San Francisco Elections Commission Regular Meeting -November 15, 2023

thank you everyone we're GNA begin if you can just thank you so much just have some quiet please thank

you okay welcome everyone to the November 15

2023 regular meeting of the San Francisco elections commission I am the President Robin Stone The Time Is Now

6:01 p.m. and I call the meeting to order before we proceed further I would like

to ask commission secretary MarissaDavis to briefly explain some procedures for participating in today's

meeting thank you president Stone the meet uh the minutes of this

meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 408 one Dr Carlton be goodlet Place

San Francisco California 94102 and remotely via

WebEx as authorized by the elections commission's February 15 2023 vote

members of the public May attend the meeting to observe and provide public comment either at the physical meeting

location or remotely details and instructions for participating remotely

are listed on the commission's website and on today's meeting meeting agenda public comment will be available

on each item on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak six minutes if you are

online with an interpreter when providing public comment you are encouraged to state your name clearly

once your three minutes have expired staff will thank you and you will be muted please address your comments to

the entire commission and not to a specific individual while providing public

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participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in this meeting by submitting public

comment and writing by 12:00 pm on the day of the meeting to elections. commmission

sfgov.org it will be shared with the commission after the this meeting has concluded and will be included as part

of the official meeting file thank you president Stone thank you secretary

Davis will you please proceed with item one commission roll call President Stone

present vice president jonic here commissioner bernh holes here thank you

commissioner Dy commissioner Hayden Crowley here commissioner

loli commissioner Parker here president stone with seven members present and

accounted for you have a quorum just bear with me for a moment

you exactly yeah um okay thank you um we're now going to move to item number

one call to order um and uh commissioner laaly has kindly agreed to State the uh

elections commission land acknowledgement resolution the San Francisco elections commission

acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ratush alonei

who are the original habitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in

accordance with their tradition Traditions the Ramat Shalon have never seeded lost nor forgotten

their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for all peoples

who reside in their traditional territory as guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their

traditional Homeland we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors and

relatives of the Ramat community and affirming their Sovereign rights as first people thank you commissioner loli

that closes agenda item number one moving to agenda item number two general public comment public comment on any

issue within the election commission's General jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this agenda and

before we open it up I just want to uh remind everyone since we have a fair

amount of public commenters potentially today um that we ask you address the full commission and no individual

Commissioners um as as uh secretary Davis outlined at the beginning we ask

that you address the entire body um okay let's move to General item a general

public comment any commenters in the room are welcome to

join Mara to do the timer my name is Angela and I live in district one I'm a member

of my neighborhood group sore I'd like to play part of the

January 18th 2023 meeting I'll begin at the 58th minute and 27th second of that

meeting I'm sorry would you mind pausing for just a moment we should get we should get three minutes I want to make

sure we start the clock bear with us yeah it says two yeah should be

three

I could also just use my alternative way of solving a lot of

the things that the clock hasn't begun yet so problems that came up most recently can started we actually refrain

from making public comment until the timer is thank you

yeah ttin yes the microphone is on but if you can just give us a moment while

we finish our te technical okay I'll just use my

phone okay no there it is good okay so play this all right great the three

minutes have just began ready to

go so I think it would be an alternative way of solving a lot of the things that

um you know problems that came up most recently but but just using a more General approach and

um but it it could also be complimentary uh commissioner D thank

you so um so I hear what you're saying uh president Gonic but I agree with the

sentiments of uh some other Commissioners here that I I do think we need to focus if we're going to to get

this particular proposal across the Finish Line I do think it's within the

scope of the elections commission to look at excuse me this we do have this

item agendized for later in the agenda today would you mind holding your

comment until we I think it would be we welcome you to

participate in agenda item number five with your public comment thank you okay

so can I read my comments instead if it if it's pertaining to agenda item number five

thank you I appreciate that we will take your comments at that time hi there Alan bodell um my comments

are about my comments are about the role of the commission and there might be some comments about uh the fierce

committee as well but this is about the role of the commission so I'll continue is that okay so in this clip um jonik

was explaining the way he thinks some of the conflicts around redistricting could be reduced some really good ideas that

he had and then commissioner D came came in to say I'm in agreement with those

Sentiments of some of the other Commissioners here and so uh she went on

to say commissioner D if we're going to get this Charter Amendment across the Finish Line we have to focus and this is

after hearing a very thoughtful comment by commissioner

jonic uh and then commissioner dad goes on to say I think it's within sorry Mr

bur I I apologize it's too much closely tied to agenda item number five but if you'd like to move more generally we

welcome your comments well I understand I I'll uh I'll hit this later than you thank

you anyone else in the

room let's move to public comment on

WebEx

okay thank you that closes out agenda item number two we'll now move to agenda item number three director's report

discussion and possible action regarding the director of Elections November report to the commission and I will hand

it over to director erns thank you president Stone I can take any questions on the director's report just what I

didn't have time to put in there uh I think you probably saw in the media there were in several States uh

elections offices received uh fenel in other in some locations and then powder

non-script powder in in the mail in others and uh even before this occurred

we had already been in contact with the post office with Building Services and we also had arranged uh through the

Department of Public Health for people in the department to uh receive training on administering noxa Naran uh should

someone be in the office and experience an overdose at the time I admit we were

thinking about some from the public potentially experiencing an overdose we didn't really were thinking that uh we

potentially would be the people that would uh be the victims of of a fentol overdose uh so that's changed the

dynamic but we've we have been working on on suspicious mail and how to handle it not just within our with our within

the department but also with other agencies including the post office and we will continue to do so uh as as goes

forward and we'll also expand not just within the office but also in the other activities we

have related to running to conducting the election which would include the picking up of of the ballots at the drop

off boxes throughout the city uh our warehouse operations the delivery and pickup of equipment the Ping places so

we're thinking about this further but it's not something that we're starting uh from scratch we've actually had this

some momentum on this topic going into the election cycle and um you know and also we have some

practice in 2000 there was the anthrax scare that we had to go through uh in relation to 911 uh so a lot of there are

several folks in Department still who who experienced those times so uh we are applying the lessons learned from those

experiences to uh what we're potentially getting ready for in the 2024 election

cycle and with that I can take any any questions

you have to raise your hands high we're not using the screens today uh vice president jonic yeah thank you for your

report directs just have a couple questions um for starters can you give an update on the number of state and

local measures that are confirmed to be on the ballot for March there's one

state and confirmed locally it might only be two uh there's still I

the board hasn't delivered hasn't submitted its its local measures yet um

I don't think we even received the ethics so right now it might actually be one the bond um but there might be up to

seven local measures okay up to seven great and then secondly um one of the commission's 2024 policy priorities is

around open source voting and there were a couple um components to that uh one of

which was for the the department to do some Outreach to organizations to see what they would need to um develop and

certify an open source voting system that would be usable by San Francisco and the idea being that if we

know what they need we could um if if it was if there was a financial amount we could potentially include that

in in the budget request for next year and have you thought at all about um whether that's something you'd be able

to do certain time frame I haven't thought about it yet okay okay is it

something you could think about I can consider it great thank

you commissioner

Parker a couple of questions I think your your phone might not be yeah thank

you got it okay um I have a couple of comments and a couple of questions also

um comments first um great on the sticker really excited to see it was it

really like the final design and and having it for everybody I think there's a lot of great enthusiasm around it um I

was also really impressed when I was reading about the different March ballot options and the new tool on the website

I'm just really impressed and grateful for the quick turnaround for the requests that you are having with that in the department and also um it's such

an easy way for the no party preference folks to request a ballot um I went on the web page I put all my information in

it was very very easy to use so um so thank you for that I just wanted to comment on that um and then the couple

of questions that I had um I was when I was reading about the organizations um

that you put out the RFP for organizations to do Outreach and looking at the dates it looks like yesterday um

maybe decisions might have been made by yesterday um about who those would be and I wondered if it was possible to

share how many organizations um you all decided on um to contract with and what

their their particular expertise lies in related to those focal populations that you described in that item um even if we

can't I don't know if you can share who those orgs are yet but if you you are you able to share sort of the range of expertise and number of orgs yeah it's

between 10 and 13 I think I don't I couldn't tell you what each organization would cover I'd have to have information

with me to do so but mean it was was within the scope of the RFP consider of

that okay I wasn't I just wasn't sure if there was you know if we you are getting

some particular expertise for some of those particular groups but okay thank you um and then um and then I was

wondering about uh how the hiring and onboarding has been going and I know you still have many more to hire for this

temporary pool um are you getting a good applicant pool do you have any concern whether you'll be able to get all the

Staffing you need for this coming election season it's it's early yet

uh for the positions that we have opened so far we've we've we've had uh a good

number of candidates Supply uh I don't know if that'll continue might depend on the type of

positions that are available within the department uh which might entice people to apply

um but generally we we tend to usually we're able to uh to fill the positions

uh and I would expect we can going forward but right now it's just early for me to really get a sense of what the

what the flow is okay um thank you um then the last question that I had was um

and this is more just sort of a public benefit why I'm asking this because um because I know about this but people

might not um since this is a piece of the elections process that most people probably haven't thought about or even

knew about is the um ballot simplification committee and so I wondered and I thought it was a great basic summary you gave in that report um

but I wondered if you could share a little bit you know who's on it how they're selected and what their basic process is just for the Public's benefit

so the BSC is a five member Committee of volunteers of three are chosen are

appointed and and or selected or approved by the board two by the mayor's office uh they need to be either have

experience in in journalism or uh experience in in U reading expertise

like the the one member would be from the school district and the Searing office provides drafts of of short

explanations of each local local measure and the BC reviews those drafts in public and then potentially changes the

language of the drafts and allows for public input and then also after the next to last draft is completed by the

BSC uh there's one more public hearing where the public can have a final opportunity to to comment on the on the

potential final draft of the digest they're called digest these explanations and then the digest are are published in

the vo information pamphlet that are sent and provided to each voter every election that's just for the local

measures thank you and thanks for all of the forward planning you all are doing it was great to U read about everything

that's happening for next year all right thank

you um okay do other Commissioners thank you commissioner Parker do have other

Commissioners it's commissioner D hi director um thank you for um providing

the information on voter registration and uh also the live Outreach events I

was wondering if you have a sense of um commissioner apologies will you just

talk into your microphone I think it may not be on yes okay there we go thank you um do

you have a sense of uh not necessarily by supervisorial

District because I don't know if you've captured if that's a normal thing that you but is that normal for an October is

there a trend is it is it something that we normally have a certain number that's

pretty steady through the year or is there like a burst right before certain months so so you're so not new

registrations just total registrations you're asking well this is a new registrations that you know item 3A in

your report you you mentioned new registration I'm just wondering without any context it's hard

for us to know is this a is is it a good month is it is it pretty normal and

consistent with past Octobers I does it matter if it's an election year I'm just

curious what how we can put this in context of it uh it'll change as we go through this

the cycle it'll increase as we go forward I don't know how it compares to other Octobers uh in previous years

however these are actually the for us these look like pretty good numbers for in October this far out from an election

and I I think it's just from the number of events that we've been able to join throughout the city that that and

compared to let's say 2020 uh well 2021 2022 uh especially there's more events

going on in the city so we probably have higher uh oh sorry we probably have a higher number of regist registrations

happening now than we did in those years but overall this looks this seems like these see numbers seem like really good

as far as the overall registration is concerned uh the number is fairly steady it'll it'll go up as we get closer to

the primary and then uh it'll go down again a little bit after and then it'll go back up again we come close as we

near the November 2024 election but as far as new registrations are concerned yeah this is a pretty healthy number

these are healthy numbers but I I couldn't tell you based on uh District though wor the yeah it's not necessary I

was just kind of curious where this fit within a a long-term Trend but it sounds like you this is good as far as you're

concerned yeah mean certainly better than July yeah you know it'll go it'll keep going up I think as we go forward

it might slow down a bit in December just because of the holidays then as we come into January February they'll pick back up again so um so and then kind of

relating it to the actual Outreach events that you've had um again it's hard to for us to assess this without

some kind of context um um it's certainly helpful to know how many people attended can can we tie these new

registrations to those Live Events or this is just all new registrations that

the the office process regardless of whether they came through an Outreach event or not yeah these don't these

aren't tied necessarily to the specific events uh

this would be total registrations that we received uh since the last meeting uh

so now I right now no this information does not tie specifically to the events but is that something that you know

whoever is doing the event that they actually track that you know we had this event we certainly know this many people

attended and we got five new registrations okay great so the number so the information is there I think it

would be helpful for us to to get a sense of like we're trying to get a sense of what kind of events are more

successful than others and so uh if there's any kind of internal analysis

that you've done I think that' be really helpful to share with us

thanks um apologies commissioner burnol and then um commissioner Hayden Crowley

thank you president Stone uh good evening director ARS a question on uh

item two I I guess it is um the 60 to 80 new

facilities are those um new compared to the last election we

had November 22 I guess and that number seem is that number seem high to you for

this point in the process um and the other question if you could just remind

me is the only voting Center operating now the one at City Hall your latter quit the answer to your

latter question is yes okay that's what I thought thank you and regarding

can't find it the um so 60 locating 60 polling places at

this point Pro election is not a high number okay uh our part of it though is

we want to locate better polling places than we if we can in relation to what we

the the sites we used in November 2022 it's just you know maybe more space better lighting uh you know less slope

in the sidewalk things like that so there's there's replacement of sites that didn't Jo aren't joining the next

election cycle and also are wanting to uh potentially uh locate uh better sites

for the election thank you and are you're still facing the issue with the school district that they have

security requirements that may or may not align with the Department's

preferences I don't know yet for for March uh for November 2020 to it was a

mix of private security and adding an extra pull worker at sites so I I expect

it'll be a mix again going into March okay thank

you secretary Davis you can feel free to use the back room if you'd like okay

thank you um thank you commissioner brall was that

all yes that's all thanks just I'm sorry just to answer your question realize

more fully commissioner so the extra pole worker at the sites would would be responsible for directing

people to correct locations within the site if necessary so if someone came to

school to to let's say go to the administrative office then po work would direct someone to the administrative office and then also would direct people

to the polling place that way would reduce the number of people that uh were wandering around the the site so right

yeah great thank you thanks commissioner Hayden Crowley

thank you president Stone director ARS a quick question um commissioner burol broke brought up

the voting Center site that City Hall is the only one did we uh were we using um

Chase Arena before in the presidential election no there there's been a time with the MBA and other cities do we not

does do the Warriors not participate in that they did offer the chase Center as

a voting Center in the might have been November 2020 yeah uh we didn't use that

site uh during during the pandemic that was just something we couldn't we couldn't pull that off uh and also there

are some Logistics issues uh and also some Optics in using that site as being

a neutral site versus a public building so um no we didn't we haven't used NBA did

have a program we did have an opportunity in November 2020 we didn't use uh Chase Center we did uh events

around Chase Center during November 2020 with and we also actually join the Warriors in their efforts so we did have

some some good uh participation we didn't have a voting Center there we had voting Center uh at state for two

elections and one we had two also uh forget the name of the rec center in District 10 for two elections okay

seriously thank you um just quick question in your in um your report uh I

item number three and a When you're counting your new registrant and you go

through the supervisorial districts there didn't appear to be any new registrant in supervisorial District 3 I

don't know if that was an oversight or if that was a fact um but I thought it was kind of odd there were three events

in District 3 and I thought that I just thought that was kind of an odd thing I thought maybe it was an oversight yeah I

don't know I have to check check on that okay thank

you thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley any other

comments um yes vice president jonic actually commissioner BCE did you have

any comments since you haven't spoken once okay go ahead vice president jonic yeah I just had a quick question

about the um the RFP

um I was curious given that you issued on October 25th um was there a

reason um you weren't able to let us know about it at last month's meeting thank

you it wasn't the I I thought that we had actually I'm surprised if we haven't

I'm surprised it wasn't in the report or I didn't mention it so okay I see it just an overate

then if you you can pull up I don't have the last month's report was it in that yeah no it wasn't in the it wasn't

in last month's report but if if it was just an oversite that would that would explain it so yeah I appreciate that um

yeah thank you thank you vice president jonic um

this is President Stone I had a few I had a few just a few comments um thank

you for pulling this together and thank you for that update about the other department of elections receiving the

fentanyl in the mail um I don't know if you can answer this at this point but or

more I'll just make a statement that I hope everyone in the department is feeling okay you know there's already a lot of vital targeting Departments of

