hi everyone i am filling in for uh president bernholtz today so uh welcome to the february 14 2022
regular meeting of the san francisco elections commission this meeting is being held by
teleconference pursuant to the governor's executive order n2920 and the 24th supplement to mayoral
proclamation declaring the existence of a local emergency dated february 25th
2020. uh martha can you please take the role
and read the the procedures for the meeting thank you madam vice president
the minutes of this meeting will reflect that due to the covet 19 health emergency and to protect commission
members city employees and the public the meeting rooms of city hall are closed however commission members and
staff will be participating in today's meeting remotely this precaution has taken personal to the various local
state and federal orders declarations and directives commission members will attend the meeting through webex video
conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if they were physically present
public comment will be available on each item on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to
speak comments or opportunities to speak during the public comment period are available via phone by calling
five 415 five five zero zero zero one again that number is four one five six
five five zero zero zero one access code is two four eight seven two zero four
seven eight three three again 2487-204-7833
you will hear a beep when you are connected to the meeting you will be automatically muted
and in listening mode only when your item of interest comes up dial star 3 to
raise your hand to be added to the public comment line you will then hear you have raised your hand to ask a
question please wait until the host calls on you the line will be silent as you wait your turn to speak ensure you
are in a quiet location before you speak i'm sorry before you speak mute the
sound of any equipment around you including television radio or computer it is especially important that you mute
your computer if you are waiting via the web link watching via the web link to prevent feedback and echo when you speak
when the system message says your line has been unmuted this is your turn to speak you are encouraged to state your
name clearly as soon as you begin speaking you will have three minutes to provide your public comment
six if you have an interpreter on the line six minutes you will hear a bell go off when you
have 30 seconds remaining if you change your mind and wish to withdraw yourself from the public comment line press star
3 again you will hear the system say you have lowered your hand when a phone is available
you can well i'm sorry when the phone is not available you can use your computer web browser make sure the participants side
panel is showing by clicking on the participants icon please
make sure the participants panel is expanded in the side panel by pressing the small arrow indicator in the panel
you should see a list of panel lists followed by a list of attendees at the bottom of the list of changes is a small
button or i icon that looks like a hand press the hand icon to raise your hand
the host will unmute you when it is time for you to comment when you are done with your comment click the hand icon
again to lower your hand once your three minutes have expired staff will thank you and mute you you
will hear your line has been muted public comment instructions are also listed on the last page of the agenda
please a public comment may also be submitted in writing it will be shared with the commission after this meeting
has concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting written comments should be sent to
elections.commission at sfgov.org thank you madam vice president
uh you're muted becca i'm sorry sorry i will officially uh call the
meeting to order and martha can you please take roll sure vice president chapel
president commissioner gerdonic
commissioner mogee here and commissioner dye here
okay with four commissioners we meet forum great so i think first agenda item
the general public comment do we have any callers from the public
plenty of callers but i don't oh i do see one hand raised i'm gonna meet you call her you have three minutes to
comment can you hear me okay yes we can mr paul
thank you why yes it is david pillpow i just wanted to publicly welcome a new
commissioner uh die and uh if it's not too much to ask maybe she could take a
moment or two and introduce herself to uh all of us and tell us about her wonderful background that's all i have
on this item thanks very much
and we do have one other call it's dr jefferson uh you are unmuted dr
jefferson and you have three minutes to comment uh yes thank you well i i want to know
if this is the right time or uh to make this comment it's just an update about the um
uh the halderman report that we've discussed at the last two meetings and i didn't know if you wanted that update now or
uh later in the uh in the hearing
i think we're covering that at agenda item seven i believe that's when we're talking about
that report so if you wouldn't mind waiting no i don't mind at all that's what i want to make sure of okay okay
great thank you that's all for now okay thank you
okay uh piers is all oh no i'm so sorry um mr turner has his hand raised
okay mr turner you have three minutes to comment the flame run
i gotta do this one
mr turner we can hear you i'm sorry i didn't mean to raise my hand
and i was waiting till the next agenda item thank you
no no problem thank you thank you okay uh i think if it's if it's okay now
probably is an appropriate time for commissioner diana to give us a little bit of an introduction
um i'd be happy to thank you very much um i'm excited to uh be on this commission
with you folks i am uh
probably a democracy nerd just like the rest of you if you're serving on this commission
if you've heard of me before it's probably because i spent 10 years on the
very first california citizens redistricting commission i concluded my service in
2020 have spent the last several years
trying to [Music] educate the public about gerrymandering
and the electoral process and redistricting i've also
done a lot of work with rank choice voting advocates and
those who are advocating for open primaries and i also
uh ran an election for the city and county of san francisco as a poll inspector
back in 2012 where i discovered um how very complicated it is to run an
election so i have a great appreciation for director armstead and his job and all of
the dedicated people who form the department of elections so very pleased to be here
in my day job i run my own strategy consulting firm and
work with a lot of high-tech startups as well as social enterprises that's a
little bit about me great thank you commissioner dye just in the nick of time as well you're joining
us glad to be part of your quorum thank you okay so next agenda item uh
discussion and possible action on resolution on continuation of remote election commission uh meetings
and i think this will be our last remote meeting i don't believe we've
re-read the resolution in the last couple meetings so uh assuming we don't need to do that
here as well can i get a motion to adopt that resolution
second i move that we adopt the motion click it thank you
okay then public comment uh
i believe it's mr pelcell it is david philpel again um so i have
no objection to uh the motion and i think it's fine uh i appreciate the 45th
uh supplement which i was just reading through which is complicated and the mayor's office still has not posted the
45th supplement on their website um anyway um
i would suspect that there are a number of uh practical
and perhaps somewhat complicated issues about going back to in-person uh
meetings at city hall and hybrid with public participation
etc so i'm sure that behind the scenes that'll get worked through in the next
month i'm happy to provide whatever assistance i can in that regard
so that we're all safe and able to participate if that's the direction that the city and the mayor
and the health officials are going in um but i'd i'd rather that we get it right
and and be safe uh then rush into the thing but whatever
whatever is so ordered will be so ordered um anyway uh did i say enough i think i did thanks
for listening thank you mr
i don't see any other hands raised okay then i think we can take a vote
okay vice president chapel yes commissioner gerdonic
yes commissioner mogee yes
and commissioner die hi okay for the affirmative the motion passes
all right okay next agenda item department of elections budget proposals for fiscal
years 22 to 23 and 23 to 24.
