 All set. So this is district advisory board meeting of October 20, 2021. Percent of chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting would be conducted via remote means members of the public for which to access the meeting. We do so in the following manner. We assume on the webinar ID 82414483355 no in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted and public participation in any public hearing conducted this meeting should be by remote means only. So we are in the meeting. I see we don't have any attendees. And the agenda is public comment. And we don't have any attendees. We had one email. We're requesting that we look at other configurations of the maps and we can discuss. I don't know if you want to discuss it now or we can discuss it later. We should discuss it later because of Tracy's proposed change to our map also has a slight has a small relationship to that. Okay, so we can discuss it later. I don't see any other public comment we have one attendee just join in. If you want to make a comment, please raise your hand. If you want to be recognized. Oh, it's a council president. Yeah. No hands. No hands so we assume there is no public comment. So we're next item on the agenda is to approve meetings, meeting minutes. Sorry. We love minutes. We can have minutes we have four minutes to approve. Yes. Actually, I have something that we have to do first which is to decide who's taking the minutes tonight. Oh, that's true. Right. Any volunteers. I would but I can't I got too much going on right now with the election. Every single day is packed. I have. Yeah, I admit it. I swear I would not do it again but if there's nobody else, then I will have to. I'll do it. Thank you. Thank you, Peggy. Your minutes are awesome. Yeah, they won't be this time. Don't say. Okay, they can be brief brief. Yes. So the first I'm going to call on the first is the minutes of September 21st. One second I have to find them. I just went to the pack. I went to the back and I had them open. That's why I had them open and within my files. Is there any change. For the September 21st. Minutes. So I had a change. In the second public comment, I think it's, I think it's number five. It's, I have to open them up, but I think a rena says that we started with the precincts. And then I remember that Tracy and I both noted that although we began with the precincts, the process was also a back and forth between districts and precincts. Each influencing the other. Yes, I agree with that comment. And you can't do one without the other. Yes. But the 4,000 was a pretty big deal. So we did. Yes. Okay. Any other comment. No. So do we have a motion to approve the minutes pending this change? Yes, I move that we approve pending that change. I second. Okay. Hi. Hi. And my name Blaston. Hi. Tracy Safian. Hi. You didn't have me. I. Minute approval. And I'm guessing I'm going to make the changes. If I have access to the word of the point. Yes. Did you receive the word document originally from Joseph? No, I didn't. I'll look though. I'll look. I mean, he's, is he no longer able to be reached? Well, he did send the minutes for today. No. Yes. He did. Great. Okay. So the next item is the minutes of September 28. Any. Changes. I had a very small change. Three a the second point of the second point. I'd like to add the word extra. I did this a long time ago. So. This is the 28th. Packet items. Three a discussion of district drawings. Let's see three a second point of the second point. So providing extra weight. Yes. Oh, avoid providing extra weight. Yes. Thank you. Oh, providing extra weight. Right. Yes. Okay. Any other comment. Or changes. Corrections. No, these are very thorough. No. So somebody wants to make a motion. I make a motion to accept the minutes for the 28th of September. A second. Thanks. Okay. I'm bluestain. I. I. I. I. You didn't have any. So minutes approved. No. We're cruising. What? We're doing awesome. Meets of October. He. Let me move them forward. One second. I had a comment on. The votes when we're discarding the maps that we should say. The 410. The voting in a motion. It's not clear. I don't know if it's clear that the one is abstain. Yeah. I thought that wasn't clear. Yeah. You usually put the one at the end, right? It's like 401. For the abstaining vote. That's what I think. Yeah. Okay. We could just write it out. We could say the vote was four to zero one extension. Yeah. That's fine. Any other comment. No, there's a type by typo halfway down page three. Page eight. Page eight. Page. He or ES either needs a apostrophe or to be made. There is. Page. Which bullet point. I knew you were going to ask me that. Okay. I take the minutes and think at the same time. I'm not very good with that either. I would, there's actually one edit I would make as well, but let's find the first edit that Peggy had there. Okay, so this is the bullet point that begins Sue raised a concern with map three version two. Okay, she said zero. Yeah. Amherst would have to run an election there and staff are pre think that there's a chance. Oh yeah, there's at the last word. Yeah, yeah, should just be a apostrophe in there. Yeah, make it an is. Okay. So, and I guess the bullet, I guess this is page three, like one, two, three, four bullets from the top. So it says Tracy said her counselor is in favor of her map, and has other complaints about map one and plans to endorse map three. Well, first of all, I think I've worked on a number of the maps. I don't know which is my map. So I do have two counselors and district three and they both have like different perspectives. But I think we could just say something like, you know, Tracy shared the concerns that the district three counselors had expressed about different versions of the maps. Can you send me a counselor and counselor Ryan, I can send a phrase. Can you send a counselor Ryan at that time he did say that he planned to endorse the map three because he considered it preferable to the map one version five that we ultimately adopted and he had indicated that in his newsletter to district three residents. Yeah, but can you send me a phrase. So then, yeah, yeah, I can send you a phrase. Can you do that after the meeting though. Bye. Okay, thank you. Any other change. No. I'm, I moved to approve the minutes of October 5 pending changes. Second. Hi Shannon. Hi. Tracy Safian. Hi. Hi. My name last time. Hi. So passes. Now we have the minutes of October. 12. Any, any comments. It's just the one we were halfway through and we said we need a minute take. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. It's a little sketchy, but I tried to remember. And we acknowledge that our meeting couldn't, we didn't have quorum for two and a half hours after we called the meeting. Yes. Yeah, it's in there. It's in there. First thing I say, due to technical difficulties. Quorum was called at 833 PM. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Any changes. So I moved to approve the minutes of October. 12. Second. Peggy Shannon. Hi. Hi. My name the last time. Hi. Tracy Safian. Hi. You know how many I. One that went without changes. Yes. Thank you Sue for taking those moments. Of course. Yeah. Okay, we're caught up on minutes. Yay. So now. Packet material. And we have different items. To consider. Somewhat linked. And some are not. Maybe we start. I don't know even where to start. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to like to get a clarification about the time frame for. Yeah. When the council is going to be, I mean, I'm assuming it's going back to the council on the 25th. But in terms of. What has to be ready by the 25th. I mean, I'm fine with the going back on the 25th, but it seems like the guidance from the state has sort of said, it's not actually like a heart. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's going back to the council and the council is stated to vote. On the document. On the 25th. Okay. That hasn't changed. From the emails that we got the clarification from the state. I think that the. October 30th, they learned maybe was a very minute from sometime in the past, but it has to be as soon as possible. Understood. But like, for example, I was wondering because the, the, the item that they was talked at the town. Council that we had time until December 15th. That's not true. Because they L. They had to make changes before December 15th. So they need to approve it. And if there are changes, we still have one week to make changes. So it has to be sent as soon as possible so that they can have time to consider it. Absolutely. But I meant, for example, like I can see as making some. Minor or possibly more than minor changes to the final report a little though, I thought it was pretty good the way it was. But yeah, that's the final report. So I think that's the final report. And I think that's the final report. So that's the final report. Councilor Hanekki. You know, if any requested come in to change things with the map or something that, like, for example, we could hold off doing the legal descriptions. Until after the council meeting. And we could just. I would try to, I don't even know if we need to have a final vote on the legal descriptions. I mean, that just seems like. This is our recommendation. We can talk more about this recommendation. Right. The town council might change. The view. This is my video, but we can discuss this. So. That's the timeline. So we have three items, I think, to consider that that's a money. One, whether do we want to make any change to the report. Based on the feedback that we have. And that has to do with. Tracy is proposing a minor change. A minor change in the map. To accommodate some of the comments that we got at the town council. About splitting the village centers. Yes. So, I mean, I can speak to those briefly. If now is a good time. Wait, wait. I just, I just don't clear. Did you mean you said there were three things. I think it was all linked. One is whether we want to make any changes to the report. Two is the map. Yep. Three is the letter again to respond to the council comments on the council that Tracy. Okay. Okay. Good. And it's linked to the email from. That we receive late this afternoon, just before our meeting started. Okay. So it's not easy to start with one. I guess I would propose, I see the report is sort of the last piece. Yes. Because we could talk about the map and we could also talk about my memo. I mean, one idea I had with my memo is that we could provide it to the council separately, but we could also incorporate it like as an appendix or something into our report. If we so chose or something. And so perhaps can we talk about the map, maybe. One thing I want to clarify. The report we already submitted is a public document. I think the one that we, our recommendation already went through. We might adjust so that it reflects the final product, but that would be a version two of our final report, but. Of course. Well, we have at a new date. We would just say revised, you know, based on public feedback or something. Yeah. With the new date. The council president did tell me earlier today that if we were. Sending any updated materials, she would like to have them by Friday so that they could be distributed to the counselors. Before the Monday meeting. Okay. So Tracy, did you want to share the map? Yeah. I can share the map. And I also, so. I mean, I know we're all at the meeting. On Monday. And, you know, I did hear. You know, one, we've had comment. We've heard comments before about breaking up the Palmer village center. So I did propose just after hearing those comments previously included the district five meetings as well as at the council meeting. I did propose a tweak that I think only moves like three, you know, four census blocks. And the numbers balance. I think that's because of the changes that were made around Hampshire college. I don't know. Because before I know that I had tried to do it before, and it wasn't working, but. I don't know. Just you said eyes, but I. Yeah, I think it's probably because of the change that we made. Around district two. That that changed the number of people in five