I think we are ready to begin
you ready the codes don't work just FYI okay well we'll do the best we can
all right welcome everyone to the July 31st 2023
meeting of the San Francisco elections commission Fair independent and effective redistricting for Community engagement or Fierce committee meeting
I am the chair Cynthia dye the time is now 603 and I call the
meeting to order before we proceed any further I want to briefly explain some procedures for participating in today's meeting
the minutes of this meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in person at City Hall Room 401 Dr Carlton
B goodlit play San Francisco California 94102 and remotely via WebEx
as authorized by the elections commission May 17 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 agenda public comment will be available on each
item on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak or six minutes if you are on the
line with an interpreter when providing public comment you are encouraged to state your name clearly once your three
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comments to the full body and refrain from directing them at individual Commissioners while providing public
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comment in writing by 12 noon on the day of the meeting to elections.commission
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of the official meeting file thank you and now we'll do roll call
Commissioners please verbally State Your Presence at today's meeting after your name is called
uh commissioner Diane president commissioner levolsi present commissioner Parker here with three
meeting three members present and accounted for this Fierce committee meeting we are ready to proceed
okay uh great so uh with that may I ask
commissioner levolsi to read the commission's land acknowledgment
the San Francisco elections commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ramatus aloni
who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in
accordance with their Traditions the Rama tashaloni have never ceded 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 ramataj community and affirming their Sovereign rights as
first people thank you commissioner levolsi moving on
to agenda item number two general public comment
public comment on any issue within fierce's General jurisdiction jurisdiction that is not covered by
another item on this agenda is there any public comment from anyone
in the room
yes sir sorry
it's double check the mic is on yes thank you commissioner Parker
okay go ahead yes there you go okay great
okay awesome to be here today um thank you guys for being here hope you guys are doing well my name is Gabe
schreier I am a resident of D1 and a lifelong resident of San Francisco
and I'm here to comment today generally about some of the written materials put
out by the League of Women boaters just to sort of double check currently in their website
uh is the written material that sort of explains their position uh with regard to this redistricting initiative
included is the following statement the San Francisco office of the City attorney said that the city will need to
amend the charter to be in compliance with some of the requirements if the state bills pass or if those State bills
don't pass we'll need to amend the charter to improve our redistricting process
this statement includes a link to the memo the office of the City attorney dated to April 24th
um to the members of the elections commission this memo was written in response to the commission's request for
a written analysis of Bill 1248 at the state so I've read this memo uh I think
Allen over there has read that memo too and I'm I hate to say I'm a little bit confused
um so the City attorney many times trying to find where it says like if those
State bills don't pass we'll need to amend the charter to improve our City's redisticking
process and that's that's that sentence is just not included in that City attorney memo of the elections
commission and so I just sort of want to find out where that comes from uh you
know I know that sometimes stuff can get lost or a little bit jumbled but I just want to keep things straight and make
sure that sort of what I'm reading is totally up to Snuff and
um you know the positions of the organizations I support and also um you know what you guys are trying to
say because I'd like to know that too and so I would just want clarification on that
and I would hope that you guys would be able
to provide that additionally I'd like to point out that throughout the contained written material
uh you know the writers say over and over again that the time to act on redistricting reform is now I've just
you know it happens every 10 years I'm not in totally sure why it's this urgent
I feel like you know there are some things that everyone here would like to change about redistricting
I just want to know why we have to sort of rush into this and if we possibly could you know maybe perhaps get
something to say just on record maybe we'll take a little bit more time
all right so I'll have to say thank you guys so much thank you Mr schreier and uh hopefully we'll
um maybe perhaps be able to address some of your questions in the main item
good evening uh Alan Burr Adele here I'm from District 8. uh and I'm here to talk
about the draft letter of support that you guys put together for 80 12 48.
that you'd like to have uh sent to the Board of Supervisors the second paragraph on page two it reads after a
seven hour hearing the commission allowed its appointees to remain to finish their task which was finally
completed two weeks after the deadline and with a bare majority of the final uh vote on the final map
and so the question is under what Authority did the commission allow these
task force members to remain that's that's an important question under what Authority did the commission
allow these task force members to remain so Deputy City attorney Flores can you
please look into the election commissions bylaws and tell us where exactly in the bylaws it describes the
election commission's Authority to allow members to stay on the task force or to disallow their continued
service I suspect there is no such provision in
the bylaws will you see that this wild claim to Authority is removed from this Draft before it goes out
this isn't just an exaggeration of your Authority this is a complete misrepresentation of it and you're
making it uh to the legislative body that we directly elect
and of course the commission doesn't stop there you continue to deride the redistricting task force as you
complained that they went two weeks past the deadline and with only a bare majority approving the map but this is
most likely the result of the meddling and interference that came from this Commission you have to understand that
claiming in this memo to the Board of Supervisors that you have the authority to allow or disallow the redistricting
task force to serve at the pleasure of the elections commission it paints a broad picture here of the election
commission's inflated sense of what its role is 12 months ago you said the objective
here was write a memo a simple memo to the Board of Supervisors to suggest some
improvements to redistricting and to maybe make some a recommendation of a shorter Amendment
and that simple objective is snowballed into a full-blown lobbying effort that's
personally carried out by this commission at the Board of Supervisors our problem with redistricting isn't
with the appointing bodies of the mayor's office and the Board of Supervisors our problem seems to be with
our only supposed non-interested and non-political appointing body which is the elections
Commission a body that's being used as a tool by a highly political highly
interested League of women's voters Asian La caucus and common cause
how things look from my side thank you Mr Wardell all right uh let's see are there any
uh you know
Let's uh take a look here
oh
a second um are there any hands in the
I do not see any hats from any of the attendees so with that I'm
going to close public comment
yeah I'm trying to stop my timer for some reason I won't stop
all right so I'm closing item two moving on to item number three
approval of the previous minutes discussion and possible action on
previous Fierce committee meeting minutes and we have the minutes from our
previous two meetings were May 31st and June 26 posted
and I want to see if uh there are any edits to these minutes from my fellow
Commissioners or if they look fine no edits no edits no edits
okay and uh ER president Stone's reading of Robert's
Rules we don't actually need to vote on this if there's General concurrence so we will open it up to public comment
any public comment on approval of the previous minutes no one in the room
let's just double check there's no one online that would like to make a comment
I do not see any hands so with that I will close
public comment on item number three and move on to the main event
redistricting initiative discussion and possible action on recommendations for changes to San Francisco's redistricting
process and
you have a couple of comments here uh
before we begin as noted on our webpage the fierce committee is a temporary committee whose purpose is to advise the
elections Commission on finalizing best practice reforms to improve San Francisco's redistricting processes
our May 31st meeting featured a panel of good government experts and a past redistricting Task Force member to
assess the potential impact of pending State legislation on our Fair City
in response to the public our June 26 meeting featured another panel of former
redistricting task force members who shared their thoughts on ab1248 and 764.
updates to the state mandates for independent redistricting and the fair Maps Act of 2019. for those
of you who missed our previous meetings the videos have been posted and we encourage you to view them
we are in the process of transferring the content from our archived website to
the new website platform but in the in the meantime you may download the last item the latest
project plan for the redistricting initiative which now includes direct links to the
educational sessions on redistricting best practices we began over a year ago in June of 2022.
as part of our continuing effort to educate ourselves and the public we thought it would be interesting to hear
from someone involved in reforming local redistricting in an even larger Californian Charter Charter City Los
Angeles I'm delighted to welcome Dr Sarah
sadwani who served as a road as one of the rotating chairs of the 2020
California citizens redistricting commission and is also part of the University leadership team of the LA
governance reform project in Dr sadwani we are fortunate to have
not only an academic expert in voting rights but a Statewide redistricting
practitioner who created the electoral districts that we all voted in last year
and a local redistricting advisor all rolled up in one person
please refer to her very impressive bio posted to this agenda item as we get her
slides up for a brief presentation so uh Dr sadwani I am hoping that you
are able to share content I would love to share content I do have
content to share I don't know how do I do that from WebEx so at the bottom of the your screen you should see a share
button ah got it sorry I'm more familiar with zoom
so I appreciate that it's actually very similar to zoom so okay great it says that I have to set it
up and in my
um oh dear this might be a problem because it uh
looks like it's not allowing me to make changes
in one second do you have a Mac I do yes
it comes up with a screen that shows that I need to click the box for the Cisco WebEx meetings but it is not
allowing me to do so okay let me just uh
yeah yeah did you um did you email me the presentation by
any chance I didn't I certainly could it looks like I might have figured out what I might need to do hang on one second
and if not I will email them to you and honestly it's only a couple of slides so it I can also do it well here we go got
it I think so okay meanwhile I'm hoping that as a panelist
that you are automatically able to share because I do not see where I can make so yeah we are less uh all of us are
less familiar with WebEx as well it looks like
as I might need to meeting and log back in um that's okay we will wait for you you are
our main event okay shall I do that uh if you yeah if that's what it's
telling you you have to do yeah I'm seeing okay let me do that and we'll see
if fingers crossed that it works I'll email it to you also just in case um that still doesn't solve the problem
right that would be great and meanwhile um just for the benefit of the public we
do have a couple of posted items in addition to her bio there's an article
that she wrote as well as a link to the interim report of the LA governance reform project
which has their their recommendations for Los
Angeles at this moment and meanwhile I will
see if
all right
okay are you back I am back let's see if aha now I can do it all right
perfect see if that works thank you for bearing with me
uh through these little technical difficulties that we're all very accustomed to after
the many years of coved believe me it happens at every single meeting unfortunately are you all seeing the
slides no no uh we are seeing our screen but not the slides
what screen are you seeing your we see your desktop uh-oh this is
Commissioner of all say I let's see I don't even oh here we go there you go
stop that let's see let's try again
you might have to pick a particular window yeah I have a couple windows open are you seeing slides now yes yes thank
you go for it perfect wonderful okay great um so I keep presentation super short and then
I'm happy to um you know answer questions or or even
have a conversation um of course I served uh as the redistricting commissioner for the State
of California so um you know love having conversations about redistricting if you have more questions about our process or about
some of the work that we're doing in in Los Angeles um commissioner die of course mentioned
that I uh did serve on on the redistricting commission I also tend to wear many hats
um I'm I am an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College I study voting behavior uh particularly of Asian
Americans and Latinos voting rights public policy and public opinion I serve
as a senior researcher and aapi data and I also have a podcast for spectrum news and I called inside the issues and you
are welcome to to uh join along and subscribe we actually talk quite a lot
about redistricting in Los Angeles and what has led said to the impetus for
reform here in Los Angeles which of course I'm sure you've probably all heard a little bit at least about the
leaked recordings from last fall which was really um you know kind of the the mo gave us
the momentum to do this work um but I think it was something that has been on a conversation for a very long
time that you know a conversation that gets kicked kicked down the road because it's easy to not think about
redistricting when it only occurs once every 10 years yet if you don't do something about it now probably no one's
ever going to bother doing anything about it um so I wanted to start off and just just
recap some of the what we see as successes of the California citizens
redistricting commission from 2022 of course there were many successes of the
2010 uh redistricting commission which I think some of you might know a whole lot about
um and would love to hear your stories as well uh for uh the 2020 commission we
wrapped our work at the end of 2021 actually I probably should have put 2021.