uh we had our pack meeting a couple of weeks ago where we went into
the documents that were provided in the packet in a bit of detail with director arts uh
i think commissioner jerdoneck do you want to give any thoughts or comments from that meeting
um sure so we had a a really good discussion um
all of us had a number of questions that we talked about director ernst and um
one of the things we talked about was the increased poll worker stipend and we also talked about one of the
questions i had was around the um dominion contract
and um but yeah we didn't take any vote or anything
but um it's a good discussion yeah and i'll just supplement by saying we we dug in a little bit about
the budgeting around the special elections um and it sounds like we're
kind of covered from a budget perspective on on what's anticipated to date um so that's not causing any
identified challenges so that was helpful um any comments from
the commission based on that hasn't that wasn't on bookpack or for director arts
yes so i had um a couple of things to ask about number one um dark turns did
you have any updates because i know that versions are that are posted are revised
right so yes commissioner george so the um we did add for the pork or stipend we
added the next fiscal year uh so instead of waiting for the second fiscal year to
potentially initiate an increase in the poll worker stipend uh we added the next
fiscal year uh for the start of the poll worker skype increase uh we haven't resolved yet the
the tax implement implications of the stipends for this calendar year but we
still wanted to give the poll workers potentially an increase in pay for for november
also the the sheet counters that were in the original memo for around 22 000
that's been removed we couldn't find sheet counters that we wanted to purchase then also there's one less health
service selection uh from 70 75 000 in the memo and also in our in our forms
than the information that bulpeck reviewed then also on the commission requested
the table which is now on page six to have some extra rows
in relation to the approving not approving the domain contract and when
uh the the bid processes negotiations and implementation time frames would
occur so that those are the changes most the the big changes i guess
um in the in the memo and also in the forms in relation to what bullpec reviewed a couple weeks ago
okay yeah thanks for the the changes you made um especially the table that i had
requested but i did have a few um wanted to get a little more clarity on the dominion
contract just because i was thinking about a little bit more um do you know like about when you'll be
introducing that resolution to the board like approximately what month do you think
uh no at the top of my head i don't because i want to fold it into the budget hearings ideally
so i don't i guess maybe april may somewhere in there
okay and then um just to kind of be clear is there any reason we can't
like renew it one year this year and then next year we could renew the second year is there any like downside to doing
that well it's just the timing of it uh so if
we so if we renew it this year for one year essentially we're renewing for 20 20 23 to
2024. so that means that you're gonna say something
no so that means that after we come out of the the the presidential primary in march of 2024 we're going into the presidential
election november we'd also have to be implementing a voting system and so
ideally i like to get past the presidential election if we're going to bring a new system into san francisco
what what i mean is um is there any reason that the second year can't be renewed next year
i mean it could it could it be for planning purposes it's it's nicer to have you
know more time than not then also in 2025 there are no schedule
elections in san francisco so that that's a better time frame to to bring in a system to you know do the
bidding process get the contract done and then bring a system in
okay and then lastly um if i know during the committee meeting you
had said that you wanted to request two years in the resolution that you were going to be drafting for the board
and then if and then you said it was sort of up to the board if they wanted to change it does that mean that
the committee members would have to like request an amendment from two years to one year if they
wanted to i could even i could we could even draft the resolution so where it's a one year or two year
choice that the the board makes i mean that's easily done oh that would be helpful yeah because i i i do think that
given everything that's been happening around open source voting with the pilot and then a lot of the information about
dominion you know regarding the you know the
security report that's coming out of georgia that we don't really know much about and also um the fact that we still only
have one vendor that's available to san francisco i think if we postpone renewing it
until for the second year until next year i think we'd be incentivizing new
vendors to come forward and it would just give us more options but um
but yeah okay um that's all i had thank you
and then just if i can so so that so the the the the the numbers
in the memo are changed but also the numbers and the forms themselves have changed to reflect the
the changes i just mentioned about the po worker stipend uh which is 186 thousand dollars being
added to the next fiscal year there's our 22 thousand dollars being removed for the the sheet counter and about i
think it's 75 being removed for the health service election so just so you know
that's helpful any other questions or comments for
director arts or director ants anything else you want to add no that's that's it thank you
that's a good question so i know bill pick thank you so much for everyone for meeting um ahead of time
and you know reviewing the budget did you come i just heard that there was a discussion but i wasn't sure if there
was a recommendation made or did you not make one
we didn't we didn't make a there was no resolution or action taken at the meeting i think in
general and and commissioner gerdonic let me know if you disagree it seemed like based on our discussion the the
budget seemed appropriate seemed thoughtful i don't think we raised any significant issues other than
kind of the discussion about the dominion contract that we've continued here so i think in general
you know my takeaway was that the recommendation is that we would approve the budget
director arms i have a question and i know i'm johnny come lately so i i don't want to disrupt anything but just
um ask someone who has you know been a poll inspector in the past i'm kind of
curious i you know totally agree with increasing the poll worker stipend especially in the face of difficulty
recruiting new poll workers i'm curious have the number of poll workers
been reduced [Music] at any of the
polling locations or the number of polling locations if they've been consolidated all given the
um kind of the massive switch to vote by mail in this budget
um and just in operationally in general uh
in the budget uh the number of polling places has not changed although might change after
redistricting occurs uh but we still we're projecting around
four poll workers per polling place in the past we projected five okay uh there's an average number
uh operationally we have less polling places for this february election because we could consolidate under state
law by the nature of the types of elections we're conducting tomorrow then also if it's april uh general
election for 1817 we can also consolidate the number of polling places so there'll be less
polling places for for this election than also potentially for april but also we've we've
uh reduced the number of of re recruited poll workers for february potentially april down a 3.5 or so
and then for for june we'll go back up to four and we'll have a full complement of polling places
okay yeah that's helpful it's just uh i know that my personal behavior as a voter has changed yeah and you know i
strolled by my polling place and it was you know like crickets there so
so i support you know increasing the pay for the people who are working but it doesn't seem like we need as many so
that that sounds consistent with what you're doing so thank you um and i just want to clarify um
viva's um question um at the bopec meeting um we were not
or they were not required to um make a decision or a resolution um the meetings
that meeting and this meeting are for the public's input um regarding the agency's budget um so there's no
you know it's just basically so the public can come together and and give their opinion so thank you
right so we actually don't even have to do we
is today the deadline is i thought that was why we're meeting today or today's the deadline for the public
engagement process yes we were required to have two public
meetings so this is the second public meeting okay so there isn't any decision that needs to be made today
i think so actually because we have to submit this uh next week to the controller's office we
have to put this budget into the system so we are taking an action today yes
got it so this is our last meeting yes plus we're taking an action today
got it right did i say that right yes okay just want to make sure we're doing the
right thing yeah yeah fresh you are commissioner johnny did you have a
comment i just wanted to clarify so we do we do need to like you recommend the budget today as
for approval okay got it yeah okay so then i guess at this point uh
unless there's any other comments or questions i think uh do we have a motion regarding the
budget i could make the motion to