that, you know, Ripple down, but anyway, go ahead. But anyway, I mean, the numbers are always so tight, right? It's hard to change anything. So, so, so with this proposal, what it was proposing to do. So originally, I had been the one who originally came up with this section. Tracy. Tracy. Also, you are the page of the new. I know. All right. All right. Let's just share the document. It's fine. Okay. Too many schools. So after hearing those concerns, I went, so I was the one hit originally proposed. For this yellow precinct precinct seven. So I think, you know, I think I had to go all the way out to Shays street. The original version of it, you know, we had awhile back was that. That this, this precinct would cut off at West street. And I was concerned about that one because cracker farm school where the precinct seven votes is actually on the other side on the east side of West street. And I also was thinking about these neighborhoods, like for example, you know, a couple hundred yards of Crocker Farm. They're right adjacent to Crocker Farm. And I also knew, just as a Crocker Farm parent, you know, I knew a lot of people who lived along Shea Street and things. And so I was the one who extended it all the way out to all the way out to the South Village, the Historic South Village Center, South Amherst Center. But I do think it is important to keep the palm oil village together. And as I thought about it, you know, one thing with it extending so far out when it looked a little weird, but then also it is also then splitting up the Historic South Amherst Village a little bit. And so I think a good case can be made for reuniting that as well as this. And particularly, you know, this is an area that the town is hoping to use as like a future economic village center with like more and more activity and things and to keep it together. So the only thing that that resulted is so it does cut, it does cut that initial shape a little bit, you know, along a line, like along one of the like rivers or something. But I didn't think that that would actually be like the hugest issue. That's the train tracks or the power line. Well, I'd like to speak to that. After Tracy published your map, I went down, I drove through that neighborhood because I wanted to see exactly what the break would look like. Sure. Below the south of Palmyroy Lane between Palmyroy and Potline is a river. And that is a very natural break. It's a really, it's a much better break than most of our breaks. The one north between Shea Street, the straight line is a power line cut. And for part of the neighborhood, it feels like also a really good break and for part of it less so. But I think overall these are physical barriers that I actually work better than streets in general. So I'm in favor of this. I think it, for the reasons that Tracy already spoke and I don't, I think the the losses that part of Shea Street gets cut off from the other part, but they were already cut off. Well, and I think too, so one of the things is right that currently precinct, I mean, I don't know if this will always be the case, but currently precinct eight votes at Munson and right, precinct seven votes at Crocker, but like the people who live along here, they're not very far from Munson, like even if you go out to like the edge of eight right over here. Right. I mean, very short distance. I think the strongest point is that it keeps the old village together and it keeps this together. I think yes, that's something that I hadn't considered before. Yes, of course, especially this one. And so I did, I asked Mike to draft the map, which he did. I shared it with the district five counselors and they were both very happy with it. I didn't, you know, take it much beyond that. We've only had a few days, but it seemed like it was overall positive. And I think it does address both the comments that we heard at the council meeting about us cleaning up village centers and it also, and, you know, that some South Amherst residents have had as well. So I hope that we could vote in favor of it. Marlene. So did you just expand district three or were there any other changes? I had a little difficulty falling. I know you, I see what you did. So all I did is take this little triangle out, right? It moved this from being yellow to being the precinct eight and then it in exchange it, it moved a little bit of this. Area. Because this down here south of Pomoi Lane was originally all eight, but then that split the village. I mean, I think it only changes, I don't know, like 50 people or something that 50, 60 people. And Tracy, that is a great point that you made about that area being a center of that I know that the planning department is focusing on, you know, thinking about reinvigorating like more of a center. That is a great point. Something I wish I would have remembered when we were going through all of this. I've written a memo about that because I'm on the, I'm the transportation advisory chair and we recommend around about, okay. So I don't know how do people feel? Could do people feel comfortable if we vote to adopt this change to our map? I don't have a problem with it. I don't have a problem. And I think we're gonna have to write the, rewrite the report or write one page addendum to explain why we are changing this one, but not, we had already the others village center that was raised by the east. I do wanna talk about that east one a little bit because I came up again last night, but can we just finish talking about the South Amherst first? Okay. All right, so then I'll make a motion to adopt this version of the map. My second. So let's vote. Majed Ghilani. Aye. Peggy Shannon. Aye. Tracy Safian. Aye. My name Blastain. Aye. Irene Jovenel, aye. So we motion passed to update the map to the current version as displayed. And then I think just to acknowledge that we're changing this, I see that Mike now changed the language just to say map to be reviewed by the DAP so we could say this map was approved by the DAB today or something. I just was starting to feel a little uncomfortable because we had this map that we called the final version map and the date was 10-5, but we had actually tweaked it a number of times and basically referring to it as exactly the same map when there had been like little changes here and there. So I'd feel more comfortable if we had this updated date. Absolutely. And I think it's good too that it also shows that we are responding to public comment, right? That we're responsive, so it's a win-win for us. And I did want to just speak briefly about this. I mean, I thought about reaching out to Councilor Ross after the meeting, but I didn't because I do recall at one of our meetings, we really did talk about the e-failage sensor for a while. Yeah. I knew that I had done a version of the map for sale-in-place, which is like over here, was included in six. And then, I mean, a good case was made for like keeping it in the downtown. And Rene, I think you said that you had lived in that area too. So, and I know originally, even my original map too, I think even like this section of five was like reconnected too. I just don't know how, we talked about it a length and nobody thought that it was very important to connect all four corners of it to be in the same district. No, there is no real connection, I think. From living there, there's no real connection. There's no center actually. There's no any activity really there. That's my view. And also, I mean, there's also like, I mean, in terms of like activity, right? This corner here is also pretty, this corner is more busy, right? So this is on the other side of Fort River, where it's like Route 9 and Route 9. And I mean, this seems like this has quite a bit of activity, but again, the activity on the Fort River side, I don't know. This is more Maryland's heart of town than mine, but I don't, does it feel like this whole area is connected? Because a lot of these are rentals, like student rentals and things that are connected to the downtown more than. Or commercial, or at least Amherst. I mean, there's a whole bunch of strip along in here, so. Where are you doing? Not on the other side of Route 9. On that side of Route 9, there is. Well, like going out this way. There's a, I think there was a hotel that now is converted to apartments and. Another business there. Well, and there's Colonial Village and like all these things. Yeah, but those are further down. Right now. I think the connection would have been the Fort River school area and possibly the East Street Common, but that's hardly ever used for any kinds of activities. So I would, I would say that I think the connection for East Amherst is, I mean, I don't, you know, it's not the kind of village center that people associate with, I think. No. No. I mean, do we feel like, you know, in response to that common critique that we would want to say anything about why we didn't unite East Village Center more or just that we felt like the main components of the East Village Center was still kept together? I think the main components and the main links are kept together, the activities. I think if you, I mean, I think we've kept most of the residential areas together and what we haven't kept is the business district. But I think as someone said, it's a lot of strip malls and there's, there don't seem to be any activities that are centered in that area. No. There's a big disconnect. I mean, and really, I mean, for the people, like, I know, you know, there are student rentals and things along in here and it really seems like they're connected and, like they're really connected towards, you know, going towards the downtown, I think. You know, they're not thinking about about East Amherst, like going out anyway, so. Right. Yeah, no, the other side of the Northeast Street or East Street and I don't know how it's called a bit. I think it's Northeast, East and South East. All that area, there's more connections. I live both in Northeast Street and in the Coghilded area and I think this one reflects much more the... Okay. So, I mean, I think whether or not we put this into our report a little, but if we are speaking to the council again, not giving a full presentation, but maybe just some commentary in response to the comments that we heard, like we could just mention our thinking about East Village Center, as well as the South, like the Pomaway Center. Okay. Someone refreshed me. Where was the Village Center before? Was it in district? Exactly my question. