necessarily something to act on now but I definitely would love to continue that conversation
as a commission uh I I have familiarity with some other commissions and travel costs are not reimbursed there are
stipends that are given out health insurance is the big one that's that's a huge thing it is huge
um and that is a big incentive for people but uh to my knowledge and I know of
several people on commissions travel costs no other out-of-pocket expenses are reimbursed
okay good to know so any other discussion
8. Director’s Report
okay so let's move on to agenda item number eight directors report discussion and possible action regarding the
director's report okay director Ernst thank you for um your report and I know you have a
there's another panics you had to the report that covers
your um improvements you're making to the results reporting did you want to say anything about your yeah I just take
any questions the commission had okay anyone questions I just want to thank
your your team for responding to some of our concerns but you're like especially
I know that there's going to be a transition to a new website but I think it's uh right that
put the effort into making the changes for the November election which is very important well thank you
yeah thank you for the the changes recurrence I I did have three questions
um and one of them's related to the results reporting during the bopek meeting I remember that you said that
when you're looking at possible ways you could address some of the the suggestions you had said that you had
met with some vendors and do you can you share the names of those vendors
a vendor is societal s c y t l vendor
okay so they're they're ones that have a results reporting web page that the counties use and then are you continuing
to meet with them right now no okay and then um on the and then on the
requested information thank you for adding the additional information to the report at the end there
um I don't know if how other Commissioners feel but if if if there's like no
items to report I don't you don't necessarily need to take up the space in the report at least from my perspective
but um but um one thing I wanted to clarify though was
um it says that there is no legislation that related to open source voting and
internet voting but was there any election related legislation okay and then my last question was on
the um on the contract extension that we had discussed earlier this year related to
Dominion has that gone to the board yet but I think I said previous meetings the way
that the resolution is drafted the the extension does not go to the board so I
essentially signed the contract as the attorney's office will sign the contract OCA will sign the contract and the
vendor will sign a contract but does it require board action the Dominion extension correct
oh I okay I never knew that okay so um so then how what is the status of that
then you I'm waiting for the vendor to get back to us on a draft I I did the term for one year so I see okay so it
does not have to go to for board approval correct okay when did you learn that several months ago okay
all right um okay so those are all my questions
um anybody else yeah I have a few at first I just wanted to elevate
something that I'd also shared with director Ernst um I had the opportunity to
um Shadow prisoner Legal Services as they registered and distributed ballots
um to uh currently incarcerated folks in San Francisco in one San Francisco jail
facility and I wanted to elevate this to the public and to the rest of the commission that it was extremely
organized it was very well um they the department very well
supported prisoner legal services to ensure that they could carry out this
Duty and are continuing to expand how they partner together and I just think
that that's a really phenomenal partnership that um you know if we're talking about equity and policies continuing to
support other departments that are already doing this work and offering them resources
is really really invaluable so kudos to director arnst in the department on that
I was really really happy to see that um one question I had about that actually on page four
um there was a mention about oh and I yeah it was more just about the move to
the videos um for um uh currently incarcerated folks is
that in exchange for posters and flyers ahead of the red like for the registration process
um are or are there posters and flyers in additionally I didn't ask while I was on site so I'm just curious well the
videos are supplemental yeah because potentially the literacy rates are yep
the I also just want to say that PLS said that was great as well okay um I was just curious if there were also
posters um and then the other question I or actually I wanted to also say that I was
happy to see the expanse expansion to working with other groups that are
supporting the homeless population I know that there were a couple of times in your report where you
um had expressed that the department is trying to encourage Community groups to
basically ask for more events with the Department have you
gotten feedback on that have you you know and yeah have you gotten feedback on that and or how is that going yeah so
we hand delivered materials of 200 over 250 uh organizations I think it's 256
and since we did that around starting around two weeks ago I think we have around 35 40 responses as far as us