up uh to approve or yeah i think it's at this point we're just going to approve so yes
it would be the final approval of the agency's proposed budget yeah what difference
um i approve um i make a motion to approve the um department of elections uh fiscal
years 2022 23 and 23 24 um budget proposal
great thank you uh do you have a second a second
wonderful okay now moving on to public comment
i will go ahead and unmute the first caller
david bill pill i support the motion thank you
thank you mr bill bell and mr turner you are unmuted
good afternoon commissioners and good afternoon to our newest commissioner thank you for your public service
uh just wanted to mention a few things because i i'm a little bit confused but that's
okay as far as this motion goes um is there the opportunity to make sure
that the public is represented to the extent that we are not renewing the
dominion contract prematurely that we're not exercising that second year option
because in the public's opinion there's a great disconnect between the conversation going on here
and sort of akin to that uh movie that's come out lately called don't don't look up i don't know if
anybody saw that but the the public believes it's imperative to expedite the open source systems and
to phase out the dominion proprietary intellectual property systems so
when we talk loosely about well we'll just it's more convenient for us to do it a little bit later so that
we can get you know uh ourselves in order before the 2024 election
presidential what we're trying to do is get the systems that are causing the the
unrest out and bring in modern technology systems that may quell
the civil unrest that we're seeing around elections right now so that's the idea and what we have at stake here is
it's not just talking about san francisco county we're attempting to set precedent right now within the state of
california which will hopefully set precedent for the rest of the united states so
these aren't casual decisions about the timing so we are very much hoping that
we send a message to dominion and steve bennett who refuses to come my understanding in front of this
commission um when he calls the operation at city hall a well-oiled machine
and that he's in control of it and that the this commission doesn't know anything about elections and that the
people of san francisco don't care about elections we don't want to send a message to that
type of operation that that's okay because it's not okay so we want
dominion out of our county as and it's just not them it's people that are selling these insecure software systems
regardless of the georgia report we know that the science tells us dominion can
never be brought up to a satisfactory level for security whereas these open
source systems meet the standard that we're looking for in the new world of technology so we are poised to do great
work here we we would appreciate it if if uh director arts would pay strict
attention to the conversations that are occurring and not push the board toward
exercising that second year option prematurely thank you very much
thank you mr turner you have another caller caller you are unmuted you have three
minutes to comment yes this is greg pennington from san francisco and i was a volunteer for the
california clean money campaign i circulated petitions at many san francisco events and i can tell you that
the support for open source voting was overwhelming there wasn't a single
person that didn't want to sign the petition in support of it the 2024 election is a critical election we have
got to get open source voting in place as quickly as possible i ask you to
please only renew one year on the dominion contract to allow the possibility that the open
source would be ready in time for the critical 2024 election and then if it
turns out open source wouldn't be ready in time then you could exercise the option for the second year of on
dominion but i'm telling you as a grassroots activist the people of
san francisco very strongly support open source voting please help make it happen
as soon as possible and please only renew dominion for one year at this time thank you
thank you mr pennington uh there's another caller
caller you are unmuted you have three minutes to comment good afternoon this is jim soper from
the national voting rights task force first of all i would like to welcome commissioner guy to the commission
i've been coming to these meetings since 2005 and i'm
i'm delighted to see that the commission is getting stronger over the years i think that the commission would be
wise and the department would be wise to extend dominion's contract by just one
year because for example one we have not seen the holderman report yet
and everything i've seen so far about it is it's not good and that's a report
about dominion secondly the bay area urban strategic
area initiative should be issuing a report within half a
year a general survey of what's needed in the bay area for
uh security uh we haven't seen that yet the open source project should have a
pilot going hopefully in november and we need to see what happens with
that pilot before we start committing to contracts with other uh other vendors
and finally uh yeah the dominion representative has been invited to
appear for the commission and he hasn't shown up yet and i think somehow the commission needs
to send a signal that he needs to communicate with the commission and not just the director to answer some
questions that are somewhat unsettling so we have a lot of things coming in a
lot of information coming in this year and i would encourage that we
not commit to a two-year contract unless it's necessary
thank you thank you mr supper and we have one more caller
caller you are invited you have three minutes to comment uh hello good afternoon commissioners
and a big welcome to commissioner dye um i'm trent lang president of the california clean money campaign a
non-partisan nonprofit organization focused on fair elections um we worked very closely with board of
supervisors president shimon walton on his legislation for a pilot program uh for the open source voting system this
november along with commissioner judonic and others uh we delivered over 2 000 signatures
from san francisco residents who support open source voting to mayor breed and uh
nearly 11 000 signatures from across the country asking mayor breed to sign the legislation so the pilot could go
forward this november um so we were very excited that the board of supervisors unanimously passed
the legislation and of course the election commission uh supported it and mayor breed signed uh president walton's
pilot legislation as our petition said it will help lead the nation to more transparent accurate and less costly
elections this exciting development i think is why
another speakers have spoken to this is why we need to
ask that the dominion contract be only renewed for one year
not to because we'd like san francisco to have the opportunity to use the new open
source voting system in the presidential election if it's proven in the pilot project and certified in time
there have been literally years and years of work by this commission by supervisors by uh uh
open source advocates and everybody else in the legislature even
with city attorney true then assembly member chu and senator weiner
now we're finally about to make a major step forward and potentially have a certified system ready in time for the
2024 election it would be a travesty it'd be an absolute travesty
for this department of elections to ask the board of supervisors to do a two-year
renewal if there's uh unless it's absolutely necessary and therefore below
the opportunity to have the open source system if it's ready if it's ready uh uh
for the 2024 presidential election we've been working on this all for years um uh please i don't know if you need to
make a caveat to your current budget resolution uh or or
something of that nature to show that the commission would like to ask the supervisors for a one-year renewal
i would like you to hopefully you could consider that given all the work that you've done to get us to this to this place thank you very
much thank you we have um alec bash mr bash you are
unmuted you have three minutes to comment thank you very much
um alec bash i worked for the city for 30 years at the planning department but have
worked on national political issues for 20 years after that and
first i want to amend commissioner dye for her work on the california redistricting commission
and her appearance now on the san francisco elections commission which is wonderful
to have that statewide representation here uh and it is something that we would
hope would at some point be extending to the rest of the country i'm getting incredible backfeed on
everything i i say so i hope that it's coming across more clearer as you
uh are hearing me speak i'm here to speak about the
one-year extension of the contract other than two years because i think it is
very important now that we have a pilot program underway for the election
this year it would make total sense to have the results of that program before
we commit to a two-year program to the second year of the program
for many of the same reasons that other people have said if there is an opportunity to go towards open source
something that i and many others have been working on for about 15 years in the city it would be
very helpful to be able to proceed with that once we know that we do
once we have a viable solution for that so i just want to offer those thoughts to you and urge you to go with the
option for a one-year extension of the contract with the opportunity to review and
extend for a second year if that's the inappropriate and following the results of the pilot