um we collected throughout our process nearly 40 000 pieces of community input
we largely worked on a consensus model navigating you know conflicting
testimony and priorities that we would hear from all different parts of the
state of certainly from San Francisco as well um but of course you know we're working
with you know nearly 40 million Californians and of course there's going to be conflicting testimony about how
people want to see their their lines drawn we also successfully navigated the covid
pandemic it meant that for us we had a very different model
for the commission even when we wanted to go in person and go do a you know a
so-called road tour or Road show of the Commission in order to go see different
regions of the state and to meet with people in person we were dealing with county by county variations in terms of
restrictions on meetings and ultimately it came to the conclusion that it was just impossible to really try and have
meetings in person with the constantly fluctuating and changing scenarios that
were happening various surges that would happen right as we were about to try and have public meetings so there was a lot
for us um to to navigate in addition to a census delay we were also very involved
in advocating for a full on Broad census we were seated just prior to the
completion of the census data and as you might recall the president at the time was was attempting to put a number of
restrictions um on the the Census Bureau including trying to identify
undocumented immigrants which would have a significant impact for the State of
California so we did a lot of advocacy around that as well um in terms of the maps themselves I
think all of the Commissioners would would really point to the fact that we
significantly increased the opportunities for representation
Latinos Latinos of course have been one of the fastest growing um communities in California for many
decades um and uh when we looked at the state and the number of majority minority
districts that were drawn under VRA circumstances um we thought there's probably some more
work that needs to be done here we did extensive analysis of voting rights
considerations throughout the state and significantly increase the opportunities for Latino represents representation at
all levels of governance that we were drawing at the same time we were able to maintain or expand opportunities for
Asian American representation and and maintain um maintain opportunities for African
Americans and what you would often refer to as Coalition districts we also you know by many accounts well you would
argue that we expanded opportunities for lgbtq representation of course that's not covered under the Voting Rights Act
per se but we received a significant amount of testimony um from lgbtq communities throughout the
state and we're very cautious to draw in ways that were respectful to some of those boundaries
um I think the key component that we're all very very proud of for the the CRC
is that we ultimately adopted our maps with a unanimous vote so in this day and
age of hyper partisanship that we see throughout America the United States and
and certainly we also see here in California I personally very much feel that it was
something really incredible to be able to have a Statewide body with individuals from all over the state to
have five Republicans five Democrats and four Independents or no party preference individuals come together and be able to
pass something unanimously I think is something pretty special and in the end we didn't have a single lawsuit brought
against our Maps we had one frivolous one halfway through the process it was thrown out by the California Supreme
Court really it was seen as something trying to delay our work And Delay the maps to
remove the authority from from the commission it didn't succeed and we didn't face a single challenge
um of our maps and that is certainly something that I think all Californians should really be proud of
um and certainly something that that folks in other states are looking to to understand how to how do we do that so I
wanted to talk a little bit about how we did that and also some of my own Reflections on um both as a commissioner
but also as a political scientist about what is unique and special about the California
process I know that my colleague Russell Yi was here with you uh not too
long ago so I'm sure he covered many of these topics as well so I'll try to be brief in that but I did want to share
some Reflections that I think are crucial to the establishment of independent redistricting commissions
and certainly some of these components we've used uh in our efforts to try and and draft
recommendations for the Los Angeles City Council in the development of the
redistricting commission there I shared with commissioner dye also a an article
that I wrote that flushes out these these um um these recommendations and kind of
larger points um so hopefully you've all had a chance to see that and if not happy to share
that with you all so what are some of the keys to Independent redistricting
um one of the things that I had to Grapple with the most was from naysayers the minute we were announced as
Commissioners for myself of course it's a two-step process of being selected to
the to the commission I was uh
which comes from a list of applicants that was fine-tuned and honed down
through multiple stages uh through the state auditor's office which you all no
doubt are familiar with that process and if not I'm happy to answer questions about that um but from the get-go there were
naysayers it was very apparent that there were plenty of people both here in California and outside of the state who
wanted us to fail who wanted the commission to kind of go down in flames to not to pass maps and have that
Authority essentially go back to the courts so that a special Master could redraw the state and one of the common
tropes that we heard is that an independent commission can't do redistricting because redistricting is
inherently political and you know I grappled with that uh concept quite a
lot um is it inherently political or is it instead inherently Democratic right
um at the very core uh of our our constitution is the concept of one
person and one vote but what good is your vote if you're gerrymandered into a
district where essentially your elected official is choosing you and you don't
have the option to choose an elected official who represents or reflects the values of you or your community
um so for me you know when we think about whether or not it's inherently
political yeah it is it is inherently political because ultimately what we're talking about is power as a political
scientist that's the number one one piece what is political science it is
we are chains and people who are who have something to lose are naturally going to
be against such uh such changes um they don't necessarily want the
people to weigh in and have a say about how the lines will be drawn and who will be able to uh to draw those lines and
that's something I'm thinking a lot about in some of my research moving forward as well um so then the real question is if
you're going to have a commission you have to remove as much of the Politics As
okay it's a key to Independence and so how do we do that we have to have things
like inherent transparency it has to be baked into the process in Los Angeles
what we saw was there was a commission it was a political commission and I'll talk a little bit more about that
distinction in just a moment um and yes they would have to uh report
if they had ex parte Communications with with council members why are they having
those conversations at all um I think that's a key question and just noting this is I've actually looked
through all of the data of all of these these um uh conversations that were that were
recorded as you know as ex parte Communications we know that they happen we have no
sense of what was discussed there did they bump into each other in the hall and just say a friendly hello and they
they uh you know the commissioner put that down as an ex parte communication or were they having substantive
conversations uh about the nature of the redistricting process it's really hard to know right so in in you know in
rather than having such a process that's so murky ban such conversations
certainly at this level we took that very seriously we did of course have
some conversations with the legislature with our attorneys present regarding the census delay but we saw that as outside
of the the redistricting process and instead really thinking about the timeline and how things are going to
happen um a rigorous fair and transparent
selection process that includes selection criteria I want to point to this
because California is unique in having specific kinds of criteria that we have
essentially baked into our Constitution that was in the ballot initiative that the voters of California passed about
what we look for in a commissioner other states don't necessarily operate that way in the state of Michigan for example
uh you can simply uh apply and then there's going to be an automatic
um Lottery of those applicants what that suggests though is that you might have a
whole host of people who threw their name in but weren't really serious about wanting to be on a commission or who
weren't vetted in any way so you could have extremists on either end of the political Spectrum you could also have
people who you know threw their name in but really can't make the kind of time commitment
um uh that is required to serve on a commission for example uh at the state
level the initial application stage there was nearly 20 000 applicants but
once we were required to write essays and get letters of support from our friends or colleagues uh that number
dropped down significantly I think down to about five thousand right so 15 000 people that threw their name in for an
application which in the state of Michigan would automatically be drawn out already removed themselves from the
pool when they realized oh I have to put in a little bit more effort here um I think another real key when it
comes to the actual redistricting and line drawing process is having ranked redistricting criteria the fair Maps act
which was already passed by the state of California uh has established such ranked criteria that are based on those
being used by the state's commission and those very simply I think Russell may have talked a little bit about those
things like like um equal population adherence to the Voting Rights Act adherence to
communities of Interest Etc I'm happy to talk more about that if that's if that's something of Interest
and then finally deep Community engagement right at every stage of the
process both the selection committee at the at the state auditor's office as well as
the commission itself took very seriously our mandate to engage the public given extra time because of the
census delay we were out there doing doing um briefings with folks in educational
sections sessions about what is redistricting and how can you get involved because ultimately people have
no clue what redistricting is I often talk about in addition to all these other hats I wear the biggest hat that I
wear is as a mom of three kids school-aged children if it weren't for my job and my general interest in
community and politics I probably wouldn't know a whole lot about redistricting and I certainly wouldn't
be paying more attention that much attention to it so go out and talk to ptas and go talk to to business groups
that are out there or Kiwanis clubs or whomever Boys and Girls Clubs right there's all sorts of ways that that
Californians gather and it's incumbent upon these commissions to go out and
make sure people know what's at stake and how they can get involved and what I write about in this article is what the
key difference is is that Commissioners on truly independent commissions are you
gooders right we're not political operatives we're folks who probably have
never had our name smeared in the media before that we're going to learn real quick what it feels like to have that
happen to us we are folks who are not beholden to political parties or to
Consultants or to fundraisers or to to other other political interests that may
want to try and sway us if we're beholden to someone it's probably to the communities we live in right it's it's
to walking into the grocery store and having your neighbor say how could you draw the line like that they're like
this is this is our motivation is to be seen as successful
um so I really feel like the switch to an a truly independent redistricting commission is a shift in the model of
who's doing that and really bringing forth folks who want to be there who
want the commission to succeed and finally I just want to talk very briefly about our work here in Los
Angeles of course as as I mentioned um at the top of this this conversation
um You probably all familiar with the tapes that were leaked this fall they were pretty crass pretty ugly
um but for me what I thought was interesting was there wasn't a whole lot of the redistricting conversation that I
actually found that that shocking and that's because a lot of those conversations happened at the state's
commission they just happened in public right so take away all that crassness
that we heard and the same kind of conversation and jackieing for power between different communities all of
that happens right different political interests that are out there including current incumbents are going to try and
weigh in on the process no matter what of course they're going to try to save their own districts but the conversation
around it is going to look very different uh when that conversation is actually happening in public with a
group of people that you know don't necessarily care if so and so gets re-elected
um you know after this um this redistricting cycle we've had plenty of
assembly and senators from the state legislature say I'm not going to go back right for me personally that's that's
not a problem to me right if you want that seat my personal feeling is then you should go out and fight for it and
make sure that you're representing people and be responsive and reflective of those people it's an honor and a
privilege to serve and to represent the people so take it seriously some of the the key components to our
efforts to to reform in Los Angeles Los Angeles does have a commission my understanding it's somewhat like the
commission that exists um in San Francisco it is as political scientists what we would refer to as a
political commission it's a bunch of appointees um so everybody gets an opportunity to
put someone on the commission that the commission tends to be fairly large um large commissions tend to not do so
well because there's so many dynamics of the various individuals that have to go into it and ultimately they're beholden
to the politicians who put them in place in the first place so they are there at their at their behest that is a
political commission by definition States like Virginia and Ohio also use
this model both of those States their political commissions went down in flames they were unable to pass Maps the
courts had to get in involved special Masters were called essentially those
commissions failed um because the model is just not great an independent Commission on the other
hand as we've discussed is really trying to select a body of people who are independent from the politicians who who
uh ourselves you know would have a self-interest in this process and who are independent from the special
interests that also might have um such interests Los Angeles is a
charter City much like San Francisco I know it's one of the individuals during public comment
um asked a question about Charter cities um in Los Angeles we recognize that
changing the charter even if the um 1248 or other other bills moving at the state
level were to pass it's a real question of whether or not this is Charter cities
have to comply with that ultimately elections for the for Los Angeles are
are governed by the charter of the city and therefore after these leap tapes a group
of us Scholars um and I think you all have the link to the LA reform initiative
um and if not I'm happy to share that with you all uh got together and said we're going to need ballot language
we're going to need recommendations based on Research based on what's unique about the city of Los Angeles what the
needs of the city of Los Angeles are and so we came together to to develop a set of recommendations for the city uh for
the people of Los Angeles because we really recognize that even if this moves forward at the state level ultimately
Ellie's going to need to pass something and we think that the time is now we are working you know rapidly to try and get
this on the ballot by 2024 political momentum is real
um you know when when this Falls too far out of people's memories there's just not it's just not going to
happen in addition by passing it now hopefully in 2024 will also have it'll
also allow the city and whichever agencies ultimately will be responsible for the selection process and housing
the commission to actually gear up and and plan for it there's going to need to be additional Staffing right we're going
to need a whole plan on how to actually operationalize whatever is is ultimately
approved by the voters we're actually in a process this summer of of doing some
uh both polling and focus groups to better understand what it is that the voters want and would be willing to
support some of the recommendations I should note that there are other coalitions of Advocates that are out
there we are a group of Scholars that came up with our recommendations we are we really saw ours as just a first step
to start a conversation to be able to provide some of the best thinking from
from throughout the country in terms of some of the research on redistricting
we do propose a commission that structured that would look somewhat different from the state's structure the
state structure of course is partisan in nature right as I mentioned five Democrats five Republicans four Independents we propose a nonpartisan
commission the local elections are nonpartisan in nature people do not run with democrat
or republican on their names uh you know when they're on the ballot um and so we propose a nonpartisan
commission that does not look at at democrat or republican as a as a key feature at least as a selection feature
certainly we might want to know that when people apply but not necessarily as the only feature
um we also recommend a 17-member council we went slightly larger than the state's
commission largely because of the sensitivity uh around ensuring um diverse communities and diverse
voices would have a seat at the table we didn't want to go too large because again we're concerned that that
ultimately these commissions only have about three months from the time census data is released to actually pass some
maps but we also want to be really sensitive to the fact that that there's a lot of conversations in in Los Angeles
right now about diverse voices and ensuring a seat at the table for as many possible communities as possible we also
suggest broad broad eligibility to serve the state's commission requires people to be voters right to be
registered to vote being registered to vote however also requires that you are a U.S citizen
um Los Angeles is home to a significant amount of immigrants and we did not feel
like that should be a barrier uh to participation in this in this process for Los Angeles we also suggest