going to the sites going to an event tabling providing information to people
who are attending the event that's great um thanks for sharing that and then about the results reporting
um I actually wanted to pose this to DCA Flores because I had a fair amount of
like word like a few not a fair amount but a few wordsmithing changes that maybe are a little nitpicky
but also are just to make sure that things are clear am I allowed to do that knowing that that does get more into the
weeds of what the department does if I want to make like if I want to provide specific feedback about what they've
done foreign I think if it's within the parameters of
your duties as allowed okay so how about I try sharing them and if that's not
allowed you can cut me off I mean yeah sure I mean if it's it
General oversight of the department I think you know it's pretty broad so okay so I I will volunteer that I
that director arnside shared an initial draft of this for me and I had made some collected you know
observations on on possible word choices and you took some of them and didn't
think all right so um okay well one thing that I do think is valuable for as
a commission and also just as sharing the result in reviewing your results reporting I think there is
um um there is some value in potentially making a few words very clearly defined
so received versus counted versus returned versus cast um and I got I we even got confused I
think it's a commission not maybe not the last meeting but in a recent meeting and so if there can be like very clear
consistency um and I'm happy to share where I saw that but also as a commission just being
thoughtful of what we're saying when we say counted versus received versus
return versus cast um and then the other thing that's nitpicky is on page four about precincts
reported I'm wondering if we could adjust that just to
um make it a little bit more clarifying um about that that being the in-person
election day polling place precincts reporting so that when it says 100 reported
uh precincts reported it's just those who submitted it's like the two percent of Voters who didn't vote by mail
um either in the mail or both or uh Dropbox um so I'll share that email and then the
last one is on page seven as it pertains to the ring Choice voting um
that I I also felt that there could be maybe some additional Clarity around the where
it says the table below shows only First Choice voters not all rankings and perhaps adjusting it to something more
clear such as it only reflects the total First Choice votes each candidate has received and not indicative of the
ranking results just so it's clear what First Choice votes means
um and then the other um the other component is just can we also include the link to the
um webinar the info webinar on ranked Choice voting so if people are confused about what this means they can easily go
from this page to be able to learn about what ranked Choice voting is um other than that I'll just share my my
thoughts via email but thank you so much for doing this so curious vice presidents don't I I had
suggested to director arms one of the suggestions he didn't take for me was to completely suppress that chart because
my feeling is that um yes and and just just have sorry
suppress the table and just include the link to to the um to the Browns and
that's because in a ranked Choice voting election it doesn't matter what the First Choice
votes are only matters so confused by it I have to tell you yeah I really was so I just so you can hear a little more
feedback director arms yeah um it makes more sense because in a ranked Choice voting contest the First Choice votes
don't matter unless someone hits a majority and by elevating that table it
implies that it has some meaning which it doesn't until someone hits the
majority but maybe it's even adding the what like I loved how on whatever page
that was there was a note that said
um the percentage like the threshold that needed to be reached perhaps even
just a little mention of that um you know what I'm saying similar to
the ranked Choice oh that's an idea um where is it oh page six where it says this measure requires 6 66 and
two-thirds percent affirmative votes to pass so perhaps it we have something to that effect oh I like that I think you
used to have that jackpot maybe I think you did I mean this is something I look at every single time
yeah I think you did I I like that actually because then it's actually completely consistent with the other
ones with the measure and so just say a candidate must you know receive 50 plus
you know plus one to win I know you did and the bottom chart is what I've always
looked at and it makes total sense to me this one really threw me off see get rid
of that table I do think though yeah we're gonna have to keep it because people are used to seeing the first choices yeah and also the first choice
Drive whether a contest goes into the ring Choice method so not all contests
will go into the right choice I just think the way it's worded we can we can change the wording but we have to keep
we have to keep that table so I think if there's a threshold language we could put in there we're gonna look at that
because it's not just only First Choice posts this table shows the first round of First Choice votes isn't that what
what it shows or is it the total first choice right but if there's a majority of the First Choice then you don't go to