program we i do understand that the pilot program does not mean that that would be a party selected by the city
but i think that the results of that program would be would help inform the city as to whether it is feasible to go
towards the in an open source direction thank you very much for the opportunity to comment
thank you there's another caller at the end of the list but i can't tell
if this person has everybody's um given a comment i'm going to unmute them oh
okay their hand went down okay so we have no other callers
great thank you martha thank you i think for the clarification of the commission
we did address how the in our voc meeting we addressed how the dominion contract extension
would flow into the budget and my understanding is that the budget is not the way that we are
approving one year versus two years on the extension that happens separate from the budget
and that the budget that's been proposed is dynamic based on that decision and
kind of contemplates either scenario but director arts or
commissioner javonnick let me know if i've mischaracterized our discussion from the beaupac meeting
um well i know it's it's discussed in the memo but yet director ernst can you
confirm that the budget as it's currently drafted does not
go either way on that decision doesn't commit to either direction on that
the so the 2.1 million dollars in the for the contract amount is is
inputted automatically into the budget for the department and so
so yes the the budget does include 2.1 million for both years of the available options
it's not something the department inputs it's something that the the mayor's office for the city might be the controller's office
inputs because that's the potential length because six years seven years was the six years of the potential length of
the contract so for budgeting for forecasting purposes the controller's office inputs
the entire potential length of the contract into the budget system but if the board were to approve
a one-year contract actually the board the 2.1 would probably carry forward the next year
unless the board were to not approve the second option and then that money would be
would potentially be pulled out of the the department's budget for dominion but
then new months would that would have to come in for a new system but so the 2.1 yes it's in our budget it's something
it's part of our budget it's not something that we input if the board were to not approve both when your options then
the money would come out in relation to dominion but then more money would come in in relation to the next system that the
city uses okay but i mean in terms of the resolution that the department presents
to the board it doesn't say you have to
request two years or you have to request one year right it's just is it silent on that point
for the approval of the options um well for the resolution that you're
going to be submitting in april or may asking the board to renew the contract right
is the wording on that resolution locked down within the budget as
because you said earlier that you could make it as a question as one or two to the board
right so the resolution is separate in relation to the budget okay yeah
okay that's that's what i want to confirm thanks and in fact any open source system would
likely be less than the 2.1 million so you know if the budgets you know
allocate you don't have to use it on that presumably it's it's just uh allowing for the money for planning
purposes and and i think to clarify for
all of the the folks who took the time to comment it sounds like the appropriate venue for this
would be to express your opinions at a board of at a board meeting when this resolution
comes up for discussion and a vote
i i think dca flores stop me if i'm wrong
if we do want to talk about the dominion contract extension i think we'll have to
add that as an agenda item for a future meeting
yes so this so this um action item is for
[Music] the budget proposal um so
i would imagine that if um because the attachments are the budget memo and the forms so if you wanted to
discuss the dominion contract separately i would imagine that it would have to be
re-calendared to another date because there the public has no way
how the agenda is worded now the public has no way of knowing that the dominion
contract would be discussed and and and a separate um
a separate um kind of like motion would be made regarding the dominion contract this
only discusses the budget proposal and so the budget proposal as a whole is what you should um be discussing and
making um a decision on today got it so i think remember the members
of the public your comments are heard i think we should plan to address those at a future meeting with a set agenda
point are there any concerns with the commission now for how that dominion
contract impacts the budget or do we feel comfortable taking a vote now
okay so comfortable i think it's it's basically a placeholder it sounds like the resolution that
director arts would prepare with the commission's input can be
discussed at a future meeting great okay uh secretary delgado can you take a vote
yes sure vice president chapel yes commissioner donick
yes commissioner mulgy yes and commissioner dye aye
okay with four of the affirmative passes great thank you everyone
moving on to the next agenda item we have approval of minutes of previous
meetings these are discussion and possible action on the commission's draft minutes
of january 19 2021 and november 20 2019
regular meeting minutes do i have a motion
so move thank you a second
a second thank you okay public comment
i will unmute the first caller here on youtube you have 10 minutes
thank you david pilpel again um so a couple of uh issues here
uh i believe it's um just a an oversight but the january minutes on both the
agenda and on the website refer to january 19th of 2021 the minutes are correct in 2022
um it's either a legal or policy issue as to whether you want to take action today
or out of an abundance of caution put it off for a month i don't think it's going to matter in the grand scheme of things
and i'm not sure that i had any substantive concerns about um how they
read on the 2019 uh minutes which apparently took some time to
uh sort out um with the transition of commission secretary and all that i was
not at that meeting i did notice at least a couple of uh things that ought to get fixed under
on page one item three member two of the open source voting
technical advisory committee i believe that's rowan coutu and i believe his last name is not
spelled correctly it is k-a-t-t-o-u-w
[Music] um and perhaps giving his first name would
be useful for the record i always think that the first reference to a person should have their
full name uh and then the only other substantive thing was on page three item five under
the director's report i i suspect that director arts reported expecting to
certify that the november 5th 2019 election the week of november 25th 2019.
um i may have some other uh stylistic suggestions that i'm happy
to convey to secretary del video if you approve uh today um
on the rest of this i think the it appears that there was a closed session and the closed session doesn't
indicate what time it started and ended and who was present in the session and that could probably be cleaned up as
well anyway um as i say i'm happy to communicate um all of that to the secretary doyle video offline but thanks
to her presumably for going through the effort to reconstruct
this from more than two years ago hope those comments are helpful thanks for listening
thank you mr popo i think those are all very helpful comments they sound more
typographical in nature unless someone disagrees are we
okay approving them with the motion kind of subject to those changes
i have a uh are there any other public comments before i say anything
don't believe so no i don't see any other hands raised yeah i i actually didn't even realize
until um the last gentleman spoke that this was actually for 2019. so when when i looked at the um
the november the 2019 minutes a question i had which may be correct
uh for item three um it the topic says open source voting
but then on the first paragraph on the next page it says that director gurule
gave an update on ranked choice voting pilot project
was that open source or was that a ranked choice voting
unfortunately predates me yeah so uh commissioner jordanic
yeah that could probably be clarified but if my memory serves there was a um directorans could speak to this but
there was a pilot ranked choice footing risk limiting audit that was using open source
software so correct directorance right so i mean we could clarify that it
could be okay and then uh just a
couple of stylistic things probably should mention congress member nancy
pelosi i think the normal way that we refer
gender neutral and then you would be speaker
this was yeah 2019. um
okay dca4s are these i just want to make sure these enough comments that we should be
looking at these and then approving them in a kind of corrected form or
yeah i think that um it it becomes difficult i mean martha was looking was hearing a recording from
two years ago not being there herself so um it's pretty difficult to redo that
when you're not there present so i think that it has become more than
a typographical so i i would my suggestion is that anyone that has edits to the
minutes um including the ones that were given by mr pilpel earlier that we redo
these minutes and we come back at the next meeting ready to approve them okay
so do we withdraw the motion you would just yes you would withdraw the motion um you take a vote to withdraw the
motion and then the motion is withdrawn okay