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know what the map. I believe that this is the, I think that this is the same line because I originally, I was changing my map and I was putting the condos into six and that wasn't there before. Yeah, I think it's the same line as well. And although I think ideally we actually would want to try to unite the districts there as we are trying to unite the districts in South Amherst, the business, I'm sorry, not the districts, the businesses. It's less clear here that it's important and really we're following the line as it was before. Right. And so it's just another one of those trade-offs. True. And again, so I think we can mention it. Yeah, so the line currently is along Northeast Street as we thought. It's currently exactly almost the same. I think actually the line is on College Street. So the only difference is this little section here would be the district nine and not district five between college and main. But we shifted some of that because now nine now has the common with college, the honors college dorms. And so that pumped up the population of nine. And so we had to shift some of five accordingly like some of nine and five. So that's the only difference, but otherwise it's the same. So I think that those would be good points if we didn't want to have a few talking points in responding to the comments. Okay. I just realized, Mike, could one of you upload the presentation that we made to the packet? I think... Mike, can you, I'm at home. I don't have access to. Yeah, thank you. We forgot that we should have added the presentation that we made to the town council, to the packet, or some... But yeah, it is also in the council packet. It's in the council packet. But I thought in our, I don't know where it should have been. It's not a problem. I can do it right now as we're speaking. And it's the one you shared at like 1.30 on Monday afternoon, right, Marina? Yeah. Okay. And where do we want me to... In which location do we want me to put it in the packet structure? I guess in today's, maybe, right? Yeah, today's. Okay, yep, I'll do that right now. Thank you. So we answered two comments that we had on them. So based on the comments that we had on Monday at the town council, we... Oh, there's one more item that we have to think is about numbering. I think the major comments were about the village centers. Well, and then there were the comments about disenfranchising the students and discriminating against them, which is why I had written that memo. Yeah, so I wanted to bring this up. So there's one more item that we need to talk is about the labeling of the prisons and districts. Remind me not that we need to vote on that. Do you want to talk about that now? Before we do that, there's one other thing I don't want to forget. Remember, since we changed those precinct boundaries, that somebody's going to have to rewrite the legal description of them as well. Yes, I guess. Yeah, I'm going to adjust that. Okay, just wanted to make sure that was on somebody's radar. So maybe we talk about now about the comment about disenfranchising the students and the memo because it links into the comments afterwards. Well, and also what we're going to do in terms of if we want to adjust our final report. Yeah. I mean, so the thing is, some of the language I thought that was made about that was very strong. And I know from being in our meetings how much we've thought about the dorms. I mean, the dorms are always a challenge. They were a challenge for the 2011 DAB. They are a challenge now. There's no way to have a lot of districts in Amherst that aren't touching the dorms. And so it was helpful for me to write the memo just to kind of go back and see exactly what we did change with the dorm census box and what we didn't. And the reality is that we really did not change that much with the dorms. Like currently, as I noted in the memo, currently the UMass College dorms include six precincts and four districts, and that's still the case. So it's not like we created many more of them. And in fact, I also found that with the proposed, and also just because of the way the dorms are clustered and they were clustered similarly in 2011, except for the Honors College dorm, is that there's only so many different ways you can group them. And so we were basically keeping the dorm complexes in the same, for the most part, the same pairs that they are currently, that we moved a little bit, like some of the ones off of Eastman Lane and so on. And we did, of course, move some of them around the Southwest dorms. And but- But I felt, no, of course, some of the numbers were changing, but I felt like pretty comfortable. Like as I went back and I noticed that, for example, that when I wrote in the memo, I think it was like, you know that, it was like less than 21, 20% of the students are changing districts, which is less than the general population. And that, you know, so many of the students in terms of like voting access at the high school, right? That's almost 60% of the residents live in precincts where they would vote at the high school. We're not disenfranchising there. And there is still, so it does shift a little bit in terms of which district has the most students. So currently, I've heard though, I haven't calculated it that just like three, my district currently is 70% students. And you know, with our new numbers, I think that because we shifted some of the Southwest and we put the Honors College that it would be the district with precinct nine and precinct 10. And that's about like 66% of students. So I thought, I mean, I tried to address those concerns in the memo. And I think it's important too, just to note just that, you know, we really didn't look at the voting data that much with the students because so many students aren't registered to vote, but it does show in terms of the distribution of residents that I didn't feel like we were disenfranchising people. Okay. So Dee has her hand raised and then baby. I would just like to comment on the use of inflammatory language toward you all as a committee, as a volunteer group and committee, I thought was unfounded and really unfair. And so that you all heard what they had to say and you approached it back base. I feel for your report, you need to do the exact same thing. Don't kind of fall into this trap of the, and whatever they're feeling politically guide you. Just what you explained Tracy in a more concise manner in how you're going to talk about this is how we consider the students. You didn't disenfranchise them. You know, if there's some reason that it can be configured better to be more inclusive, certainly take that advice, but write it in such a way as to make sure that you are adhering once again to the state guidelines. And I feel, as I said last night, that you all did your due to adhering to those guidelines, paying attention to registered voters and making sure those communities were as intact as could be. If you use language such as, these are potential voters, these are voters, non-voters, whatever, then it does kind of trigger, particularly for folks who are elected in office, right? That somehow you're disenfranchising folks. But again, it's needless, they didn't have to use that type of language. So I just don't want you all to be heard by that. And I didn't get the census that's guiding you. It's the residents. It's intact communities that you're trying to keep together. And write it as such. If you write it in such a way as to be defensive, then that's just to me gonna trigger more of the questioning and going back to probably the same map that we have. So anyway, that's my word of advice in listening to what happened last night. Just watch the wording and how you craft it and construct it in your report and stick to census and residents and population. So Dee, I don't know whether it's just on my end, but you're like fading in and out a lot. Is that, is anybody else having that with Dee? Or is it just me? Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. Cause I was gonna turn off, maybe you turn off your video or something. I just know I have issues in my house sometime or something, but. Cut it off. Yeah, I, okay. Better. So I had. The better automatic way. We love seeing you. But, okay. No, so can you hear me? Yes. Yes. I was just saying, when you write the report, just make sure it's about residents and not about voting populations or potential voters. I think those are triggering for politicians basically for folks who are elected in office. So use wording that speaks to the census numbers and speaks to residents and keeping intact populations with certain geographic and other commonalities together. And I think avoiding those words, such as voters potential voters will help because all that does is create more questions for them or the ability rather to question it. So that's my words of my two cents words of advice. Well, and I think, I mean, the thing is right. So just for that, for the student population, we don't have voter data, right? So that's why I did just go back to the demographics. So. Absolutely. And this is what I'm saying. Just what you explained earlier, but write it in a concise manner because you use other wording for them. And again, these are folks who are elected in office. And if there's a way for some, not all, I think some heard you loud and clear and understood your arguments. And I think your arguments were sound, but others will try to use that. So I think stick to what's allotted by the state and you'll be fine. I think you all have defended it extremely well last night. You argued your point, made the key as to why the maps look the way they do and talked about the counters, you know, what an alternative. This would be the alternative, but then you'd have to do something else. So I, you know, I think it's a really specious argument that they presented last night. It's a red herring. And it kind of undermines the work of this committee. And I just don't want you all to fall into that trap because you've come so far with a handful of people. So, all right, that's it. Okay, can I have a turn? Yeah. So D, I actually very much appreciate what you're saying. I'm just gonna add my thoughts, which is that one, your memo blew me away, Tracy. I think it's amazing to have all that information there. The one piece it feels like it's missing and I don't wanna speak to whether we include the memo or not, but I do think it's a great piece of work. The one piece that's missing to me is that the argument that I heard on Monday night was that students are a community of interest and therefore we can't break them up into separate districts that we should cluster them. And that's the argument that I feel like needs to be countered because I think that that's just not true. And so I would... You really brought that up yourself. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I did bring it up. And so I haven't gone back to reread the report yet. I wanted to hear what happened at this meeting tonight, but I do feel like what I'd like to do is go back, change whatever language in there was so terribly offensive. I mean, I'm sure there are some phrases or some assumptions that really were poorly done. Happy to do that. And then I think decide as a group whether we, A, counter the community of interest piece and B, counter the sort of historical piece, which is what Tracy has put together. So I'd be curious to hear how other people feel. So first Tracy, if you want to, that's a link to the comment of Peggy, if not we can do a round of people, how people feel about it. No, I mean, I think, I just wanted to comment quickly on the community of interest. And Peggy mentioned it at the council meeting, right, that you have this large population. And actually, if you look at the students as a whole, like they're actually 60% of Amherst population. So they're a majority. And I thought you made a really important, and even the students in the dorms, it's 14,000 students. So you made a really important point that that's not just one community and that's definitely true. So, and one of the things I was trying to do in my memo, because part of what I was hearing is that, well, you did a really good job with the race equity in terms of voting equity, but what about the student equity, but that's sort of ignoring the fact that like some of our most, a lot of our diversity comes from the students. Like when you look at the diversity data, and I know Peggy had looked at it in depth, and I've looked at it some. It's just that the population, the census box that have the most racially diverse populations are in the college areas. Not to ignore the other communities as well, but there's definitely a tie-in. And so it seems a little false to just say that you have, you have students and then you have diversity because the students are contributing to our diversity. Absolutely, Tracy. Your point is such an important one. And it is a common fallacy, right? Or a common trope that people use to talk about groups and generalities that have no color, that have no diversity within them. So there's this assumption, well, they're students. Therefore, they're white in a sense, right? Or they're students. And, you know, they don't count as diversity. And we know, having taught at UMass, that the students bring diversity to this community lots of times. So, you know, I think it's, their critique was very problematic for me as a resident and as a person of color and how they were pitting these groups, you know, these two groups against one another in a sense. So, you know, I applaud you all for not falling into that trap. And I know you will attend to the language, but, you know, having your own definitions and specificity will help within your report, define