the second round but but is this but it's still a ranked Choice voting what you're showing though is this is round
one but the algorithm is not applied unless there's not a majority of First Choice I know but from a from a voter
perspective I don't I don't like that's more information I don't need right I just need to I just
I just know this was a contest where I ranked my candidate so as far as I'm concerned it's a ranked Choice voting
contest regardless of whether the algorithm had to go to round two or not right so it's back to like I don't need
to know it's called a short report because nobody else knows what that means from a voter's perspective this is a ranked Choice contest right but even
even a one choice ranked Choice contest there is no right choice it's just just
one candidate that you're voting for so if we just have the table with the
reallocation of votes there's you wouldn't see anything because if that candidates one book that candidate wins
right so the summary table is actually what drives the result not not the ranked Choice table
I think so I see what you're saying is this a summary of where you are in the
count or is it a summary of the first round that's what's confusing to me
the first choices so where it says Board of Supervisors district one ranked
Choice voting contest this table below shows only First Choice votes not all rankings so I I guess where I was
confused was was this was this where the contest stands
based on the ballots that you've counted correct okay that's what's not clear
because I thought now wait a minute is this is this just the first round or is this where it stands based on where
things through through County and that's what is missing that piece
that's all I mean it's it's great table but I just needs to be clarified I think
just merely adding the threshold and just changing like a couple of words so
the table below reflects the total First Choice uh votes each candidate has
received or maybe we change it well ballots counted and it's not yet indicative of the total ranked Choice
voting uh ring Choice voting ranking results like I think there and I can I'm
happy to provide I've actually drafted like three different versions of this so I'm happy to provide that and we just
add the sentence about in order to that one candidate must receive 50 or a
majority of the vote in order to secure the win otherwise it moves to phase two
but I I think the table is actually important because you know for folks who understand ranked
Choice voting it yes it is more clear to look at the one chart below but for the
maturity of people who are still confused and there's a lot of community input on this about ranked Choice voting
I do think there's value in maintaining this so long as to everyone's point it's
just clear of what it actually shows um so I'm happy to provide some examples and if you want to review those
um of what I'd recommend we change the language to I'm happy to collaborate there's always the ballot simplification
committee I mean this is the kind of discussion that it's good for a committee meeting
because um for people that are interested um but I think
I mean we're we're free to say whatever we want today but yeah I don't feel like it needs to be a committee meeting I
think it's just language to help clarify for the public what it means um and if if folks disagree and they
don't like what you know not that they don't like but maybe they have thoughts about what we've since proposed or perhaps what
I've proposed definitely share that and I can so I I love the idea of adding a line that just makes it
clear you need a majority which seems obvious but in a ranked first voting contest it's not obvious so I I like
adding that and then it's symmetric with all the others I love the idea of linking to an informational video about
ranked Choice that's that's like a no-brainer um uh I will admit that this was one of two
options I gave director Arts to try to clarify what this table really means
um and I understand what you're saying now director Arts that you know if it's if it's you know an uncontested you know
contest yes the the it won't go to the algorithm because you know the first Bell be it right
it'll be one round but I guess the point I'm making is that from a again from a lay person's point
of view I don't really you know need to know if there were 13 Rounds or if it was around one round it
was still a contest where I was asked to put my choices and it's different from other choices for other contests where I
you know just pick one right so I think
um I think it would be good to get some
feedback of why that what I mean clearly your team feels the stable is important
um my feeling is even if it was uncontested you could still have the link to
one round right so then it would then it would it
doesn't matter right and you've already clearly stated that they need a majority and it's very clear that in one round
they got a majority anyway I defer to you and I I encourage
vice president Stone to send our suggestions as well okay cool and then I
imagine your team can just review the feedback that we provide and yeah we're getting a little short on time though
we're making changes to this page to be honest so send me your language we kind of go from there yeah the page is