alternates we have seen other uh commissions really um face some
significant difficulties uh when a commissioner decides that they cannot serve um I think common cause and others are
also pushing the um concept uh that at this point just having some alternates who are a part of
the process much like you often would see in juries who sit through all of the deliberations and should they be called
upon they can kind of move up into um into a voting position as needed and
we were also very specific to identify some options for for various city
offices and the ethics commission that the commission that a redistricting commission might be connected to of
course someone has to run a selection process and someone has to help an independent
commission get started when we first got started we had two
recent retirees who assisted Us in figuring out how State Contracting works
and and how to get our badges so that we could get into our office and to even secure office space for us there are
some nuts and bolts that have to be worked out for these commissions and so therefore we we lay out some options but
given the fact that we hadn't had conversations you know with the L.A County Registrar which might be a great
option so to run a selection process we didn't want to call upon them only
um because we also recognize perhaps the city clerk could play a role or perhaps the ethics commission so we identified a
number of different bodies that are permanent within the city or the county
that could potentially Place some of these roles but we didn't want to you know put put too much pressure on any
one of them at this stage but of course we would need to figure that out for the for a natural ballot initiative in
addition to um to the independent redistricting commission as you might be aware the
city of Los Angeles has faced a number of various scandals encryption so in addition to an
independent redistricting commission we also have recommendations that we developed through this La governance
reform project around Council expansion as well as ethics reforms happy to talk about that if that's of interest but I
really wanted to focus in terms of the independent redistricting commission stuff and that's all I have I'm happy to
take any questions or or engage in conversation fabulous Dr sarwani that
was very helpful and I think covered all of your roles you actually answered some
initial questions that that I had about some of the recommendations that you folks made that
slightly differ from the CRC structure and process and you explain those so
thank you for doing that uh I have one initial question
uh related to one of your slides I I just want to be clear then under
your definition then that San Francisco's redistricting task force would be considered a political
commission is that correct from everything I understand about the San Francisco commission if you have
appointees from members that that the commission will
ultimately be redrawing on behalf of and that is by definition a political
commission right and of course San Francisco has been criticized for its political appointment process and at our
last meeting we heard from uh several former redistricting task force members
that they were in fact encouraged to draw safe districts and felt pressured by their poising authorities and and
other elected officials uh your colleague uh Russell Lee stated at our last meeting that a selection process
focused on impartiality was key to the crc's success yet some San franciscans are skeptical
that we can find impartial people to serve on the task force based on your experience do you agree
you know I I was skeptical actually going into the process and I can still
remember very early on right after I was selected taking that
slightly aggressive not aggressive but um you know I was very skeptical of my
colleagues right I really didn't know you know what persuasion they were from or you know
um if they would want to work across the aisle you just don't know that and because of covid we did not have the
opportunity to even meet in person what I learned however um
was that I honestly I feel like the the commission process was was quite
incredible um because we really did have a group of
as I call them do-gooders right right that that yes that want to be impartial
that want to um give Community testimony the benefit of the doubt
um who could also be critical for sure um we didn't always
see eye to eye in terms of how to achieve a goal but we always kept the same goal uh you know amongst the
commission which was passing Maps right and really striving to work on consensus
to get there right to work out issues you know if we had an issue in Orange County let's work it out before we move
into other parts of the map because if we don't figure out Orange County where it's going to send a ripple effect throughout the rest of of our our map
right um so I really do actually think that
um that that the selection process the the the the
um the multiple layers of selection really did lead to a host of individuals who I
mean I think we might be criticized by some as being somewhat moderate right that that we didn't have extremists
extreme Republicans we did not also have extreme um Democrats we you know are really
liberal folks like I talk about this a little bit in the article that I wrote um it was a field of moderates
essentially right that we we believed in the same things just maybe perhaps uh how we would get there was somewhat
different but people really brought with them a sense of listening to One Another don't get me wrong temper is flared at
times it's a fairly stressful job as just especially when you have Community input
just you know sometimes people screaming at you um but I think actually as as Community
testimony flared um as Commissioners it actually made us closer despite being Democrats and
Republicans we actually didn't think about it that much um uh at a certain point it wasn't
something that that plagued us uh day in and day out because I think everyone came to the table
wanting to engage with one another and I honestly I think it's one of the most incredible incredible processes I've
ever I've ever been a part of where you find individuals who who operate like that that's not necessarily the case in
some of these other states um and actually we have a albiana panel
um on August 2nd if anyone is interested I'm happy to send information where we're also talking with folks from
Michigan who I'll share a little bit about the Michigan process as well Colorado Arizona of course is is highly
contentious um so be largely because they're institutional structure how they're established is very different from from
the process that's used here in California it's why California is often referred to as the gold standard
um for for independent redistricting yeah that was very much my experience as
well I thought that my my colleagues were and
also an incredible experience although we did not quite get to the unanimity
that you did so you guys know did us we did actually hear from the uh a former
chair of the Michigan independent redistring commission and she did point out
the flaws of their non-selection process they're completely random process they
ended up with a couple of folks who we're clearly just showing up for a paycheck and and did not did not engage
and voted against all the maps so um great I would like to now open it up
to my fellow colleagues and I know that they have some burning questions commissioner lavosi I had already motion
to me so go ahead Dr satswani thank you so much for this presentation it has been extremely
helpful and a education on the process that you were involved in my question is
out of a concern I have with the application process
um yes you want to have people who are engaged yes you want to have people who
understand but I'm concerned that sometimes the application process is
such that the commission may become full of people who only have
phds JD's I have a JD I have nothing against those degrees however not
everyone who doesn't have a graduate degree is not intelligent not interested
not capable and many people who don't have those degrees have not been given the
opportunity so how do you think you can have an
application process that weeds out people who are just signing up just for the sake of signing up but it's not a
barrier to people who are intelligent engaged interested but may not hold a JD
or PhD yeah I think that
I think that you know of um the the you know the first eight are
selected through random selection and then we select the final six um and so this issue certainly came up
and was one that we grappled with in fact and saying do we need more lawyers on
this commission the first commission had a whole lot of lawyers including folks who had once worked in
Mall death and advancing Justice when it was about in other places uh maybe we need more lawyers and we actually came
to the decision no we don't we're good we'll figure it out um so we only had one person with a JD I
yes I had a PhD Russell I think he also has a PHD but there were certainly folks I believe that don't have advanced
degrees um the question that we were asked to write on has nothing to do with our
degrees but instead had to do with how can we demonstrate our critical thinking
um I think there's a lot of folks that don't have advanced degrees who who uh
have all sorts of ways to demonstrate in their critical thinking my husband doesn't have an advanced degree but uh
you know he's the an entrepreneur right so I think he has an amazing critical thing you're probably better than I do
um so I think it's a about folks who are just able to communicate that they have
generally kind of some some cognitive skills that they would be able to look at a map and and kind of think
critically about it that's really the the basis of it um in fact I think some of my colleagues
were annoyed that I knew about the Voting Rights Act they were like hey you don't get to own this Sarah I was like
okay I know I know I go um so so if anything I think it's you
know we really did believe like hey anyone should be able to serve on this commission and and our job therefore was
to ensure that our materials would speak to a wide audience so when we went out
and did uh Community engagement sessions it had to be for a broad audience it had to be in multiple languages
um you know I I do think what ultimately happened for us was that if you look at
our demographics um we don't have anyone that's that's you know very low income on the on the
commission I think that that is a function I think that's a problem um we should have folks but I think it's
also a function of the amount of hours that it takes the stipend that is
received we did receive a per diem for days worked um but that's not necessarily enough to
live off of it's not a full-time salary there are no benefits that go along with it so if someone is it you know works
with on temporary employment or something of that nature or in a part-time fashion
um it could potentially be challenging to serve on the redistricting Commission
because it they might not be able to make ends meet so I do think that the per diem peace plays a role in all of
this at the same time you don't necessarily want Commissioners who feel like oh I'm going to get rich off of serving on an independent redistricting
commission it is short-term and not a permanent position so it is a fine
balance but I agree I don't think it I don't think it should have to um require a PhD and my understanding is
other political scientists who applied were often removed from the list feeling
like they They Knew Too Much I think I kind of snuck in at a unique moment I
had actually just finished my PhD in 2019 when I applied I didn't have a lot
of my research published yet it was peer review takes a very long time so I had things in the pipeline but it it wasn't
out yet um so you know I think I kind of snuck in under the radar to some extent and
I'm I'm curious if I were to reapply not that I'm going to but if I were I don't know if I would I would make it through
the selection process at this point because my understanding is other political scientists who have applied
didn't make it through through the process I just have one follow-up do you have
any having um have this experience do you have any recommendation thoughts
on how excuse me other than the stipend how are there ways to get low income
community members to be a part of this because that's really you you hit the
nail head that's really my concern is that we have people who have education who have experience
who have jobs who have means making decisions for everyone else and rarely do we have people who have the lived
experience of what it's like to live on a budget to not have much money to not make ends meet be a part of these
conversations and to me that's not inclusive so what are some of the ways or do you have any thoughts
where we could actually change that yeah I think a couple things right so
one the per diem I think some sort of compensation is essential
um again I don't think anyone who's doing this work is trying to get rich but we have bills to pay for myself even
though I had a full-time job I was working a whole lot of nights and weekends it was very helpful to have the
per diem to help you for child care um I think that so some sort of compensation for sure I kind of have
this question about service on any commissions right um Do cities have stipends that people
who are going to serve on commissions who are lower income can they apply for such as some sort of additional support
for their service given their income I think that that could even apply Beyond redistricting commissions right I don't
know of such such opportunities but I don't think some sort of system like that would be a bad idea like why you
know and looking in for example at the city of Los Angeles can low-income people serve on the ethics Commission
you know maybe we want them to right um I share your concern um that we want to have a broad array of
folks to serve on on on not only redistricting commissions but also others and so perhaps there's something
that we need to be thinking about more broadly but but redistricting commissions could be a way to push this
conversation to have additional compensation specifically for folks who are lower income
um to to to help make ends meet if they're going to provide this service to cities or the state
um in addition I would say Outreach I write a little bit about this in the
piece that I wrote um I was asked multiple times to apply
um a colleague of mine asked me I was getting solicitations from non-profit
organizations that we're running support uh you know support sessions to support
people who wanted to apply to help them figure out how to write their essays and what to say
um there were articles in the L.A times that I that I read about how there weren't any you know the the candidate
pool wasn't very diverse it was predominantly white men um and I thought okay maybe I should do
this right so it took three different hits before I actually put in an application um and trust me along the way I had a
plenty of other things going on so I was like oh am I really going to write all of these essays and I I did and I'm glad
that I did um it's not an easy process but that I think speaks to the need for outreach if
you want a diverse set of of candidates to serve then there has to be diverse
Outreach to get those candidates and I think my experience Alone
um shows shows that to some extent right three different hits I had to get to three different times I had to hear the
message apply in order to actually go out and do that so if we want to have diversity if we want to have low income
folks serving um who's going to go out and talk to folks to actually get them to apply who's going to support them in that
process to say no no you can do it we think it would be great right
um you know are there grants being given to non-profit organizations perhaps to do
some of that work um I think Statewide there has been in the past is there some way to to
yeah in fact during our cycle the Irvine Foundation put three and a half million dollars in to do a lot of that community
outreach and when we kind of did a survey of the of the 2010 CRC about half of us came
through that process where we had support from Community organizations to either help with the application process
or heard about it for the first time from a community organization so that
kind of intentional Outreach was pretty important and was supported by philanthropy the first time
I also wanted to mention in San Francisco we do have a program that we've been doing for jury San Francisco
juries to ensure that we have diverse juries right that supports
low-income folks to get additional financial support if they get chosen to
be on a jury so San Francisco actually does have experience with trying to make
sure okay that low-income community members can participate
in our in our system uh commissioner Parker I'm sure you have
some questions and perhaps I know you've asked questions about the stipend in the past
um yeah thank you very much for this presentation um and actually I just like comment before
I have a question is I think um related to the Outreach that's necessary
to recruit diverse members to a commission is you know is making sure that
um there is Outreach to lots of communities in the process itself right
to make sure that even because no matter how many members you have on a commission they will not be
able to know all the experiences of people and so it'll be so important for whoever that commission is to have the Staffing and support and to be able to
have really robust Outreach during the process
um to gather all of the and put and you know maybe be trained in making sure that they're receptive to that input
right that also seems like an important part um question
um I had a few things when I was looking at your interim report for this La reform project
um I noticed that um that the report said that in you know you all have recommended a 17-member
commission and there was the initial process with the 10 but there was some
debate on the how to select the final seven and there was not agreement and I just wondered what was the debate and
why weren't you able to reach agreements I think that there's they're amongst
some of the members they have there was um a lot of concern at the state level
when the first eight were selected through random draw of which I was a part that there were no Latinos selected
um two thoughts on that and then I will answer your question more directly about
what the debate was um one you know I I don't know if you recall but in my slides I said a mostly
transparent selective selection process the one part of the selection process
that is not transparent at the state level is that once the state auditor's office has developed a list of
candidates that list goes to the leadership of the legislature and
Democrats and Republican leadership get to confer and remove names from the list
I forget exactly how many names it is I don't know if Cynthia you you wrote six
per leader so 24 in total really
goes behind closed doors and removes a whole bunch of names we don't know why that happens we don't know what their
selection process is um and it was in that process there's an
um a report from the Schwarzenegger Institute that looked at this in Greater detail it was through that process that
numerous Latinos were removed from the list which ultimately got us to a place where
there were no Latinos selected in the random selection process which was like a statistical anomaly I think it was