what is diversity perhaps, right? What does that mean in terms of this report? That, that might help folks who will read it for the council, but then also 10 years from now. Thanks. So, so before we were talking, I wanted to see how people feel about that. Peggy's comment and Tracy's comment. How to address the questions raised last time. One is more data driven. The other one is, I don't know how to put it. I don't know how to explain it. So Tracy, yes. I mean, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think Peggy was suggesting going back to the port. Yeah. I mean, I was looking, I was working on my memo. And. I would like to share, I mean, no matter whatever we do, you know, with the memo, whether it becomes for the report or not, I do hope that a plurality of the DAB, like we'll support it or something that I could take it to the council. As the DAB. And if not, I can even speak just as a DAB member, because. I was, you know, I was in part responding like to some of the, as D was saying, like some of the inflammatory language and stuff, which. And, but I also found it really helpful. It was a really helpful exercise for me to go and look specifically at the student data in that type of detail. And see all the things that we had done right. Like as we suspected, but it was good to document that. And I can see perhaps like how in reading our report, and sort of how we are framing it in terms of with the active voters, like if the focus that we had had on the demographic data and the census data. Got lost a little bit. And it looks like we were doing a lot with the voter data. And we really were not doing that much. Like that really came in just in the last few meetings. And part of that was when we were looking at how to distribute. The precincts across the districts. So I would like to clarify that in our report. So you would like. I mean, I would just like to revisit our report and, you know, and be more aware of how we could present what we did more strongly. So. Okay. Thank you. I agree. Yeah. Marilyn. So. We did consider the active voter data. That was one of the reasons that we made some changes. And. In some ways it is front and center in the report. So how do we. Downplay that. And still have, you know, have some integrity to the report. You know, I think it has, it's sort of the elephant in the room. How do we address it? And. I think in some ways it's a big issue. Maybe it's not just. It's maybe it's just looking at active voters rather than students. But I think we did want to try to equalize the numbers of. The precincts in districts based on the voter turnout. At least based on one, one election. So it's just a question, you know, Peggy. I think that's brilliant, Marilyn. I mean, the. We, I think in the report, we may have often, I may have often used the word students or dorms or whatever. When really, if we just focus on active voters. Versus nonactive voters. And appreciate in the report that our numbers are. Imperfect. We know that. But we also know that in general. The numbers that we have are. Somewhat reflect a reflective of what actually happens in the town. So, and I think we may also want to address the issue that this was like one of the worst times to do this because of. COVID and so many residents were not in town. Largely students, but we don't know who else left town. Or was not counted in Amherst. Yeah. Although. They're not counted by that. It's my understanding that. At least the dorms. They get. Count. I don't know how they stand, right? So. They did that. The undercounting is mainly. Outside. The dorms. Then the content is mainly on. Presidential. Places. So that might be. So. Yeah. Yeah. My head. Go ahead. My head has. Hi. So I had a bit of an issue with that because I remember from last meeting. That counselor Evan, I believe said that using active voters would have like. Some kind of a political agenda behind it. So I just think that like, I don't really understand the logic behind that, but I'm just bringing it up because that might be. Brought up next time if we change students and dorms to mostly active voters. Yeah. I mean, I personally thought that there were some false parallels there because in comparing us to. Republican politicians who clear the voter roles of all the inactive voters. I mean, we're not doing anything to the voter roles. Right. We are. Well, what we're trying to do is have some metric that represents like who is voting. And the people who are voting are the people who are the. Move for the most part, the active voters. I mean, in that memo I wrote up, I mean, I was trying to, I don't think that either. I don't think that registered voters is a great metric because it's inactive and active voters. And active has some issues too. But we know that. The voter turnout. Particularly in local elections is not very big. And it tends to be the people who are the active voters, the people who fill out the town census, you keep their address updated who voted in most of the elections. And from being an election worker and Amherst for over 20 years. I know that we have lists and lists. I mean, it was actually interesting when I went back and looked at the data that after the charter. Went through. We, we lost a lot of registered voters. The number went down from like over 20,000 to now it's currently at 16. I'm not sure where some of them went. I mean, maybe there was some big clearing out of inactive voters, or maybe the system's changed or something. But, I mean, the reality is that there's a lot of inactive voters because, I mean, one of the reasons is the students who graduate. You know, stay inactive. Unless they register somewhere else in Massachusetts. And so you have this lag time of a few years before they're cleared off. And so it does not seem accurate to me. To do any kind of analysis on the registered voters. We know that we have such a large inactive voter population. Including not just inactive voters that just haven't voted and they still live locally. As you might see in urban areas, but just people who aren't even there anymore. So. I mean, I think that of the different voter metrics available to us, that I do think that active voter numbers were the best choice. So they're not perfect either. And then. So Tracy, in this instance, I think qualitative data would, would be more useful. And, and what I mean in a, in a very, you know, I'm trying to be facetious. Here. What my heck is referring to. Is a really important point. Because they're trying to undermine. Your use of active and inactive. And in this case. Like I, I suggested. It has a different meaning than how Evan Ross. Used it. Then how Mandy Joe used it. And even how it is used nationally. You're using it with a certain specificity here in this community. To not only to, to not just. Talk about in general. Active people who were active. Voters and then people who were active. Active people who were active. Voters and then people who were on the rolls, but not voting. Okay. You're talking. It sounds like to me about. A generalization around students. Okay. And in some ways. The point. Is unfair. Because that's not all students, right. It's a generalization, but based on. Trends and numbers. They are as a group. Not as active as the, the population of Amherst. Okay. In general. All right. For your sake in writing this report. It is, you know, in basic kind of research. You write these are the working definitions for this report. These definitions have. Other meanings outside of this report, but for the purposes of this report. We are calling inactive voters, voters who are. You know, on the rolls, but not voting. We don't want to go back to this report. You know, I don't, I don't want to go back to this report. Or have not, no, I mean, that's not right. There's not even. Exactly. They don't have current addresses. No, of course, no, no. Tracy Tracy, Tracy, hold up. I know exactly what you're saying. This is a hypothetical. What I am saying is that however you're going to define. A student voter, or a student non voter. You all need to decide on what that definition looks like and put it in your report, because it's going to come back the next time Town Council meets if it's not fully fleshed out and defined. So just what my heck said, it's going to come up again. So I understand it has its own meaning, but you're going to have. Oh, do you mean that we can't hear you. No, I'm muted because that's all I have to say. Okay. Hello. Okay, because you're going to run into the same problem and you're going to keep going in a circle and I wish you would take time. Going back to what my heck offered. It's important that you define it because just like Evan Ross tried to take you on this fishing expedition with his language, it's going to happen. Okay, Marlene, you had a comment. Yeah, I'm muted. Yeah, I'm muted. I know. Just getting back to these point, I think, and trying to be objective about it. I mean, Sue has explained the whole process of reviewing the voting role voter roles and eliminating people from the active voter list. In some ways, we could say the state mandates that we do this. It's not a decision that the town is making. And because of the nature of the population, which is a transient population. We lose a lot of voters for variety of reasons, but I think, you know, we need to, I think that should probably be more front and center in the report explaining why the numbers of active voters versus registered voters is so low. I have a, I was just looking then coming freshman class it's 5,000 over 5,000 students. So each year, I don't know if it's still there's an exchange there should be a rate of exchange of 5,000, both 5,000 new residents every year and this 5,000 new decide the undergraduate undergrad is 5,000. So I was gonna say you get the undergraduate freshman transfer students graduate students that's a lot of so so that's probably over 6000 new residents every year to the town so if all of them were to register, we would have how many. So it's five years. So 30,000. We potentially could have 30,000 inactive voters of people that have left the town. I'm not running Hampshire and Amherst College to. That's just you must. So, in my memo that I had written that's where because I realized it was an issue when I was sharing, you know, our report and some of our recommendations but some people and they were like, Well, how come you're only using active voters what about registered voters and I think you know the word active it makes it sound like active voters are those people who are at the polls all the time when actually what active voter means and the definition that we're using from the state database or these are the active voters are the people who are registered voters who return this town census and their addresses are current in the system. It does not actually mean that they are showing up at the polls like every single election. So, I mean that word active can be confusing and I mean I put it into my memo. But if we're going to put it in the main report which I think is a great idea. Then we could take it out of there because it's a little awkward in there because it doesn't really it doesn't really talk about the arguments about why our map is doing a treating you know students fine, you know treating students okay it was just that I wanted to address that because it came up. And I acknowledge in there in the language in there right I acknowledge that it's not a perfect metric but it's better than using registered voters so. Okay. I want to say that I think we should do that we should put our definition of active voters in the report. We should explain that we are using it as a proxy for for the data that we don't have which is some sense of how many of the people who move every year will vote. And that we understand it's imperfect but it actually correlates fairly well with turnout and go from there I also want to point out that a lot of those students choose not to change the reservation registration because they would prefer to vote in the communities in which they grew up where they have more of an understanding of the town dynamics or whatever. Plus, there