already up I don't know if anyone actually looked no it's it's already implemented so that's great it's
fabulous yeah thank you I'm sure Terence I just want to back on
the question about the contract extension I I'm still processing what you said but we had a number of commission meetings where we were you
know debating this resolution and throughout those meetings we we were sort of under the impression that the
board had to vote to approve the the extension of the contract so what
changed to so that you understood that you no longer needed to get board approval so
the resolution that was drafted when the board approved the original contract granted the director of Elections
authority to extend the contract and then were you always aware of that or is it I don't really realized until later
in the process okay I I'm fairly certain I told you I think I said at a commission meeting as well
okay well I don't I don't remember but it's I I understand now so appreciate the information
okay um so so let's um if people don't have
objections let's open it up to public comment on this item so um this is agenda item number eight
directors report
caller I am going to unmute you and you are commenting on the director's report
three minutes to comment great it's David philpell again it's late I feel like this meeting started
four or five days ago um I will try to bake all of my comments
down and then that's it for me for tonight I didn't say anything about uh compensation earlier
um so I'm sure we'll discuss compensation and benefits another time that's fine um really great that work on improving
the results reporting uh director art and the staff trying to get it right
taking your feedback uh all that to the good clarify I mean this is really good
stuff on the results reporting can't say enough um about that um I still on the other hand I don't
like the sf.gov platform and the website and the sansara font and the white space
I'm not a fan of that but if you have to go to it because of the Digital Services
strategy and whatnot then so be it but I really hope that the new website
continues to be intuitive so you can find things easily and it contains all
current confidence there's a lot of content buried in the department's website that's all good stuff and I
really hope that none of that gets lost as an example the mayor's office recently transitioned from the old
platform to the new and they only carried forward some of their content and the other part is archived which is
very difficult to work through and it's not all there and it's just a problem so I do really hope that the department
keeps all of the content puts it in a good place makes it readable and accessible and yada yada I'm happy to
provide additional technical comments to Department staff thank you for listening
I hope I'm done for tonight and we'll do more next month thanks again
we do have Mr Turner on the line Mr Turner you're you're going to comment on the director's report you're unmuted and
you have three minutes to comment thank you Martha can you hear me yes we can thank you
um yeah I'm in a bit of shock I uh think I communicated with you offline earlier
that I just got out of the hospital for a heart surgery and so my my team here
in the back is telling me I should remain calm but to hear um John Arts now say that he has the
authority to go around the uh the um
board and also the commission and contract with Dominion is disturbing at
best I'm trying to keep it together at the late hour but um this is just another another point to
be made we have to open up this process to um considering some new people uh to do
a competitive selection process here um I appreciate it I'm sorry Mr Turner
you have to remain on the subject it's the director's report if you have a comment on that please I'm addressing it
directly he he just mentioned that he has the ability to extend the Dominion
contract and what I'm saying is that that that is inappropriate um I don't know how long he's had that
information he mentioned that he told president jordanick previously that that
was the case uh the public has not been apprised of that and we're upset about
it if you want to tell me what to say I'm glad to say what you think I should
say but if unless you have something else to tell me I'd like to continue my public comment
I was just stating that we can't that you you have to continue with the topic at hand I don't know who that was
talking by the way because on the platform whoever talks it just always
comes up Martha as speaking so there's no way for the public to tell which commissioner is speaking that's just
something I want to mention um but I will continue and hopefully be giving my time back
um Mr Ernst mentioned seidle that he's talking to seidle that's Paul Allen's
company partners with Bill Gates from Microsoft we see Microsoft is
controlling this environment controlling the Dominion company also as as that's
the platform Dominion is on top of and we see again this outside interference
recurring and controlling this environment so the public wants to move
toward better systems but we're hearing Mr aren't say he has the ability to lock
Dominion into place without regard to the commission or the Board of Supervisors we want to investigate that
how long when did he know that why didn't he tell anybody now he said that
he did tell people we reject that until proven otherwise and with that I want to