Elections um so I I am sorry to have heard that there's any concern um and

hoping everyone's feeling okay thank you um even though obviously our department wasn't targeted still important to

recognize so thank you um I wanted to talk about the um the grant the grant

funding for the voter participation Outreach I think that is let's just leave it as such sorry

it's just a little distracting um the Grant I think this is awesome I'm really glad to hear that this is uh something

the department is doing um I too was curious about the window just because I

saw the timeline between the October 25th launch of the RFP and then the

November 10th close of applications seemed pretty abrupt um and so I was

glad to hear commissioner Parker ask about how many folks had participated um I was just curious if the department had

done a press release in addition to sharing it with those or was it a focus

on working with the partners that were already pre-established or that you already have such great relationships

with um yeah yeah let's start there I guess so we didn't issue a press release

we sent the RFP to to I think over 200 organizations that we've worked with in the past for previous

elections okay um and what was I guess my question was around the process of

like launching it to have that window was it in hopes of being able to get

this done before the like get the RFP taken care of before the holidays knowing that come

January there would be a very quick turnaround before March I just if you could just walk us through kind of the

the timeline for that I think selfishly also I would have wanted to be able to promote it in my network um and to

community groups that reach out to us um so just would love to know a little bit more about that process so that the

commission next time can um can know how to like participate earlier on and and

support the Department's efforts if you wouldn't mind just walking through the timeline like the process of that well

the timeline is part of it is the uh the funding being available and then we have

to issue the RFP and then there is the on the other side The Nearness of the

election but one of the major factors is the con the time for Contracting just

getting through the contracts with the with these uh organizations uh Contracting is not a

quick process in the city and if we have I think it's like between 10 13 organizations just to to to put all that

information together move everything through the process to have that approved so that we can actually

disperse funds when the a begins in January requires a really tight timeline

thank you I appreciate you walking through that um similarly the vote ready

tool I'm am so excited about that I'd love to know how the commission can support you in building awareness uh and

building awareness for this tool I think it's really great I'm excited to see um that it's going to be available ahead of

the P that it's available ahead of the primary um but it's something that could be used um I imagine you'll be sharing

this as well with the grantees from the RFP but are there ways in which we can

you know promote this more um another idea I was thinking about is working

with the Department of Civic engagement to have them be aware of this tool um because I know a lot of community groups

and like community- based organizations are doing a lot of things like this um

and so it' be great for them to know I I just love the idea of build a vote plan and the fact that as the city we're

now being able to show them 30 plus ways in which they could um so if you could just let the commission know not

necessarily write this second um but maybe as in the next you know before our

next meeting ways in which we can support you in getting this out um and used that would be that would be great

okay um and if the department of Civic engagement is an option that would be cool as well um I also was curious about

the 60 to 80 new polling places and apologies if I was distracted when you gave this answer what was the reason why

we had to use why there were there was the need for 60 to eight new facilities

apologies again if you already said it well we don't we don't control these sites so from election to election we

don't know if we can use the same sites yeah so a lot of lot of the lot of the 68 numers are those sites that just have

decided not to uh allow us to use their Loc for polling places then also we

we're looking for sites where we can uh improve the the area for the voters be

it the lighting the size of the the space slope of the sidewalk things like that so oh that's good to know so it

wasn't just a matter of the facilities saying you can't use us anymore it's also the department trying to optimize

for the voters as well that's great to know we do that every election yeah 60 to 80 just seemed like a lot so um it's

helpful to know um that it's a little bit of both um and then that last piece is just I really appreciate your efforts

to share new the data on new registration in tandem with the commission's priorities and I actually

was going to respond to commissioner D's ask around you know highs or lows I

imagine that as I mean since this is the first month that we're getting that type of data I think we'll just you know

maybe in a year look back over time we'll be able to talk about those types

of tools that work more but we did just I mean I imagine this is the first time that we're sharing this type of like

monthly data is that correct it is yeah um okay thank you I just wanted to say I

appreciated the robust report I'm excited about the new initiatives and appreciate you sharing more insight into the Department's

processes any other any other comments from

Commissioners yes commissioner Hayden Crowley I I just want to express my gratitude again for the Chromebooks

because we're using theming and it will also save us some

paper thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley um okay we are going to now move

to public comment on agenda item number three the director's

report no public commenters in the room do we have any public

commenters great that closes out agenda item number three we'll now move to

agenda item number four Commissioners reports discussion and possible action and commissioner reports for topics uh

not covered by another item on this agenda meetings with public officials oversight observation activities long

range planning for commission activities and areas of study proposed legislation which affect elections and others and

given that vice president jonic is had um posted a couple of items to today's

agenda I will hand it over to him okay uh thank you president Stone yeah I had

four things to report and the first two relate to the the two memos that I attached so the the first thing is that

um commissioner bernholz and I had a video conference meeting with San Francisco's Chief Information Security

Officer about an issue that came up early last year or early this this year

and um we had had a invited speaker Professor Alex hold who had um told us

about a voting system vulnerability he had found and then he had tried to contact the department about it and

wasn't wasn't able to um get get in touch so um he had said there was a best

practice called what's called a security. txt file that provides a way for security researchers to communicate

security issues with elections jurisdictions so at the time we had talked about the idea of possibly

reaching out to the cities uh information security officer so we

did have that meeting uh last last week and um it was great for us to hear that

it's actually something they're already working on so they know about this best practice as well and he said that

they're going to be rolling it out either next month or early next year

and then he will communicate with departments across the city to let them know how they could participate as

well and then the second um memo is about some research I did the day after

our last meeting at the last meeting um IID raised the idea of using rank Choice

voting for The I voted sticker design contest and I spoke with someone at the

rank Choice voting Resource Center which is a nonprofit and he told me that there were

a couple other jurisdictions that have done sticker um contests using a rank Trace

voting poll and um he pointed me to a website called ranked vote which um has

a system that jurisdictions can use and it's only between 20 and $60 a month and

it has a lot of the features that um could potentially useful and then um thirdly the annual

report which um is on my plate um I was about a day away from finishing it um

last week and then I had a conversation with President Stone and um we agreed that it would um make sense for me to to

um keep working on a little bit in part because it would give us more time to discuss the the redistricting

recommendations and also give me another week to kind of revise it and clean it up a little bit more so I should have a

final draft ready by the end of the week and then finally um we're going to

have one more boek meeting before the end of the year and just as a reminder that's myself commissioner Loli and

commissioner Hayden proba and um currently we're aiming to have that meeting on Thursday November 30th I

think it'll be a short meeting but just wanted to give people a heads up about that so that's all thank you vice

president jonic uh commissioner burnol thanks president Stone uh is

director or still in the room I'm sorry I can't yes okay great um I just wanted to let folks know that um on November

7th uh I participated in a new Tradition at Stanford called democracy day they

actually cancel classes on Election Day now so that everyone has a chance to

participate uh I was able to participate in a panel session on uh design and election Administration which I had the

chance to meet Tammy Patrick of the national election center and Bill Gates the uh director of elections in Maricopa

County and uh heard some real uh stories uh but what I wanted to let folks know

is that there's another project happening on campus uh that may be of interest to those of you with

connections at Cal um they have mobilized The Varsity athletes to uh

take a leadership role on uh encouraging people to vote one of the things that

came out of that was um about I have a stack of about two or 300 thank you

postcards that the athletes wrote to election officials which uh since I was

there they said let's give them to the San Francisco folks so I have a pack of postcards for you director ARS from

assigned uh and written by uh large number of Stanford Varsity athletes um

I'm sure they'd love a Throwdown with Cal to get a voter numbers up um and

then I also have for you director erns which I can bring to you in person on

December 1st the uh some of the materials from the design work that was

done about this some of which features things like uh your

Department's um manual for training pole workers was recognized as a national

Exemplar uh and just finally the group that organized this uh this particular

panel at democracy day will be leading a class on Election Administration in

winter quarter which is January to March and I believe they are looking to partner with the group group of Bay Area

voting officials um I'm trying to find out the name of the exact organization

but I haven't heard back yet just just to let you know they can't work with a single jurisdiction but they're hoping

to work with a coalition of election directors so that's that good thank you

sure thank you commissioner burnol do we have any other

reports okay please the RFP was in the

director's report in July actually we mentioned it in that month so take a

look thank you for sharing that you're talking about just to clarify the the

Outreach the voter Outreach thank you for drawing our attention to that um any

other Commissioners want to make a comment before I move in into my updates okay

um I just wanted to remind folks that the offsite will be December 1st the

Friday after Thanksgiving at 12:00 p.m you you all have this on your calendar

but wanted to make you all make sure it's fresh in everyone's mind um the agenda for that will probably go up in

the next week or so and uh we will also be adding some

packet items as as close as possible there just to let everyone know for special meetings there are uh some

special rules uh that we are required to follow so um that is why the agenda is

going to be up um sooner uh sooner rather than later uh another update I

just wanted to mention which commissioner Hayden Crowley uh had already kind of alluded to that uh our

computers are in uh and I encourage folks who have not yet gotten their

computers to please do so as soon as possible um it was they are uh all you

have to do is make an a a appointment so to speak with uh secretary Davis and she

will help ensure your setup uh last we also were asked to

participate in a um a survey for Commissioners specifically around racial

equity and demographics um and I want to make sure the commission has 100% participation we're still waiting on a

couple folks I won't name you but please do it um as soon as you can uh this

definitely is a uh urgent ask and it won't take less than one minute

literally 30 seconds I think um so everyone please please take care of that

um any other yes commissioner hating cowy I

just have a question because I did do the survey um and I just want to make sure because maybe I didn't click a

button or something okay you're fine all

right say something yeah I sorry um so I think

November 30th is not going to be the day for BC but I'll we'll post it on the website when we have a

date thank you vice president jonic anyone else okay let's move to

public comment

just let's just get the clock out sorry thank you for your patience bear

with

us you're good to go uh good evening Commissioners I'm Luke procha and uh I

just had a question for you based on a comment commissioner jonic met uh made

about preparing the current annual report as a member of the voting public I'm trying to educate myself about the

activities of the commission and I was only able to find an annual report for the year 2018 20 2018 on your

website and uh I know there's an archival website I searched that also and could not find any prior annual

reports is there a a way that can be made available to the public those prior

annual reports is that your full comment that's that's

it okay thank you thank you any other public commenters in the

room double cheing Now's the Time

right oh this is uh specifically about the commissioner's reports not

redistricting sorry didn't realize you were asking me if it was your agenda item does anyone in the room have public

comment to make about the commissioner's reports okay let's move

to remote anybody okay thank

you okay that closes out agenda item number

four and we will now move to agenda item number

five uh Fair independent and effective districting for Community engagement committee update discussion and possible

action on updates and potential recommendations from the commission's temporary Fair independent and effective

redistricting for Community engagement committee um so before we dive in I kind

of wanted to uh set the table a little bit because obviously I know why we have

many folks in the room today and we have l a lot to get through and so I I kind

of was thinking through how we can structure this most efficiently and productive ly um and hoping that uh this structure

will will work for us so the the way I'm thinking we go about it is we um

hopefully folks have read through the report as provided by the fierce committee um and I think that we should

go through sections starting with the introduction as the first section and

then each level of recommendation so composition selection and removal process proc redistricting line uh line

dragging criteria funding processes timing um and uh I'll come back to the

appendix and what I think we should do is have each member of the commission

who is not a Committee Member uh be able to provide their more material comments

and that each and then allow a discussion as as we go um but not have

it be a rebuttal process between Commissioners and the committee uh so

the second piece of that would mean that Commissioners who have text changes you

know spe small things that we don't necessarily need to discuss you know as

a body right now we ask that you send those via email um and have we'll

include those posted on our website uh and make those available at the next uh

at the next packet item so just to kind of re come back just to reiterate what I shared we'll go through the

Commissioners who were not on the committee assuming that the committee obvious the the recommendation put forth

by the committee was shared by all three of them um so the four Commissioners who

were not on that committee would have the opportunity to share their feedback we'll do it by sections and then allow

uh response and discussion within those sections from the committee members

themselves before we move to the next section um I there's uh some additional

comments that I want to make about how how I think we should uh uh tackle the

structure of the the actual conversation beyond that but I wanted to pause there and make sure everyone has some general

consensus with that approach is everyone comfortable do you have concerns okay great so um knowing that

we have a lot to get through I also think that we can think about this in kind of three buckets the first um will

be the content of the recommendations so just talked about that the introduction

the specific sections of recommendation um Etc so the actual contents of what of what was sent to us

um the that that will be kind of bucket a bucket B would be how it might be

presented so that might include the format of the document um that might include what else we want to include

beyond the contents of the recommendation uh or uh or any

supplemental items that we want to include and then a third part of that might be how we're positioning the

material to the board and then the the bucket C would be kind of next steps

where we're going to go from here um what what we're thinking for December

meeting and um and Beyond um but I think for the purposes of today let's focus on

getting through the content um some High Lev items of how that material will be

presented and then what we need to do for December is everyone aligned okay great so with that um I'm

glad to hear everyone's on the same page let's let's start um unless there are some uh any other comments folks would

want to make before we dive into the intro I I'll just I wanted to add one thing but sure commissioner D yeah I

just wanted to make some introductory comments um so happy to announce that we completed

our mandate to draft and finalize these redistricting reform recommendations for the full body to consider we spent an

additional three and a half hours at our meeting on October 30th to discuss and

agree on this content and I wanted to publicly thank commissioner Parker especially for taking copious notes and

pulling it all together um this report which has been posted since last Thursday uh built on preliminary

recommendation that were present posted in a table format uh for our committee meeting that

I had verbally summarized for the commission at our October 18th meeting and this report um addresses a few

issues raised by Commissioners bernhold ayen Crowley and vice president jonic as well as noting the implications of the

passage of ab 764 and interdependencies between the various components which is why we

present these as a package we did unanimously vote to approve this final report which explains the rationale

behind each of the reforms for consideration by this commission to pass

along to the Board of Supervisors as a basis for a possible Charter Amendment the report was created to

stand on its own and incorporates the deck that Fierce used for its discussion

as well as links to other helpful resources um You Might Recall from the

last meeting that Governor mum said that he shared the goal of ensuring community control over the redistricting process

but he did veto uh ab1 1248 for budgetary reasons he also vetoed SB 52

which would have established an IRC in Los Angeles but he signed other bills

establishing irc's for Sacramento and orange counties this could be interpreted to mean that he wants San

Francisco and other large jurisdictions to develop something more tailored on their own this means the time in effort

we have devoted as a commission to understand and study independent redistricting reform over the past year

and a half and the hard work the fierce committee has put in since May to develop and finalize the recommendations

are not in vain uh I did want to mention that we've received about 65 emails from

San franciscans who in support of a charter amendment to ensure truly independent redistricting and they were

sent most of them were sent directly to me in events of our meeting so I have forwarded these to the general inbox to

include them in the public record and with that we turn it back over to you

president Stone thank you commissioner D appreciate that intro appreciate the um

work that went into this and appreciate also the update on that there was unanimous consent from the committee to

move this forward so um with no further Ado let's get into this so I think let's

start with overall or sorry with the intro um introduction section of the of

the recommendations as I said the four Commissioners who were not in the committee have the opportunity to give

their feedback on the section of material in and substantive interest for text changes and things like that please

um hold off and just share them via email so that we can move through this quickly no not quickly but not take

forever um alternatively um so try and move quickly through the um try to move

through it is the best way possible so um that the members who were not on the

committee just to remind everyone is Vice President jonic commissioner Hayden Crowley commissioner burnol and myself

president Stone so let's start with the introduction section um and I will open

it up for feedback and

comments vice president jonik and then commissioner Bur hols uh thank you

president Stone and thank you uh to the fierce committee for for all the work on the document

um so I I just had two um comments on the introduction the first one is more

of a question um on the on page four where it says why we explored this topic

and then it has the word independent in quotes and then there's a like a footnote on that and that footnote is

not present in the the earlier version of the slides from August and I was wondering if maybe you could explain the

background in that cuz it's kind of a a big footnote you know on one of the first pages and why is that

important you want me to respond do you want to go through all of your comments and then sure we'll allow thank you and

the second the second one is on the same page um as far as why we explored this

topic and I know one of you know we hear from members of the public that this is not something we should be discussing

but there was another point I thought we could consider adding which is not just that we're responsible for insuring free

fair and functional elections but also that the charter does give the commission um an explicit role related

to redistricting which is our involvement in appointing the members so

um and also overseeing the director who and the department which is also involved so I thought it might

strengthen things to include that role as well thank you vice president

jonic um commissioner burn I know you're comfortable with listing that and

responding okay great thank you um commissioner burn uh thank you and I have a comment on this section that

picks up directly on vice president jordon's note about the foot note I

think it's actually it's it's not clear

to me having reviewed some of the emails from the

public if in fact the public thinks

of what exists now in San Francisco as an independent

redistricting commission um so either I think that footnote holds a lot of

weight and um while the uh members of

the task force are probably all too familiar with these definitions um I'm not entirely sure

they're clear to the public so it was very difficult to know for me to know

what uh the public was in favor of or opposed to so I think

distinguishing what we have currently um from what is a if there's an official

definition of independent uh redistricting that needs to be made clear ER for the public uh probably also

for the board um I have a uh I would suggest that Pages 44 and

45 are critical context and should be upfront in the intro not at as an

afterthought as additional considerations um the state of the law on page

44 and um the content on page 45 both strike me as critical and then finally I

um I know that you and I'm grateful for the enormous amount of work you all did

um I think it's problematic to use terms and I know we're not going to Wordsmith

this but throughout the document there are references to everyone right here on page for everyone involved in recent

redistricting agrees I find I don't think that that's true I think the use

of the word everyone is going to be highly problematic I don't know who you're what subset of people you're even

referring to but I don't think everyone agrees uh and I'd be careful with language like

that thank you that's those are my comments on this section thank you commissioner burnol commissioner Hayden