are eight to 10% of those students are international and can't vote also so there's a lot of reasons why students don't vote which has nothing to do with enfranchisement. Yeah. I think it. I think that. And then technically, I talked to several students since Monday and they were saying on perp they might be registered to both, but on purpose to them both on local elections because they, they know they're very transient. At least the ones have been talking they said we are transient in this town so we don't vote on the local elections and vote on the national. Sure. Or the state elections. I mean this election turnout is pretty high yeah. Yes we get a massive amount of voter registration forms. And then every four years, you know, the people become inactive is not every four years but it's just the cycles, it's and it's always the same, always the same. Maybe that's when our number of registered voters will be back up in the 20,000s and then two years later it will be. So you had a comment. Just yeah quick comment at the last conference that I attended, speaking to a lot of the other clerks a lot of clerks actually advised there, from like the smaller towns that know their residents advise the people going off to college to stay registered in their own community, in their hometown community and not to register to vote when they get to college so I thought was interesting I just listen and take it all in, but I thought that's interesting. Quite a few clerks. Yeah, we don't, we don't advise. I just want to say personal experience when my kids went to college we tried to ensure they stayed registered in Amherst so that's just one example. There you go. Okay, so we have to decide. So, what I've been hearing is that there's going to be changes done to the report to reflect these comments. So we can convene the group that was working on the report before it's still active and guessing to make the changes. Everybody's okay with that. I mean, we can have a working group that as long as it's not a majority, like a form of the committee. Okay. And I mean I thought I thought our first version of the report. I mean that piggy had pulled together I thought it was done really well and I mean I'd be happy to not work a lot on the report though I can add a few things and Okay, Marlene. Are we going to address Mandy Joes. Yes, yes, now. Okay. And I wanted to know also the, the, the memo from Tracy. How do people feel about adding it to the report of being sent, send it independent of the report. I would send it independent. Whether it needs edits or I want to know, I want everybody to have a way to not look at any other decisions. Marlene. Marlene, do you have any opinion I'm going to go calling everybody to see how I feel about the. I think I would want to see what the revised memo looks like but I don't know that it necessarily and we talked about adding some definitions to the report so. I don't know whether it has to be part of the report or whether it should be separate just based on what you know how the two end up. If it's redundant I'm not sure that it's necessarily should be part of the report, but I do think we probably need to address town council or there should be some memo to town council addressing some of those concerns. Okay. My heck. Can you hear me. Yes, yes. Yes. For the most part I actually just agree with what's being said. So yeah, no comment. Okay. Okay, Peggy. I love them. I, I love the memo. I really want the town council to see the memo. The question is, do I wanted to come as part of the report as an appendix to the I don't want it as part of the report it could be appendix report or it could be sent from the DA be separately or it could be sent from Tracy, and that's what I'm not sure. I think it's important to have it sent either from the DA be separately, but from all of us, or from Tracy, and not be actually part of the report, although of course it will be included in the paperwork in Sue's big book, no matter what right so. So I think I would vote for one of those two, and I'm not sure which. I, I care of it being an appendix was just so that it would be like part of the record. You know I was, I was a little, I mean I don't think it needs to be fully integrated into the report. My idea was just so that you know when the 2021 DA be sits down or whatever the historic record is that it's there. It's not lost as you know some of the artifacts that came along before the final report. I think, I think, you know, I mean one thing there's two different ways with the memo. I mean I did, you know spend some time on it and that we could just leave it standalone as it is. And just because like it was directly in response to the concerns raised. We have that discussion about active and active voters which I could just leave it in that memo and then, but we also are going to integrate those into the report. And I think but that's okay because you know that was just such a big part of what the inflammatory language was about so that was one thing that I was responding to. I feel pretty confident and good about like the different points I make in terms of how voters student voters, I mean sorry student residents in Amherst are not being disenfranchised. And we're not being discriminated against and ignored in our analysis, like in terms of, if you look at them, you know both the UMass storms but then off campus students and the Amherst college and Hampshire college students, as well as just the students that we do have racially diverse students. And so, I mean I like it as a standalone thing. I would be happy to send it with just my name on it. But if like if I wasn't going to change it if I wasn't going to change it at all. I mean I would, if people if other people from the DAB wanted to support it as well like that would be great because otherwise it sounds like it just is coming from me. And, and I write that and I write the council memos on other things too so they might be sort of tired of me so if people wanted to vote to. I think I think I'm one of those people, but if so, if you wanted to agree together to endorse it that would be lovely. I think maybe one compromise would be, I think Peggy you wanted to address about the point about the students that are not a uniform population. And maybe one way to balance our address this would be to have an appendix that it was response like the title of the appendix would be so that it doesn't get lost would be response one to comments on the presentation on 1020 so that it's attached but it's clear that it's in response to some comments that we got on the meeting. Right, it's a different type of appendix on the on the appendix that we said before it was extra data. This would be this is version two of the report with an appendix is response to if we were going to send it that way I would like it to also be a standalone piece. Okay, personally, and then I mean I was just thinking it could be in the appendix just as like an artifact of, you know, something that db produced it the db endorses it but I have a feeling I don't think that you know everybody will read through the whole report a second time or whatever and, and I think it does just having a memo saying there you know response to counselor is more powerful than just folding it into the report even if it's in the, especially I guess if it's in the appendix because I don't think it will get much view. I agree with all that. It's a more powerful standalone. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what we're looking at now is that I would write a little like a paragraph explaining why students are not really a community of interest to be protected by clustering, and we'd add that to the memo, and then send the memo as on its own. And I'm in, I would very happy to sign it, sign it as well and have our whole committee sign it but of course that's up to everybody. Do we want to vote about signing or I'm here. I see if a heads nodding that people are willing to sign I don't know my heck. I think you're the only one that I don't see how you feel about the memo. I feel pretty good about this one and like I said before I agree. We should sign it and then obviously things will come up along the way but so far so good in my opinion. Okay. And, and of course everybody should get to see it before they put their name on it so yeah edits will go out. Okay. Tracy, if you can send that paragraph to Tracy. Yeah, I mean, I guess so we can, I can share with Peggy and she can edit it accordingly. And then send it. And we can circulate something now are we able to take a vote on it or do people feel comfortable voting on it with the proposed revisions because I don't think we can actually vote when we're not convinced can we know know what we could. Can we say that we will, we will send it with proposed revisions and what happens is it goes out to everybody and then all comments go back to Tracy, and nobody else, and then she incorporates the revisions, and we go from that's that's all legal right. Yes. Okay. So we would do that. So we have a motion to send a memo. Regarding the comments that we had on the council meeting regarding student population. Yes, I make that motion. And that's the motion and pending changes that we're going to send a memo in response. Yeah, I make that motion. Okay, I mean our people can if I send it as like a word document or PDF or something or we don't really want to get Google Doc right if it's for now to edit it. Do we correct. Yeah, word or PDF or something. So who seconds it. I can second. I second. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. So we have two comments. The second comment that we have is the email that we got late today just before our meeting from counselor. She was asking that we put the numbers as pairing and I have an opinion on this, but I would like to hear opinions. Some of the comments that she's the work that she's asking we already consider them and we already discarded them. One of the numbers is already in the report as an appendix. And the other pairing that she's suggesting the first option was one of the first parents that we discarded that we didn't even didn't make it out to our final maps. That was discarded early on. And my recollection of this was because for multiple reasons we discarded this parents one was because precinct six and eight together would make a very long district going on nurse to south so that was discarded. We discarded immediately even before we looked and active voters that again will create a huge imbalance so that was, that's why we didn't even consider we didn't recommend that parent Tracy. Yeah, so I did want to, I mean just logistically so you know initially when I read it I was thinking about all the work she was making us do and the fact that we've already considered a lot of these different options but then. I think one thing, one way we could do it address it is that I already have a lot of the numbers that she's asking for right she, I just want to, I mean. Tracy, we already should. That's not our recommendation with our recommendation. That's not our recommendation and she can bring it. I think she can bring up these numbers and propose these numbers. The recommendation of the VIP was we we consider these options and. Yes, as a committee, we discarded it. Yes, yes, but all I'm saying is I already. So she proposed two different options alternative. We know alternative one alternative to. The one option the one to keep the pairings the way they are, like right we even had that in our deck. We knew that people were going to bring it up and I already have those numbers. They have them already on the report. Well, right but we didn't put I don't think we put the other option in there the one with the six and eight which is just the hugest geographic precinct ever it's way too big. No, I understand, but I mean, okay. But all I'm saying is that, I mean, yes, I don't, I don't think it's, I don't think it's that respectful of all the effort that we put in. And the facts, I mean some of the language that in her email. For example, there's this portion it says I'm still unclear whether I will make a motion to alter the proposed districts on Monday night and if so which option I would choose. I was told if I was thinking about it to before the option to use so that the numbers could be crunch and they could be discussed at the DB tonight like that email literally went out two hours before our meeting. We've already we've already crunched the numbers we've already looked at these factors. I mean not to, you know, feed into her argument but I personally would I don't think that Mike should do any maps or anything because we don't even know if she would propose. She's just saying, oh, you know, just go ahead do all my work like crunch the numbers and but the reality is that I already have the numbers. I mean I already have the numbers for alternative to it's really easy for me to crunch numbers I love spreadsheets. And we just send her those numbers and we just, I don't I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even do anything detailed I would just say these are the numbers with what you were asking for, and that you know we rejected both of those. I don't think we need to say anything else. The question is, why do we have said Peggy has said Peggy. Sorry, but I felt okay with responding in that limited way, because we already have the numbers. I also calculated the numbers we have the numbers. What came through to me from that memo was was Mandy Joe's feeling that Southwest had to be reunited. And I just wondered if anybody understood why that was such a compelling argument for I'm just trying to understand. And so, this is just a question does anybody know why it feels so important. I think he keeps raising that and the thing is, it's a freshman dorm. I mean, it doesn't, it's not compelling. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something. And even the district three counselors for whom that's their districts, I mean the people who live in Southwest like our students have spoken to how it's not. It's important to be able to reunite all of Southwest in one district, and, and the counselors don't think it's important to reunite Southwest in one district and so on I just don't. Yeah. Marlene. You wanted to discuss the day meant before. I just, I wanted to make sure we addressed it but I was the comments that have been made that's, that was my only point. Okay. So one of the concerns to this email is, we already consider that the DAB did not endorse this parents. That we already, let me say we already calculate so one of the numbers is on the report on the in the first appendix, and the other map consideration we discarded them early on in our process. Because it didn't satisfy many of the requirements and we considered the fact that it would be one district going almost north to south of Amherst. Not a good bearing. That was the remind me if I that was that's why it's not just north to south it's not physically like six and eight are the most rural of the district so the ones that have the. No, no, no. Two precincts that don't have that don't have any U of S storms. Yeah, and so geographically they physically occupy about like 40% of the town it just is like completely weird. And I mean I would doubt that the state might even approve it if you have this like huge huge district personally. It's gigantic, it doesn't look good. I think a more compelling reason is voter turnout. But then the highest, you know, highest number of voter active voters. Absolutely. Yeah. Everybody else. Everybody else. Yeah. So I think that's our response to the email. I'm. So do we do we provide her with any numbers or no. Well, do we provide her with the alternative one numbers just because we have them. She has access to the numbers you can calculate with themselves. And I don't know what's, I think it's that if. Maybe I'm getting into trouble here. But I think all of us, we can do the calculations five minutes, but it takes five minutes of our time that we cannot write finishing the report. I'm doing the work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is something that we have done in the past already. Yes. We could, we could also, we could also say given the late hour that we just didn't have the chicken go back just as we could to look at the numbers. If those, those maps were there. Yeah. But. I mean, I just don't want it. Tracy, what happens if everybody sends us this kind of request? Two hours before this meeting. I mean, I'm pretty sure that we will not receive a similar request from any other counselors. And I mean, the main thing for me is that the email, one thing is that her email, the email request that came in only two hours before our meeting. Is that it was sent, it was not sent to the DAB. It was sent to staff. Right. It was sent to Mike into Sue and then Sue forwarded it to us. But, you know, I have concerns about. I mean, you know, staff, for example, Mike, who also can crunch the numbers and has generated lots of numbers too. Like being asked because this is a counselor request to provide these numbers. And so I don't want to put any more work on his plate. And because we already have the numbers. I mean, I would, I would say very little about them, but I would just give them to her. And yes, it is like five minutes or whatever, but I just, I would rather just do that and make it go away. And we just described that we've like rejected it. So. I'll have a set up a process since the beginning. I think you should emphasize that process. To also the counselors. And Maryland is, is right. It came in at the last minute. How were you all to take your time to consider this already? I just spent a considerable amount of time. Discussing it. And it came in at the last minute. So I think you should follow your process. And with any, whether it's Mandy Joe, or another counselor and inevitably they'll, they'll be someone else. Usually. No, no, you have something. I'm sorry. I just, just follow, I think you should follow your process. And have, have it at that. That's all I'm saying. So our process had been that we would, we did not guarantee that we would deal with anything if it didn't come in the night before. That's what I recall we had said. Yeah. Also. Also do we work for this is work done for somebody in particular what request for somebody in particular that will be sending it to one particular person. I found it weird that somebody's requesting us to calculate some numbers where they're publicly available. For everybody. Because if it comes from us, it seems that we are endorsing these numbers. We are endorsing these parents and that's, that's where my conflict is when we, if we send something back, it seems as the DAB is endorsing. And I've a point about the possibility of this other parents we had the DAB was endorsing one pairing, not the other ones based on our discussions. So that's, that's when I have the conflict of sending back because then it seems as we, the DAB might endorse any of these other parents and we don't have any issue with these other parents. When the data is publicly available, it's not accessible for everybody or the person's numbers are there or the whatever we have included in the, on the, we have it included in the report. All the data is there. My concern is if a mail goes out from us to the council is saying go ahead and change the program. Well, and you, I mean, you could refer to what one of the versions of map one, right? And I think that's one of the best versions of map one that actually have like that, those parents, the ones that we rejected on the October 5th meeting and we've only made a few tweaks since then. Or something like, as you said, the information's available. That's what I would say. And it's in our report too. I don't think we ever, I mean. I don't recall why may have, but I don't recall running the, the pairings, but I don't recall running the pairings. I thought that that six and eight was just too problematic. Yeah. I don't remember running that, but, you know, again, we didn't even, but we, we go to the point that we discarded so early that map. Because of the size and the environment that we didn't even look at the active water registration that came much later. So it was, of course. Yeah, we just, we did, we got rid of that before we got even to the voters. So I guess one question I have, okay, if we, if we just don't respond, I mean, what, I guess, how would we leave responding directly to Councillor Haneke? Would we be preparing, you know, a response that would go to the town manager or to the rest of the council? Because no doubt she will share that she has made this request of us. And particularly if we do not respond to it. And so I do think we need to have some type of response ready. And do we think that it would be something that we would have to respond to the committee or would the chair be doing that individually? Well, it does say I was asked today by the town manager. So. Wait, what were you asked today about? Her email says I was asked today by the town manager. No, because. So, so, but it seems that the town manager, if I had request to do it through this, it was, it was weird in the phrase. It wasn't clear that the town manager asking us to do this. It's like, if I have questions, I should refer it to you. Who's the vice president? It happens to be Evan Ross. Right. Right. By way of the vice president of the council. I think it was Peggy. I think it was Peggy. I think it was Peggy. I think it was Peggy. To forward any proposals to reconfigure. But this was not asked during the meeting. The. And I would refer to your process. And I think it was Peggy that mentioned your process was. That if something wasn't received in time, I think that's reasonable. They adhere to those. Most often they adhere to their, those principles. And their process. So why should this committee be any different, particularly in how it's phrased. It makes it really strange and just lacking honestly. And kind of professional courtesy. You know, it's not even like it's a direct question. From Mandy Joe. How disrespectful. So. You know, why should you take your time out to consider all of this? That's publicly available. I mean, if anything, say, hey, didn't have enough time to consider it guys at the last minute. And all the info you're asking for is publicly available. Thanks. I mean, it should be short and cool. Of course we have considered it. And that's part of the public record. So if, if the problem. I mean, the, I think the problem, the whole situation was problematic, but we have now considered it. I think that perhaps what we should do is somebody either from. I can do it as vice chair. I don't care. Is send an email to Mandy Joe saying we, we read your memo. And by the way, both of those options were rejected earlier in our process, one very early, one more recently, we invite you to calculate the numbers yourself or, or refer back to the packets to understand why that happened. Okay. Maybe you want to draft the email before you send it or you send it. Whatever you like. I can send it if I can put. Yeah, I'll draft it. You can send it. Okay. I also just want to mention, so I mean this, the DAB is a council committee. It is not a town manager committee. And so technically the council oversees our committee. So I think, I mean, I definitely think something you should go to the attention of the council, both the council president as well as the. Council committee. I mean, I think the council committee was charged with creating the DAB and overseeing the DAB at the council committee level. I mean, it's odd that this, like the language was saying. About the town manager because the town manager has no official role in this. DAB process at all. So. That's just a comment. So, I mean, I'm hopefully whatever response is sent to. Councilor Hanna key that then those parties can be copied as well. Okay. So just to be clear, you want the part, you want the GOL and the council president to be CC. I mean, I think it just, they can go to the council president, but I'll, but the GOL, I know George Ryan. You know, is the chair of the GOL and he's been involved in this process. You know, they were the ones who had the charge and came up with the