just say we believe the vendors are controlling the conversation here and and we object thank you on behalf of the
public thank you
this is Deputy City attorney Flores I just want to remind the members of the public that um your public comments should be
addressing the agenda item I believe that we had a open such an item about
the hiring and selection process of director Arts so any comments about the
hiring and selection process of director orange should have been addressed at that agenda item so um you know it's
pretty late so we welcome all the public to comment on the agenda items at hand
thank you I don't see any other hamstrings this is
secretary Jacob I don't see any other hands okay thank you we'll close the public comment
so if there's no other comments from Commissioners let's move on to agenda
9. Commissioners’ Reports
item number nine commissioner's reports discussion on possible action on Commissioners reports on topics not
covered by another item on this agenda okay who would like to start on this item
I'm so sorry I just wanted to respond to something am I allowed to just respond
to the public comment s okay um well just based on the feedback
perhaps and I'm not even doing this right now perhaps it would be beneficial to the public for us to State our names
before I speak so this is Vice President Stone just so folks know who is saying
what okay so who would like to um go first on
the commissioner's reports otherwise I'm happy to go so I've actually got a number of things
um I'll try to be quick but um for starters I think you may have seen that some sunshine requests came in a couple
weeks ago just because it was in the news about the the resignation letter is about
commissioners and um on that topic I just want to mention that something that might be of interest
is that um we had a former commissioner commissioner Jung who had um
not responded to a sunshine request and then a complaint was filed against him
that went to the sunshine ordinance task force and then the complaint was found valid and then a couple weeks ago
he had requested a re-hearing and the Sunshine ordinance task force then
agreed with the request so they're going to do a re-hearing and I'm just mentioning this to you so people can be
aware that you know we should always be very um you know look for these emails that are requesting information because
in some cases they do um send those to the sunshine ordinance task force but you should be complying
um anyways um but on that on that item I I did want
to um I I was following the discussion at the sunshine orange task force and I wanted
to ask a question that relates to it um in the in the um
agenda packet for that item there was a a long I think it was like a 250 page
document that I saw and one of the pages
um so the sunshine owners task force had requested director Ernst to search
commissioner former commissioner John's emails and I was wondering direct Lawrence
could you just explain to us how does that work like in terms of searching uh
commissioner's emails do you have access to the emails or or do you have to get
I don't have access to your email uh but when it says commissioner John was had
resigned from the commission uh and we had not in the account had not been
closed the department is the only entity that can access those emails in response
to a sunshine ordinance uh request otherwise I don't have access to your emails but but after they leave then you
can it would actually correct okay all right and then next clarifying question about that yeah
so does does it have to be just so I understand a formal request given to access the emails in order for the
Department to then ask like access them or is it at the
discretion of just so I understand well all your emails are public record right and so it's just a matter of who's going
to provide that public record uh since commissioner John I don't think I I I'm
not sure if his account was closed to his access or not at that point he might have thought it thought that it was uh
so since the uh since the sunshine request came to me then I responded to
their request by looking at his emails otherwise I don't I don't look at I don't have access to your emails uh and
I have to have a formal request someone can't just call me up and say hey what emails do they get on in July 5th you
know it's not how it goes but um if there was a request for records
for sitting Commissioners I would forward that to you and you have to respond to it so thank you for
clarifying okay so then yeah thank you Dirk Terence um on the next thing
um I did post on our website the the list of regularly requested information that we approved at the last meeting I
did make the out of the additions that vice president Stone had you know pointed out during the meeting
as part of the motions and she was able to review that I know um vice president Stone she did mention that you have
other suggestions on the document on stuff that wasn't mentioned at the meeting so we can we can revisit that
document at a future meeting to um look at your additional suggestions
um another topic is I've mentioned before that our commission's website is getting
they're asking us to switch over to the new SF gov um
platform it's a newer version of Drupal and they were saying that we needed to
complete that by mid-november and so I I have been
working you know meeting with them every couple weeks and I have access and so