like a 0.1 chance or something like that of not selecting any Latinos and we hit
it right um and so I think that there's some who still are very concerned about that
notion ultimately the first eight of the state's commission worked very hard to
ensure that we selected Latinos as well as East Asians because it was myself and
another South Asian woman who were selected so that was something that we
made I made very clear when when we first started needed to happen
um and ultimately we did that being said it is a process that's left up to those first eight personally
I think because as we talked about because it ultimately Commissioners are these do-gooders who are most responsive
to communities and not to politicians um that uh that Commissioners tend to
want to do the right thing um we were flooded with testimony um about how there were no Latinos and
how they were about no East Asians um and we worked to remedy it
um in particular on that point how so one or two of the members in particular
felt very passionately that they did not want the first 10 Commissioners to
select the final seven um and so we left it the language the way that we did because of that I
however of course among the of the belief that the first 10
um should have that responsibility that in fact they would be the best people to
do it because if you push it back to the city ethics commission those are all
appointees from politicians so who's going to end up in the final seven if
you push back to whoever what other another selection agency
I don't know what what's going to govern how they choose right do they need to go in from city council to get their
funding figured out maybe um so maybe they're going to pull strings for for a council member
um you know then that the public isn't really going to know about it won't be transparent so for me
um I voted on that one a hundred percent that the first 10 Commissioners selected should be the ones
um selecting the final seven others didn't didn't agree with that
um thank you um and I can imagine there's well I'm curious if they had a different suggested process for the final seven
and also wondering um you know to help
um institutionalized institutionalize a process that that would be inclusive that would kind of pull those values on
how do we select those others what sorts of things feel really important to us representing whatever the geographic
location is um that that you know maybe there's some way to suggest I I don't know exactly
how you would do that um but but did they suggest a different process for those final seven or no
no they didn't they said whatever the selection body is they should check it
um I take issue with that because I think any other selection body potentially has
has hidden hidden interests um so I think that leaving it to the
first Commissioners to figure out the Commissioners are going to be most responsive to the testimony that they
receive and I can tell you at least for the city of Los Angeles we have a very engaged
um electorate so if you ever tune into an LA City council meeting my goodness gracious there's plenty of public
comments so any if the first 10 are selected they are going to hear from the
people of Los Angeles about the kinds of individuals they should be selecting it will be for them to to discuss and and
and debate but then that discussion and debate is public if it bounces back to
an ethics commission if it bounces back to some other City agency how will we know
um what process they used to to determine um those other other seven Commissioners
It ultimately could become a political commission again some sort of mixed system which is what they have in Colorado they have half political and
enough independent and it led to a lot of of issues between the Commissioners thank you
um and actually just sort of a follow-up to that um and you talked a little bit about
this especially as you were talking about wanting to um for LA and I know this is La it's not
San Francisco but you know just talking about your La recommendations um you know wanting to open it up to those who may not be registered voters
but you have there's also another listener interim report of both objective and subjective criteria and I
wondered you know I'm seeing here um for those who you know in the public
who are listening who may not be looking at this report the objective criteria is adults over age 18 residents of La at
the time of service and preceding three years disclosure of political donations amount to be TBD
and the subjective is letters of recommendation or some other evidence of community engagement and it excludes
candidates for commission appointments who are folks like um I'll just read through the list
really quickly and then my question for you Sarah is just you want to say anything more about why this is the list
you landed on because it's a little different than it sounds like what is for the series The CRC um the excluded candidates are current
elected office holders former elected office holders former candidates for office city employees non-exempt it says
civil servants can serve appointees are not eligible political appointees by mayor council member other La elected
official registered lobbyist campaign staffers who are paid and then spouse or close relatives to any of the above so
do you have any anything that you can share about why that's the list of criteria and why it's a little different
from CRC yeah we were really thinking it's actually not terribly different from CRC
there are um certainly there's there's disclosures of campaign donations and disclosures of any family members that
are um serving in office or who have ever ran for office
um all of that has to all be disclosed though it may not be disqualifying
um we really recognize that in Los Angeles there is a political class of
individuals um people who serve on a commission with the hopes of running for office one day
people who get appointed who then want to move up in in some other capacity we
are trying to take the politics out of this process so if folks want to run for office one day that's fantastic but you
can't draw your district and then go run for office you can't draw your district
and then have your wife or your partner go run for for office and we wanted to
make that very clear that we want folks who are engaged right if you work at a
non-profit organization of course we want you to apply if you work at the
Jewish Federation absolutely right if you work in South La for sure right if you're an environmentalist definitely
but if you're already on that path of the political class and kind of seeking The Climb
um that's that's going to keep the politics in the in the room and I think one of
the real differences is that in Los Angeles is a big place
um it's not as big as the state of California though I'm from LA County we
were drawing all over the state and parts that I've never even visited before and I had hoped to visit but we didn't because of the pandemic when you
go down to the city level it's much more people are much more closely connected
um to the the governance structures um and that was something we wanted to be very mindful of and to have a number
of of prohibitions um to ensure that that
um we're keeping the politics out of the process to the greatest extent possible Right is it inherently Democratic or is
it inherently political the politics is always going to be there so how do we insulate this commission as much as
possible from the politics that that exist okay thank you
um my two final questions I'll just share them both with you and um and the first one is uh when in one of
the conversations we've been having uh in this committee on the commission is who is the right appointing authority
um you know here in I mean every city is different right like I'm not going to pretend that La is you know the same as San Francisco
um but it's it's hard to decide what that trusted Authority might be here and
um as I'm sure you're aware ab1248 um you know one of the the first listings there would be the ethics
commission which San Francisco as you also have referred to does have that body and there is there are some folks
who think that might not be the right appointing position uh appointing authority and and so my question to you
is because there were some there's a section of the governance reforms related to the ethics commission down in
La um I'm wondering if there is something in all of that research you all have
done that has identified characteristics of a trusted um appointing authority that might be
interesting for us to consider our City attorney has interpreted ab1248's implication on San Francisco that the
ethics commission would be the appointing authority should that pass and and we fall under that so that is my
first question is there anything that would help what are characteristics of a trusted appointing authority and then
the last one is just have you had any response to these recommendations so far since you all published this last month
um that you might have to share and that's it um in terms of appointing authorities we
left it open as I mentioned because we didn't want to put any one at one um
Agency on the hook uh we actually have quite a lot of reservations about the
ethics commission not that we have problems with our ethics commission we actually think it's it's doing a great
job and some of our recommendations are to strengthen the ethics commission But ultimately those are appointees of the
council president of the mayor of the of the um controller of all the elected
officials in in the city um so we can see that there could potentially be problems with that that
being said I think that the permanent staff members of our ethics commission
are very professional have been our our predominantly lifelong public servants
and so one of the things about our ethics commission is that I think ultimately it would be the staff that
does it the commission itself might need to just oversee that process but I think if the staff were the ones to do it it
could see that being okay because those are our lifelong folks and they have been there typically
far longer than the Commissioners themselves um I we also point to some other possible
options the city clerk they I believe are appointed by the mayor that's
probably okay right the mayor um is not being redistricted
um and so therefore much like the governor appointing the state auditor
is at least somewhat removed and then they can identify staffers who actually do the selection process that's how it
operates at the at the state auditor's office they have a panel of three one Democrat one Republican one independent
and they host all of these public meetings to review the applications and to host the interviews Etc we also for
us identify the the Los Angeles County Registrar um that's of course a county level body
um but they are they are the ones who um have the the selection process they
run the selection process already for the Los Angeles County independent
redistricting commission so they're already doing it so is it possible then and they run the elections for the city
of Los Angeles so is it just possible for them to to run that selection process and potentially even use
candidates from both pools if you live in the city and you want to want to be a part of an independent redistricting
Commission maybe you could be in the pool for both County and City I don't know I mean I think there's a lot of pieces to work out there there also has
to be will from some of these agencies to take it on and we recognize that there's some politicking around that
um so we've certainly had a very robust conversation but I think again it's really about selecting an agency where
you can remove as much of the Politics as possible and I think an Ethics Commission in the
case of Los Angeles could be okay but there might be some better options as well your second question I'm so sorry I
didn't write it down can you remind me that yeah sorry I have all these questions the public response been to the
recommendations in the interim reports so far particularly related to redistricting yeah you know there's not been a ton of
response to the independent redistricting component because at this point pretty much all Advocates
um want an independent commission it's just a question of like what are the finer details of how we set it up I think
there's been a lot of folks that love the idea that it's residents um and not uh based on voter
registration um you know I talk about it like I have uh documented students who are fantastic
and fabulous and have lived in Los Angeles their whole life they would make great Commissioners
um but currently can't serve in many capacities so um we've definitely had a very positive
response to that I don't think people buck and I too much at the the 17
members versus 14 members I think people generally feel comfortable with it because the the real key coming out of
those recordings was this simmering tension between racialized communities
so whatever can help us get there I think is generally viewed quite
positively and at this point there's not a lot of approach back to the idea of an
independent redistricting commission we've heard far more about our Council expansion proposals
um than uh than the redistricting Commission because in general everyone's
pretty much on board that we need one it's just a question of what are the the finer details and I think the way we set
it up we you know as as noted right we didn't identify one agency right so I
think there's conversations to be had about where that would actually um lie
thank you you're very welcome any more questions
I have um I have a question uh so the the California commission has a special
super majority requirement for Final maps and other key decisions the 2010 CRC achieve close to a
unanimous decision for the on the maps and of course your commission beat us and did agree um
[Laughter] this requirement affect how you worked
uh with your fellow Commissioners throughout this process
the commission shifted throughout the process
um we had longer than your commission did because you all fought to get us extra
time and we had which thank you but thank you very much um and we faced the census delay
um so we had a lot more time together though our time was not in person
um we got to know each other through some of the adversity we faced
um we had some staffing hiccups along the way and we had to find a new new Chief Council we had to find a new
executive director um I think those experiences actually brought us closer together as a
commission um in trying to sort out the uh the the
census delay right um you know those were those were big
questions that we had to ask ourselves and and I think um you know being I don't want to say
completely inexperienced but but relatively so certainly for me I hadn't sir some of the members like served on
school boards and such things I had not um you know sometimes I think
as individual Commissioners we struggled to just land on a final decision on things
we would talk about it and talk in circles and talk in circles and talking circles um and so sometimes it was challenging
to get to bring the whole group to a point and say okay this is what we're gonna do
um you know but I I um I think over the course of time we
really developed strong bonds I mean I feel like I have 13 friends for life
um that uh in the end of it it wasn't that hard
because we had been committed to work on consensus while we were drawing
um we knew otherwise that we would constantly be circling back and circling back right that there was ultimately
communities of interest that we couldn't keep together in an assembly map but maybe we could do it in the Senate map
right or maybe we could do it in the Congressional map and so so we had to make those compromises but I think we
all came to it um truly everyone brought a lot of professionalism to the process and truly
a real desire to complete the work completed on time to do the best job we possibly could for the people of
California to be responsive to the testimony that we received and to weed
out the more political testimony and you know the more the testimony that was more political in nature which became
very apparent um at especially as the process continued and to talk about that right
we just talked about it openly I don't think Sam locardo really cares about about about splits in San Jose I think
he wants to run for for congress right so so I think we bonded in in many
ways and I think that was was key um because when it came down to it we
didn't have any questions about whether or not we were going to really get maybe
there was one commissioner that was on the fence because there was one community of interest that that wasn't kept together but ultimately it we
didn't we didn't have a lot of concern about passing the maps once we actually got through most of the process we knew
every everyone was really coming along on on that train
um and and for the this localized one that we're that we're um suggesting you know for the city I uh it would be
nonpartisan in nature so I think a majority vote would would be fine I think the super majority model for the
state's commission is is really essential because of the varying parties um that are that are on the commission
yeah so the state we had a special super majority as opposed to just a super majority
um and I agree with you at the at the local level it's non-partisan and there
shouldn't be a special super majority um but there is some question about whether it should be a super majority or
not because uh we heard from members of the very first
redistricting task force which is back in you know 2001 2002 uh as well as the
most recent one that there was a a 5-4 faction that you know voted together
um all the time so there were a lot of 5'4 votes all the way through and
um so that was the reason I was asking you the question because it's very interesting to hear you describe your experience because it's so
much it totally Echoes my experience we also had a commitment to consensus
throughout the process we rarely took votes unless we had to we moved together by consensus
and as a result uh you know we also we're not concerned about passing the
maps eventually since we were kind of bringing everybody along and airing any disagreements and working through them
as we went along but if you know you have the vote the
question is do you have motivation to to work toward consensus anymore
yeah yeah and that's I think that's a fair consideration yeah
so um great I think we've talked about a number of the
issues we've talked about in a previous that we had questions on any anything else you can think of or
no or we can let our guests go she's been so generous with her time and
dealing with all the technical issues so yeah so we really uh really appreciate
your time and sharing the breadth of your experience with us today you are
welcome to stay on and listen to any discussion but I totally understand if
you would like to go back to your go back to your evening so well thank you so thank you so much
for having me it's it's really been a pleasure really fantastic questions that were asked and please let me know if if
you know other questions arise in the future I'm happy to be available too great thank you so much Dr sedron you
have a good evening take care all right so
um any thoughts or Reflections that you'd
like to talk about based on the discussion
no questions I um appreciated the information her
thoroughness and the presentation and it's food for thought and I hope members
