 Oh, I should say this meeting is being recorded percent of chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting might do so in the following manner. We assume on the webinar ID 824 148 1448 3355 no in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted and public participation in any public hearing conducted during this meeting shall be by remote means only. So welcome everybody, this is September eight meeting of the district advisory board and I'm looking for the agenda. Are we waiting for somebody else. I think we have a quarter we just started yeah looks like he's trying to get into. Oh, she's in the attendees. Okay. So, let's get started and the first item on the agenda is public comment and I don't see anybody. On the participants right. No. So then we can move on there's public comment at the end. The next item on the genus to approve the minutes of the previous meeting. So we're going to go over. The minutes of the meeting of September 1 I believe in the package there both on the. We already approved them. The 25th we had already approved. So we're going to go over. I want to clarify the meeting. The minutes of September 1. So does anybody have any comment. I have a few. Okay. I had a few comments. Thank you just for doing the minutes, even though you weren't at the meeting, I'm sure. I hope it was interesting to watch. And I really appreciate all the detail you put into them. There were a few clarifications, I thought. That would be helpful. I don't want to spend a ton of time, but I'll try and go over them quickly. So on page two, I don't, I don't know. It might be helpful if we know if the minutes get long, maybe if we number the pages. So page two on the bottom, like under B. So packet material, there's a three bullets. So that's second bullet. I mean, I did say that last sentence, I would just, I would ask that you take it out about Tracy told us to hide the data sets. With the zero population when looking at the spreadsheet. I just said you could, I mean, I didn't say you have to. And of course, what I found is when I was working on the maps, of course, we still need to like account for those things that are zeros and they make a difference. And then, so I would just remove that sentence. And then on the bullet below that, I thought it was a little confusing your explanation. And I had a suggestion for it. So there are unique identifiers for each census block. It's not that there are not unique identifiers. You just need to use the right ID. You need to use an ID that includes the track and the block. And as Mike had pointed out, like the, I think the geocode. ID or the geocode 20. The 21 does that. So I just said, I changed it a little to just say, there are a census track, which contains census blocks. And block numbers can. Repeat in different census tracks. Therefore it's important to use unique identifier ID. Like the geocode ID. When working with and referring to the census blocks. And then I would remove the last sentence in that bullet about census tracks. Do you have this distinct identifiers? You just have to understand that there's both components in them. And then. Under for the draft of possible precincts. One, two, three, the third bill down is as Mike stated that the average for the 15 precincts would be. 2618. And so the entire Southwest precinct would be about 100 people short. So it's actually not the entire Southwest precinct. Cause that's like way over 2600. It was just that my initial precinct. That I created that had the 2512 in there. So I would just change it to say. So Tracy's initial Southwest precinct would be a hundred people short. And. And then on three or two bullets after that. About that with the precinct drying process. Avoid moving precincts. You know, East and instead move them south. And so I think. The point there might have just been that it would allow us. More flexibility when creating districts later. And so I think that, like, one of the issues that the charter had charter commission had when they were creating the districts is that there were. There weren't a lot of places where the different. Precincts intersected. Or shared boundaries. So if we can have more connection points, it's really helpful. And then just the last bullet. I mean, I didn't know what Mike agreed to do or not agree to do. Maybe Mike would remember more. I mean, there is some data, you know, there is like the earlier census data about where rental properties are. Just because we don't find those rental properties doesn't mean their student rentals. So. And then. On the, on the last page. I thought there was just something like under B agenda moving forward. And I couldn't remember, but I thought with that last, you know, there's an empty last bullet, but we could just say that the town council has requested our final recommendations. For the map by, and I forgot the exact date. I think it was around. Before the document has to be in before October 15. But you were saying that that's the map, not like our final report, right? That's my understanding. That's the material. It would be good to have the report as well. Because this is. No, of course. I mean, it. How we did it. Yeah. The council will vote on this. And I think they will want to see the full report. Right. And then just, just like, this is just like a little typo at the end about. That is September 8th, not. September 8th. Like first eighth, but that's it. But thank you for those really minutes there. Great. I have one comment before we move on. I'm not entirely, I don't know if we still don't know about if these recordings are going to be like. Official. Like officially documented. So since we're doing a lot of like. Hypothetical map drawing on like a GIS software. Is there any sort of other than like what I've already been doing any sort of specific. Um, Information that we want to get down when we're sort of doing that map drawing process. That like we want. Like on paper, since we don't exactly a lot of what we're doing is visual. Um, so. Do you're suggesting to add the package to the final. To the final minutes to add the package material. I'm asking like in minutes going forward when we're working on the drawing of maps, if there's any sort of specific information that you want to keep in mind when doing minutes so that like it's sort of you can comprehend what we're doing in the meetings from like. The writing like. I'm not sure what that exactly would look like other than what I've been doing, but I mean, I think the packets