the current plan is that for the next meeting we'll be able to see a preview of that and then we could
activate the switch over um you know sometime in late November or
so and I think um the other thing is
um related to this they're doing this for all departments in the city including
the drug the Department of Elections and which director Ernst mentioned in his report and Digital Services who is
managing this transition has asked me if they would if they would be able to give like give a presentation at one of our
meetings so they could we could learn about the accessibility and usability
improvements that they're they want to introduce because this is an effort that director
ernst's department is going to be involved in so it would give us some insight into
that process and then the next item is I was invited to participate in a meeting by Stephen
Hill with um the Registrar of Alameda County Tim Dupuis and his deputy
director Cynthia Cornejo I think her name is and there was also a member of the League of
Women Voters in the East Bay and basically during that meeting um
the interest was in and I was more of a kind of an observer I wasn't a part of this but the registrar told us about the
changes that they're making to their website around results reporting specifically on ranked Trace voting
because they have a similar issue where the Dominion system that they're using does not
um report ranked Choice voting in the way that it used to and he he told us that they basically
developed a system in-house where they're they're going to be generating that that rank Trace footing grid and
they're going to be um displaying it integrated in with their their election results kind of
what we were um discussing with director Ernst at the bopek meeting so I I um and he told me
that he's I'm happy to share the code with director Ernst and um you know work
with him provide any information but um so this is kind of like what the open
source advisory committee did in their proof of concept but this is something that Alameda County then also
implemented on their own in their own way so um that's just another alternative
for improving the results reporting and then the last thing I want to
mention is that um I know that we've had Iraqi onboarding process for
some of the new Commissioners and I know um you know all of you all of us so I
just want to let you know I do take responsibility for this just as the President right now so um I'm going to
be a little bit more involved just to make sure that there's a lot of touch points with
different entities within the city and sometimes things get hung up or it's also kind of complicated because
the process can be different depending on who appointed you so um I just want to let people know that I'm going to be
more active in that just to make sure that things are smooth for people so um would it be possible to also like
as folks work with you on that um provide some element of documentation
because I think what was challenging and I don't know if that already exists maybe Martha excuse me secretary
Delgadillo could speak to that just because I think one of the challenges to your
point is the relationship that is non-existent between like the ethics department and then the HR department
and the appointing authority and obviously all those stakeholders but having some documentation of that
process I think would be helpful and I'm happy to help with that too yeah so I I did work with secretary Doug on that
document I I was updating it with with her to add more detail but um there can
always be improved more and I don't know as a body how if like it should be a
public document or if we can circulate a privately I'm not sure but um
we can certainly um keep that option open even like a checklist everything right it's what's a
sequence of steps kind of um and it's hard because each step might
depend on the other and things have to happen within a certain time oh yeah so yeah
so um so that's that those are all the things I had to report I know it was a bunch of
things but um will the um the folks you spoke with from Alameda and how they were doing
ring Choice putting is the are they going to I'm sorry if I missed this since it's late um collaborate with the department
or present some of those insights to us um or what is like a
is there a helpful takeaway so I will probably share with you some
screenshots from that their page but I also did tell director Ernst about the meeting I had and and he actually told
me he he met with him shortly after so I think they must have independently got in touch with each other
so um but that's a more long term it's not for the selection
cool answer your question yeah okay um
can I ask you a question were you just talking about a checklist for onboarding yeah oh okay I'm sorry it's getting late
yes I was kind of it's not getting late it is um you know you might want to check with some of the other commissions and see if
they have that and you could just crib from that would be just a suggestion so you don't have to reinvent the wheel
yeah yeah um it's a good idea
okay um so if unless there are other anyone else's things to report we can open it
up to public comment I was just going to report that I that I had met with prisoner legal services and
I had registered folks to vote in I think it was cj2
um and also um helped deliver ballots