Crowley thank you president Stone I actually didn't have a comment on the introduction other than um a followup on

commissioner bernh holtz's comment that to add 44 page 44 and 45 I

looked this over pretty carefully and what hit me right away was on page 45 that second paragraph I think should be

removed um there's a reference in there about just bringing up did not consider

broader changes like the number of districts the number of Supervisors per District or the voting method those

issues were never agendized here we never discuss them I don't think that they should be included in the report in

this report point of clarification um commissioner Hayden Crowley those did come up um they weren't necessarily

agendized but they did come up as conversations very early on in this initiative prior to your appointment so

that may be why but that doesn't that's not to okay that's not to diminish your your feedback that's just to clarify

that it I'm not not offend but I still don't think it belongs as a point of clarification I don't think it belongs

in here I think that um our focus is on the redistricting and bring bringing

that up confuses the issue thank you commissioner Hayden growley was that it on the intro section

uh yeah okay you're also welcome to add later if you think of anything

else um okay I would like to add my comments um I I Echo commissioner bernh

holz's comments about 44 and 45 I to believe that should move up um one of

the comments that I wanted to that is more General comment that came up early on in the intro and the report um there

is a general use of the term best practices and I think it's I've seen um

the CCRC I've seen a1248 I've seen um what was the third

one um something else um that then other

things in there I can't remember where the other one was I can't find them in my own notes um but then kind of

implying that those are considered best practices and I think I want to be careful about what we're considering

best practices and why they are considered be best practices so for example on page 17 which I realize is

further on but it it's relevant to what I'm saying right now when talking about Outreach Partners it says when

considering Outreach Partners we use CAU we use caution when considering 501c3

orgs that have political arms but then throughout the document the is reference to common cause um which you know has

been a great partner in the work but common cause is also um does have a C4 component to it so I think just being

careful about what we're suggesting as um uh what we're suggesting to be the

best practices and explaining why those are those best practices um if you're saying that CC the CCRC the ab1 1248 if

common cause you know those are quote unquote considered accepted best practices what does that mean why are

those considered the best practices I think we need to explain that upfront um the other piece about that is ab1 1248

did not become law but it is being referenced throughout the document um and so why is that is that because the

committee is saying that it is considered the best practice um and otherwise it it becomes a little bit of

it feel it can come off as a desire that ab12 48 had been the law um rather than

you know using it as quote unquote the best practices so I think just being clear on you know the groups that were

citing the law the potential legislation that was put forward why are those

considered best practices um and and uh context to support the

claim um I did also I think want to

touch on something vice president janic had mentioned about that asterisk and the independent citizen uh redistricting

um and I think also just moving some stuff around will help with context uh

where we say where it says San Francisco was a Pioneer in independent CI citizen redistricting I think that I don't

really know what we're uh what what that's referring to um and so I think

just when we make broad claims like that I think we should just have a clear

context or source to justify statements like that um and then the oh the other

piece that I I wanted to to add um that's more substantial um and then I I

do have some like suggestions of language that I will share via email um

I do think before we get into the recommendations the document should provide more insight into how the

recommendations came to be what is the Mandate of the fearce committee what was the process to get there um you know it

does kind of allude to that and saying this has been something the commission has worked on but what what was the

process specifically how did the committee review these these recommendations who put who it kind of

goes back to the comment about best practices um who were the groups that informed that um and how are we modeling

what best practices were to inform our own recommendations and then what was the specific process that the committee

took so you know the commission had worked on this for over a year before we

called the committee the commission then called for a committee at a certain point and then the committee did what

and then the committee brought forward so I think when we do share this or if we share this with um the Board of

Supervisors being able to really talk through uh how we got to this point would be great uh one other thing that

is not so much uh feedback but an item I wanted to share with the group that the

um that DC Flor has shared with us is that we will be also receiving a memo from the city attorney's office

specifically about AB 764 which I think will be really important um rather than it being the Commissioners saying what

AB 764 how San Francisco is uh uh um is now

bound to follow specific components of ab 764 we actually have the the city attorney's office uh state that I think

it's just better to come from them so I really appreciate DCA Flores working on that for us um and I would ask that we

include that as the as the packet item as the packet for the um for the final

report those are all of mine on the intro um any other commissioners before

we hand it over to committee for responses

okay committee commissioner D okay um I will

try to address all these and I invite my committee members to chime in um back to Vice uh start with vice

president uh jour's comments um yes you are right there was

not this footnote previously and that's because uh the discussion deck that we

used in the fears committee was narrated by commissioner Parker and she provided

a lot of context that uh didn't show up on the slide and so when we looked at this we felt that

uh the quotes needed explanation uh and that's why the footnote was added um this did come from

presentations by Dr Sarah sadani who uh gave us um an academic perspective on on

what was considered an independent commission versus the politician commission so we could reference that as

a source um so that's the background on that um another way to resolve this is

simply to note that uh San Francisco was a Pioneer in citizen R districting so

and not not get into that definition at at all so that's a I think would be an

accurate and neutral way of stating it uh and the Pioneer

since that was another question San Francisco was the second in the state to

take this responsibility away from its legislature and give it to a body of

citizens uh and this was done years before the fair Maps act so that is how

San Francisco got is recognized as one of the pioneering jurisdictions to do this so

we can certainly um provide more detail there um I like um vice president

janik's suggestion to add the fact that we are one of the opp appointing authorities that they may be obvious but

it's worth pointing out um on to commissioner bernh

holtz's uh point like I said one suggestion would just be to take out independent and just leave it with

citizen uh and just describe it that way as a citizen's body uh I had a question about Pages 44

and 45 I the additional considerations is only on page

45 page 44 was part of commission processes I

think so I just wanted to make sure that we didn't misunderstand something

there and actually I know that um we had some question on where to to put the

content on on page 45 so certainly I appreciate the

feedback that maybe it should come up further

uh so I'm trying to go somewhat in order but these are interrelated questions uh

so if we were talking about page 45 um to address commissioner Hayden K's

question we did have quite a bit of discussion when this first came up in in May of

20122 uh about what the scope would be and in fact I think it was commissioner bernholz who was concerned that it could

be too broad and so we were very clear about what we were not going to get into

and to limit this purely to redistricting not to do anything very Broad and so this is really

clarification of of um the decision the commission made to focus on this issue

as opposed to looking at broader issues or other kinds of reforms like for example multi-member districts or

anything like that so it was really a point of clarification uh and this was also

in the introduction uh in the original tables

that were presented in June of 2022 that there was a preface to be clear this is we're not going to delve into this area

we're focused on this so this was using the same language that we had used in previous documents um that the

commission has looked at um noted commissioner bal's comment

about everyone we can we can certainly list be more specific on

that um and hopefully I addressed your your

question commissioner uh moving on to president Stone's comments uh yes I good feedback

um the best practices have um you know been established

through a number of of academic studies and so we can site them

um and um in terms of why ab1 1248 was

referenced uh even though it was not signed into law it um it has a lot of

the the language uh that uh we had been considering prior to AB 1248 being a

thing and so uh we reference it for convenience so it's easy

for um our legislators to potentially just take take language that has been

passed at the state level by our assembly and Senate so that was really

why it was referenced uh we could put an explanatory note about

that um noted that common cause does have a

C4 arm um and again uh we can cite sources that that are

not um uh good point about including some

information on the committee's process itself I guess you know we were just

focused on the output and we didn't think about describing that so uh we have uh documents for that so we can

certainly add add a section on that I think that addresses everybody's

input good input thank you um commissioner Parker commissioner

ly you want to add on to any of this I'll I'll take it back yes we're one of

commissioner we see I had a point of clarification um president Stone you

asked um let me see look at my n sorry um how did we get to this point of

making recommendations I just put know a better timeline is that what you're thinking that we need to

have in this report a sense of a timeline as to how this started when the commission first

started reviewing this and then to how the fierce commission uh committee was

formed is that what you're thinking I'll respond um in kind if

everyone's comfortable with that um thank you for that question um I honestly I hadn't really I don't I don't

know if I have the answer to that I think it could be a timeline I think more just the context to share all the

good work that you did do to be able to say this is how we got here um

commissioner bernh Hol had her hand up go for it commissioner burol yeah um I

don't know what president Stone had in mind but um I think a timeline would be very helpful I think there's a there's

an introductory section on process that's quite important here for both the

commission and the subcommittee um and I would hope it would incl include things

like all the the meeting or the number of meetings at which this has been

discussed the names of the individuals and the groups who presented to us um

the speakers the uh independent resources the Publications that were

provided to us and that you reference um and certainly uh the city attorney's

memo on AB 764 would be part of that thank you commissioner

[Music] burnol um as if you don't mind me just

adding something on to that um I was going to bring this up in the like other

items to include but yes I I strongly encourage that there is a document or

even a section of this um report that has the names of speakers the dates

where they spoke the hyperlink to the video recording and the general learnings or topic areas um I think even

a table would be of that would be excellent um and I think that's great

also for the for the public um commissioner loli was that um the only

question okay commissioner Parker oh um just I just wanted to add one

other note the comment about um slide 45 which we actually did I originally had

that up in the front so I think it's well noted that that would be helpful but the second paragraph was also um in

response to a memo that um the vice president jonic sent to the committee for consideration asking for this to be

included for some additional context if the Board of Supervisors wanted to consider some broader reforms that were

beyond the scope of what we decided to focus on in this committee so that's part of why we included it was at his

request thank you commissioner Parker any other comments from the committee

members yeah oh yeah sorry commissioner D yeah I just wanted to say

that um we were conscious of trying to trying to keep this somewhat succinct uh

and that's the reason for example we have the information on all of the

expert testimony we received at what meeting and what the topics were and the links to all of the videos Etc it's part

of the redistricting initiative project plan which was included in the uh a link

to that was included in the appendix um but there's a section that um

essentially lists all that information in an outline form so we could pull that out just to make it

clear thank you commissioner D um before we move to the next section does anyone

else have any comments okay I would like to respond to that um Mr President Stone I personally

don't think we should keep this succinct um I think this has been an enormous amount of effort that should be I don't

think we should you know shop stop short of showing all of that work um I think there's a ton and I know I recognize

it's an enormous amount of Labor um which I I really appreciate but I I definitely I I don't think succinct

should be the um priority uh and I also and commissioner D is very I know we've

gone back and forth about this I plan to ask that we do not include the project

plan um we can talk more about that when we get to this and I have very I still

maintain that that section of the project plan should be in a table and it

should be very very clear to any member of the public without having to dig into the project plan or even just to read in

paragraph form just name of speaker date of their their presentation hyperlink to

their um to their uh to the video recording and the general topic I I if

that is something that might be too much work I'm happy to help develop it um but I think that there would be tremendous

value to the public um to include that okay let's move to the next section

were there any other comments about the introduction okay let's move to the next

section on recommendations and um compostion I will open it up

commissioner bernh hols thank you um this

may go more to framing than to but no I think it doesn't I think it would be

important however this is presented uh just as you include the

paragraph um that says what we're not digging into the infamous page 45

paragraph now um I think it would be important for uh public reader and a

supervisor reader of this to note why are we focused on these one two three

four five six areas are they the only areas to focus on or is that the this

total Universe of things that all of the research the redistricting task forces

own report um did it speak to these six areas do these are these six areas a

subset of a potential nine 12 36 things that are built into the process of

redistricting why these six uh is my question and some explanation to that

and that actually would then also provide a place to put the infamous page 45 paragraph that says and we didn't

look at these things but it's not clear to me if these six represent every

element of redistricting that we could have could have attended to or not so

that would help clarify that and it should be citations to Independent

research uh or to the redistricting taskforce I think uh as much as possible

throughout these sections um and again and a caution about language like everyone agreeing to

things the the more this is citations to Independent research the better I think

thank you thank you commissioner burnol

uh vice president dronic or commissioner Hayden Crowley do you have any comments on the composition

section vice president Tron yeah just one comment and this is more of

a um stylistic thing but I think it first starts happening here under

um under the other notes for this on page 13 you have these

um you know deviates slightly from maybe I think it would be worth just making them complete sentences so that it's it

reads more um clearly

um I I just noticed that was something that occurs a little bit throughout but um so it's more of a stylistic

thing that's all thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley did you have any comments on the composition section

um I just am noting as as going through this that the City attorney is going to

be interpreting AB 764 so will you

be eliminating these I mean would would you be eliminating eliminating these

references in here to AB 764 is that the idea because because you don't want to

be I mean you want you want to give the weight of the opinion I mean how's that

going to work do you want to do you want to just address that quickly yeah so this this was based on a

conversation I had with DCA floors knowing that she didn't have time to do a memo before our Fierce committee

meeting and so this is um so now that the City attorney has

agreed to do a written memo then we can rely on that okay any other comments commissioner ad

gry no thank you um I had just two questions about composition uh

specifically on page 11 um it says diversity factors to include and I

wanted to know what how how those should be included um is it just

consideration that you know I think it's it's important to include obviously this

item as a consideration and recommendation but I think the question

is how are we recommending ing that those factors are included um and that

may not be something you can answer right now perhaps something to discuss and then the other question I had which

I would like an answer to is um the third point on 11 where it says consider Equitable stiens to compensate for

differential effort and assist those of lesser means am I to understand this as stiens

only to those who are from quote unquote lesser means and if so I personally

would disagree with that and um I think that each member should receive the same

stipend um and I think that it can be a very dicey and problematic issue to have

someone determine what quote unquote lesser means are um and I I think it would be better to just keep it the same

but perhaps the suggestion is equity provides more uh the the equity comes

from the fact that there would be a stipend provided can you please clarify that

item okay so is that everyone I think so uh so let me

address um from the top uh commissioner bur Holtz

uh uh yes the uh we will site independent

research we we have plenty to site uh good suggestion there um and the

um areas are based on other legislation as well as uh what we had identified

originally in the registrating initiative project plan as areas to look at so we will uh we can expound on

that um nothing wrong with complete sentences

for clarity uh since we are not worried we're not um optimizing for brevity uh but for for

completeness um and I think I address commissioner Hayden Crawley's question

uh to president Stone's question um the diversity factors are

based on the same ones that are used by the California citizens redistricting commission and there is uh the um