membership and everything. So. They're the two natural people and the vice president of the council was not involved in any way. In an official capacity. Okay. So wrapping up all the things that we need to do. That we are still outstanding is the issue of labeling the first things and the districts. And the legal boundaries. Besides, we need to. The other things that we have discussed so far was. The memo. The report. And the cement. So. Okay. So wrapping up all the things that we need to do. That we are still outstanding is the issue of labeling the first things that we decide to do. So. The last thing that we need to do is the amendment. So. Nothing. Okay. It's only 7 40. I have an announcement. So. Okay. You want to go now with announcements or we're going after it? I don't care. I just need to make sure it happens. Okay. we were asked by the town council to teach the numbering of the precincts. So we had originally thought about using letters for the districts and numbers for the precincts because people in the past have been attached to the precincts. But the council has asked us to model the labeling based on other towns. So to go with districts with numbers and precincts with letters. So having district one, precinct A and precinct B and so on. I heard the suggestion, there was heard some suggestion that and I thought it might be confusing in numbers where we have only two precincts that maybe we end up with precinct 1A next to precinct 2A across the street that might be so we have to be careful because people might get confused and might say oh I'm precinct A, I'm precinct A but district so maybe to label them 1A, 1B. So the precincts would be reflecting also the number of the district. So we would be district one precinct 1A and precinct 1B. So it's clear because if you see on the map you might end up having precinct A next to precinct A but they're in different districts. So then if you put the number just in front it is an indication of which district they belong to. Tracy? Tracy? Yes, so Casa Hanakie when she was talking about how the numbering had been done and I know that this was also mentioned in her initial email to the DAB before we had even met but she was talking about the city of Springfield and I did look up how they do it and that's what they do. That they have 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B, 2C and so on. So and the first the numbers are considered the words which are our districts and then the letters are considered the precincts and I think that makes a lot of sense because you need to have a clear definition so that I had clear labeling so that people would understand what precinct they're in because the voting is still happening for us at the precinct level. Yeah, so my concern when I heard the A, B I was imagining the map where the precincts are next to each other and they have A's to A's but they're different districts and I was like no. Springfield's map has them completely labeled 1A, 1B like throughout and stuff. Okay, so Mike when we send the table to the state we should keep so it should be district one precinct 1A, district one precinct 1B, district 2, 2A, 2B. Correct. Got it. Great. And I was just going to go off the model of the highest, I don't even know, the highest number previous precinct will be A and the lowest number will be B. So like in district one we have precincts one and three so precinct one was going to be A and three was going to be B. Just to make, I don't know, that's what I was going to do. That sounds good. Yeah, any, my sort originally was so that they next to each other are not days and not touching days but you need four colors for doing that. So when I was in a map I need at least four colors for neighboring things to distinguish. Makes me think about when I was when I was really young I think I was like you know first grade or something I learned my blood type and I was really pissed off that I wasn't an A because I assumed that made out meant I was the best. It does mean that actually. I'm an A too. Are you positive or negative? No. I know it is funny. Okay. Everyone's going to be learning, it's going to be a really big learning experience for the voters. Oh my gosh. So that was my concern when they told me to last that. We kept the precinct as close as possible because people have the identity and then oh the way we throw away your names. I know. I mean I do think it will take people a while to get used to because I think these numbers have been around a long time and people know. I mean you know I've been to the precinct 10 brunches and I mean people have identities around the numbers but they can adjust. I mean it's the same. I think it should be clear it comes from the time council and it didn't come from us. I agree because I agree with you and I would have preferred to keep the precincts numbers but. And what and what do something different with the districts? Yeah. But I guess one thing is I mean but perhaps this is an acknowledgement from the council that you know that that town of Amherst is a city. So I mean perhaps we will see more city like things because it is really confusing. I mean the fact that the state council like the council tessinary right she's citing as mass general law sections that only apply to towns. I don't know that was like confusing to me so it's confusing that we have a town that's legally a city that we call a town. So what and I think it's going to be an issue next that in 10 years because it's going to be 15 precincts. They're going to change the 4,000. The 4,000 is out of date. Okay. Maybe it'll still be 10. Okay. So that's one item and so everybody's okay with the name. Okay. The next item that we need to prepare is the legal boundaries and Tracy because you modified the borders for the two precincts. I can look at seven and eight. They were affected. Okay. Yes. Can I ask everybody to take a read at the legal boundaries just to make sure that they make sense. There was one I saw. I didn't modify. Do we have a word version of it because I only see the PDF? Do we have a current word version? I think we can send it out. I have it. I can send it out. But that's helpful just because it's easier to edit. But there was one of the legal definitions it was referring to the buildings like with I think one of the dorm complexes or something like that. No, I did a lot with building names because in the borders of precinct three, two, and nine, the divisions are footpaths. No, yeah. So one footpaths go into another footpath that it goes between the dining common, one dining common and one residential building. I wanted to add before besides walking 390 feet, I want to say walk 390 feet and it's the footpath between these two buildings because there's no other. No. So in the southwest dorms because I did those and the census blocks are actually just these jagged lines that aren't even on footpaths. I mean there are some that are on the paths and then there are some that are not. And I thought that we couldn't actually refer to the building. So I usually started them from like the road like there would be a road. And then I just referred so that you I just didn't use the buildings. I just said you go like 200 feet south and then 100 feet east and I just like did the zigzag in my description and I didn't include the buildings. But I don't know if they were legally allowed to include the buildings and that is really helpful. I don't know. I added them on top of the on top of the description of walk north on the footpath. It's I said walk north on the footpath and then the building. So if anybody has any comment, please send them to me so changes because we need to send it on Monday with the packet on Monday. I would like to be included and have everything together before we send the final map and the things to be voted on Monday. So have you had the vote in letterhead from the town? How do who has to take care of that part? I sent it. I've sent it twice now. Okay. Lynn Gresemer wants to Athena today. She's got the format. It'll go on town council letterhead. Okay. She's all set with that. She asked me what we were sending to the counselors, but I was thinking that I didn't think they needed the legal description. I thought they're just having to give us that vote. Yeah. And we give them the map because that's what they're voting on and we give them our report. But I want to have everything. So once it's done, then we can send it off. Yes. But anyway, she has everything she needs. Okay. Thanks. Am I forgetting anything besides Peggy's announcement? No? No. So Peggy, so we are on the things not anticipated 24 hours before. Right. Yes. So Mindy Dom contacted me. She was at least somewhere, all of the meeting on Monday night. And she had some concerns about the students, not anything about whether we had distributed them appropriately, but just whether there are policies in the town, the university and the state, which are making it more difficult for students to vote, which there certainly are. I mean, this whole question of how they get considered active or have to be registered when they move and all that stuff. So she, so that's something that she is thinking about. And then the one of the persons, people from the LADRC, the one that's appointed by the Attorney General, actually contacted Mindy after reading about our redistricting story. I guess in the Gazette, but I'm not sure. And expressed that she wanted to talk about also student voting. So Mindy called Mindy called me and we talked about it. And I basically said what we've been saying all along, that I thought there were two issues. One is the question of whether we disenfranchise students. I didn't believe that we had. And the other is whether there are things that the town, the state and the university could do to make it easier for students to vote. And so we concentrated on that. And she is going to, if she hasn't already, she's going to contact USU to understand much better about exactly what things get in the way and what the processes are. And then she asked me, would it be okay to put the LADRC person in contact with me? And I said, that sounds, that doesn't sound like a very appropriate thing at this point. I think if it's just about students voting and the processes that get in the way, I think that might be fine. But if it has to do with districting, I assume that would not be fine. Anyway, I'm just letting you know that this happened. If there seems to be some interest on the part of this person whose name I don't know who it is. But in reaching out to me, I will make sure that we try to do it appropriately, either with Irina or something. And I would like to follow up on that before anybody else speaks, if I could. Okay. Marlene, Majek, Tracy, and Sue. Okay. Okay, no, okay. You, okay. Me first? Marlene, Sue, Majek, Tracy, okay. Who's first? Are we playing? I haven't castella. Okay. Okay. So, so the thing about students having a hard time voting, they're no different than any other group in this town or anywhere. If somebody moves, they have to be registered to vote. A student, a non-student, it doesn't matter. So we have worked multiple, multiple times over the years in trying to find ways to reach out to the students between the student government and our office in getting the word out that you need to re-register to vote when you move your dormitory. And sometimes it's successful, sometimes it's not, but we've put things in there. I mean, we've had round tables, we've had multiple, 10 people around the table from all the different colleges in how to reach the students on explaining to them that every time they move dormitories, they need to re-register to vote. We've had things on our website. So we've made multiple, multiple efforts. It's something that we have to do every year, but so it's like they're not impeded from voting. They just need to know that anytime they move, they have to re-register to vote. And how do you get that across all the time? So that's the first thing. And oh, I forgot the second thing. Go ahead, Peggy. You were going to say something. You look like you. I just wanted to answer. I think that Mindy