of the public will um go back and watch this who are interested because I think she gave us
some really important information I did appreciate her thought about the
appointing authority potentially being staff of the ethics commission I think
that's an idea that it I don't think it is an idea that
resonates with me and that I think could be something that could work here in San
Francisco since there are questions so I I appreciated that and I think
we have to really think about Outreach and the commitment to diversity not just
racial diversity but economic diversity particularly in a city like San Francisco
which is losing its middle class there are lots of things and and
it's easy for it to become stacked with people who have a particular experience
it is very important that low-income people be a part of the process because they're we have low income people who
live in the city and so they should be a part of the process so I would I would like to know more I would have liked to
have heard a little bit more about how we do that but I do like her idea which
you informed me about our jury system which I think people who are at a
certain income range maybe they don't get a stipend people who are at a lower income range perhaps they get more
um that's what Equity is yeah everybody gets what they need not everybody gets the same thing so
um I found it very informative she's obviously very enthusiastic about the work she did and I read the article
thank you for passing that on and the article is posted for the public too yeah I think that um
I'm interested to hear what people think because it was just recently published
so I'm interested to hear what others think on that yeah just to respond
um uh I did think of one more question that I'm now going to have to email her uh I
was I thought of it while she was talking and then I forgot to write it down but for example when we heard from Long
Beach they have a very interesting selection process where they have I think it's um one judge and one Lawson
yes and one yeah so it's actually um you know a kind of a mixture of people
from different walks of life and expertise yeah and they form the
selection entity so um and I think we need to practice using
the term vetting and selection entities that's right it's like we're getting away from appointing authorities
um so uh and I wonder if some combination of
um you know people representing different agencies approach to the city uh would my might be you know the best
thing for San Francisco because we are having challenges even Among Us
having a strong opinion on whether it's one or the other and I I think there's also maybe some value in thinking about
uh are there different agencies that are assigned different parts of the
process like I could see for example there are certain agencies that are much
better at Outreach particularly to marginalized communities and maybe there would be a
different agency that's responsible for the Recruitment and building the candidate pool as opposed to the vetting
as opposed to the vetting and selection because for that we need an agency that can run a process
you know that's demonstrated they can run a process that's demonstrated they can run a process if they can follow criteria that they can vet people
against that criteria um and and choose the 40 most qualified
right if we were to follow the state legislation and that may be a different
set of skills that's a really good point and so I think we don't have to limit ourselves to just
thinking you know who's the one right that maybe we can be a little creative
and think about who has the best skills like we've talked about how Okay the
elections commission's nonpartisan that's already a step in the right direction but we don't have the Staffing and the resources to run a process right
right that it would be difficult for us but the Department of Elections run stuff all the time right and they do
Outreach all the time there are a couple of agencies the elections being one of them that that's
an example of one that could work one that could work for outreach in particular
another thought that I had this is something that I brought up when voters not politicians approached me about what
to do in Michigan and they said yeah we want to copy California but we don't like your
we don't like your selection process because we don't trust anyone we don't trust anyone in government no one we
don't trust anyone to to be the selection to be the betting uh Group which is why they have none other thing
but that's like they went way on the other end of things and so you know yeah
there should be some process ground I think um I like the idea of
I mean that's Innovative what you're what you're proposing is to think instead of thinking as we do tend to
think in cities there's one body that needs to do it having a body that is or
having a split responsibility in the process I think could be very valuable as well as
um improving the responsibility too right and and also making it more Equitable in
the sense that you have um particularly one group that would be
a part of the Outreach to do the Outreach and making sure that communities and and and stating we are
making a concerted effort to build the pool build the pool in a way that it has
not been built and to make sure that people who traditionally don't participate in these processes
participate and one of the other things so we had the same problem at the 2010 commission
with everyone was you know pretty educated right and in
fact the the California state auditor actually said to us you know we were required to look at these different
diversity factors and we really tried but when you have all these requirements
you end up getting certain kinds of people I mean I often described it as as
applying for graduate school right I mean writing all these essays getting letters of recommendation
um you know filling in this very complicated application I mean it's no wonder we went from 36 000 to 5 000
immediately when and that's a barrier it's a huge balance barrier right yeah and so so when I was talking to the
folks in Michigan about what could they do to encourage people who you know
didn't have the advantage of a fine education and yet we're still you know involved in their communities and would
be great commissioners engaged yeah my suggestion then was take out the essays I said make them make
them videos right because it takes or make that an option yeah I mean it takes a certain
level of Education to feel comfortable writing a set of essays and I think
that's a barrier and if people can communicate verbally that's that's all
that's required on the commission is that you communicate you listen you're a good listener you can listen to the
public and the community and understand what they're saying and that you can work with your fellow Commissioners to
come to hopefully a consensus but to come to a decision right and and you
know and have the critical thinking uh abilities to provide a rationale for why
you're proposing the map look one way versus something else and be able to communicate and discuss this with your
fellow Commissioners it does not require you to write a graduate level essay and so I felt like that was a barrier that
was unnecessary in the California process and so that was my recommendation to folks in
Michigan if they wanted to broaden the pool right is to not require written
essays to give people the opportunity to do video essays instead to talk about to talk on
you know anyone can make a video these days and talk about why we should believe they have the ability to be
impartial right what are the examples of critical things I mean instead of having to write which I think is a barrier I
mean how many essays did you have to write I think we had to write 5 we had to write one each on each of the
requirements the ability to be impartial uh an ability to the critical thinking
skills uh understanding of California's diversity
I mean they weren't long but they were still essays yeah I mean if anything I
think the application limited how long they could be uh right but the point is I think there were and then one about
your background and why you wanted to be on the commission and I don't remember what the other one but I think there were five essays and then there was an
optional sixth one and of course because you know because I'm me I wrote the sixth one too but my point is that it
was right it is something that attracts a certain kind of person it will feel like a barrier to other people and and
people with a certain skill set I mean it's just that's just the truth um and and I think we do as a society have
a bias towards people who have education as being more intelligent and being more capable and maybe more seriously not not
everyone but I think generally that's a bias we have absolutely so we tend to
listen to people who have graduate degrees Yeah so I think the idea is great I think I I like the idea of a
combination um I applied for Fellowship that I finished in April it was a academic a
school Academic Year fellowship and part of the application process was video and that was not comfortable for me so I
thought it was because I'm much more comfortable right writing an essay and
you know but it could be an option but it was it was a requirement to do both
and I think it was good for me just on a personal to kind of get me out of the
analytical part so I think there's some value to I do think there should be some essay I
don't think it has to be five um but I do like the idea of video because we are in an age of
people being able to articulate and voice their opinions via video and that and I think that's something that should
be valued so I definitely think that that's an idea that that would would be
beneficial and knock down some barriers for people who may not have considered
it well and also her comment for Los Angeles that they are only requiring a
residency like for a certain amount of time rather than being a voter for a certain amount of
time um I think that's interesting in San Francisco we allow you know
um in School Board elections right we allow non-citizens to vote in School Board elections
um not all of the members of the last redistricting task force were citizens in fact so that would be consistent with
what we've always done in San Francisco so I think that is absolutely something that you know we should think of to
broaden the pool in San Francisco um yeah I I think
um we could probably spend a lot of time talking about um how exactly how the selection process
works but maybe when we get to recommendations eventually there is just some component of that that suggests
um a way to um options uh for if there is some sort of
a talk about your critical thinking skills or whatever that it's not necessarily essays it's other ways to
demonstrate that you have the ability to make an argument and to communicate with your fellow Commissioners that's really
important and there should if there is that level of selection criteria because I know there are some who don't like
just the completely random right because then you just don't know what skills that you're going to have so if you're selecting skills that people might have
it's the ability to communicate with other people that's really important and right like not everybody can not
everybody's good at doing that in writing or wants to but they're very effective communicators and so finding some way to get that I think just having
some kind of a statement could be useful um just to also just related to the
um the selection agencies and things like that I I have had several folks suggest
to me that which I think is is really fair is that you know San Francisco has
a um a partially political appointment process right now right if there's two
of the appointing bodies are political um in nature and then one is
um one is not but the thing that's good about that is the diversity you know that it's spread out it's not just one
appointing body you know and so it's just an interesting idea of having
selection multiple selection and if you can find a trusted selection
body or agency then maybe that's not
necessary but that that trust thing and so sometimes diverse diversity or
collaboration and you know agencies helps with trust for people because it's not localized just to one
um so it's you know it's an interesting they consider I think some folks have made that suggestion of the state legislation as well
um and so the one thing I would caution is that uh you know I like the idea of using different agency strengths in in
working out this vetting and selection process and I also am wary of making it too complicated you know like yeah
well the state process is cool and our city is not always good at coordinating its agency's responses and work doesn't
mean that we shouldn't expect it but I just think we would just be careful about not making anything terribly complicated
um but collaborative sure if they're like two agencies that could work together that could be interesting so yeah I think I would like to I'm
sorry Cynthia I'd just like to add to commissioner Parker's um
comment I think another skill set will would have to be a good listener
um and really emphasizing that because it's about listening to the community
it's about listening to the community and it's about listening to your fellow Commissioners as well so I think that
would have to be I think that should be something that should be a recommendation along with the ability to
communicate yeah it's interesting uh this was in the catch-all uh category of
relevant analytical skills and I think that when the um this the state auditor
was the one who put together the specific regulations on exactly how they were going to to
you know to choose uh and they were looking for analytical skills in terms
of understanding data right because you have to look at census data and you have to be able to interpret it and draw
conclusions from so they were thinking of that but then they realized when they watched
us how important the teamwork piece was and the collaboration and the ability to
to you know to listen to each other to to be willing to the impartiality piece
was the willing to change your mind kind of part but um so I noticed when they started
recruiting for the 2020 commission this time they added the teamwork piece and other stuff to the list of relevant
analytical skills because of course that's key it's it's it it actually was very very important but the fact that a
totally different group of 14 citizens you know went through this
process 10 years later and had very similar experiences is a little bit like
encouraging to me you know that they um they face some of the same challenges came up with some of the same Solutions
and of course not a competition but they did beat us and they it did get a
unanimous decision um okay um
I think that's uh any other thoughts on this I wonder if I would
just like to say thank you commissioner die for um bringing Dr saswani
um I that was fantastic and and extremely helpful so thank you yeah and I hope it's helpful to members of the
public too to provide some perspective on this uh I wanted to provide a couple
of updates uh as we've met we promised to monitor the state legislation while
we continue our educational efforts so both ab1248 and ab 764
are making their way through Senate committees they've both been through at least one and they're on to the next one
I did want to let the public know that the League of Women Voters and I met
with president peskin and supervisor Melgar last week to answer any questions
they had about the elections commission's work today and
um and and the and the state legislation and we provided all the same information
that has been provided to the public you know links to all of our past educational sessions and testimony from
from experts uh and they will be working with the city attorney on drafting specific
legislation on which the public can provide input during their process and
they're committed to do a community input process to consider all these different
possibilities any updates from you guys since the last
committee meeting I would say they only update I have is a
personal update um our last fierce
committee meeting I suggested that we stop we take a pause and that we get
more information from the community and that we wait to see what happens with
the state legislation I've been on vacation for the past two and a half weeks from my day job and so I've had
some time to relax and reflect and I want to move forward
the more I think about it the more I understand
part of the reason that I had that reaction to be completely blunt and
honest was some of the reaction that you experienced and the direct
statements about you being a racist some of the statements that we as a
commission needed to Garner trust after our vote to open up the process for
director arts and I got a little I got a little nervous and I realized that this
is very important to fairness in elections fairness and
representation and that it is absolutely our purview as members of this commission to make
recommendations to the legislative body the Board of Supervisors to move forward
with this the time is now because the current
Board of Supervisors do not have a vested interest in the outcome
and that's the most important piece and that my fears I'll be honest being the
only black commissioner it's easy to insult black people and
black women and so I've I felt a little fear but I've thought about it and
this is really important and this is a place where we can make a difference in
making sure that this city represents all communities
um and when you I did a little history of our district elections and what happened and why we moved from district
election at large and I think there's an agenda
um from other groups to kind of attack us and I want to say to you
commissioner die that um I've got your back and I am so happy and
grateful that you asked me to be a part of this process and we'll deal with what comes but I think
we need to move and we need to make these recommendations ultimately obviously it's up to the people
um in how they vote it's up to the Board of Supervisors based on our
recommendations but we need to move because time is of the essence and we
don't have 10 years that's a myth we need to put
the process in place to have a independent redistricting task force in
the future so I just wanted to publicly state that to you as committee members
that I I want us to move forward I want us also to educate the public to
continue to educate the public and I want us to hear from as many different
voices as possible from the public I don't know how else we can do that
I don't know if we have the authority to put our information in other places so
that we get more opinions from the public there are more people interested and we're hearing
from a few I welcome those voices but they're a minority so I'd like to hear more so I definitely wanted to to make
that clear and I hope that makes sense thank you thank you commissioner lavalsi
um any thoughts before we take some I think I think public comment for the site yeah maybe just a question a couple
questions um so um commissioner die when you said that um
supervisor present pestkin and supervisor Melgar are going to be working with the city attorney to draft legislation when you met with them did
you let them know that the commission doesn't have recommendations yet as of yet and so do you know what they're
moving forward with um well I I believe they're going to
you know look at 12 48 and 764.