California state auditor was required um to use these diversity factors to in

their in their vetting and selection process so there's actually an existing very detailed set of state

regulations that this could be modeled after um point of clarification uh so I

wasn't asking if these it's confusing because it says to include so I wasn't asking if these are the specific factors

that should like I I agree with the factors that you have listed I'm asking I'm asking you how are you suggesting

that that the the composition of who is on the task force and the vetting body

who is determining that will consider these specific factors how are they

going to do that so uh for

example um at the state level for the CCRC you know they would look at gender

balance right and um they would consider whether the race and ethnicity fairly

reflected the demographics of the state um they would look at

um in the case of the State of California they were looking at what part of the state you came from um and

then finally they they looked at social economic status and so this was part of their selection process to determine the

most qualified finalists uh before the random selection and the other pieces came into being

they were required to create a balanced and diverse pool of

finalists uh and then uh for example um when we as the

commission uh had to replace a commissioner we were required to consider these same

factors so so there's a extremely detailed State regulation on how to

apply these factors thank you I'll just respond to that quickly so you you

explained you gave the example and then said fairly reflect the demographics of the state so I think that is more that

is an answer to the question of how um that I think perhaps just being a little bit more explicit would be helpful so if

you say similar to what X Y and Z department does you know and cite that

specifics I think that would be helpful otherwise I think you could anyone could say consider this consider diversity and

people would say well we considered it so I think the more explicit the better okay um noted uh we we were a

little limited on space in this format so we did discuss and and go through

these examples but yeah so um in terms of stipend we uh everyone we talked to

said there should be stiens so there was no argument about that everyone um we

had testimony from um agreed that there should be stiens um and uh there is already and I

think we put this on the next page there is already um a precedent uh in San

Francisco oh it's in the funding section um because Equitable doesn't always mean

equal and so there are programs in San Francisco that have already set a precedent to allow people to

self-identify and and apply uh for additional support

if necessary uh so that is what we were basing it on is current current city

practice so the example program in San Francisco um for example is the be be

the jury program which provides a higher stien for those who identify that they

need that support to be a jury member um commissioner LOL or parker

want to may I may I finish may I respond thank you um so I think it I don't I'm

not clear on if my question was answered so it sounds like you agree that there

should be a stipend but I'm not clear on whether not everyone would be receiving the same stipend it sounds like you're

suggesting that perhaps the recommendation says that it should

be it should reflect that that uh process in other City departments and so

not necessarily everyone would receive a stipend just those who apply based on

the same sort of structure of the what is it the jury duty yeah so so I wonder

if we want to defer this to this discussion on funding because there there are more references in that

section would you be okay with that um but just to clarify the words that are

on the slide which again we were limited by space um we thought everyone should

get stipend we thought it should compensate people for differential effort and that

was um from testimony we received from uh various former independent

redistricting Commissioners that stated for example certain Commissioners put a lot more time in uh either because they

were in leadership or because they had been assigned by the commission to head a committee or or whatever and that uh

um that whatever the compensation scheme is that it should recognize people who

are putting in more time um and for example uh at the California

CCRC uh it's a it's a pum so if you put in more time you would

get more right so so that's the comment about differential effort and then the

the equity issue is that for some um

they might not be able afford to participate and if they want to we should give them that opportunity and so

that's when we get to the funding section there there's references to these other programs okay thank you so

differential effort so it's basically like there's a pay scale depending on how what you know just as you would in

any organization if you're at a certain level you receive a certain stipend and then perhaps there would also be

additional funding which we can re adjust at that section for those who are

of who would require potentially additional support so I want to clarify it's not a pay scale so the pum was the

same for all Commissioners but if you if you work five days in the last month and

somebody else only worked two you would get five times the pum and the other

person would only get two times the pum and and as it pertains to the equity

component of it just so you're saying the folks on the in addition to the perm

folks FKS who apply uh to this potential program similar to the jury duty could

receive additional uh compensation should they qualify for for example just to since

we're there the be the jury program it's like $35 a day if you're every normal

Citizen and if you're in the if you apply under the be jury program I think you get 100 instead thank you for

clarifying that commissioner B commissioner

Parker um I don't have anything to add substantially I just will just make the comment now because it's it's clear that

um that everyone here is wanting more detail and so to me it just want to note

that I think that the slide format what it we chose it because it's easy to look through and review but it seems clear

that it probably will not lend itself well to the final report because of the kinds of details so I just wanted to

note that so um that's all thanks commissioner Burker commissioner

Olie did you have any oh thank you um okay any other comments before we move

to the next section I know this was a huge undertaking commissioner perker so we

appreciate you putting the slides together um okay let's move to the is it

what is the next oh selection and removal process qualif ifications and

restrictions does anyone have any

comments vice president jic yeah uh thank you president I just had one

comment let me just pull the page up here this is on page

21 where it says no recommendations for the specific body or agency to do the the venting in

selection um so and I I mention this partly because I think there may have been some

comments from members of the public that maybe the commission had an ulterior

motive like we're trying to recommend a change that would move us from appointing three of the members to all

of the members and um but but throughout this discussion I was sort of under the

impression that we don't we don't want to be appointing any of the members just because we're not really

equipped but um but maybe maybe my misunderstanding wasn't correct but I

think if if we are in agreement that the commission shouldn't be the agency then

it might be good to state that and maybe maybe we want to say we we recommend

that it be a an agency with a full-time staff or something like that but but again I don't know what

people were thinking on that um yeah so that that was my comment

there hay and growley do you have any um I'm G

to Circle back to my main point which is I don't think we should be looking for

um reasons to disqualify someone and I'm going to just zero in again on the $500

which I'm looking at on page 19 um I think that that uh um a person's

individual uh an individual's political involvement would mean that they're likely more informed and passionate

about Community issues which can be Val in which can be valuable in redistricting discussions I also think

if we're going to truly Embrace diversity we should include all voices and viewpoints and we shouldn't look to

disqualify anybody I'm not opposed to including more people I'm opposed to

disqualifying people I can see where there would be concern about biases on

an impartial body but I think when you look at that

$500 arbitrary kind of um disqualifying uh

criteria that $500 being the max donation has been in place since before 1992 and hasn't been raised so we're not

talking about a lot of money and um and I realized since uh commissioner D had

circled back and said to me that it's a small number of people I I don't even really think that's the point I think

that we should be looking to find people who are actively engaged and bring

diverse viewpoints it doesn't mean that we're going to have a commission full of people that have all made $500 donations

it means that we should not disqualify anybody because of that um I also think

there's a legal argument where um disqualifying someone based on political contributions could be seen as a

violation of their first amendment rights and I know that that hasn't to my knowledge been challenging in court but

I think that at some point it might be um and setting up too many barriers to participation could lead to difficulties

in finding willing and qualified commission members so that is an objection that I

have thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley uh commissioner burnol did you

have any comments um and this could be okay um I had a few

comments um oh actually just very small a couple small

things um uh small things and then a couple bigger things on page 18 I think it's

not really that relevant one thing I'd like to make sure we explicitly call out is that a is age so legal voting age

seems like it gets brought up later um oh yeah residency is more incl on page

19 it says residency is more inclusive than voter registration which eliminate 21 % of voting age residents um I share

in that sentiment but it doesn't say legal voting age as a requirement I

assume that's what we're saying um but want to make sure that's called out um

and then I wanted to ask about something on page 20 it says

um uh consider more inclusive alternatives to written essays for

evaluating subjective criteria and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit

because I I would imagine that written essays actually are a very

inclusive um way to explore some of the

criteria um and I think this has been a discussion in many facets of our society

um you know for example academic institutions doing a way with

standardized testing and moving more toward written as a means to become more inclusive so I was kind of surprised but

I'd like to know what what that means exactly um and so if you could talk about that and then to talk about the

vetting body um I was actually going to wait to get to that section but um since

we're already talking about it I'll just mention it now um I do think that this

should probably be a more prominent discussion in the recommendation um I noticed that you know there's no

recommendation for this specific body um and I do believe that of course the role

of the uh our body the board and the mayor in appointing and betting the

previous task force members I think played I think it was a very big conversation and so I was surprised that

that wasn't um there wasn't an answer to that and I also know that when the state

legislation was in discussion that also was something that the I believe the committee had also looked to exploring I

think at one point it was supposed to be potentially the ethics commission and that was kind of a controversial and I

do think i' I'd like to know why that wasn't um why there was no specific

recommendation for a specific body um and I would if we are wanting to do

away with the structure of our commission the board and the mayor I

think we need to make a case for why we're doing away with that structure and that at the very least um even if we're

not going to recommend a body why are we not following that structure anymore um I you know some as an aside I

think there while the commission our commission has had some criticisms from

members of the public in the last year and a half I actually think the fact that each of us was appointed by a

unique elected official May makes us a very special commission um I think it

actually does provide some Independence and I think that I'm not suggesting that

the structure of the commission the board and the mayor are the right approach but I think if we're going to

suggest doing away with that then we should have a clear idea about why um I

also am am not uh am not uh convinced

that the Department of Elections should be roped into this either um I think as

no one will be surprised to hear I so I think it's so important that we insulate

the department from anything that could ever be seen as political and when it comes to

redistricting this is while we would love for it to not be

a political process it can be and um I think it would be a concern it would be

of a concern for me that the Department of Elections could po be implicated in anything of that going arai so I would I

would discourage um them as being mentioned as a potential body um one

last question I had is around removal um I saw that the recommendation is that

the body itself would have to decide to remove a member um and I wanted to ask

two specific questions one is would that be through a majority vote and what would be the process around that so

could any any member of the body decide that they are unhappy uh with a another

member of the task force and then or the commission and then be able to say oh

they were you know they had a I don't remember the language that was used like dereliction of Duty of some sort um you

know what is the actual process and structure around that um that would be that would be good to know um Can anyone

propose it can anyone suggest it and who is responsible for um looking into that and you don't necessarily have to answer

that question right now um but I do think um it helps to to at least think

about that is a consideration when we explore um removal but I'm not opposed to having the body itself uh be that as

opposed to the vetting process um I want to be clear and I think that those are

my primary um comments anyone else before we hand it over to the committee okay commissioner d

okay going from the top uh in response to um BP jonic comment on page 21 we did

talk about that the selection should be done by trusted adequately resourc

bodies that leverage the city's capability systems and processes so that

was an illusion to the fact that we don't have full-time staff um and that would have to change so in terms of

actually saying taking ourselves out of it I I think

that as we are currently constructed it would take us out because we are not adequately resourced so

that's why we didn't specifically say that so

um so there's a point here that if if we're going to assign this important responsibility to an agency they must be

adequately resourced and they must be trusted um by the

public um so we can be more explicited by what we mean by adequately

resourced okay um in response to commissioner Hayden Carly's

comment um this um this is noted in a number of

the reports that have been done on Independent redistricting bodies and part of making them independent and free

of political influence is to have what they call disqualifying um criteria and

so um I think I had mentioned in a previous meeting to you that at the

state level for the California citizens registering commission they also use you know donors who contribute the

maximum and at the state level just happens to be 2,000 a big difference yeah so um you know so this is just the

analog to what the same disqualifying criteria at the state level

uh so uh it is standard for an an IRC to

have um these kinds of criteria to exclude what is considered the political

Elite people who have Insider connections it is not um um it's not to

silence them they have an ability to to give public comment like anyone else but

um you know same reason that lobbyists are excluded um candidates for office you know who

might want to draw their per future lines Etc so this is just um the

standard list for an independent redistricting commission uh but we will

site we can site that in in multiple studies on that um on to president Stone's

question um I think the city's law is not legal voting age this is something

we can maybe check with DCA Flor I think it's 18 actually that qualifies that

anyone in the city can that's something we should check of this propy we passed it recently so I think we're not trying

to create anything new here we're just trying to abide by city law and the president that's been set by other City

commissions but uh we should check that with with DCA

Flores um in terms of writing essays I will

share my EXP erience and then I would love um commissioner laly to make a few comments on

inclusion uh when I did my application for the California citizens Rising

commission I have often described it as applying to graduate school I had to do six

essays um and it takes a fair amount of Education to write essays that respond

to the questions that were asked and uh

there was a lot of feedback from communities saying that that was a barrier to

applying and so um there are other um

methods of getting the same information across without requiring someone to write a formal essay so when I was asked

um by by um voters not politicians who

passed the independent redistricting um initiative in Michigan again what I would recommend I actually

said um have people make a video I mean anyone with a phone can do that now and have them talk about why they can be

independent you know why they can be impartial it doesn't necessarily require a a graduate level essay so that's my

personal story but I'd love commissioner Luli given her experience in Dei May

might make a comment commissioner ly sure uh thank you I I do think that

it can be the number of essays can be an unnecessary barrier and can

be extra um work that people who are busy who have several jobs who have

children can't meet it doesn't mean that if people aren't able to meet that um

qualification um or task that they aren't they don't have the capacity or the ability to do the writing so I think

there are now um graduate programs um certificate programs um leadership

programs that require you to do um a short video that has very specific

questions that are asked um and limited writing so I do think it's something

that could be done um if done properly

and the right questions are asked or questions are asked that

get people to use the videos in a way to give the correct information it can't be

broad so I think given how busy people are given

that we want to open this up to as many people as possible working parents um

people who are Caregivers for their their parents um elderly um a video or a method that

doesn't require seven six essays um would be a more inclusive way of

selecting U members from the public point of clarification how many

essays were required for this last task

force because I I know that we're talking about your experience at the state level but I don't think that's the

same as the city level yes commissioner Hayden Crowley um I just want to say I I do think that this isn't going to cease

to be even relevant with artificial intelligence I I've been doing a lot of work in that recently and um it there's

going to be a period of time in the next year where most a lot of people are going to be particularly young people

are going to be relying on artificial intelligence to write their essays and so it's just really not I I think

commissioner laoli and commissioner D if you're if you're looking for a way to

encourage to get an au authentic representation I think videos or some

other alternate way of of pres you know qualifying yourself would probably be

more appropriate as we go forward it's just a reality can

I can I respond to commissioner yeah commissioner president Stones um I'm not

sure what the process is I know that um task force members were selected by um

elected bodies so I'm not sure if the process was the same as what we are recommending now which is a selection

process that would require you to vet individuals and them not be selected so

I'm not sure if if our current the process for the last redistricting task

force had a selection process that even compares to what these recommendations

are does that make sense it does but the elections commission select vetted

selected task force members last year so I was curious if folks remembered what that was and I remembered that there

were a maybe there was like an essay or two it so I was just curious how many it was I understand the question now no

problem um was was there anything else from me okay let me so that was just and

again this is not something that it was just a recommendation to consider uh

more inclusive ways to encourage people to participate

um yeah in terms of the vetting body um that is that

is you know what we as a full commission struggled with um and uh shrinking us

down to three on a committee didn't change that uh it is the area where I think the public input is really needed

uh because this is about finding a trusted body uh so that is is why we didn't name

any there were several options that were suggested in the state legislation so I

think all of those could be options um but I think the people really

need to speak up is the ethics commission trusted in San Francisco would the controller's office be trusted

they write our you know uh valid explanations would they be trusted um

you know would it be the the the Department of Elections so again we felt

like this was not something that we had you know a strong opinion or a lot of

academic research or you know best practices I mean we we looked at what

other uh organizations uh other irc's have used um from extreme examples like the

Michigan you know uh icrc which is you know Rand

so uh and that's not we we didn't agree with that uh for obvious reasons and so

uh so this is something that we think the the board should seek public input on and and find out you know who was

trusted by the public in San Francisco um and then point of point of

order excuse me if you if you wouldn't mind if you can please refrain from

making public comment until we've gotten to public comment thank you and if you're unable to do that we're going to

ask that we change some rules in the room so please thank you out of respect

for the commission thank you yes commissioner D okay um and to the fundamental question of

of of you know why we're not following the the three appointing bodies it's

it's the whole reason that San Francisco came under scrw uh because one of the appointing bodies

is in fact the the the legislature um which is the whole reason

to move toward independent redistricting is to take the legislature out of that

process uh and then most consider the mayor to also be a political body so San

Francisco has what's considered a hybrid commission where there are two political bodies and one independent body and so

um certainly we could uh provide a better explanation of that but that is the the you know the language that was

in 1248 that is the reason why they identified this as a state level

concern um uh so we can we can certainly footnote that and add that

in um in terms of removal uh you'll see later on under commission processes

under decision making and voting that everything would require minimum of nine

votes so it couldn't just be a single person who decided somebody else was you

know uh not competent or something it would it would take uh a super majority

to remove another commissioner thank you commissioner

commissioner Parker um I just wanted to add um

another comment related to the vetting body um I think those are you know

they're Fair points I take your your point about the Department of Elections maybe not even naming it because of um

the importance of the B of the department not seen as political um even though we hope that the redistricting

process is as you know is is U minimally political um and I also think it's a

good suggestion to talk about why we would want explicitly lay out why we

would um suggest moving away from the process rather than just saying do this explain why moving away from this

process and you know I think that it is um because of the um the electeds who

are appointing some of the current members and there is there was a report the promise of fair maps that was

evaluating the effects of um the fair Maps act on all of the the state and many of the irc's that were created as a

result and one of the quotes is here in the slides that I think probably is worth noting and that says that IRC so

this is an evidence-based thing I think this is why I'm bringing it up is it's report that's based on evidence from places throughout the state that says

irc's whose members are not selected by incumbents or you know elected people who are sitting elected um folks and

meet certain qualifications to ensure impartiality were more transparent more encouraging and more receptive to public

participation and more likely to draw maps that kept communities whole than legislative bodies um so and there was also some

comments in the recent redistricting task force report about um their desires

to be um insulated from you know political influence in their process um

and then um but the other thing I did want to just recognize is that we have

had members of the public say and and I I would agree is that something that was nice about the process that that what is

nice about the process we currently has that it's distributed like I do like the idea that it's distributed among the

three bodies I just don't know how you do that if you're removing the elected appointments um but the the effect of

that I think is a nice one and we did have a lot of members of the the public Express that so I just want to share

that thank you commissioner Parker vice president jonic yeah I just wanted to

answer one question I I did look at one of the old applications from 2021 and the the application was a

three-page application and there were six um questions that people had to

provide answers to like please provide a statement confirming that you meet the minimum criteria you know describe your