um which was really helpful um and then I also met with a couple of other community groups
um including folks who um who work with formerly incarcerated
and particularly with sorry folks who aren't were formerly incarcerated and
who recently had voting rights restored so I think it was perhaps 17
that changed this where Parolees are now eligible to register to vote
um and a lack of a work was it 17 or the most recent the most recent 17 I
thought um so mostly what I just wanted to share um is that it I've started to kind of
try and understand the needs of those Community groups and also
um understanding the confusion around how often our rules change as it
pertains to elections so it's just really informative and happy to share more if people are interested but wanted to elevate that
um I just want to add that I have a long history with personal legal services not really along but I worked with them when
I was in the Sheriff's Office Nick gregorado said Melinda and I helped promote that whole loading
um uh program with Nick and um that program goes back to my candidacy who is
the sheriff that was there for 28 years and he um was the one that actually has
helped establish prison and legal services he was a poverty attorney and then he became sheriff of San Francisco
and prisoner Legal Services is unique to this country that we don't have anything
that no other no other jurisdiction has anything like it they help people in the
jail with other legal issues that come up as a result of their incarceration such as being evicted from their homes
Child Care things like that and so voting the voting rights has been a long-standing program which director
arts and his group have facilitated for many many years and then this year they've added the the
voting boxes and and are seem to be doing uh even more but it's been a really successful program and has been a
standard for the for the country so there's information on it on the
sheriff's website so at sfsheriff.com I wrote the information
well then I probably learned from you
that was all mine okay great um so let's open it up to public comment
on agenda item number nine yeah okay well let's move on to agenda item
10. Agenda items for future meetings
number 10 agenda items for future meetings um
let's see website transition yeah I'm just trying to think if there's
anything that we didn't mention um previously so um go ahead reviews
yeah well actually there's there's something I I want to say about that um
I guess I could say now so Mark I'm secretary dogadio asked me just to let
people know that she's actually this is her last meeting today and she said some medical issues that she needs to to take
a break for and I just want to say I've really enjoyed working with you secretary Delgado and I'm going to miss
you you know thank you
yeah so thank you glad you're taking care of yourself
yeah so um
so um but I think in terms of a future
um meetings I know one of the things that um that we could discuss in and say
December is the commission's budget and that's come up in a couple different
contexts and this is something that I don't think we've the commission has ever done basically is there anything
that we should be asking for as a group that we might need um
you know just even even earlier today for genetic number five we saw that there was there was something missing
um but um
and so there were a number of things that came up earlier in the meeting I'm just trying to I'm blanking right now but
if um
um if anyone has any suggestions but oh let's well people are thinking let's open it up to public comment on agenda
item number 10. from the line and color you are
commenting on agenda items for future meetings you have three minutes to
comment all right well it's David philpel I wasn't going to say anything but you saved the worst news for last so this is
the last meeting for Mark oh no
could I move to authorize a medical leave of absence for some period of time if you've got it so she can come back I
mean oh all right whatever we got to do what we got to do continuity of government all right thank you for your
work thank you for your service for the people I really appreciate you thank you Mr Coco
and we also have Mr Turner on the line and Mr Turner you're commenting on
agenda items for future meetings you are unmuted and you have three minutes to
comment thank you secretary Delgado can you hear me yes we can I just on behalf of the
public also want to reiterate Mr philpow's uh appreciation thank you for
your kindness and your your ability uh you'll be missed
um other than that hopefully we can bring back open source voting for future
agenda items um I think it obviously is the I think most crucial part of this commission's
work moving forward to set precedent for the State of California we know Los
Angeles isn't going to do it they attempted with a 300 million dollar budget that went down the drain we also
could possibly agendize what effects outside interference and Corruption are
having within our Arena here and these would be a couple suggestions and thank
you again all for your time in this late hour thank you thank you for your kind words Mr Turner
okay everyone so um seeing no additional comments um
The Time Is Now 10 18 p.m and thank you everyone for sticking it out it's been a
long night have a wonderful rest of the night meaning is adjourned good night