um I also recommend that they look at the Long Beach measure DDD
as a potentially model legislation
um I don't know what their time frame is we just wanted to make sure that they had enough time to think about it
and to plan for a public input you know process
we were you know we we shared that there are some items that I think
are probably no-brainers um I don't see San Francisco getting rid
of a Citizens body for example um but uh you know for example this
question of a vetting or selection Authority is very much an open discussion
uh which I don't think they know the answer to either
so um so I think that they're just kicking it
off to start drafting something because they just need to get the ball rolling
if they want to consider an early date in 2024 or if they want to take more
time and I'm like I said it's their process right so but
yeah that's kind of where they they left it that they wanted to get the ball
rolling and start talking to people and thinking about it
okay um thank you and then um commissioner lavalsi so I just want
to make sure um when you were just sharing what you where you have arrived over these last
few weeks so so you're saying you don't think we should wait until there's a result with ab1248 before making
recommendations to the board okay and that um close perfectly into my
question that I wanted to ask after your question with commissioner Parker is
in your meeting commissioner died did they say they wanted a timeline or some
some to some guidance from us or within a certain period of time I think they would love to have guidance from us but
I think that they were very clear that they also don't need it guidance from us uh but it would be appreciated yeah I
mean they know we've been studying this for over a year so obviously they'd like to know if we came to any conclusions
um but you know if the full commission you know doesn't feel ready right you
know they have a schedule that they want to work with you know so I think to
preserve all options they wanted to get the ball rolling
um I don't know what they will decide in terms of the actual timing I think that
you know they wanted to be able to think about all these things and I'm sure they'll be having a lot of discussions and then
they will have a public process that allows everyone to come and speak to them and and and
help them decide what is best for San Francisco uh
but I think as you most eloquently said yourself commissioner Parker I mean
everybody agrees that the the process could use Improvement so on that there's a lot of agreement
so uh and I think you know
I think this was brought up uh at our last full elections Commission meeting the reason that that we don't have as
much time as we think uh for example just to tell you what happened in California the voters First
Act was passed by the voters in 2018 and it took multiple tries to get it on
the ballot so you can only imagine how many years good government groups
had to work to actually get it be to be to be a ballot initiative that we as
voters voted on in 2018 and then the California state auditor
was a bunch of accountants right was completely surprised that they were they
were chosen as the vetting and selection Authority and all of a sudden had to learn how to do PR and an Outreach
process and all this other stuff which is why I think we can think more critically about who actually is more
naturally like you know has those skills that we could do better
um and they took 18 months to draft the legal regulations
and then they took another eight months to run the selection process right and
then we only had seven months to actually draw the lines that's because it took so long for them
to go through the bureaucratic steps of how to interpret the Constitutional Amendment operationalize it put staff in
place you know hire staff to do things that accountants were not naturally
designed to do um and I think we have to account for the timing will take our Fair City to
implement anything though so anyway
um like I said uh I think it would be a shame if we didn't
feel ready to make recommendations after spending so much time in a pretty methodical process that a time that has
exceeded the length that the redistrating task force did their job at this point
um but uh it's also really important that people understand we are not trying
to rush this we have been taking our time we are trying to make sure that members of the public who have not been
engaged with us for the entire year have the ability to catch up right why we are taking a pause that's why we are working
really hard to try to get the links on the website and we at least you know have it in a place that's much more
available it's very unfortunate that we had this you know website platform switch in the middle of this that it
made a lot of our previous content not so available so we we want to answer any
questions that right the public have so that um that they understand the rationale
for this right and I think that's that's really important that we've done a lot
of work there's a lot of work to do and that as a body that is
policy making body recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on this particular
type of um regulation is I think very much
something that we can do um well appreciated
they were very clear to say that they didn't need right they didn't need enough recommendations that they also
believe that there is room for a lot of improvement in the process but that they can leverage all of the work that we
have done regardless okay and either way for their own timeline reasons they
wanted to get the ballroom well because you know until you know anyone can have
a real conversation it's not unlike redistricting I mean we didn't get really useful actionable Community input until
we put out draft Maps right and then people threw Tomatoes right and then we got very very clear you've got the line
wrong move it over one street I mean then we got very you got three feedback feedback and I think we've been talking
about you know these these reforms at a conceptual level until
we see what uh our what the legislative
body wants to put forth as a first draft they're not going to get very specific
responses either so I think they're trying to do that so that they can start having that conversation
uh but you know we will continue to do everything we can to support the public
and being able to participate actively in that community and prep process that they will run and I think that's our job
is to make sure people are informed enough and understand
what's behind each of these reforms what it's intended to accomplish whether it has accomplished those things
or not in other you know another jurisdictions uh and whether it's
something that they believe therefore would work or would not work in San Francisco right and I think that's the
kind of actionable feedback that would be useful to the Board of Supervisors as they try
to draft something uh why don't we take public comment now
and then we can talk a little bit I know we've talked a little bit about
commissioner Parker raised a point about um
probably discussing some talking points so that our role as a elections commission is really clear versus the
Board of Supervisors and also you know why we're taking why we took this on
um and uh we've all started to get some media inquiries so we just want to make sure we're on the same page right in
terms of representing what our committee does and what the status of our work and timeline that we see ahead okay
absolutely uh and the full commission of course is on recess for for August
we can continue to um uh to have another meeting again for to
bring the public up to speed to address any questions that they have uh but the full commission won't be able
to move on this until September anyway which I think will work really well
because I know there's more committee meetings at the Senate before it gets to
the senate floor so the timing might actually work out perfectly in terms of the Senate being done with their peace
um on or around the time that we will be meeting as a full commission right and I
think for us to come up with a with a timeline that
we could reasonably agree upon and whether
the commission as a whole agrees on making recommendation I think that's something we
yeah I think it's going to tell well anyway because I think that the Senate has to be done with their work in in
early September or second week of September somewhere around that it's I think it's right before our full
commission meeting so we will know how the Senate has acted so at that point we
will know how our legislature has so we will know how the Senate has acted we don't know if the governor signs or
vetoes right right and so there would be an opportunity should the full Election
Commission want to to take action before the governor signs or doesn't sign
of okay so why don't we take some public comment right now uh on this agenda item
and then we can we can go over some talking points after this so with that
um the public commenter in the room
Mr Birdo we would love to hear what you thought of the presentation today and in
particular if there are specific items that you would be interested uh topics
you might be interested in hearing more about in the future good thank you
um let me start my timer here so I know how much time I've got we have a timer uh
there we go um thank you for having the guest from La uh
um a couple of things uh you know the the thing that jumped out at me is is that
she talked about political momentum being real that's what her comment was political momentum is real and she said
that because she said Now's the Time now is the time to capture that political
momentum so let's all just understand that that's why we're on the time frame
that we're on it has nothing to do with supervisors uh not being they're not
voting on this who will be in office in 2030 there's a number of reasons why that's not a case can't make it right
now I've only got three minutes but I'll be making that case with you uh commissioner if you if you like
um and another another uh thing we hear from uh the chair uh is
the argument that we have this looming um imposition of the boilerplate from
the 12 48 uh how that's going to take away
our flexibility to craft our own uh redistricting rules and you know
that's that's nonsense too but I've got to just use the word nonsense because I only have three minutes here I'd love to
have a conversation with you so if that sounds harsh pardon me for that um
but we saw today again that it's the political momentum and that is short-circuiting
uh process uh and people talking we can't have a forum of me and a few other
people we're not doing that I can't give you uh the kind of delivery that we had
today from your guest in three minutes here it's just uh it's there's a bubble Happening Here and
you're not letting your bubble get penetrated and it's hurting this community
um another note that I made it's just interesting we're using
political momentum as a reason to urgently expedite the de-politicizing of
redistricting I chew on that for a minute that's what's happening here okay
uh and also finally um it was the speaker put uh the process
that we have here in San Francisco in the same bucket as the process they have down in La is far different down there
they've got 20 plus council members that each individually hand pick a a
um uh advisory uh commissioner each of them have a hand-picked one and so
there's 20 or 20 so advisory they draw the map they turn it into the council
and the council kicks them out of the room and then they draw their own boundaries that's what happens down
there we don't have anything like that up here we have nothing like that yet it was conflated
um and that's not fair thank you thank you Mr burravel
uh let me check if we have any commenters online I see a hand
um great uh Mr Arden go ahead
yes wonderful thank you this is Lauren gerardin with the League of Women Voters
of San Francisco with you at every meeting as we have been for this whole process
thank you for having what a what a wonderful guest um so much great best practices and
Lessons Learned not just at the state level but also in Los Angeles
um you know there's so much that San Francisco can benefit from that other body that other jurisdictions have
learned um and you know the league has also been thinking about a multi-department
selection body served by staffers at those departments so I like how aligned
we are um there are agencies that were in
departments that were deeply involved in redistricting that immediately come to mind they most of them are mentioned in
the final report that the redistricting task force put out there even if they are not a part of the vetting process or
the selection process they could certainly help with Outreach or even in just helping other departments scale
their efforts identify resources language translation of things
um a lot of things that went wrong with with redistricting could be better in the selection process with the right
bodies involved and yes uh you know if you're looking at requiring people to be
registered to vote the elections commission decided to not require that during its process it was part of the
discussion the recordings out there and that is uh something the league supported them and supports now for for
various reasons um and a much longer time frame um the league we are looking at the timelines
and you know that myth of 10 years um thank you for pointing out the myth
um we don't know 10 years looking at the Timeline very carefully as we have been doing um depending on when we actually start
the selection process when the bodies have to start allocating resources and budgeting for those resources and staff
people budgeting could need to start as early as 2027.