Civic engagement stuff like that so there was no essay but it was like six

text responses thank you vice president

jonic um I'll just add thank you for looking that up um it might even be

worth especially if they're not essays it might be worth us even including something like that as a reference um in

a in the appendix of some kind um and just to go back to something

commissioner Parker had said about the uh feedback from the public about it being distributed that's actually really

interesting because again it's something I like about our body um we all come

from different electeds and therefore have different um have have lots of

differences I'll leave it there um and I'm wondering if the committee explored

the idea of three different independent independent um appointing edting bodies

but all of them following the same Pro required to follow the same process I recognize that was an issue um last time

so I won't pretend that that wasn't but what if it was something like the elections commission the ethics

commission and the city controller as an example I'm not saying those should be the three um to remove some of what you

shared commissioner Parker about and commissioner D about the electeds um and the political component of that is is

that something that the committee explored yes commissioner D yeah we didn't ex we didn't actually um get into

against specific agencies uh because even if that were distributed uh they would all have to be

trusted agencies that were adequately resourced and so uh that we kind of

didn't go down that road we did look at splitting the the Outreach and

recruitment piece from the setting and selection piece that we thought made sense and I shared some of my experience

at the state level where you know we had a bunch of accountants who were essentially trying to run an Outreach

campaign um kind of not their strong you know strong suite there um so you know

clearly we have agencies in the city that are really intimately familiar with Outreach and recruitment uh and you know

existing relationships with Community organizations Etc that could run it very

efficiently uh so that th that was how we talked about Distributing it a bit

but yeah I mean I think the main rationale is having consistent process

consistent criteria um as we all know the three appointing authorities uh for the

registration task force all had different criteria and different processes um and then the other you have

is how do you balance diversity if you have multiple agencies that are

contributing and so that is the reason why um

most of the other irc's we've seen have a single betting and a selection Authority so there's consistency thank

you commissioner D I'll just share that I think that's all very helpful uh context that if you're open to including

in the report I think it would be really valuable in addition to to the piece about the feedback you'd heard from the

public um I think being able to say you know things that we heard specifically from the public in addition to all the

evidencebased research and the um you know the all of the um citations that

we've already talked about um any area where we can say we heard from our process from the public XY andz I think

that'd be great um so everything you just shared would would be wonderful any other

topics or pieces that we want to get into before we move into funding yes

vice president Jon yeah I just want to make one comment on the on this point about the the selection body um I mean

it might be worth emphasizing more that it's not really a a selection body it's more it's more the vetting body and

they're going to have this pool and then the selection is random so then it really doesn't matter as much like if

you have three bodies doing a random selection it's not really and so it's more about the vetting I think is is yeah I think

that's exactly right so the process that we've recommended is

that they they vet the pool and and there is a selection in the sense that

they identify the finalists in the same way that the auditor did this for um the California citizens red dising

commission they identified 120 finalists in this case of would be 40 of

the most qualified based on the criteria uh and then you go to random

selection for the first eight and then the first dat select the final

six thank you commissioner D okay let's move

to funding do I think is that next did I miss something I think it's line drawing

criteria line drawing criteria did I miss I'm I'm sorry thank you I

apologize um okay let's move to line redistricting line drawing criteria

maybe it's because I missed it myself any

Commissioners yes I wasn't alone and not having feedback in that section

um okay we can come back to it if if we'd like um if something comes up so

let's move to uh funding now um

Commissioners Hayden Crowley burnol vice president janic do you have any items

for this

section I can jump in um I know we had talked a little bit about stiens

earlier um and I wanted to give the opportunity to

revisit that um I also think expense

reimbursement it it appears here but not in oh sorry actually on page 30 there's

some things in the additional notes on page 30 that I actually think need to be more explicitly in the actual recom

recommendation so on page I think it's yeah page 28 um should have the

stipend and the expense reimbursement piece for whatever we're including like

transit or things like that make that a more explicit recommendation and not um only in the additional notes um the

other thing I would um uh oh I would say you cited the city

clerk's proposed budget recomend recation I'd be interested to have that as its own piece in the appendix um or

have more clarity or context of what that is um I think those are the two

things that I uh I wanted to wanted to

address um commissioner burn holes I was struck that there's no

unless I missed it which is entirely possible no mention in here of the need for translation services

it's mentioned i' I'd like to see it referenced I think that should be

explicitly called out as a need thank you thank you actually I had one other

piece in line with that thank you I don't know why it was moved in the other area but um I also wanted to include any

considerations to provide uh remote participation access as well

yes commissioner ha just a little in the weeds and just the idea of a stipended and and

you were talking about the additional um expenses I would just say that um

having just gone through a rather extended expense report uh

situation expense reports for people like this who are going to be giving their time I don't know if that's what

we would be asking them but I would rather give them a full a a healthy per

DM that would cover expenses and and that kind of goes back to the point that you were making about the equity

situation which would have to be resolved um you want to have it across the board that everybody gets the same

amount but that people then could apply for more but if they have to start justifying their

expenses that that just doesn't work so it's just better to have hey here's the

PDM hey if you need extra money you can apply for

it yes I see thank you um vice president jonic did you have anything to add

before we move to the committee okay commissioner loli I just wanted to ask a point of

clarification for Hayden crowy so for example if there was a person who needed

child care expenses that that I think is what we were thinking about those are

additional things that someone might need and I'm not sure if a if a pum

perhaps there could be an application process for that but that's some of the things we were thinking about because if

you are a working parent and you want to be a part of this there are going to be times where you'll need to have child

care and that's that's an expense that I'm not sure could be covered by our TDM so that is

something that was one of the things we discussed and were thinking about when we came up the

expenses thank you commissioner L commissioner Hayden Crowley I I think

it's I first I I I understand what you're

saying I think you'd have to come up with a simple way to resolve something like that such as having a pool of child

care funds that someone could apply for or something like that because I think

it would put someone in a difficult situation have to go and say oh well I

had a babysitter last night and here's the receipt I I mean maybe I'm simplifying it but I just went through

this and it was not for child care but just mileage you know it's it's it's

really um mundane and um I was helping someone with it and trying to recreate

all of that and I mean we were both college educated and

you know it's going back seven months it wasn't fun your point so I'm just saying

I think that we should if you're going to offer something like that you need to simplify it and make it as make it easy

and and also there has to be precedent I I don't know there doesn't have to be

precedent but I don't and maybe we're overthinking this because look this is going to be passed on to the Board of

Supervisors there's going to be a whole separate set of hearings so to spend this much time on how things are

operated probably doesn't make a ton of sense but I would just say that

whatever recommendation you make it should be to simplify people's lives and

to also look at has this been done at in other

jurisdictions thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley go ahead commissioner

Parker um I think that the the main idea and maybe this is to communicate with

some examples like you were saying is that we want to reduce barriers and so that means Simplicity you know that

means that um if you have and it's not just child care right some people have care for elderly parents um there are a

lot of things that come up for people that are barriers and so whatever however we can make it simple or reduce barriers I think is the headline

probably and then give these as examples of ways it could be done whether it is a larger stipend um or there is a pool

whatever it is like they can decide logistically how it can be handled because the other thing is I think

always we have to find the balance and it's not our decision to make but it's something maybe to put out there for their consideration is that um when you

have uh highly detailed processes like expense reports for instance it also

costs money to administer that you know so whoever is having to process that it takes money and time which is you know

already we're hoping that they are going to be um thoughtfully expanding budgets During the period of time that this

would happen um but that is you know it's staff time you know so there's sometimes there's a cost benefit right

and so it could be that that is the decision so providing a little bit of um you know thing for them to think about

as they make those kinds of decisions it's probably worth it um and I also did just want to mention that um I think the

the suggestions you made um in general um president Stone are are great and and some things that we did talk about did

just didn't make it in here so I will note like we did have a conversation about remote access kind of early on in the process and so we should make sure

that gets in here we also had some conversation about providing translation services I know that was a big beef that

people had and that wasn't the fault of the task force it was because there wasn't funding to allow you know um

interpreters to be there Beyond four hours or I don't remember what the details were with that um but we did

talk about it it just didn't make it in here so thanks for those points may I may I add I also o believe

that the um interpreter interpreter issue was also issues around scheduling

yes um that I believe that that maybe is something worth mentioning in the report

as well that the scheduling is very important to provide

inclusion things that are necessary for inclusion yes commissioner D yeah so

just to run through um so everything uh yes and partly reason we didn't have a

really detailed discussion about of the stuff is that a lot of it was in the city clerk's recommendations and so we

didn't repeat them we just referenced them so yeah absolutely we should call that out it is part of the reding task

force final report but we should pull her report out separately um and yes uh we did have a

lot of discussion about translation and this is an interdependency with the timing and the schedule so

while while it's true that the our supposedly independent you know task

force didn't have control a over a lot of their resources and that's something that we called out they were dependent

on other departments to make certain things happen uh so they wanted more translation and they couldn't get it but

partly it was because meetings were going till 3:00 a.m 4:00 am in the morning right so that's back to the timing again and the timeline for the

maps and making sure there's um enough time to incorporate public input and to

be able to schedule translators um on the stien it's another thing where

we just wanted to I think you're exactly right um commissioner Hayden Crowley this is something that the board's going

to decide it's going to be decided within what city policy is uh you know

uh I will tell you that I filed a ton of expense reports as a California commissioner standard State processes so

you know was no different than any other employee of the State of

California you know uh but you know there are are standard um shortcuts you

can use you know if you are working a 18-hour day which we did sometimes uh

there's standard amount you put for breakfast lunch and dinner like you were not required to keep receipts you just

put you just put the standard amount that's accepted by the state you know Etc uh so so again I think this has more

to do with what city policy is uh and that's why we didn't spend a lot of time on stipend except to say that there

should be stipend because currently the registering task force gets paid nothing um and so I think the important

point we wanted to make is everyone agreed they should be paid something and

that it should be you know meaningful um and uh and Equitable and

that's that's kind of where we left it at diend and then everything else was just a consideration for the board to

think about it's probably not I mean this is not the level of detail that would go into a charter amendment in any

case um I think that's everything I think I

addressed everyone's points yes commissioner see I just wanted to um

make a point that we had several meetings most of the meetings were during the summer and so we were really

trying to think about uh and um

committee members chime in if I'm stating something incorrectly or but my recollection is that we really wanted to

make sure we were not getting into the weeds of legislation but making recommendations so there are pieces as

commissioner D said that we felt we want to recommend that there's a stien and we don't and we think that

there's are some things that should be considered like the fact that some people need extra expenses because we

want to be equitable but we were careful not to get into the weeds of of trying to tell the Board of Supervisors how to

legislate but just giving a little bit more Broad and and we kept reminding

ourselves um if you watch the recordings there are times where we would start getting to weeds and one of us would say

wait we're this is this is recommendations so there are pieces and

details that we actually pulled back from because we felt that's what the

legislature can can decide side and we'll have the resources to get public input to find out what the community

thinks if did I state that yeah okay that was good thank you thank you

commissioner we see any other comments about

funding great um let's move to processes

and timing I feel like we've addressed additional considerations quite a bit um

but we can lump that in as well so we'll do commission processes timing and additional

considerations or um feedback from Commissioners who are not on the

committee yes commissioner Hayden cley I think this is covered in in what you had

what you I I was I went back and was looking at it I but but the timeline

uh particularly the six months before the

um census comes out I I think that's so

important and because you need a lot of time on this so that people can really

think this all through and get along and so forth but the but I do think well

again it's in the weeds and that I I tend to go there um but I I do think

that um having a timeline of what you want to accomplish and you kind of

mentioned it somewhere but it was after the fact of what you want to accomplish in the first six months before the um

census is you get the census information um there should be some um

benchmarks that I I guess that's it that that you want people to achieve that there are some goals because there's a

lot to do here and um with or without a

redistricting commission let's just say that you were God forbid that um you

didn't have all of this in place but you were going to do this all again in 10 years the timing is just not in place at

all and it needs to be I mean that's huge people need time to to to do this

to think it through to get the support they they need the

time thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley any comments from vice president

jonic or commissioner burnol no okay yeah vice president

you're yeah well I just I was just kind of thinking about this in the weeds

comments that people are making um are there I mean one way to handle it is if

there's some detail that people feel strongly about we can you know put that in the additional notes to consider you

know um so we're not like not putting it in at all

thank you um I had just a clarifying question

why an ordinance establishing the IRC needs to be passed at all um that might

just be from a position of ignorance I just was unclear about

that sure I was ask just to repeat the question on page 42 the recommendation

says the ordinance establishing the IRC should be passed 18 to 24 months prior to the map deadline and I was just

unclear about why an ordinance need needed to be passed commissioner D um maybe DCA

Flores can address that that is just something I think that's stipulated in

the charter right yes that is an okay thank

you I can commissioner just a little more context I don't remember if it says it in here but um that specific

recommendation is also in the city clerk's recommendation you know the specific language around having the ordinance passed to actually create the

body that allows them to set aside the budget that allows them to do all the all the structural things that need to

be in place in order for the work to begin that's why that has to happen then and so but there is more context and and

if it's not listed here we should probably just site that more details are in the city clerk's thank you but I was

going to say I think that the reason um or maybe more contacts the reason why that is um required in the charter is

because theoretically there could be a census that shows no need for

redistricting so there would be no redistricting body needed to be convened

so I don't think that's ever going to happen but theoretically that could happen um so that's why that's that's in

there that if the census dictates that redistricting is needed the redistricting body will be called on uh

will be appointed isn't this thank you pcers isn't the step that the Department of Elections has to provide that

recommendation to the Board of Supervisors and then they pass the ordinance based on it okay just to clarify it for folks online the DCA

nodded her head um vice president Jordon so are we doing the additional considerations now um sure yeah I I

didn't comment on this before because I wasn't considering it as part of the intro but I I just had one um comment

question on the first paragraph of page 45 where it says um some key existing

redistricting Provisions are what Exempted us from falling under the

FMA and um is that is that going to be clear to people what those are or is that listed somewhere

else would it be worth um calling out articulating yeah uh and that's something we can get

some assistant from DCA floron it's page just to clarify page 45 the sentence

that says in the first at the end the end of the first paragraph yeah the two last sentences of the first paragraph

where it starts additionally some existing key redistricting

Provisions I think the short answer is that Charter cities were Exempted if they had um at least a couple of um

redistricting criteria uh that they could be exempt from falling under the FMA um DC Flores

do you want to expound on that at

all is this regarding um the 2023 FMA or the 2019 the

2019 um yeah so the 2019 FMA um and for folks that don't know

what FMA Fair Maps act um really um Exempted Charter cities that had their

own redistricting um body or process uh in place which San Francisco has San

Francisco's been a Pioneer in that you know uh we had one of the first ones so that's why um some of the criteria that

that was included in FMA 2019 didn't apply to us because we had our own processes and we had our own things that

we um redistricted um the I guess the the order of things that we would look

at which was population deviation um um and also communities of Interest so all

of that's in our Charter and that's why we were we didn't have to follow what the 2019 FMA um all of it what it said

uh there were certain parts that applied to us like um the

translation the um you know posting on the website like those kinds of process

things still apply to us but because we had our own process the rest didn't

apply thank you DC FL is go ahead commissioner D okay um okay

to address the questions on on the timing uh that commissioner Hayden

Crawley brought up the the main point on the timing was to not tie it to the

census yeah because that is what screwed us up this last time um but to actually

tie it to the deadline instead so it would be at least one full year before

deadline and then you have to back up from that to um the ordinance which was a recommendation from the city clerk so

we can uh again footnote that and make it really clear that that's the city clerk's recommendation for the

ordinance uh and then uh vice president jonik I I

think I agree there might be considerations and there are already things here that um don't necessarily in

a charter Amendment but we didn't want to lose the idea so we have uh

um the additional notes a lot of that is is that stuff so if there are more uh we

certainly want to include it um so we answer the question on the

ordinance um and as DCA Florida said there's never not been a need for

redistricting which is why feel pretty comfortable tying it to the deadline the mapping deadline rather than the the

census itself um I think that's

everything um okay thank you any other comments

no yes vice president thank you president I was wondering if I could make a comment on just one of the

earlier sections that I hadn't mentioned then yes thec as were you going to respond to something I was going to say

my um I haven't had a chance to review this but um in depth like I would have

liked but just looking at this there are some inaccuracies um and some things that are incorrect so I'll be working uh

with um commissioner D on getting these things correct specific to Fair Maps act

AB yes and I think there was a mention that the prior districting task force

got an extension from the Department of Elections or negotiated directly with with the Department of Elections to get

an extension uh which is not factually correct um and um so just throughout I

I'll make comments um and provide feedback just on legal things sure thank you vice president jonik yeah thank you

um yeah I just wanted to add one more possible additional note that could be added under the selection section and

it's because this is something that it's on the idea of doing a random selection

and to really reduce the importance of the or the unti being trusted and we can

take a lesson from the pr the processes that are used for elections and we could

mention that um you know the random selection could be done in public in the same way that the Department of