completely understands that. And she was thinking about whether maybe how the state does the census for voters. Maybe that shouldn't happen at the time of year that it does. Or maybe the primary should be moved to the spring. That's what some college towns do or whatever. I mean, she's thinking bigger. Maybe the university should be working a little harder to make it easy for the students to get registered or to understand that. Maybe that shouldn't be up to the town, that kind of thing. So just so you know. Okay. Okay. Well, that's good to hear. Marlene, Majeke and then Tracy. So I know that I think Hampshire College, all students have the same address. UMass, if they have first year dorms by default, they're going to be living somewhere else the following year. So is there a way that we can get one address for students living at UMass? Then we'd have to make them into complex. So Southwest would have one and Northeast would have another and North would have another. I mean, Southwest has 5500 students. I know, but it's like, and I don't know if you use, you have to use their official dorm address. And there may be a loophole so that it could just be UMass, Amherst, 0103 or whatever. This is beyond my office. This would have to be, I know, I know, because I don't know how they were set up to be. I don't know if Mindy has any influence on that. I mean, that would be. It's not Mindy's decision. It's the voter registration system. And it's how the street, how the town recognizes street names. There's a bunch of offices involved in this one. Our inspector. Yeah, I know, that's huge. We have so many addresses for UMass. What is Amherst College? It's the same thing. Amherst College is almost the same as UMass. It's room number, dorm name, and they have multiple dorms. Same exact thing. My heck. Okay, so I would like to add two points. The thing about the address, yeah, that's extremely true. And it's really unfortunate because we even have to give the names of our room numbers and the dorms. You can't just be vague enough to say Amherst 0103. And secondly, if it is a certain relief for Mindy, I do, I'm pretty involved on campus about regarding voter registration and everything. And also in touch with the student government. So in case it would be beneficial, I could also reach out to her. That would be great. That would be great. Do that. Thank you. I have one suggestion. Can there be a voter registration line waiting for the students that whenever they move into a dorm saying you need to re-register? Like they go into the room the first time there's a voter registration. I believe we've proposed that. I think in their like orientation packet, we had voter registration forms in there one time. We've done all kinds of things. I mean, all kinds of things. Tracy? Well, I was just going to comment that I think that like so I would suggest I do think that some of the press coverage possibly might have been misleading after some of the inflammatory statements that were made by certain council members. And that's what made it into the headline. And that's why it went viral or whatever. I mean, so it's it's good that the LDRC is paying attention, I guess, but I'm sure that that was part of what motivated that call. I would suggest that we do send the final version of the report that we are submitting to the council, the revised version, as well as the memo that we wrote in response about the disenfranchisement and discrimination against student responding to that critique that that those go both to Mindy Dom and to the person who reached out from the LDRC. But just to like keep and maybe even the media that we could tell them like the more complex story beyond the headlines. So I missed the headlines. I need to do my homework. I know I heard about it, but I didn't get a chance to read it. And I don't know. And when the heck I'm excited that you're doing voter registration rolls with somebody who's been involved with, you know, elections and Amherst for a long time, I'm sure Sue could speak to that, too, that just it's so important to like make sure that the people actually get registered because there's always people who will come in to vote and say, I was on I participated in this on campus voter registration dive and we're not really sure what happened to them because they never ended up in Sue's office or they never entered the state database. And it's complex. So I'm sure Sue perhaps would have guidance for you on that. I applaud those efforts. And I think it's great that students are getting involved in our registrations. So thank you so much. That's really nice of you to say. And no, I'm definitely still making efforts. I see how students, you know, sometimes don't feel as motivated to cast their vote. But yeah, it's an effort. And I assure you that I'll send that email just in case. Thank you. So you had a suggestion. Yes. You we have to talk about chair approving the chair. The last set of minutes giving you permission to approve the last set of minutes. Remember that. I make a motion to allow Irana to approve the last set of minutes. Somebody second. Second. Tracey Saffian. Aye. Marlene Blousting. Aye. Peggy Shannon. Aye. Majid Gelani. Aye. So I think we have to do homework. And I don't, I'm going to request to the town council, whether do we have to post a meeting for Monday or? I think we, I think we should just in case we have a quorum. In case we have a quorum. In case we have a quorum at the council meeting. And could you try to get from the council president, could you try to get clarification on when we'll be on the agenda? Yeah. I also know that the community safety working group is speaking on Monday. And if possible, I would love to go ahead of them because I'm hoping that our presentation, our time with them will be much shorter, right? I don't, we're not planning a formal presentation. I think we would just speak to that we need some update. Yeah. We made updates and we have the memo and the report and they will stand largely on their own. But we can, I'm assuming we could speak in just, you know, 10 or 15 minutes about the updates that we made. I'd be happy to be part of that team to do that. Okay. Okay. So yes, I'm going to email in requesting this. Okay. Okay. So we have one more. Okay. And in principle, after that meeting, we should not be meeting unless depending on what happens on Monday and unless we'll hear once everything is submitted. So the next steps is if the town council approves it, everything should leave as soon as possible out. So, and then we're going to hear at some point from the LERC, they're going to take a vote on our map. And if they have changes, we need to reconvene and answer within one week, right? So I would like to send us as soon as possible because there are some days I'm going to be out of reach in December. So we don't want to be, I would like to happen before December. I was going to say, Arina, you know, one of the things that I just have a little bit of a concern about is us going into this meeting on Monday and then saying, oh, well, okay, the deadline is an October 30th. Let's think about it for another few weeks or something like that. I think it is important for us to notify that our time is, you know, you're going to be leaving. I don't think we should be pushing this too much later. I think we should try to be getting it approved soon. And that's what I heard on the town council the other day. The majority of the councilors wanted, that's what I heard. I mean, they have a full agenda too. They don't need to go back to this. Yeah. That's what I heard on the town council that they said, even if the deadline, they were thinking what's our next steps because that's that's what in particular ask, right? And as far as getting it out, once we do finally have it all, I'll get it out because I need to make a copy for the records. You know, Mike and I will work together on that because Mike, I assume you're going to have maps folded up and all kinds of things. So we have to send a copy? Yes, Peggy. We want to be really, we want to stand really firm and stand really together on this, that this is not something that we are extending, that we are done. We found, we developed a map that we really believe in and we want them to vote on it. Yeah. Good. I'll be there on the 25th. Okay. Great. So we need to post it. I can't make it. I have a previous commitment. So I will not be there. Okay. Am I correct in understanding that the council could, could change the districts? I mean, they can't change the precincts, right? But they could decide that they want a different district shape. Is that correct, Sue? They could want different district pairings? Or is our, is I mean, is it within their power to say, oh, we want different district pairings? I don't know. I think that they could actually say that they want something different. I think they can do whatever they want, but it's not endorsed by the DAB. Right. That's what I was, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's why I had us prepare the alternative numbers with the other pairings just in case it came up. But why would we have done additional processes? But my main, but my main, I mean, when I was reaching out to people, when I was concerned after some of the comments that I heard that there could be councilor pushback in terms of accepting our pairings. I mean, I was really stressing to people that time that like, we're submitting the legal definitions of the precincts that you can't change the precincts. And there's no reason to change the precincts. And, and that, I mean, we're an advisory board. So I feel like the council could choose to make any configuration with the districts that they want. And it's out of our hands. And so I think they gave our recommendation. I think what is clear, this is a independent group. And the councilors might have, they have conflict that might have conflict of interest. They can decide what they want to do. But the district advisory board as an independent board is recommending this. That's why I don't want to send to the comment of councilor Hanukkah. I don't want to send the numbers as coming from the DAB because then it seems as we are recommending that we are okay with these other parents where we've spent the last over two months analyzing for the data. And our recommendation was the other one. The council is free to do what they want. But it's not the recommendation of the DAB. I hope everybody agrees with my, not everybody. I completely agree. I completely agree with advisory. I mean, most of the citizen committees. We're an independent committee, whereas some councilors are not, they have, that's why there's an independent committee and not a councilor because the councilors have might have a conflict of interest. Okay. Okay. So can we just recap our homework to make sure I'll do what I need to do? So I will send out my memo to the committee and Peggy was going to add a paragraph related to the communities of interest with the students and I'll work on the updated legal descriptions of seven and eight to reflect the change on the map and also go through my other legal descriptions. And then we have the working group that's working on the report. And Peggy is going to take a lead on that initially. And there's an email to councilor Heneke that will go out. Yeah, councilor. So Peggy, I can, I guess I'm working on, okay. I'll drop the Heneke email later tonight and send it to you and then you can make whatever changes. And I don't know if we need to formally, like if, if a working group wants to meet, you know, a little bit before Monday just to talk about the main points we want to make at the, at the council meeting. I mean, I'm assuming we would talk briefly. Mahak, do you want to raise your hand? Hi, I'm sorry. I just need to say that I need to leave right now. So do we still have quorum? And not if you leave. So I think we're done, though. Yeah, done. So we could make a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn, please. I second. All right. Okay. We'll see you all soon. All right, thank you. Bye, thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.