um possibly 2028 depending on when that selection process starts and possibly earlier there's a lot of machinations to
the budgeting process that are not uh clear to even those of us who watch the process from outside
um and that's just four or five years from now um that's hardly a lot of time for
legislation to get passed by voters and then as has been discussed for all of
the planning to start happening in the Departments that we'll have to take on this glorious task of finding our our
next independent redistricting commission members um and you know if anyone has any
questions about anything that the league has uh said online or here we have an email address we welcome questions the
email address is redistricting at lwvsf.org you can also find that on our
website we are volunteers so it make it take us some time to answer questions we
wouldn't want to pick any of the task forces time answering questions that people have of US during your meeting
thank you so much thank you Mr Arden
all right and is there anyone else
I do not see any other hands so I'm going to close public comment for this
item but we uh fellow Commissioners can continue to discuss a couple of
um a couple of common talking points on how we talk about uh
this item I have thought about this a little bit and
I thought it might be easiest if we let me propose a structure
and see what you guys think that we do what why who how
uh when and why now set of points
and have one or two points under each one do you think that would be I want to
keep this simple and hopefully very clear
uh I like that structure I like that
structure um so that's I think they would answer most
questions yeah that's that's what I was thinking is like have enough talking points that it would cover most
questions that the public or the media might have uh
so for what we're talking about best practice
structural and process improvements best practices for independent or
independent redistricting yeah
capture that
okay about to die
um and I think it we may want to be specific on
what the improvements are intended to do I think it'd be useful to mention that
we want future redistricting task forces to have
qualified members representative of the city's demographics
and free of political conflicts of interest that's something we feel comfortable
I mean in in Broad Strokes I think so I think that there's the uh my understanding of this process
from the beginning has been I mean it's laid out in there in the plan right and the way that you interested introduced
it even at the beginning at this meeting you know is sort of a succinct is that our job as a committee is to determine
recommendations for improving the redistricting process which there's some you know in um implied you know
Independence to that um uh for San Francisco and bring those to
the full elections commission who will vote on recommendations to refer to the Board of Supervisors and like that's
sort of the simpleness of it so I would say probably somewhat simple because we could start to get into what are actually recommendations on the
components redistricting Fair um which I think there is a I think there's a general feeling definitely on
our commission I would feel as fair to say is we want it to be an independent process independent that feels fair and
then beyond that there's you know um while they might be very straightforward and we probably will all
agree on that on some of those anyway you know probably not getting into recommendations in the description I agree all right so so we're good with
independent um and then if we move on to
why um I felt there are a couple things that are important to say one is to
acknowledge that San Francisco was a Pioneer I mean San Francisco was 10 years ahead of the state
in establishing a citizen's body but
but it doesn't adhere to most of the best most of the established best practices
uh and that I think commissioner Parker was very eloquent that the last elections
committee commission meeting to talk about that it is it is part of our mandate to ensure right free fair and
functional elections um can I make a recommendation I think to
commissioner Parker's point I think you may be staying in that lane
um and I I hear and and agree in many ways
that you know San Francisco being the city that we are Innovative but I don't think
that that should be a part of this these talking points I think it
should be along the lines of it's part of our purview to ensure fair and free
elections we can take out the yeah I I like the historical context because I I
want to acknowledge the fact that San Francisco was actually San Francisco is not La it does have a
citizen's body um but it's not necessary so if we want
it to be briefer I think stating that as part of our mandate that we believe Fair
representation is not possible without Fair districts
that are inclusive of everyone but that's part of the free and fair
part of our mandate and the other thing under why and well
actually I would just say the general um I think redistricting including our San
Francisco redistricting task force the Mandate was to get to one person one vote like even simply saying something
like that you know it's just it's simple it kind of encapsulates I agree you know it's not controversial I think not in
San Francisco right that we want one person to have one vote in the city and that that is why we think it is relevant
to the elections commissions um perfume um to come up with some recommendations on
best practices okay um do you feel like it's necessary to to
note that this initiative was conceived in response to
public concerns about the redistricting task force this a year ago or not not necessary in
in our talking points yeah because it's not like we just decided to do this one day it was actually because the public
came to us and said do something okay go ahead go ahead yeah okay
um well so so here's some thinking that I had when I requested us to talk about this um this item was we do have the
redistricting plan document that does give it a lot of context it does and so I don't know that we necessarily need to
repeat that I think that what might be most helpful is that I get calls and
emails regularly saying where are you on the what are you doing and what are your report when they right and so they they
uh they're asking they don't we don't have to so we have the contacts there and so I in my mind these talking points
are a little bit more about what what we started with is that you know this like our we we see our role as determining
recommendations for improving the redistricting process um the independent redistricting process in San Francisco and bringing that to
full elections commission who will then bring it to the Board of Supervisors uh recommend that to the Board of
Supervisors and you know that we believe in our purview because free for professional elections that sort of
thing but than getting to the and also actually within that I think clarifying
um we said what our role is maybe also once again stating what we do not think our role is because people I still get
questions on that people think that we are writing the legislation and we are writing a city a charter Amendment and
we are not and we need to make that very clear that that is not what we see our job is and that once it's handed off it
is no longer on our plate we we do not want to we cannot all of those things that's good to clarify so I thought that
would go under who I was just going to say the rules and so about it so what I
was going to suggest is something like the elections commission has a forum to discuss and recommend appropriate
reforms to our legislative body the Board of Supervisors and will continue to inform the public so they can
meaningfully participate in shaping any final reforms that's what we see our role is and then we can say the San
Francisco elections commission is not a legislative body right what we are not and is making recommendations to the legislative body
is and or would like to make recommendations is
limited to um and making these recommendations we're
going to do some wordsmithing after this I will try to capture all of this and then we can we can word Smith it
um but so that's under who so we got what why and who now
and then how um I would propose that we say because
the redistricting Task Force recruit was created by Charter Amendment any changes must also be made by amending the
charter because some members of the public have made comments asking why are we pushing a charter Amendment well it's
because there's no choice that it's in the charter so the only way to change it is to amend a charter so just to be
clear that it has to be through the charter amendment process there's no other way to deal with it because it's
already in the charter right I would just be clear and and keep it succinct yeah to that
um and then uh also under how a majority of the border and some of this is in the
this is also in the project plan so help me make it shorter a majority of the Board of Supervisors can refer our
Charter Amendment to the ballot for approval by voters and then this is something that was in
we don't need the second sentence if you feel like it's covered in the in the project plan that the elections
commission chose this route because the Board of Supervisors is better resourced to run a public input process
say as opposed to mayoral referral or um or because of the they're the
legislative body or we don't need to say anything about it I I just threw that in there because
there are multiple paths for a charter Amendment and I I don't think we need that level of detail I don't know what
you think commissioner Parker I think that it's in the plan already it isn't a plan so I think we maybe just pulling it
out okay repeat it okay um but along with the how um something that I was wondering maybe
um could just be again a succinct sentence just saying that we have been in will continue to identify best
practices from those who have been close to an impacted bypass redistricting efforts as well as from field experts
like the how are we getting to those recommendations you know just a sentence and and could
also say I have written in my thoughts to share was and members of the public elected officials and colleagues can
review those past presentations by going to the hyperlinks in the plan and there's a hyperlink and just go there that way we're not being repetitive in
these right points good idea to seek um and have the excuse me commissioner
Parker just want to be clear and have the hyperlink to the plan in that statement right no talking points okay
correct could you repeat it again we will continue to seek uh sure um I can also I typed it out I can also
send it to you um we have we have been and will continue to identify best practices from those who have been close
to and impacted by past redistricted efforts meaning task forces in the community yeah as well as from field
experts all members of the public elected officials and colleagues May review past
presentations on this topic via hyperlinks in this document which we would hyperlink okay to the latest screen you will email that to me
fabulous okay so that's uh three points under how and then when just to be super
clear uh the charter can be amended as early as 2024 and then I thought we
could add if passed ab1248 would require elimination of San Francisco's political
appointment process by January 1st 2030. so that's the bound do we want to
because we because that legislation is going through its process
um and we don't know what the outcome is going to be I'm not sure
I said if passed okay they've passed and signed I don't know
um I want to sorry we could add another bullet on the web I'm just trying to think of the status of it right
I have a couple of thoughts but I what I do think is important to say is the timing of a ballot measure related to
this is up to the Board of Supervisors very good not us right and
um making that clear but I and and I'm wondering also if you were thinking chair die that
um like I think there are some other when in Timeline things that people want to know about not just when something will go to the barter but the the I
can't even speak anymore um to the ballot yeah but there's other thing moments in our process people want
to know about yeah well I think part of our timeline was actually a little confusing
and you know we had tried to put a timeline together which again was just a
proposed timeline because it's up to the Board of Supervisors but it at least tried to indicate some steps like that
drafting has to happen first and that the board has should we add some those
steps are different from a timeline or when yeah because there's so how a
bill becomes law kind of documented from the Board of Supervisors that we can we can link to but again that's the
board's process not ours so I don't know that it's our responsibility to do that
um so I think I think that that is we could put we could put that but I think that the important message there is that's up to the Board of Supervisors
you know and I think we were talking about putting the um the timeline in the appendix to make it clear like that's not our timeline that the board is going
to do that but what to go back to what like what our committee's job is that is
to come up with recommendations so I think that should be part of our the when is our job is the recommendations
right it's not the getting it to the ballot our job is the recommendations right and so maybe that's a thing we
need to focus on here and when yeah when should we are our recommendations and
are we I'm not sure we're able to but I'm not sure we're able to answer that right now but I agree we should answer
it at some point but um but I think also we should to commissioner Parker's point
s narrowly tailor that to our recommendations yeah will be
whenever whenever we feel ready to vote on it well but but I think we sorry go ahead
go ahead I think we need to be specific because I think that that's really important for the public
and since these are talking points to the public we need to be specific about
when we think that might be or say that we don't know but we will have a timeline or a a time for
our recommendations yeah maybe we can shoot to answer that question at the next meeting because I
think that we can or we can uh do you mind if I share my thinking about these
next couple months um I I might be in the minority here at
this point um but I when I'm thinking about the timeline of our work
um to me there's a bit of a we heard from the public and we wanted to slow down the process to include more voices
we're realizing some people are just joining the process they didn't know it was started a year ago so there's so that is happening to educate folks and
us um in that so that we can make responsible recommendations um and then also you know in my opinion
we do wait to make recommendations until after AP 1248 and the reason why I think
that there are lots of things that I support in that bill and that we likely all support in that bill and the reality
is is the bill passage or not not passing has direct implications on San
Francisco and it seems impossible to know I mean they're slightly separate like recommendations can exist
regardless of State legislation I recognize that and
if it passes let's just say it's amended in another senate committee and then it passes then we'll see that but we have
to see what the governor does and if it does pass we understand from the city and turn the city attorney's analysis
that it will have implications on San Francisco and so what would go to the ballot and what we might recommend exactly to the ballot is just it's going
to be different depending on what happens with that bill I mean we could make recommendations but we'll probably
have to we might at least maybe not have to but might have to change them
um and so in my mind it makes a lot of sense to continue developing our recommendations on
um individual components of redistricting reform be working on that parallel so that when we get to the
moment when we know what's going to happen those 12 48 we can say and hey you know most of these are in
there and it's passed and so we might recommend that you
write you know amend the city Charter to be compliant so that we don't have to exactly follow 1240 but it's mostly
there and then we'd like to suggest this one change or or whatever but it is
um so in my mind we're not making recommendations to the commission and therefore the Board of Supervisors until
there is a determination on ab1248 and that in the meantime in late March or
March I don't even know what month we're in so in late August that we would have another meeting
um and start to walk through every component right and that we talked about this and you know just going through kind of issue by issue here is here are
the here's the component here's some ways to think about it here's how past redistricting task forces in San
Francisco have thought about it here's some other presentations we've heard similar to this chart that commissioner
die has already developed but a little easier to understand and read and to discuss and that we take public comment
on each of those items as we go through so that we're like oh everybody's in agreement on X Y and Z we are not in
agreement on these and so at least we've identified where there's not agreement and we can work on those and then the
next time we meet is after we know what actually happens with the bills so we can make a final correct that's my thinking yeah so a couple of thoughts I
don't think we're really that far apart because I think the timing is going to end up working out anyway I I think that
um commissioner Parker suggested this and this will be for the next agenda item on
agenda items for future meetings but uh the idea of walking through you know
with the public one by one on the major reports I think that is worth doing I
think it's um helpful review for those who've been following along and for those who are new to the process it will
help them understand what is the thinking behind each of these reforms what is its intent
has it accomplished that intent in other jurisdictions you know what would it
look like in San Francisco so to give people a chance to to to slowly walk
through each major set of recommendations and and what the uh major reforms and what the intent behind
it was I I think um the only um
uh slight difference I might have with commissioner Partners I don't feel like we need to have a comprehensive list of
recommendations I think it may be possible for us to agree on kind of the no-brainer ones and I and
in prop probably this next meeting um be able to identify those there's
some that everybody agreed on like for example in the last meeting all the redistring task force members