Elections randomly selects its precincts after each election and for that process for people that don't know you have a

public ceremony that's announced in advance and you have you have the list of precincts and then you roll dice in

public and even members of the public can take turns rolling the dice so that everyone can see that it's a random

process so commissioner D yeah I was going to say that is what the state did in fact

they used Lottery balls and it was a public process that everyone could

see great okay are there any other comments before we wrap up the actual

contents of the recommendation

excellent um Okay so we've made it through the contents I think we should move to the

conversation around the how we want to present this material I will just take a

brief look around to the commission and see if anyone needs to take a minute or two break or if we should keep going

before you take a break I know we've been going kind of keep going power through okay let's take take a 5 minute

break um or let's say yeah 3 minute break so

8:37 p.m. we will return um and talk

about the next

piece we've got 20 members of the public here that would like to participate

in and they' read material the last several days they prepar their

statements and you all have the discretion here to hear them so it just seems to me that

it can be exercised so that you can have some input from the public and they can

then leave because they've read the material and they have a prepared they have a prepared statement so that's just

an idea for can I can I ask you to accommodate them um absolutely we'd love to hear

from them when we're done with the agenda item so that's a no no I mean that's

we're not finished with our discussion so because you have a discre you could

speak they've been here for hours ready to contribute to this discussion so thank

you want them to understand that that's the no it's it's definitely not a no we look

forward to your comments when we're at the end of the agenda item thank

you yes thank

you

that she think about that just a little bit because you don't often have 20

members this

room thank you guys

than welome

Street

here today just you

thanks

oh Tom yeah so I appreciate I feel like I'm with a

bunch ofh you

were univ Professor oh that is definitely I

I I don't that about myself my head I'm so distracted I'm very distracted as

well honestly your your um comprehension

of material commitment going through it line by line

just never seen you must have been the top of the class

no I like to read I don't know if that made me Collective IQ here like I want

for a minute stop I'm not kidding stop I just

feel like

like I'm and also I'm

not my husband just just drives off this type of thing like he has a commission

he's on civil service he comes home and tells me about all the people that show up I do

not I'm not you

knowah blah blah I like probably gonna

live yeah

she's really really

good close well we've got we

got you folks have done a lot right oh I'm sorry

okay okay excuse

me apologies that I took a couple extra minutes um I wanted to spend some time

evaluating the options as requested by members of the public um so to

accommodate the ask we're going to do 20 minutes of public comment now and then

we will complete public comment we will go back to finish out our discuss and then complete public comment after the

um after we are done with the agenda item so the time is now 8:40 p.m. and we

are going to start taking public comment um and we invite you to make your

comments

now thank you very much hello um could I get the mic is it on it's on doesn't

sound like it okay uh so good evening Commissioners W it's been a while here sitting out there listening but I'm

learning a lot and I appreciate that I'm a resident of District 8 and I'd like to

know why why you're taking redistricting reform advice from the very commissioner

who nearly single-handedly but for the help of her political allies at common cause Asian

law caucus and the League of Women Voters created a chaos during our most

recent redistricting period and who now points to the chaos that she created to

offer up uh new ways to make the next three districting less chaotic excuse me

less chaotic and more fair well that's what happened last year

but do you guys see the absurdity that that we all feel in this room tonight okay so the only thing wrong with the

redistricting process last year was this unelected and unaccountable Commissioners meddling and maneuvering

to change it we like what we have it works it ain't broke so please stop

trying to fix it the only action you should take today is to drive a nail a

final nail into the coffin of this more abund and unnecessary redistricting

reform initiative idea and fiercely bury it six feet under thank

you thank

you good evening Commissioners I'm Sarah silver from District 3 and I'm a member

of iconic D3 but tonight my opinions are I'm representing myself the material

from the fierce committee that you're evaluating tonight reinforces my firm belief that having multiple nominating

bodies is key to protecting our redistricting process we can't adopt a new process that takes redistricting out

of the hands of the People by creating an activist commission prone to corruption this material also says that

the redistricting task force is no longer a trusted body a direct result of the actions of this elections

Commission in February of 2022 commissioner D was appointed to the elections commission within 3 months of

starting her term during the height of mapping and at an especially critical moment in the redistricting process

commissioner D led a failed attempt to remove all of the election commission's own appointees which resulted in an

outrage across the city as reported in our local media the distrust that she's brought upon the commission led to the

early resignation of Charles young one of the most trusted and dedicated public servants that we'd had on the elections

commission next commissioner DED in a failed attempt to remove director arnst

mostly because of his supposed lack of diversity an absurd claim as he has led complicated voting efforts seamlessly

and has received National claim as an exceptional director in both cases the people the city departments and Board of

Supervisors pushed back and the elections commission was once again discredited has that deterred

commissioner D apparently not because now in concert with the League of Women Voters common cause in the Asian law

caucus commissioner D is leading an attempt to create an activist redistricting task force that is not be

Holden to the voters the be very difficult to remove but not so difficult

to influence Commissioners we need modest changes and improvements to redistricting make no recommendations to

our Board of Supervisors please get back to the business this commission was created for to give the public

confidence and Trust in San Francisco elections thank you thank

you hello my name is Stephanie and I live in District one I'm also a member

of the neighborhood group sore but I'm speaking for myself tonight there's a very troubling Trend that's happening in

San Francisco for some time now but I think people are just becoming aware of it political groups such as the League

of Women Voters and others working to have certain commissions do an end run around our actual legislators the League

of Women Voters offer often offer public comment urging this commission to adopt unnecessary and unvetted measures with

regard to redistricting measures that our legislators in Sacramento have flatly rejected ab1 1248 was rejected in

Sacramento yet this commission persists it persists with the support of the League of Women Voters this commission

persists to pursue an unnecessary irresponsible and potentially damaging change to our redistricting rules I

actually saw the League of Women Voters do the same at our police commission recently a representative of the league

of women's voters stepped up to the podium to express anger and frustration that a djo which dealt with pretext

stops had not been adopted by that commission this despite the fact that a nearly identical measure was rejected in

Sacramento so I do think it is imperative to repeatedly point out and emphasize again that this commission is

not a body of elected officials this commission is not authorized to act as such additionally affording one or any

small number of political groups the power to force policy adoption here in San Francisco that is in direct

opposition of the voters and desire liers of our state legislators is an assault on our Democratic process and

will undoubted undoubtedly be challenged in a court of law no one group has the

right to undermine the laws of our state and neither does an unelected commission like this one so please do not Advance

anything to the Board of Supervisors and after sitting here and listening to to

the content of what you were describing And discussing yeah you guys did a lot of work a lot of work that was not

necessary and it's it's sad that you did it because it just was not necessary if

a commissioner had an experience at the state level don't come looking for those

problems here locally if you if you're fixing something at the state level because there's problems there that's

fine but there was no problem with there is no problem with our redistributing process it worked fine please do not

Advance something that was only your 30 second Mark just so you know okay okay just

wanted you to know you had more time if you wanted it

okay finally yes my name is Angela and I live in district one I'm a member of my

neighborhood group sore although these comments today are my own I'd like to know why you election Commissioners

stood so firmly with groups like SF Rising a March 15th press release last

year from SF Rising ing tells the story the press release reads and I quote this

community Unity map was created through a rigorous process the Coalition reviewed feedback from over 74 different

organizations representing a diverse network of communities all across San Francisco we also held over 10 meetings

for residents and leaders to give feedback on several versions of demonstration Maps before ultimately

finalizing version one of the unity map Commissioners are duly sworn

redistricting task force heard feedback from thousands and thousands of people in public meetings where minutes were

taken and Rules of Order were in place for transparency and for the creation of a detailed public record why didn't SF

Rising participate why did SF Rising hold over 10 of their own Community meetings when they could have

participated with the rest of San Francisco and our sworn Commissioners what data was used to

create the community Unity map a Board of Supervisors redistrict redistricting

task force applicant said during his televised interview in June of 2022 with

the board that quote if not chosen as a task force member I'll work with groups

as a volunteer and use my analytical skills to pour through election data to create maps that protect marginalized

communities end quote Commissioners please look it up his name is Mark p and

he said it to the Delight of my supervisor Connie Chan as she beamed on screen

while he gave his presentation but SF Rising the group who clearly according to their own press release decided not

to participate with the rest of San Francisco is the group that this commission inexplicably decided to stand

behind this commission tried to dismiss its own appointed task force members for not listening to these members of the

community who held their own private meetings and used their own data to draw their own bogus maps and then kicked and

screened foul when they weren't properly listened to to at the redistricting meetings they finally decided to attend

that's the folks this commission decided to listen to and stand behind and it is

outrageous thank

you good evening Commissioners my name is Todd Davis and I live in District 3 a

commissioner said about the creation of the fierce committee the election commission's redistricting initiative

was in response to The public's request that we remove our appointees that's not the case the

election commission didn't have a mandate from the public there was no public request to remove your appointees

that request came from political groups such as the League of Women Voters Asian

law caucus and common cause all great groups but all political groups as well

if you want best practices you will let the redistricting task force function

the same way it has in the past only not allow political input as occurred at the

end of the last redistricting process the fact is the redistricting process is

not broken and you're trying to fix a process that is not broken now I I

appreciate the fact that you took a lot of time and you made a lot of recommendations but the fact is there's

nothing that you would recommend that we'll make it any better than it is now

so what I ask is that you not make any recommendations to the Board of Supervisors thank you thank

you hello Commissioners my name is William Thornton I'm a student at Stanford and and me and my family live

in District 2 where I grew up uh before I say something that jumped out to me in this discussion tonight is the

recommendations for a miss deadline this document recommends a special Master with no qualifications to draw the map

if the task force misses their deadline I find this very problematic also a

states of the redistricting task force negotiated with the Department of Elections when they missed their

deadline they did not miss their deadline they missed their first Target and their final dates and the

requirements were directed by the deputy City attorneys and not the Department of Elections I'm quite sure this is correct

please um feel free to correct me if this is wrong but I'm pretty sure this is correct um also Commissioners this

work you're doing is taken away from your core duties to run elections please reject being drawn into

this political matter don't make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors and please ensure we have elections we can be confident in

confident in thank you so much for taking your time thank

you good evening my name is Marina OS salivan Roach I'm a District 4 Resident

and a member of a neighborhood called sun sunset United neighbors but I am speaking for myself tonight and not for

sun although AB 1248 was vetoed by our governor this vetoed legislation seems

to continue to be the boilerplate for this Fierce committee's recommendation to this commission why is this

commission considering recommending our Board of Supervisors take any action on a charter Amendment modeled after a

state measure that was vetoed by our governor the governor made the right decision ab1 1248 was a blunt instrument

designed to address problems in LA City that we don't have here in San Francisco

we have an independent re redistricting commission model here for more than 25

years LA City has a failed advisory redistricting commission model that has

failed the residence there miserably for years ab1 1248 would have turned rist

District in into an expensive cumbersome bureaucratic mess run by insiders not

directly accountable to voters that's exactly why the governor veto did do the

right thing here today Commissioners take no action to recommend changes the governor thought was a bad idea be

sensible thank you thank

you good evening Commissioners uh my name is Luke parocha and I'm a native San Franciscan a D7 resident and a

member of several Community groups my comments today are my own but grew out of conversations in these groups

prompted by press reports that you're considering making recommending changes to the redistricting

process like others I was dismayed by the chaos that ensued during the 2022

redistricting but to be clear I was more dismayed to learn that the C of the

central role that members of this commission played in causing that chaos

your role as defined in the charter as I read it is to oversee the Department of Elections to assure Fair free and

functional elections that Department's role involves things like voter registration

the nomination and filing process for candidates Precinct operations vote counts and the prevention of fraud these

are all explicitly mentioned in the charter I could not find such expansive

uh control and managing of the redistricting process itself as you are now considering as part of your

role red ring is an inherently political process as the president has

stated uh Your Role should not be political it is also highly inappropriate as been has been stated

for this commission to be influenced in its work by well organized political advy groups like some of those already

named these are some of these groups uh I have myself supported um however um and they have

every right to address citizens and elected leaders on the topic of redistricting however ever it is very

improper for you to allow them to use your commission as a tool for backdoor political advocacy especially on an

issue that is not explicitly in your Charter our recent redistricting task

force membership represented diverse interests it was respectful of our City's communities and the narrative

that the task force and the map produced was a disaster is a falsehood promot promoted by those with an agenda who

were unhappy with the outcome uh fortunately the task force

was not swayed by the interference and did their work professionally I urge you tonight to

stay out of the fundamentally political process of redistricting do not expand your role in

this area instead please focus on your non-political role of assuring a functional and fair election process as

defined in the charter I urge you to make no recommendation to the Board of Supervisors and do not Advance this

report thank you thank

you hello commissioner commers um my name is Elizabeth S and I live in District 8 um the document provided by

the fierce committee repeatedly refers to ab1 1248 as proposed legislation but

that is incorrect AB 1248 is vetoed legislation vetoed because it will be a

budget Buster to implement vetoed because it will create a burdensome and unaccountable bureaucracy yet this

Fierce committee has made the proposal after this V legislation why the proposal by the

fearce committee suggests some departments be in charge of administering process mentions the clerk

the clerk is already swamped and only the fact that there was a pandemic allowed them to have extra time to give

support to the last redistricting task force and even then according to the task force there were many times when

the clerk almost had a mutiny on our hands a mutiny because of the extra amount of work clerk staff had to add in

order to support the redistricting task force therefore anybody that would be recommended would need to agree and be

budgeted for more additional ende for this additional Endeavor a total unrealistic expectation totally

unworkable furthermore this proposal calls for 14 redistricting members an even number of members allows the votes

and is problematic to getting the mapping completed Commissioners say no to this it creates an expensive

complicated multi-party bureaucracy that is unnecessary and may take years to set up it will necessitate costly budgetary

expense highly unusual compensation and is a bonanza for Consulting cators to come to create endless work endless

duplicative work that will help them feed from the public trough just say no thank you thank you we'll take the last

two public commenters in the room you both of you and then we'll get back to our agenda item thank you hello

Commissioners thank you I'm Liz and I live in district one who decided to

participate in the work that our redistricting task force was sworn into complete it was groups like SF Rising

these groups started drawing their own Maps based on unknown information during meetings that we have no record of or

transparency over then they presented these maps with demands that the task force adopt them and then you all drag

your appointees into a commission meeting four days before the deadline to tell them they are not listening to

these people who did not participate in the redistricting task force in the first place as F Rising clearly

describes this in their press release in March of 2022 and now the fierce committee is calling for a supposed

non-political non-elected appointing body like the elections commission to be the vetting and selection Authority for

an independent redistricting task force here in San Francisco ironically the

elections commission which is supposed to be a non-political appointing body to our own redistricting task force was the

only body out of the three that so grossly interfered with our process

after buckling under the political pressure of some of the most well

organized powerful political advocacy advocacy groups in the state of California please do not recommend

changes to appointed authorities who have done a great job and please do not make recommendation changes to the Board

of Supervisors please do your job oversee the Department of Elections and try to give us confidence in the

upcoming election thank you thank

you good evening Commissioners my name is Richard pin I'm 78 years old I'm a lifelong San Francisco and I live in