uh so i guess martha can you take a vote to withdraw the motion sure are we withdrawing the
motion for both of the meeting minutes
i i believe it's just for the um november 2019 uh minutes um
the other minutes i think were were just strictly i think it was strictly date
yeah so should we vote on that one first yes taking public comment and then
actually um withdraw the motion um completely and this is why i may be a consideration for the commission is um
before taking public comment um don't make a motion um so that you don't have to redo it
once public comment happens that's just a policy um decision that you should make
but it's my um recommendation that just hear public comment first and then make a motion and then uh you know you can
vote um there's no there's no requirement in the brown act that we make a motion and then take
public comment okay noted okay so
uh commissioner mogi i think you which you'll have to withdraw your
motion okay i'll withdraw my motion
okay and then we vote on that you need a second
a second just so just a point of order is it necessary to
actually vote on withdrawing the motion if the person who put the motion forward
voluntarily withdraws it it's a good question
it's it's a it is a robert's rules of order kind of question but it doesn't hurt to to do this process just in case
we should have done it um i i don't know it off the top of my head personally but um
it doesn't hurt to make a motion to withdraw so that you can start clean
i second the motion i was muted when i raised my hand thank you okay and i'm assuming we don't have to
take public comment to vote on the withdrawal that's great okay no
martha we do not have to take can you can you comment for okay
no because you essentially just took public comment on this on this agenda item um you're just withdrawing that
motion okay so vice president chapel how do you vote
yes commissioned your doc commissioners yes
yes and commissioner die hi okay before the affirmative
the emotion passes okay then in deference to dc84 flores is comment
let's take public comment because i see a hand before we do anything else
okay oh you're on music
sorry it's uh david don't patel again i guess i was confused about where we are procedurally
i think in terms of robert's rules he probably didn't need to vote on i think a member can withdraw a motion that's
made and it doesn't require whatever anyway um if that was on the 2019
minutes then i would still suggest that the january minutes have the
uh incongruity for lack of a better word uh on the agenda and the minutes that one
says 2021 the other says 2022. so my suggestion is just put off both sets uh
it will be cleaned up by the elves at work at night to do these things and we'll be properly back before you uh
next month that's my thought thanks for listening thank you mr culpel
uh i think that makes sense unless anyone objects that we can push them to the
next meeting
sounds like a plan okay so we are not taking any action on that agenda item
so then moving on to item number six open source voting discussion and
possible action on open source voting including the pilot submission process
um director arms do you want to give any kind of initial
comments on on the document that's been provided in the packet the submitted
plan and the attachments sure so last monday and the 7th i submitted the
documentation secretary of state's office applying for a pilot program in san francisco
with using ballot marketing devices from voting works
and the secretary of state's office for the november 2022 election and the secretary of
state's office indicated that they received the application and they'll review it and get back to me with any questions
and so that's where things stand right now great
any questions or comments from the commission
um yeah just again director ernst i think what you submitted looks excellent thank you for all the work you did on that i
know it's um looks like a real big job um to put that together
um my one question is can you um i know we we had the draft as part of the last
agenda packet i was wondering if you could maybe comment on anything that was different in the draft
or maybe there wasn't anything substantive uh
so as far as the uh the i guess the body of the application
there is an extra section i did fix some language here but there's also an added section
about requesting to use full manual tallies of the ballots used rather than trying
to implement risk limited auditing just because the the number of ballots involved probably won't really register
for a risk limiting auditing uh scope then um
also added to the application is the secretary of state's office i think
about two weeks before the deadline can't uh sent another form that voting works
had to complete which is attachment nine uh the application for approval of
voting for a voting system so they so voting works had to itself
submit an application on its system to the secretary of state's office for reviewing approval
in relation to the pilot program occurring in this november's election so i guess those are
the two substantive changes to the application from what you saw in january
okay thank you
director i have a question and this is very helpful thank you for
providing it i guess just taking a step back to you and the department what does success look like
with respect to the pilot program and how is that kind of being evaluated and
and defined at the end of the day once once this pilot plan has been executed
i don't know i i mean essentially we would explain my instant answers we'd
expect the system to work with the components and to work as expected to conduct an election for people using
those ballot marking devices then when those ballots are scanned for the for the results to be scanned
and reported correctly and that's so the the scope of the
program is two belt marking devices in the city hall voting center then a a balance scanner in our computer
room so there's a small number of items so basically that the
that the components operate and that the system can can uh can scan and report
the results appropriately make sense
is there going to be so there's kind of the voter experience which it sounds like we expect to be
similar to the standard uh dominion systems uh and then there's an election you know
administration kind of experience as well
so i guess uh kind of as a follow-up to vice president chapel's
question you know what what would you want to see from kind of an elections administration
piece that you're kind of running two systems in parallel you're checking for accuracy
but is there kind of easy use features or other things that
the department of elections is going to be looking for
this is uh i mean as far as usability that's the voters would give us that feedback so that's not something that we
would like i don't think judge hey we're we're looking for the system to operate the way it's expected
i mean that would be our you know our perspective on the pilot program so um
so i mean if the system if voters have frustrations using the system or if the
justice i mean i'm not trying to anyway cast aspersions on the system just or if the the scanners didn't scan
they got jammed a lot i mean whatever i mean those are the that's what would catch our attention on
on this pilot program and then of course getting any feedback from the voters on their experience
is there a um is there a way to collect that feedback
uh we can provide uh forms to the voters if they want to complete forms uh indicating their experience with the
system sure it seems like in order to capture that
data we have to ask the question so yeah we're kind of a long way from that
point yet so uh i think as we go through the application process with the state
uh one of the criteria is that we have to indicate any sort of issues with the system so that's something we have to
collect on the department side um and i'm sure that on the voter side both voting works especially voting
works want to get you know feedback from from the voters that we can collect as well but yeah i don't know what the
steps are between now and when all that would happen though we're still waiting on the state to give us some feedback on
the application okay thanks
this should we take comments from members of the public at this point unless there's
any other comments from the commission
okay let's move on to comments from the
members of the public okay uh mr turner i you are being unmuted you
have three minutes to comment uh hello again commissioners uh i guess
at this point we just want to make comment that uh [Music]
the great work of this elections commission is again appreciated i think for
um the sake of the new commissioner we should state that this work initially started
uh with a fellow by the name of alan decker in the year 2000 coming out of sacramento and resulted in
a demonstration of an open source system in 2004 that was covered by the new york
times so you can imagine the the the
lag that's felt by the pioneers of this work uh it's been
you know over 20 years now that the answer has remained the same
if we want to increase voter confidence and make sure
that as director arn said the ballots are being scanned and uh recorded correctly
the only way we can do that is with these open source systems the current systems are not capable of that and that
is just the unfortunate reality it's nobody's fault that we've been sold overpriced systems
that don't work for the for the act intended
that's just what happened we're all doing the best we can with what we've been dealt but now that luckily voting
works has shown up um we're not in that position where we're trying to convince the government to