and the good government panel agreed on having a stipend right and then again broad Strokes we
don't have to decide what it should be that's up to the Board of Supervisors but being able to say that we got no
pushback on this that everybody agreed on a stipend and that that's something that we could recommend I think it's
okay we if we do a partial list you know and kind of go
right as we you know because there are some that are certainly deserve more study and clearly the choice of a of the
structure of of a of a vetting or selection Authority is something that we may actually decide
we don't know what the answer is we're going to maybe make some general recommendations like maybe it should be
split responsibility for different phases of the process we have some thoughts on possibilities
but hey you Board of Supervisors you need to take public input and figure this part out right I think actually
it's completely reasonable that we don't recommend on certain things because we honestly don't have a strong opinion on
it or don't feel like there's a critical mass a strong feeling that we want to push that forward
right and there are probably some that are in between right I I agree with both
of you and I have and I feel it's okay to have a partial list
to have some things that we agree on and I understand question Parker your
your idea of things could change based on
the results of ab1248 and ab's
764. however I also think
we can make recommendations make those public have the public know what our
recommendations are and that we could update them and amend them based on the
results of ab1248 AB 760. so I think it's okay to
move forward with recommendations based on the year and a half of or the year of
um information gathering listening to the public
informing our colleagues hearing from our colleagues
I I think we can have a partial recommendation list as commissioner
Parker said the Board of Supervisors has decided that they're going to move forward so
they aren't necessarily waiting for this legislation to to have an in-game per se
there they're moving forward so I think I don't think we would be in a situation
of not doing well that's not what the word I
want to use I think it would be in a situation where we have those recommendations there and just because
they're out there doesn't mean they can't be adjusted updated and I think
once there if we have those recommendations before um the final results of the legislation
we can come back and say this is what we thought here's what the legislation is or isn't and therefore these are updates
at this time I think that's okay and I and I think we are all saying the same thing but in our in our different ways
so um so I think what we should say is that
we'll have another meeting in August to kind of walk through things uh I think we're actually pretty agreed
on that uh with uh moving toward coming up with
a set of recommendations which may not be complete right and that has to have the approval
of yeah you know Elevate some reforms that we believe
there's broad agreement on so that we can spend more time
engaging with the public and providing more um
expert testimony if necessary or just more discussion about the the pieces
that are not as clear right because I I think it would be helpful because otherwise it's just it's
a lot right if we can identify the stuff that okay everybody said yes to this like let's not beat a dead horse and
continue to discuss it unless we've owned the stuff that like the vetting Authority that really deserves more
discussion and that we can acknowledge we may not even be able to come to a
conclusion on because I think that may be true and I think that's okay
um you you both might remember in the last elections Commission meeting I actually had a similar perspective that
we may not have um agreement and you know recommendation on every item so I do agree with that and that part and
like I said part of my thinking was if we were to meet and start to walk through those we could identify those we
we can see how it you know if we were to say we are going to start walking through and begin to narrow
um you know where we need to do further exploration to make recommendations you know that that I'm comfortable with
because I do think that's where we'll we'll land um but I I I do think that the assembly bills are
a big piece of having any final recommendations um preliminary
um so yeah um anyway
okay I'll work on some weird thing here um may I say something I think
um we as a commission need to have further discussion because there's not a consensus and that's fine
um but I think we are in the process of developing these talking points and they need to be
something that we agree with and so if commissioner Parker feels we need to develop that piece of when
better then let's let's we we can spend part of our next meeting in August doing that
yeah I think that's that's before we I mean we've agreed on everything else
so if it's just one bullet point I'm sure we can we can work that out um
and it may be more obvious after we have that meeting too where we are it may be
I mean uh you know like what I'm comfortable with is that is saying we are going to meet in August to start to
make our way towards those recommendations like I'm I'm comfortable with that um I can't say that I would
know for sure you know think that we have recommendations I don't know if any of us can say we would for sure recommendations after that meeting
um you know to me there's an acknowledgment that that there will be implications like it's important to acknowledge for us as a committee it is
important to acknowledge there may be whatever happens with those bills will
have implications on San Francisco and we want to make sure we're considering that in our final recommendations that I
think is the point that's right I think that we can agree on that point absolutely
um and that yeah I do think that that affects final recommendations
um for sure it's hard to um debate that
um so yeah so that that timeline you know if we can agree on that I think we can
and and and be clear about the the other timeline with a charter Amendment like
that is in the Board of Supervisors court that is not ours our job simply as a committee is to make recommendations
um so okay uh I think I captured it and I think we actually have agreement which
is great like I said I'll try to word Smith a little bit more but I think I've got the gist of it uh I will say that
most of the Amendments that I've seen are um lately have been
minor tweaks in timing and changing the size of the jurisdiction that would fall under it none of which affects San
Francisco the big changes they made they actually made early which is on the structure of
the commission and moving the randomization to the first eight so I
haven't seen any really substantive amendments that would affect us at least
that I've seen obviously that could change okay and then the last one I thought
would be um why now and I think commissioner lavolsi's Point
uh that none of the current Board of Supervisors will be up for re-election
in the next redistricting cycle so there is this idea of having in between late
you know that nobody who would vote on this would have a vested interest in the
outcome at this point I actually um we've talked about that before but I just want to um like I understand all
the different arguments on timing like I find myself on various sides of them at different times you know I was like well
you know it's fresh in people's mind and so we're able to capture people's you know the freshness it's also really raw for some people so the flip side of that
is also true um and this this idea of um you know people not having a vested interest
while I see theoretically that is true we also have a current supervisor who
already sat in office and then was reelected and last time we had another supervisor who just left office and went to be re-elected so it's not entirely
true so I'm sure that that's necessarily the best argument a lot of people who could pull that off maybe but it's
happened twice in the last several years so I don't know that that's necessarily the best argument because it has
happened and it could totally happen again during the next redistricted possible yeah in here I I agree with you
but I also would like to and I would like to say that that is a unique situation
and as the speaker from the um Her Name
Escapes Me from the league of Voters talked about Miss Dorado the the time it's also about making sure that we have
everything we need so that when redistricting happens yeah we are in
more compelling we are in a good place that's I mean from from my perspective
let me try the uh try this wording and see if it captures that I said um we can
why now we can Leverage The public's recent experience with redistricting regardless of whether it was raw or
fresh it is recent to consider Community input for reforms
to allow adequate time for planning and implementation of the new process
the point is you know we don't want to do this when people are not engaged and they have no input right so part of the
reason to do it while it's fresh is that people
remember it right and we had thoughts about it and they might share them with
us or with the board and therefore be part of shaping what
the new process should look like but of the other pieces I I think that it needs to be more succinct in the sense that
we're we're talking about making sure that the next redistricting task force
has everything it needs to create a fair process so maybe I should
separate this point because I think that's the community input point is is separate about the time
right the time to make sure the next one's successful and I just want to add one more point I think it's important to
say that when you're talking about why now because the argument has been that
we have plenty of time right yeah the the important thing when it
comes to our purview is fair and free elections that takes
time that takes time to develop a process that will as you said allow
public engagement allow us to put the resources the mechanisms things in place
to make it that I think that's that's really important to say from my perspective we'll be prepared
um to run a fair process okay so I want to separate out the
planning and implementation and tie that to the next redistricting task force ability to be successful and
run a fair process uh I do think the fact that
people just went through a redistricting cycle and have been educated about it and have perspectives about it that they
would want to share with the Board of Supervisors I do think that's an important point because you know
by 2025 the people who were involved in this process may not you know be around to share
their perspectives and other people may have to be educated from the beginning on what is redistricting again good
point and so I do think if we want this to be a process that that is built with
Community engagement that has the Public's input on who should the vetting body should be
that you need people who know enough about it to have an opinion and the concern with waiting till the mid decade
is that you know the people who went through this last process and were engaged and
are coming to give public input may not be around and so if you want Community
input I think you need to do it when people are engaged and so I think that's
part of the freshness argument right um I think that that you know I mean
it's possible that they wouldn't be here I think maybe a way to again sort of acknowledge that we have heard a a wide
range of input about this um maybe it's just acknowledging that the experience ranges from positive to
negative you know whatever it is whatever your experience is it is that's why you've watched an experience I did not put a positive or negative right
maybe it's the range of recent experience maybe that's the way to describe and acknowledge that people have had varying experiences some people
were comfortable with it some people really didn't like it you know some people felt represented others didn't and so maybe it's just the range of
experience as a way to just acknowledge what we have been hearing from people right I was trying to be neutral I agree
I think we we don't I think it's uh commissioner Parker excuse me commissioner diet I think it's
getting a little bit into the Weeds about who will be here who won't be here that's something we can't determine
um you know something could happen with us as far as being here so that's not
really um I think as relevant as the experience and the experience the
experience is why we're here yeah okay so we got one point that's really about
the fact that the public has had a range of experiences with recent redistricting and can therefore engage in in providing
input um a second point about allowing adequate time to you know operationalize
a new redistricting task force to make sure that they are prepared to run a fair process
uh and then I'm happy to take you know edits uh like I said I will try to draft
this and then we can we can tweak it as needed but um uh
I do think that the situation that you're talking about um
that there are Unique Individuals that were able to pull this off in terms of of actually being having a vested
interest but uh I mean if you're comfortable with the con I mean under
normal circumstances none of the current Board of Supervisors will be up for re-election in the next redistricting cycle it is a uniquely clean time to
reform I hear you but I still think that that's something I I think we should stay away from I mean one it's a unique
experience I I just don't think it's as compelling or as relevant as we want
to make sure we have this in place and that we take the time to do it
in the most effective way I hear you okay both but I just I just don't think we need to go down that road because
it's very clear who we're talking about and I think we need to stay away from that so are you saying that we I want to make
sure I'm clear do you want me to not say anything about the fact that it's it in fact average mere morals you know
would be unlikely to have a vested interest in this next process or I mean
I I to be honest um commissioner died like people that that is something that the legal voters
have shared on their website like they'll see that in other places you know and if we want to focus on um you know what we've been saying in this and
so if we stay true to this is we want a good process right and so and so maybe it's leaning into the process knowing
that if people are interested in this they're going to find that another that that case in other places and we want to focus on process okay that's fine so
let's go ahead and and not bring that up we will let other voices talk about that
but that is a I hear you other people have made that
argument I totally get it and at first I was like yeah no totally and then I'm like wait a minute this is just greater
than much greater than zero chance in this city it's just is okay you know all right other than that
District so so um if uh if you guys are comfortable I
will attempt to clean this up a little bit I've been taking notes for the whole thing uh if you want to send me the the
couple of notes that you have I'll try to make this succinct and then we perfect go forward on it
um if I can just make one more comment um and I was when I was thinking about this I thought well maybe it would be
good to sort of formalize and you know and vote on what these talking points are they're not finalized and detailed so maybe that is not really where we are
but I do hope that we can what my hope is is that um we have heard and I think all of us
are taking notes um on the the core of what these are and that we agree that
when we are speaking on behalf of the committee and the commission this is what we were saying yes if we have a
personal opinion we need to disclose that it is a personal opinion and that is not the representation absolutely absolutely I think we need to be really
clear with each other about that and I just want to make sure when we do the minutes that like this is reflected it's in the minutes that we're just agreeing
to do that as part of a we're gonna um that trust building thing and
transparency that we're trying to do at the public we've had this discussion we all have you know agreed on tonight
we've agreed to edit I think it's a reasonable and I think we come back in our next meeting with the final version
and go over it and make sure we agree if you're comfortable I'm too happy to do a draft we'll post it we'll discuss
it at the next meeting and do any additional tweaking sure and if there seem to be significant
tweaks ahead of that if you send it to us we can always post our tweaks together yeah yeah absolutely absolutely
not a version that sits out there for you know that doesn't feel representative so okay great well with that and we've already taken public
comment um let me bring this item to a close and uh take public comment on this or no
no we already took public comment on this on this on this item so you can
email us yeah I mean for free um okay so we're moving to agenda item
five which I think is um stick around actually Mr verdell it's
agenda items for future meetings if you have a public comment we would um love any thoughts discussion impossible
action regarding items for future agendas so I just want to say I
think we have agreement we're going to do a walk through and in uh second half
of August so again for the benefit of members of the public who've joined us early who've
joined us late it's going to be a review for some but to walk through each major reform
and make sure everyone understands the rationale what the intent was and pros
and cons and I think it'll be very helpful for everyone to kind of go through that together
uh and as part of that you know we'll have some discussion on whether we can
winnow it to the ones that are more controversial and then focus on that uh so with that let me open it to public
comment because I think that will take all of our time at that next meeting and see if any members of the public would
like to suggest other agenda items for future meetings topics you'd like us to cover
um we welcome any thoughts on that or not or not or or you can call it a
night you've been here with us all evening you can call it a night as well or you can think on it and email us too
all right great I appreciate that let me thank you thank you Mr burdell um let's see if we have uh let me just
double check and see if we have uh anyone raising their hands
I don't see any hands raised okay I'm going to close public um
public comment for this final this last item and we are adjourned and the time
is 8 58. thank you all
and with that let me turn off the recording