District 3 I uh am on the steering committee of iconic D3 and on the

executive committee of the lower Knob Hill neighbors Alliance I'm speaking on my own behalf I believe diversity and

accountability of appointing bodies is vital to to hedging corruption and

influence diversity of accountable appointed bodies will allow for

redistricting members to maintain neutrality as we currently have in San

Francisco where registry members come from three appointed

bodies Commissioners this election commission has had a great track record

for the last 20 years please keep it on track make no recommendations to the

Board of Supervisors provide them with a simple report that suggests no change to

our diverse appointing authorities thank you so much for your time thank

you okay that will conclude the first 20 minutes of public comment we are now

going to resume the agenda item number five

um and as I proposed I want to make sure the commission agrees um with this I was

thinking we can discuss so we talked about content of recommendations as

bucket a bucket B is kind of How It's presented I discussed three different components of that one being the format

um which I know we've already slightly touched on um two being what else we would include as a part of that um and

three being how we then are going to position it to the board and then C last

bucket would be kind of next steps what we want to achieve at our next meeting and then beyond is everyone comfortable

with that structure and sequence okay great so first let's start with uh

B1 um being the U how we're going to present this and talk through the format

and I think we can um we can open this up it doesn't need to be Commissioners who are not on the committee or

committee Etc let's just open it up for Comm discussion does anyone have any feedback

or thoughts that they would like to add yes commissioner burn

holes um okay so assuming something's going to go to

the Board of Supervisors which is the Assumption to be made here one of the

things I find most difficult about this report and a

suggestion for how to address it is distinguishing what

is from what might be from what is going to be required and so it seems to me

there are because that information is sort of sprinkled throughout and so there's um a

suggestion would be to have a as simple a summary as possible

that distinguish was distinguishes what currently is in place

from what is required by law from what is recommended in

here so that someone could just sort of look across a a chart or

something probably clustered along these six components um that would show those

differences the redistricting task Force's own final

report strikes me as a critical piece to include because it captures the

experiences and the suggested recommendations of those who did the work the last time and I think that

expertise is particularly critical to

reference so thank you thank you commissioner bernh

hols vice president D thank you president Stone um so I I'm going in no particular

order I just want to make some comments on the on the formatting of the document that

um so um commissioner Parker you had mentioned earlier that it may make more

sense to make this as a just a traditional report if we're going to be less the synct on

some things so I think that's a good idea and it may it may actually be simpler in terms

of um you know just being able to arrange things um on the on the sections

I was thinking that it may be helpful to have numbering section numbers you

know you know section two recommendations 2.1 composition 2.2 to

section removal and so on just to reference things um in terms of presenting a

document to the board I think currently this is titled Fierce committee

recommendations as the first page I think it for the next iteration it would be useful if we can view it as what the

board would receive you know I assume we would have the elections commission's name there instead and you

could put draft or something and

um and then for appendix B I thought um you could maybe have

some a page before that saying what what this is you know so there's context around

it um that's a bunch of random things but I'll I'll stop now and if more

things occur to me I'll mention them later thank you vice president

jonic I can share some of mine um my

comments so similarly although I I think I like commissioner bol's structure better I

was thinking about uh how we present the recommendations and I think the order an

order that maybe I'm open to collaboration discussion on this but um

would be kind of what is the current current vent newly required by law then the

recommendation then the rationale um for that recommendation um

so I think just moving like a couple things around um in just like the order

of things um but also happy to discuss that more and then um I think there are

a couple of documents that are hyperlink throughout the report that I might recommend we actually have as the like

items in the appendix so spefic specifically I think we've now talked a few times about the clerk's uh report I

think let's just have that as um an actual an appendix item I also think

that having a like clear citation like a like bibliography of what's been cited

as well um I think we kind of do that or you kind of do that in the

additional whatever I can't remember what page it is now but yeah there's like a it it has its own yeah appendix

item um but maybe we could just have it be um like the the citations um in more

of a the bibliography format I mean it doesn't have to be academic but um I

think you get my point um but I do think there are a couple of documents that the

ones that are uh routinely cited perhaps might be worth not just being a

hyperlink but actually being an appendix item um I think I'll move to my second

like B2 of what else to include um we talked about the table of the speakers

dates hyperlink to video recording General topic or learnings um I'm kind of open to that being either in the

appendix or earlier on it might make better sense to have it earlier on I'm not sure kind of defer to you but I do

think um pulling that out as its own separate item um and also maybe making

it a one sheeter that we can have on the website generally um would be good um we talked about AB

764 Memo from the city attorney's office I think that's good um I also agree with

vice president Jon's recommendation about appendix B I think perhaps we even we can even just change that to be the

fierce committee discussion guide um because I think that's what it was used for um so that might be that might be uh

worth mentioning and then um two last things about what what else is included

so I wanted to go back to something commissioner Hayden Crowley had brought up and I know this is something you

brought up before about the uh $500 um the $500 restriction on

donations so I think we should also allow individual Commissioners to

provide statements if they want as supplemental like supplemental statements from Individual Commissioners

perhaps of areas of dissent or disagreement so perhaps if that's an area that is really a sticking point for

you you could write even just like a short memo or brief uh statement that

says I did not agree to this specific point here's why um and we include that

as a a piece to the appendix I also um think that um I have submitted some

comments um for example about a the project plan I provided in writing in the past that maybe I would include as a

supplemental statement um or some feedback I believe vice president jonic has shared about um about uh the Mandate

of this initiative um so you know I think that also allows us to say okay we

don't necessarily have to vote on every single thing being in agreement here are the areas where we maybe disagreed but

still believe in the general uh recommendations that we're putting forward so I wanted to propose that as

an option as well um and then the last piece of the appendix that I know I've

brought up a few times and might be slightly controversial is that I would like to not include the project plan um

I don't believe this document was voted on I think it's also been um there's

been material in that project plan in text and components of the plan that I

personally have issue with and if it is included it would prevent me from wanting to move forward with this

package um and if I was overruled on that I would probably write my own like

I said dissenting um opinion on that so happy to share more thoughts but I would like to forgo that that piece um those

are my thoughts yes commissioner Hayden crowy

so I my intention here is not to create a full-blown discussion I'm simply going

to State something and then I so I listen to public comment and um

the thing is is I did not have the benefit of being here when everything that went down during the um

redistricting and so I have some concerns I read a lot of articles I do have some concerns because um if I'm

thinking about the speakers that I listen to and I don't know all of the um

the exactly what happened um uh and I can talk to all of you SE separately

offline and I also have my own sources that I can go to but I have the concern

about the just the the one situation where we are were're where we're taking

information from folks what I heard was is that they didn't participate in the

actual redistricting commission meetings that may or may not be true I don't know

the circumstances around it but I do want to let you know I'm going to look into it and that may affect my vote so

um I just think it's important to hear from the public we've heard from everybody and we've had some really expert wonderful people I believe in

having Fair districts I believe in the work that you've done but I don't know

if I think that we need to be making all the recommendations that we are making

so I may have a dissenting vote I'm not sure um I just need to do a little bit more investigative work I just want to

put that I I want to be transparent about where I'm going with it um I I

just say uh commissioner D when I made my comments about the $500 your response

was I'll footnote that with with the opinion that's out there that it's

important to have that as a disqualifying uh uh criteria and that

hit me wrong just because I'm thinking to myself well again I don't think it's disqualifying I think

it's disqualifying if you're running an independent expenditure campaign I don't think that person should be on I think

that's disqualifying and I do think at a high level I know $500 is a lot but it's

been the max since 1992 at least and um I know it's a small

number of people but and I and it's just one issue but again I think our goal is

to be inclusive not disqualify and we want to be inclusive of residents but we

don't want to disqualify people just because we're in we're qualifi we're I'm losing my train of thought now because

it's 9:15 but um uh because we have included residents it doesn't mean we

have to disqualify someone that may be very you know Earnest I mean you know I

I've made $500 contributions to uh to um candidates and I would be offended if I

was disqualified for that reason and I don't have any political motive I'm telling you this right now I know it may

seem that I just don't I just don't care that much you know so anyway I digress

but I do want to investigate it a little bit more um I do I just heard some

things that troubled me a little bit and I think that it warrants my taking a look at it um independently of the

comments here and I I will talk because I've heard from these folks but it's piqued my interest I do have people that

were witness to this that are totally separate I've heard from them I will talk to some of you separately and I

will take it under consideration thank you commissioner Hayden

Crowley oh commissioner perker sorry um I was just going to make a

suggestion about um format based on everything that um everyone is saying um if we if we end up

moving this forward and that might be I I do think a Word document will will help meet a lot of the the needs that

you all expressing and so I would recommend probably a fairly Traditional report format which might include an

executive summary you know that is just a couple of pages long with sort of some highlevel things and then perhaps after

that a chart that is very brief that um that is similar to what um commissioner

bernholtz described um and then actually going through se you know doing a full

introduction that allows us to get more into depth of about what a lot is covered in that those first several slides and the additional considerations

and then going sort of one section by one section in the order that you suggest

um um president Stone so it's you know just a more traditional format for a

report that um that does allow somebody just to grab that kind of initial executive summary the chart and then

like let's really get into it and then have that appendix of all of the things that have been listed

so thank you commissioner perker commissioner bernh I saw your hand up thank you just in response to that I I

would support that recommendation I also think it's important that the

introduction to this document be

forthright about uh what happened and and what this is

and I I I sense that there's still considerable or

noticeable uncertainty on the commission as a whole regarding what we're actually

thinking about submitting and I'll remind I just reminded myself that we

entered into much of the public presentations to us from the various uh

uh members of the all the all the experts who who presented to us really

as a learning Endeavor um and I think that it's possible and actually and I think uh

commissioner Parker just outlined a format that would capture the reality

that we went through a redistricting process there were problems the

redistricting task force provided us a report that identified from their perspective the problems we uh

contributed to some of the problems and that we undertook this process to learn

about other uh structures and possibilities and while all of that was happening the law changed and that's why

I think actually the the structure that commissioner Parker just outlined provides an opportunity to explain that

and provide significant amount of information that the fierce Committee in particular has done a lot of work to

make sense of but that it's in an educational stance uh and not an advocacy

stance and I think the more I hear about individual Commissioners having concerns about you

know having having it appear that they are supportive of

recommendations that they may not be supportive and how you know that that

that's problematic I don't imagine presenting a document full of recommendations and then full of

exemptions of those recommendations is all that helpful to the board if we think of this as an

educational uh a summation of an educational and learning process that was greatly

attended we had you know Wonderful participation from people that could be helpful to the board uh it takes some of

that pressure off each of us to decide if we're going to have to file exemptions to the document that we're

busy submitting thank you yes thank you I

raised my hand as if you were call on me um thank you president Stone thank you

um thank you for that um I just if you don't mind wanted to add on to that I I

appreciate that um that comment and also how you articulated the um the sequence

and kind of from a bird's eye view of the process the problems the task force how you know all the different steps I

actually think that's incredibly valuable um for all of us and I also support the IDE the the

sentiment around not having a list of exemptions um in the appendix I think

that's a fair a fair piece of feedback um I think on I'll speak personally as

an individual commissioner I think um what it sounds like we would be getting

to is actually the best practices ourselves so rather than citing these

are all the different best practices we would actually be presenting potentially the board of supervisor what we believe

the best practices to be now um and a robust review of that um so not

necessarily advocacy or or or even specifically learnings but saying Board

of Supervisors if you want to consider best practices we know all of the different consideration we have

evaluated and heard from all these different um groups and done learning

and this is where we have landed as what we believe to be best practices but not so much as you should adopt all of these

specific um things um which I think maybe is a a a um a distinction and I'll

just add personally you know about my own feelings I don't there aren't areas

that I have the significant concerns with so much as that project plan I had

a lot of issues with how we were presenting our work and I don't I didn't

think that it reflected the full body and so that was the one thing I just really wanted to make sure was not

included in the final report I realized that I spoke out of turn so um yeah um I I want to thank you

president Stone and commissioner bernholz and I really want to thank the whole committee because this is a

um uh this is fraught with a bit of anxiety for me simply because let me just tell you I deeply respect all of

you and I deeply respect the work that you've done and I really want to support

my fellow Commissioners that's how I feel you know I I I do but um so the way

that commissioner burol kind of came up with a possible solution here which may not be the best solution for everybody

but I like the idea that you know I mean when you do a report um you've done a

tremendous amount of research and all that research is so valuable but again

at the end of the day do we have to make those recommendations particularly when we don't have consensus we can put

things out there that these are the best what we come to think maybe some of us

are best practices or are are there's a consensus out in the in the uh political

world or or the elections world that these have become or evolved potentially as best practices but it doesn't mean I

mean it's it's information but it I I I'm I guess that

I guess I come back to when I'm kind of just talking out where I'm going with this I'm not comfortable with

recommendations I'm not sure that that's I still struggle with that whether that's our role I know I had that

conversation at the last meeting and I think Chris you assured me it was our role but I'm not sure it was

you but um but I I still I'm not I'm not sure that I'm totally 100% comfortable

making recommendations I'm definitely comfortable sharing the information but I I do think that at the

end of the day you know it's the board that's elected and um we may have a

different difference of opinion on it but I didn't run for office the citizens of San Francisco did not elect me to

make these type of decisions per se I I go and I give them information and then

the electeds make those decisions that's just my point of view on

it commissioner D so we aren't going to be making the

decision on this we are not a legislative body we've stated that over and over again um and uh I agree with

everyone we we've gone through a lot of information and we have gone through

this evaluation process of of looking at what other jurisdictions have done uh

what's worked what hasn't worked um there are a number of academic studies on this

that are based on actual outcomes so I do think we're in the position to

draw conclusions from from looking at all of that um you

know I think we're getting a little bit into semantics about whether you call it a recommendation or not because the

Board of Supervisors is going to do what the Board of Supervisors is going to do and so there are things that we didn't

feel strongly enough to make a recommendation but we wanted to throw some considerations based on what we

heard uh some of the stuff doesn't even belong in a charter Amendment would be practices right so so to me that is

something that um our legislators will decide what is appropriate to go into a

charter Amendment versus a practice or what have you um

but but it is part of our role to to look this I mean that is what our body

is about is looking at at how to make democracy better and so

um you know I would very much like for this to be a unanimous kind of decision

by this body to submit this report for consideration uh and like I said they're

going to do what they're going to do so that that will be their decision not ours and ultimately it will be up to the

vote voters to decide what they want

so thank you commissioner D commission vice president Jing yeah I wanted to

present another angle on you know a reason for making a recommendation that

I I just thought of partly after hearing all the comments but um you know in the same way that the redistricting task

force they went through their process of drawing these district lines and at the end of their process they they wrote a

document that you know based on their personal experience the ways they

thought it can be improved and we were also a part of that redistricting process by virtue of appointing three of

those members and then we were in the middle of it you know we we were affected by that process and we

experienced things and we you know so we were affected in our own way and so

similarly this is kind of you know we're we're doing something similar the redistricting task force or

we're recommending something cuz I think we were kind of placed in an awkward situation you know we don't have the

same resources to V the these people and we didn't get real high number of

applicants so we're trying to we're recommending like maybe we're not the best people to

be choosing three out of the nine people so um you know as partici participants

in the process you know we can also you know Rec make recommendations

based on personal experience and I I'll be this only applies to the selection portion but but um I do see that

parallel commissioner Parker um I um I really appreciate this like

really honest discussion you know like how everybody's talking about all this and you know I'm thinking one of the

reasons um why am I understanding because I joined this process really late also right like I'm the newest um

member of this Commission and so I wasn't here um when the redistricting task force was in place and when you all

started this initiative I I joined many many months after that um my

understanding is part of why um why this body thought it was appropriate to go through this initiative was because the

Board of Supervisors while the appropriate body to be making decisions and putting things on the ballot and doing legislation they also aren't going

to spend the time that we were committing to to do the research and the learning and things like that so so

there is that and I'm wondering um if to

kind of what I'm hearing is if um if maybe something that would feel good that both recognizes the experience that

um vice president jik was just saying and the where we have done this work and arriving at some um conclus drawing

conclusions the way commissioner D was just saying um but also this hesitancy

right to provide like solid recommendations what if in a report we

are are saying these are our suggestions and because it's going to be in a format that allows for more narrative that we

can make sure we're saying and we had members of the public come regularly who said these things we received emails we

received 60 emails saying these things and if we make sure that that public comment is represented in our report it

might provide a little bit more context and Nuance so it doesn't feel just this is it we're not going to give you all

the things that you we don't want to hear because they didn't agree with us you know it just allows for a little bit more Nuance while still allowing us as a

body to say we drew some conclusions because we spent 18 months doing this and we know you didn't have the time to

do that and so we're presenting all these learnings I I do also agree I like the way commissioner bernholz phrased it