build the system out which is the predicament we were in previously so lo and behold now we have a system that is
that is available and it's not like this is the first time it's going to be used
i'm sure everybody's aware it's already conducting elections in
mississippi so even though now we've got the extra issue of rank choice voting
my understanding is this is not rocket science for these open source pioneers
and that this mission is simply accomplished it's just a matter of political will
it hasn't been the fact that we can't do it or the technology isn't there
it's really been the politics that have stood in the way and of course i'm sure everybody's aware that microsoft and
these vendors they hold a big hammer within the political arena so
this is tremendous work again that you're doing i think we have kids met in
san francisco where where we started this effort so many years ago with tom
amiano and folks like that leading the way that now we have a progressive
secretary of state a forward-thinking secretary of state and
uh the president of our board in san francisco and you election commissioners
and all the supervisors all on the same page at the same time which is fantastic
so as long as we're brave and hold the line and don't backslide and don't allow
the vendors to come in and manipulate the environment however they might do it and believe me if they can they will
because their goal is to hold the line in san francisco and not
allow this to move forward by hooker by crook and i think if you see the statements of steve bennett you'll
realize what you're dealing with here so you have your work cut out for you and again the public applauds your efforts
thank you very much thank you mr turner
i don't see any other comments do you martha no
okay no i do not another hand traced okay
do we have any action to be taken here i i haven't heard one in our discussion
but i don't think there is but may i just quickly um make a quick comment um
director arn's i just wanted to say thank you for i know that you know there's there were
um it was a team effort but i really appreciate the application to be submitted i know that it's a really busy
time of the year um and i and you continue to kind of you know meet our
elections policy on top of making sure uh we have like back-to-back elections and back actually
um happening and so i appreciate it and i'm looking forward to things you know continue to move on as we heard from the
public commenter like i do honestly believe that it does take um
for these type of efforts happen it just is sometimes the political will and also from you
know the department as well um and i know oftentimes that there was some will
um politically but not a full support and i and i do agree that you know i think
this is the right timing for everything to happen so um i'm really looking forward to the next steps and i know that we have a lot
more to go um but i think this is the right step forward so thank you
and just to add on to that um i think it took three tries for the um independent
redistricting to pass in california so that the timeline of decades is
it's not unknown for innovations and our electoral process
and director ernst a funny story is that i was first exposed to ranked choice
voting as a college student at uc berkeley where we use
preferential proportional voting which is a little more complex form than than sacrament than we use here in the city
and in fact an algorithm was written to automatically count the votes and do the
ranked choices and uh and a bug was found because it was open source you know
written by students in the in the computer science department and as a result all the
candidates insisted that the votes be counted manually and so
all the candidates would go into the acc chamber and watch these boats
be transferred manually in piles all night until the vote was completed and that
was what was necessary for people to feel that the elections were transparent and
the candidates were confident that the vote was right and i think we're a little more sophisticated than that
but uh i think that you know getting there might be a little painful but it will result in a lot
better transparency for our
elections okay thank you if there's no further comments i will move on to the next agenda point
item seven commissioners reports discussion and possible action on
commissioner's reports on topics not covered by another item on this agenda
meetings with public officials oversight and observation activities long-range planning for commission activities in
areas of study proposed legislation which affects elections there are a number of attachments in the
packet so i will open up for for discussion on the commission
mr mogee thank you i saw the letter um i just
want to provide a quick update i actually um i really appreciated uh president bernhard sending in the letter
and i also heard um directly from the district attorney um he actually
reached out to me personally to thank for my service um and he is actively looking for someone to
come on board actually asap um he has couple folks in mind but i think they're just going through the the vetting
process at this time and so hopefully um you know there won't be any kind of like
there there won't um be any delays in terms of my appointment but i'll follow up with him
um you know after as well um to let him know that you know um
it's about a month from now that we would have our next meeting and we would really appreciate someone to come on
board and so um you know it's commissioner die welcome um i know that
um it's we're literally switching off i'm gonna be stepping off as as you step on i'm really excited i think that this
has just been you know really great commission i've shared this with others as well um
that you know i think that we've we've learned to like have very efficient meetings um and also
being having very a you know active body that's very engaged and being very mindful of each
other's uh personal time as well to make sure that we don't
you know really push for very very long meetings unless they're they're needed i
think it is a lot of credit goes to the department um you know director arn's for running
such a great department and you know we don't really have to have to like get too much in the weeds
of everything and so i think this has just been such a great opportunity to work um
to serve on and so i just wanted to say a quick thank you and then um welcome and also
um that hopefully there will be um a replacement for me or my the new um
appointment coming very soon
thank you commissioner mogi for that update that's helpful that's uh making me hopeful that we won't be
down to four people for the next one that'll be great and thank you sincere thank you for your
years of service to the commission uh i i got to watch you as president when i
first joined and it was uh very illuminating especially now that i find myself struggling through today so
thank you um doing great you're doing great
you should see my first meeting so thank you all right commissioner jerdonek
yeah i also want to say you know thank you again commissioner mogi it's been a really pleasure serving with you and
good luck to whatever you're off to and um i guess this is kind of the second time
we're saying goodbye because we last last month too and then welcome commissioner dye
excited to really have you on board you're very um a lot of expertise and i think we're
really going to benefit a lot from you um in terms of the commissioner's reports i
wanted to just draw attention to the um the documents under the halderman report section
there were three documents they added just in the past couple days that were forwarded to me
that i guess you can kind of look them over but i wanted to say that i think david jefferson is um going to be
speaking during public comments so he can kind of give an update because it's a little bit technical
what's been going on and then i also wanted to ask um i haven't personally spoken with president
bernholtz but does anyone know if she received a reply from mr
bennett i i haven't heard unless secretary delgado you received an update
yeah no i didn't get any update and uh she was aware that you know that this
would come up still no update no response okay and i also want to mention um
maybe commissioner dies being modest but in addition to this letter of appointment in the packet i know that um
city attorney two also issued a press release about her so i encourage you to go to the
city attorney's website and check that out it's under the news section so
and there's a nice picture as well yeah i didn't realize there was going to be all this pomp and circumstance but i
appreciated it it shows you how grateful we are to have you joining us
yeah well i decided for your last meeting and it sounded like you were going to have difficulty meeting core
i'm so glad i could go any reason so we're glad to have you
okay uh and thank you uh commissioner jodonick for calling attention to the report um
i do see that david jefferson is uh raising his hand so perhaps we can
take public comment and he can provide us an update on that i will you are unmuted dr jefferson
uh thank you very much um you'll recall what we're talking about is the report
by alex halderman that is a declaration in a federal lawsuit in georgia
uh furling v raffensberger uh professor alderman is a computer scientist and he has
studied the dominion voting system uh the image image guest voting system
used in georgia and also in san francisco and has uh
and he did so at the direction of the port and found severe vulnerabilities uh in that voting system and i had asked
uh the elections commission um to uh to call for
uh a copy of that report so that you could um