I wrote I wrote it down um and and so maybe that's a way that we PR present a

nuanced thoughtful View and and also is something that we've talked about you

know in these last several months that I've been on this commission is looking for ways to rebuild trust in our body

and I think by doing that that could help you know is we're making sure we're not going to just not represent views

that didn't agree with what our suggestion was we're going to make sure that those are included somehow um in our report so that's one

suggestion suggest thank you commissioner Parker

I'll just add I think that's a great suggestion um I really appreciate that I

also really appreciate everyone's honest um input and I wanted to Echo uh vice

president Don's comment about how us being participants in the process because I think you know commissioner

burol did allude to that as well that you know this isn't just us randomly

deciding to pick up the process you know we realized that through our own

experience as well that we had an obligation to do to help um inform a

better process that would not um that would lead to a fairer

uh fair fair districts Fair mapping process and um a fair vetting body a

fair selection body um all of the above that the public trusts um so I think it

also is a response to um some of the frustration that we heard from the

public from many different voices in the public um it doesn't mean everyone but I

think vice president I I really appreciated you adding that angle and I would really like to ensure that that is

um included as a position in the report as

well yeah commissioner D I just wanted to plus one that I mean we we you

know were confronted with a public protest in front of City Hall on at our

first inperson meeting that we had had after the pandemic and then M we responded to that and had a

what was it 6 to8 hour special hearing and we heard a lot of different perspectives during that time um and

that is probably something we should also link to because there have been a lot of um

um characterizations of what happened during that meeting that anyone who

wants to can actually listen to themselves of what the testimony was from a lot of different people and what

the discussion was among the commission and I am aware that you know

half of our commission wasn't part of that so that was um something

that we should include our participation and our

experience of the process I also think this is pres John

just to add to that I also would be happy to include a link for us to include a link to the meeting where we

made the decision to have the hearing because I think there's been much discussion about how that happened I

think it hasn't always been um accurately represented in Me by many

different Outlets um for example it there was and I'm just going to say it

explicitly the commission did not vote to have a hearing to remove redistricting task force members we had

we voted to have a public hearing to ask them questions um to investigate and

explore after members of the public asked hundreds of members of the public

came and asked us to look into this um at no point did we vote to hold a

hearing to potentially remove our task force members and the only time removal

was incorporated was actually not uh specifically proposed by any member of

the commission um it was actually actually from another member of the

staff that was participating and so I just want to make that very very clear the commission was not aiming to remove

any redistricting task force members we wanted to make a we wanted to provide the public with

transparency um unfortunately how it all happened is not exactly always how it is

intended to happen um but there was that was a not what we had voted on um and so

I I wanted to make sure that's very clear and I encourage us to um provide if we're going to provide access to that

the hearing itself then we should also provide access to the meeting where that was discussed um and I have gone back

and relistened to that on several occasions so um that's not just from

memory yes commissioner burnol I very much appreciate this conversation I I feel like there's a an

important distinction to be made

in tone and humility uh about what we've been

doing that can still be potentially of use to the Board of Supervisors should

they choose to take up these issues but

as a document I think it's it's very possible

to put together a document that would usefully synthesize the extraordinary

amount of information we've heard from local community members independent

experts on elections Scholars um the redistricting task

force um that reflects why we took this

up the the the challenges is to the task force

as it exists as identified by the task force members themselves the requirements under law which have

changed and um these Alternatives Within

These six or seven categories that have been identified and can be cited to

other experts I mean that is an an extraordinary that I I would imagine should the board take the issue up that

would be an extraordinarily use document that would also serve um some

useful uh archival purposes to document um what's been going on even

should nothing happen at the board level we will face a new census in 2030 and

there will be some group of people that might want to know what happened and what did they

look at and what did they discover as potential Alternatives and I think it's possible to present that information in

that way um that's both humble and reflects the the learning that that has

happened and that the the uh Commissioners D Loli and Parker helped

uh surface for all of us I I feel uh Stronger more confident

about that sort of end product

myself thanks thank you commissioner

burol any other okay you gonna say else Vice so I just

um so just where did we land then on on the what what we're calling them I

mean recommendations or something else or yeah commissioner laosi please

I I really do um appreciate commissioner uh bernh hold's notion that this is

something that should be in education [Music]

um whether it's recommendations education we are

presenting through our work and through our discussion um ideas on

that we hope the Board of Supervisors would consider um in their legislation so I I

don't think it's as important what we call it I think it is important how it's presented and the

format and so I I'm not as concerned about that

personally thank you I might also suggest that we don't

have to answer that specific question until we vote on it in December um because I think at this

point we don't have a we don't have the like final um product um I will say

Obviously thank again thank you so much to commissioner Parker for having put this together I also can imagine the

next stage is a tremendous amount of work so I would like for us to talk talk

about how we approach that so that it doesn't just fall on a single

commissioner um if you all don't mind I'd like to move to that kind of C bucket of next steps um especially based

on what commissioner LOL said you know it may just be a matter of what we call it and therefore we can potentially wait

until December but um you know one one item that I had planned to State today

is the that we would dissolve the committee the fierce committee um and therefore the committee would no longer

meet moving forward um I would like to discuss as a group

how um to ensure that we can

properly finish this out before the end of the year as everyone knows this is

been a big priority for me um and I believe most of you um so I also know

that commissioner laoli is a member of vek as well um which will be meeting

before the end of the year um so I want to just call out workload of that

committee I might suggest and this is open for everyone's discussion that

commissioner Dy commissioner Parker collaborate on finishing out uh the final product um but I also you know so

we dissolve the committee and then have the two commissioners complete the the

report um that's not to single you out commissioner nooli if you'd like to finish it out definitely please um

please share um I I know you're just dying to do more work um but that's

that's my that's my proposal um I also was going to suggest that perhaps um we

appoint in nonformal terms um a couple of Commissioners to serve as a point of

contact if question arise as well but let's kind of start with next steps about the committee and um the two

Commissioners um working together to incorporate feedback and also commissioner like I said I don't want to

speak for you commissioner burger if you look at

me long enough I'll talk um uh I think I think it makes sense to

dissolve the committee we're not going to have time to meet again um so I I think that's fine um I have taken very

very detailed notes tonight um and I'm happy to collaborate with commissioner

Dy on that and to take the first you know um it's I can see it all in my head

um you know so I can try to incorporate all of the um the notes and really thoughtful comments people have given um

and then just work back and forth with um with commissioner D um on creating

something to then share with you all um I would guess that we would have we

would need to try to do something the same kind of timeline which is give everybody you know at least several days

if not a week to review um because it will look different than this it will feel different than what you looked at

tonight given the tone that I hear everybody wants um so it'll take it

shouldn't be horrible to craft that but it will take some time and you will need time to review because it will be different so um I I personally am fine

with all that and I do agree that um as you have stated over and over president

stone that we need to complete this work and know what we're going to do with it where when we hand it off to um you know

to the board and how we do that you know it feels like that can be discussion when we actually have a document that

people agree on because that's the first step you know um so but I think that the substance of

the work needs to get done thank you commissioner Burker yes

commissioner D thank you Comm commer Parker um I'm more than happy to

collaborate with you to to put this in a in a more formal word document where we

can provide a lot of the color that we had in our committee discussions that we

had to clip out to try to fit on slides um so there were a lot of I want

to thank all of the Commissioners um very good um suggestions to clarify and

document uh sources um I've also taken notes maybe

not quite as detailed as commissioner Parker but uh we can cross check each other is that an

earthquake yeah yeah yeah we're rolling really yeah we're on rollers on City

Hall something let me ask my husband I'll

look on Twitter uh in any case uh under their tables if we have to did you feel

it a while yeah I have two okay I have two no shake alert though it's not more

than 4.2 because no shake alert was it yeah it is I don't know I just texted my

husband okay no no if we have to at any point we

can always we're probably the safest building in the city get away from the windows just get away from the window

okay I didn't mean to interrupt no there's no tweets yet yes okay yeah um

okay so anyway I just wanted to yeah it's a

sign yes I just wanted to affirm um my willingness to work with uh commissioner Parker on this so that we can um get it

done put a wrap this up with a bow on it great

the the what there's a special event tonight um I think you're safe okay um

let's let's um finish out here does any commissioner have any final comments on

this just for some of these like niggling things

like you know maybe word changes or whatever we could just email those yes yes please pleas please like

ASAP go to chat GPT okay um yes so uh

any word choice word smithing Etc um I also have a couple I will share via

email and the request is to send them ASAP okay anything else before we move

to oh yes sorry commissioner wson okay I just have one comment it's just that

um this was a lot of work and I've thoroughly enjoyed working with

commissioner Parker and commissioner D on this and learned a lot in the process

so it was also um very informative and

and um was I actually had a good time um at our meeting so I just I just want to say

that and um I I learned a lot from watching you um

so yeah and it was um you know at a time where U me being um working at a school

during the summer where I could actually do a lot more so that was that was also personally helpful but I I

really enjoyed it and I think it was I'm very proud of the product and I'm also

proud of the discussion that we've had tonight that I think has been really really helpful so that's all I want to

say thank you thank you commissioner ly anyone

else okay now let's move to public comment um we'll take the last folks in

the room thank you for your patience and then we'll move to um the public comment

online hi there you guys Alan B um your mic may not be on hold on hold on one

moment okay go ahead can you start that time

again okay thank you um good good

evening you guys uh just a couple of comments uh first uh

I thought commissioner Parker had some great ideas for inclusions uh into this

final report I want to just make a note of that thank you commissioner Parker

um and I heard a comment from uh commissioner jonic we were in the middle

of it we were in the middle of it and that was in response to uh commissioner

Crowley's comments about the uh April 88th meeting in uh

2022 and you you weren't just in the middle of it you were placed in the

middle of it you were placed in the the middle of it by this commissioner and

the Asian law caucus the league of women's voters and common cause that's who

placed you in it so you just weren't in it you were placed there it was

political activism and this commission got swept up in it and so that's what happened and this um few minutes ago

commissioner Stone mentioned uh um

that best practices why are things called best practices and where is supporting content context that's the

first question the next question who were the groups that informed the best

practices okay those were two very good questions so the groups that informed

the best practices are the very groups that created the chaos on April 8th in

2022 okay you as a commission have got to grasp this this is something that

happened through this commissioner and with those special interest groups until

you grasp that you won't really understand why this process that

we're in right now is so offensive and why people spend their evening here here

okay they spent their evening here to tell you about it

so there's a somewhat longer question answer to your question I think you

called uh called it um a moment ago what went down and I'd like

to certainly take another 3 minutes to tell you what went down um but my time

is dwindling and I wish you all uh the best as we wrap this up I'll be back next

month thank you very much

thank good evening good evening Commissioners I'm um Mar one second we

haven't turned the timer on bear with us thank you uh hi Marie hariel I am with

Sor D1 um yes a lot of work went into this I

respect the work you've done and I think that is why a report is appropriate but discretion is the better part of valor

there should not be any recommendations coming from this body the

recommendations should be coming from the redistricting task force the recommendations that they already spent

quite a bit of time and effort and energy creating part of the reason they shouldn't be coming from this body is

that your main premise here is inaccurate it's

false the redistricting that happened in 2022 was

robust and often contentious that's

democracy what happened last year was the most R robust redistricting in at

least 20 years and that's because lots of perspectives showed up up for the

first time just because there were more perspectives there does not mean it was

a bad process that actually is a very good process and that should be respected that doesn't mean it's bad and

the question about SF rising and their process and did they show up they did show up at the task force meetings but

they showed up with a fully baked map that was done behind closed doors with their groups and then they demanded that

the task force accept it six of our redistricting task force

members came from two appointing bodies that are directly accountable to voters the mayor and the Board of Supervisors

the third is this election commission this is a hybrid of diverse appointing authorities that has a track record of

serving San Francisco well the last redistricting cycle saw saw the most

diverse appointees to the task force in our history again it did not fail

in fact it was extremely successful in spite of the healthy adversity it encountered from the public despite the

outrageous interference it faced from this commission and despite the attempted interference from a few

members of the Board of Supervisors and extremely successful in

spite of the League of Women Voters Asian law caucus common cause and other political advocacy and political

lobbying groups that didn't like that they couldn't control the process or

outcome AB 1248 was vetoed by the governor even though this document from

Fierce refers to it as proposed legislation it is over the most Troublesome provision of that vetoed

bill is that it places the power of appointments solely in the hands of the unelected it prohibited the use of

accountable political bodies as appointing authorities to any independent redistricting

commission thank you thank you

okay are there any public commenters on

okay yeah they're on I don't it's at the top at the top I

can see that you've unmuted me yes let's give her no let's start the

timer okay now you can go wonderful thank you

hi this is Lauren gerarden with the League of Women Voters of San Francisco

we are a nonpartisan volunteer-led nonprofit um I'm a volunteer um so uh

wanted to just give you a shout out for volunteering tonight and all these other long nights uh I've been where you are

and I know how much effort it takes and how hard it is to pay attention at this late hour um and this process is great

it's informed by so much research so much so many expert interviews and so much public input we're long overdue to

update how our city does redistricting doing nothing is just not an option at a minimum we need to update

that Charter because waiting for census data to start redistricting simply does not provide enough time for the

complicated process that it takes replacing the census trigger is just one of the essential changes that must

happen for our next redistricting process to be truly independent in a way

that our communities and residents deserve many of the recommendations you have in front of you are absolutely

essential changes that can result in a redistricting process that will help the city Carry Out free fair and functional

elections and that is your mandate as a body it's good also to keep in mind that

even outside of a charter Amendment the Board of Supervisors will need to create a lot of trailing legislation that they

will need to enact redistricting and run the body things about budget and funding and Staffing and more and to put that

trailing legislation together they're going to benefit greatly from recommendations that you can make that

might even go beyond what a charter would cover so try not to my recommendation or League's

recommendation is to not limit yourself to just the charter um and so much of

what you've discussed is indirect agreement with recommendations from the previous redistricting task force and

the final Clerk of the board's report which is just essential reading for anyone looking at redistricting reform

and in align with proven practices uh that have been academically studied to

be most effective when we remove electeds from the appointment process but your recommendations go

further in critical ways and it's so important you have such an opportunity to help the city

use the Lessons Learned in the last process here in San Francisco in other

jurisdictions in California at the state level and across the country to change

what we do here for the better and we've got such a unique way of doing things in

San Francisco and the Fier committee and you have really looked at this situation to see what will work for San Francisco

not just what will work for everybody else thank you thank

you

calling user can you hear me

hello you're good to go okay thank you hi I'm Jens with the

League of Women Voters of San Francisco we wanted to provide clarification on something mentioned earlier for the

benefit of the public and perhaps the perhaps the commission for the redistricting bills that Governor New

did sign into law uh sb314 County of Sacramento uh Sacramento

district and commission ab34 uh County of Orange of orange

citizens R District commission both bills create independent redistricting commissions based on the California

citizens redistri restrict sorry redistricting commission is also late therefore governor governor Nome

approved that a person shall not be appointed to serve on on those Comm commissions if they contributed $500 or

more to candidates among other qualifications and those commission members shall not be a candidate for

elective office for those counties for at least five years Sacramento Orange

County Fresno Riverside and San Diego counties those are count those are

redistricting they create redistricting commissions through State bills and they all follow these rules furthermore the

California legislature and both Chambers overwhelmingly voted to approve AB 1248

the assembly had 64 yes votes 16 no votes and two votes that were not

recorded the Senate passed it with 30 yes votes seven no votes and three votes

that were not recorded and it's worth noting that all of San Francisco's elected

legislators weer King and Haney all unan unanimously voted to approve AB 1248 our

state elected representatives thought that what's in AB 1248 was right for

California and right for San Francisco thank you thank

you president and members I'm Russia Chavis cardos the Voting Rights and redistricting program manager with

California common cause uh Comm California common cause is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization um and at our at

our organization we're dedicated to building a democracy that includes the voices of all Californians we work on

voting rights redistricting and other democracy issues with the goal of ending structural inequalities in our state and

local governments um to create governments that are accountable to and reflective of all Californians um we

want to thank you for the time that you've taken to study and consider recommendations to strengthen San

Francisco's R districting process the B of the recommendations you have before you directly align with the

recommendations provided by the prior register team task force and with the processes that have been implemented

across the state um and have and those processes have been studied um given the

impact Reg districting has on communities we urge you to continue to progress on the work that you've already

accomplished and all the time that you've taken to judiciously study this these issues um and present a set of

recommendations to the board of supervisors thank you for your

time thank

you thank you secretary Davis and thank you all members of the public

um that unless anyone has additional comments I will close out this agenda

item by just saying that I going to formally dissolve the fierce committee

and look forward to next month us reviewing the um final report for our

action um close out agenda item number five move to agenda item number six

agenda items for future meetings discussion and possible action regarding items for future agendas actually before

I do that I wanted to just quickly go back to um agenda item number four

commissioner report rep and make a quick update um that I wanted confirmation I

could I could share um before I and it happened after I was um I had to move to

public comment on that one but I wanted to just share the good news that commissioner berol has um agreed to be

reappointed for another term and so um I want to congratulate commissioner brols

um she's obviously phenomenal and really excited that you will be joining us for

another term congrats thank you president Stone okay

back to agenda item number six agenda items for future meetings discussion and possible action regarding items for

future agendas let's move to public

comment great I will close out agenda item number six the time is 10:04 p.m.

and the meeting is now

adjourned good because my computer has 4% I forgot my I wonder I know living on the

edge