you you could examine it to see if it applied to to san francisco and uh you uh had um
president bernholtz write a letter to the secretary of state asking asking her to sort of take over this issue because it's more of a state level
issue so i first i want to thank the commission and president bergholz for for writing that letter to the secretary
of state uh to weber uh asking her to investigate this report and perhaps to intervene
uh with the court to ask for a copy of that halderman report
i hope if you get a reply and if you think it's appropriate that you either make the reply public or
at least let me know about it um because i'm anxious to know whether the secretary of state
uh is is going to act on uh your request
i just want to give you some updates some news about what has happened since we last met um i believe i reported to
you that uh um i know i reported you the state of louisiana had uh filed an intervention
with the court asking for a copy of the halderman report because they use
dominion image cast machines and the judge denied that request
uh i believe i also told you that fox news uh had asked for a copy of this report
uh the judge hasn't ruled on that yet but what i have learned is that they were not requesting just so they
could make a news story out of it they were requesting it as evidence to be used in the lawsuit
the the multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed by dominion against fox and fox news for a defamation
so if the judge granted them access to the halderman report it would be for attorney's eyes only it would not be
made public but as i said the judge has not ruled on that request from fox news
um somewhat uh surprisingly georgia's secretary of state raffensberger who is
the target of the lawsuit asked the judge and also made a public statement calling
for the haldeman report to be made public so now somewhat surprisingly both the
plaintiffs and the state of georgia are in agreement on this report that they would like it or at least the redacted
version of it to be made public still the judge has not done that presumably the reason the state would
like the report to be made public is that it uh it's come to the attention of uh the press and and the public the
existence of the report and so um uh secretary of state raffensberger in
georgia would like to be able to demonstrate just how far off base the
criticism that professor halderman is making uh is and he can't really do that if the report is
is secret that's that's my guess as to the reasoning i don't think he actually said why although he did claim the
report was quote off base the last uh update i want to mention is that
the federal agency cesa the cyber security and information security agency of the department of homeland security
expressed interest in seeing the halderman report so the judge gave professor halderman permission to send a
copy to them which he did cesa subsequently last week wrote to judge
totenberg recommending that holderman's report not be made public even in redacted form
until cesa has a chance to review it and then work with the vendor to come up with appropriate mitigations and get
them tested and presumably certified and fielded now
sisa didn't say how long that would take but they did say that they would have a better idea in about 30 days or so after
they've done some technical evaluation of the haldeman report uh the judge has not
uh ruled on or accepted um caesar's recommendation but assuming that the
judge does that this means that the there could be a
an exceedingly long delay presumably in either the
main or redacted version of that report becoming public uh which circles around to the original request i made of this
elections commission that it asked for the republi the report to be made public
so anyway that's just uh an update on the action of that
about that report and again i want to thank the commission and and the president for
sending the letter that you sent to the secretary of state of california
thank you dr jefferson uh martha can you uh
on our next call mr turner is next mr turner you're unmuted
yes uh thank you commissioners i just wanted to comment on it on a couple things on this issue
um certainly the uh community appreciates the efforts of
mr halderman uh but i think it it deserves stating that uh there's
really no breaking news here um he may have
found issues attached to one particular model of voting machine that might be
some new model of dominion systems but the fact is
just so we're clear all the systems that are currently in use except for the
open source systems that are being utilized in mississippi are similarly
deficient the deficiency starts with the certification process
being broken and that is per the father of the certification process
roy saltman so i think it behooves us to start at the certification process and understand
that nas ed and the folks that have been giving stamps of approval on these
systems along with the itls the independent testing labs
there's a certain deficiency that is in existence at the processes inception
right right at the certification point so a lot of this conversation is again 20
years old and we're talking about now proving up halderman
and his assessment of the system but we know that these systems are not appropriate
as sort of a blanket stipulation regardless of the model type the problem
is of course that they're running on proprietary software that you can't see
and so you're faith-based at that moment and of course that's the beauty of the
open source system so i don't think we should get completely into the weeds we just need to understand that we are
operating in a vacuum here that's 20 years old and that the real
conversation has to be how quickly we can move the new systems forward we don't need to have conversation too much
about the difference between the two systems we have to take the current systems and
throw them in the dumpster and then bring the new systems that we're lucky to have available and bring them in as
quickly as possible all the rest of the conversation should just be pointed at
the the new systems and implementing and doing all that tough work the old
systems are obviously have left us in a very dire situation
that is further exacerbated by the fact we don't really want to talk publicly about how dire
the situation is because that further erodes public confidence so that's why you get groups
like the little hoover commission couching it in terms like let's make a good system better
because we don't want to tell all the voters that the current systems are at a
level two out of a one to ten because you know that will lessen voter
confidence yes the new systems will come in at perhaps an eight and that's better
than a two but we we really i think should move past that part of the conversation where
we're talking or trying to analyze the current systems let's just stipulate
get them out of existence as quickly as possible i think the damage they've done
to the united states is self-evident and again uh the last part i just wanted to
comment the audacity of the vendor's rep rep steve bennett to make the comments
that the people of san francisco don't care about elections and that this elections commission doesn't know
anything about elections i think that mr turner yes i'm so sorry we're past
the four minutes i'm sorry thank you martha that's fine thank you okay
thank you we have one more caller caller you are
unmuted you have three minutes to comment thank you good afternoon again this is jim salper
from the national voting rights task force i want to connect two things here
one is this whole demon report about dominion that is
not being released uh i do know professor holloman he's
serious and he's dedicated and meticulous and i take any indication that there's
things that are not good very seriously and the public needs to know what's going on
and this connects into open source most of the conversation about open
source is about getting a look at the source code which is a good idea since
we know in the past that somebody with 23 convictions
for embezzlement program the diebel machines but it goes beyond that we need access
to just about everything that's going on inside those machines the the log files the databases
everything including the source code in there everything we don't want to uh
give people hints as to how to hack the scene but there's a lot that can be shown to the
public that's not there and both of these issues the alderman report the dominion
system and open source they're all tied together and we will continue to support open
source and encourage the secretary to uh approve the pilot project for next
november thank you
thank you mr soper martha do we have any other callers no that was that was the last one
okay great thank you to the members of the public for your participation and your comments
uh any further discussion amongst the
commission okay great and we'll move on to the next agenda
point uh item eight the director's report discussion and possible action on
directors report director arms oh thank you committee chapel so i'll
take any questions on the report but then also one attachment to is the racial equity progress report
the section that the commission needs to complete that's an ace section a7 that's why it's attached and
i thought i attached also the election plan for the potential april election but i didn't
uh so we we haven't drafted it and i'll send it out after speaking to martha she can send it out to the commissioners
so we'll have to review the election plan for the potential april election
at the commission's uh march meeting i can say that there's not
there's nothing that's been removed from the elections process uh from the february the current
election tomorrow in relation to the april lecture we're not taking away any services so
we're actually adding more services for april so i i i apologize for for the omission i thought i said everything
but i didn't but i could take any questions on the on the director's report
no questions okay
you uh we're speechless that's oh very good but i do want to thank uh commissioner
mogi for her time on the commission it's been a real treat to have you a part of this collections commission
uh certainly one of um certainly i think a great
participant in the elections commission process and the elections process and uh certainly it's hard to see you go
where she could stick around longer but certainly i wanted to say that everything that you've contributed to this point certainly has hit a mark down
here at the department so we thank you for your time and wish you good luck everything going forward so
you well i'll still be doing my delivery drop off tomorrow so i'll see you tomorrow all right very
good and good luck tomorrow i'm yeah i know it will it'll go really
smooth and i've already heard great things and thanks again for another great report yeah we are definitely
speechless it's always like you run things so smoothly for us so uh thank you for always making it so easy not
just for us but for the public and really appreciate everything thank you and i mean i've got to say i've got a
there's a great team people down here in the department though too so it's certainly not me doing it thank you
great uh any public commissioner jordanic so this um the
racial um equity progress report there's
if there's an action item for us is that something that we would agendize for a future meeting or um
was that meant for us to do today i guess
i guess a good question is there anything that we need any action that you need from us on that director arts
is that something that we have to we have to i'm sorry to interrupt but uh yeah we have to include that in our
report uh to the right department racial equity so yeah i think we do need something
from you i don't know how you're gonna i don't know i don't know i guess you have to agenda and go through that process but we just need a
product from the commission okay is there a deadline on that
uh march first so
uh so i don't know um maybe city attorney
can i make a suggestion is that when i did it last time i wrote
in like the report and then i did present it to
the commission but it seems like we're kind of off the timing um so that's where i would kind of need
dca flores to advise us or if we're allowed to make that recommendation to the president
to actually just like you know at least make the initial report to meet the deadline um because i just remember i did the
first initial recommendations um and then submitted it i don't know i think we had a little bit of time um so we
were able to get the commission to approve it but i remember drafting the recommendation piece
um yeah so yeah i was gonna i was gonna recommend that we delegate
it to uh president bernholtz to complete otherwise i don't see how the deadline
is gonna be made are we a lot i guess that was our quest my question is are we allowed to
do it without the full commission's approval to submit the progress report
uh do you just a point of clarification this is my first uh go around with um
racial equity uh plans and progress reports um do you remember if the commission made a decision um at the
last time um this was submitted so we had a couple recommendations i
think that you know in terms of from a racial equity perspective
of you know um making sure that we diversify our our boarding commission um and it was
very broadly speaking and i know and then um the other one was to make sure that we
do um do a landing acknowledgement but i know that's been more commissioner
bernoullt's and commissioner zhang did um were actually speaking with
you know to see if we if the land acknowledgement was the accurate like way of doing the land acknowledgement i
know there's been a couple conversations so i feel like those were the recommendations that were made and then we
basically assigned others and i think because it was my transition from president
onward i think commissioner bernholtz has been the one that's been taking it on so it's unfortunate we're kind of
ballin telling her right now what she's supposed to do when she's not here but like i do i don't know maybe i'm saying
this out of like context but i do think that she was the one that was supposed to take it on because i took it on when
i was president to do the actual recommendation so um i don't know if other folks remember the
conversation i guess it wouldn't be mostly commercial or dramatic if you do recall but um i feel like the president was
supposed to just kind of continue to monitor and yes track
if i wasn't wrong i'm not wrong i mean yeah so um i mean
that being said and because it's just a progress report um that we
have to report to the office of racial equity i i would
i don't think that it is outside of president bernholdz's duties to to do that um task
um unless anyone on the commission feels otherwise um you know it sounds like that was the
course in the previous uh reports and i know that you know this has only been probably what like two
years since this legislation was enacted so we don't have a lot of history on it but if that was the way that um it was
done in the past then there's you know there would be no issue with continuing to just allow the president um the
discretion to do it
yeah yeah sorry i just i just wanna one thing i want to add is that yeah i do think that the
we did even try to attend meetings to understand what our role is we have very little
even you know over
like whether it is have you know we could encourage our um appointed bodies to think about
diversity and whatnot but like we we it was like it's just this this the work that the department
has to do versus like the role of the commission has always been a little bit kind of tough because we really have
very little control over um because we're not going to mandate the operational side that's on the
department and we'll we'll just review any progress reports and then
from the commission side we actually have very little that we could do so we can always just encourage it and i think that's what we decided to do was
you know um see what maybe other commissions are doing and seeing if that's something that we would want to adopt but outside
of that i think it's very minimal so if commissioner i mean if president bernholt can update it in that
way i would recommend that to be the process and i think i just submitted it directly to director arn's of our edits
and he just combined it with his report so from a process perspective
got it and i assume that there's easy access to the
report that you did at the start last year so that loose uh president bernholds can kind of
leverage that okay so if we're say uh dc84 is of course
saying that that's kind of within the scoop that scope of the president's role i think that means we don't have to
take a specific action on this is that right
no i mean unless the director wants to present um the progress report um and just
discuss what's in the report just so that it could be heard in a public meeting i mean i know
that he submitted the report um as a document but i don't know for lucy's context um if we wanted to
discuss it at all it's up to you all i think i think the report that was submitted is
just the blank form to be completed so i don't think there's some anything substantive for us to discuss
so i think yeah so i think that um you know it's it's hard to you know president burnholz isn't present um so
it's tough to say do this but you know that's within her um responsibilities
are within therefore it's not tough so um so yeah i don't think it would be
inappropriate to just proceed with um you know we'll ask uh president burnholz to take care of this um item
okay and and i will support her as needed since i'm on this meeting and who knows
uh kind of what her her schedule will be so can i um is it possible director
arn's for um at least a commission to see your progress report because i'm looking at
the attachment and it's just a blank document is what i'm looking at right now yeah ours isn't done yet either but
certainly we can send it to the commission yeah i think it's it's just always helpful so that there's like at least
continuity and if we do need any alignment um so i think commissioner bernholtz can see what kind of progress
has been done on the department side as well
that sounds good
uh any other comments on the director's report
um or a racial equity progress report
okay and i believe no public comment
so you can then move on to the next agenda item
number nine discussion and possible action regarding items for future agendas
i i have i have three of them
i think the dominion contract renewal will be agendized as an item
we have revisiting the meeting minutes for january 2022 and
november 20th 2019 and then we have the election plan for
the april election that will be submitted prior to that meeting
anything else
mr gerdonic maybe this could just be under the director's report but maybe the um
the racial equity progress report that was submitted could be just detached so the public can see that
as well as what we we submitted
okay thanks okay any public comment
i don't see any house raised no okay then uh thank you everyone for your
patience uh thank you commissioner moby again welcome commissioner dye i will see you
next month uh this meeting is adjourned at 5 41 pm
bye thank you hi that's nice working with you bye commissioner
bye everyone okay bye