like the packets will still be available online, like even after the committee sunset. So people can always look at those. Right. So the 2011 ones were still online. And so I think if the minutes just capture like the points where, you know, there's disagreement or where people agree on different points related to the map. Or something that just try to summarize it. I mean, that's what we found in the 2011 minutes. The question. Go ahead. The question I have is whether we should archive since the minutes is the official document, whether we should. That's me. We should be archiving. The package, the packet materials together with the minutes. Sue, isn't it archived? It is. Well, the old stuff's archived. It'll still be there. Yeah. How it's going to be there. I'm not sure how it set that up from the past. I'm not. I don't have my time. I don't have my time. I don't have my time. I don't have my time. I don't have my time. I don't have my time. I don't have my time. I'm not sure how I T set that up from the past. I'm not, I don't have my town computer with me tonight, but it'll be there. It's not going to be not. Yeah. There. I mean, this stuff is always going to stay in this structure of, you know, within. Within the DAB and within the meeting dates. So I would just refer to meeting packet stuff. That stuff, we have to keep that stuff. We have these going back into the 30s and 40, 1930s and 1940s. So. Okay. Okay. So anybody else has any other comments for the minutes? Tammy? I just have one. I can't find the minutes. I have gone through every single screen here, every email that I've received, and every item on the packet and do not see September 1st minutes. It's a, I had that issue. It's a, it's called district diversity board nine one 2021 minutes draft. And what category is it under agenda? It's in the packet for today's meeting, I think. Yeah. Is that so the meeting packets. Are you on the DAB page? Yes, I am. Over on the right hand side. Reference materials for all meetings. Nope. Nope. Nope. There's a one, one, one above there is. There's a 98 2021. Well, it's on the main page packet materials. Okay. Click on that. Now I see it. I do want to say in general, that I'm having a hard time with the way the references, the resources are put here. I went through to find the interactive map because the thing that's listed as the interactive map is not that it is something else. And I found 50 different references in about 20 different places. And so I'm, it's just very confusing for me. And I just, I just want to point that out. Like we've gotten emails with information in them. The DAB homepage has different things in it. There's reference material for all meetings that have different things in them. So I'm just going to say that. Each meeting package has things in it. That are not, you know, like the minutes, I wish the minutes were all under minutes. And. Back and forth on this. I find the same thing as Tammy. That this is very disorganized. This is very disorganized. This is the poorest that I've seen for any organization. We, we, in my business, we take minutes. For meetings every week. We have everything organized. Systematically. And this is not systematic. This is gibberish. This is not systematic. This is not systematic. This is not systematic. This is not systematic. This makes sense. For anyone who's looking at it. And if we as committee members. Cannot find things and have to spend hours searching for things. Then somebody who's not even involved is never going to be able to find their way through this stuff. Craig, where would you propose? So you're on the main page and there is a section for minutes. There is a section for packet material. How would you, maybe we can talk about this. I think that's very disorganized because this is how all of our boards and committees pretty much, I think, are organized. So yeah, I'd be happy to hear what you have to say. My understanding is that the minutes has the final minutes after we approve them. And then the package material has the minutes. For us to read and discuss. So the package material has all the material that we're going to do. And then we're going to put it in the package. So they are. Archive on the minutes. Link. Correct. Right. No, we won't put something on the minutes. Link until it's approved by this committee. And all the material we are both, we are trying to minimize emails. Because then you lose information by trying to put all the material to be discussed. In the package, because there's a very short. So the way of distributing information and not losing track is to put everything in the package that we're going to be discussing in one place for each meeting. All right. Yeah, I'm just saying what I'm noticing is in 825 we have the state response dated 820. And in 98 we have the state response, which is 820. So we're discussing both of those. Yeah. And I'm not going to be asking it to be put there because I thought just like the practice at some of the other committees, even the council when items are coming up over and over again, I wanted it to be in the packet for this meeting. Just to remind people that is the things in the package, the idea is that somebody has requested to be in the package because wants to discuss the item so that we don't have to go back to previous packages, trying to find the documents that you have every document to be discussed in this meeting in order to go back and try to find if somebody wants to discuss something brought something up to discuss, not to go back, start looking on the spot, looking back where you can find it, but to have it access it in one place for this meeting. Okay. It's just confusing for me because I am seeing things repeated and so I'm trying to make sure I've looked at everything and then I go back and see that I've already looked at it and I keep to know why it's appearing in the package so I get what you're saying. The other thing is with the interactive map, I just want to ask really quickly on the front page, interactive map is actually the census block comparison map. Is that correct? Because the interactive, the things Lisa has interactive map is a colorful map with percentages on it. I think that interactive map is the 2020 mapping. They're all interactive maps you could call any of the maps that are linked to on the DAB committee page. They're all interactive in terms of. I can rename that to be whatever you want, Tammy. That was the first map I threw up there. Whatever we want to name it, I'll change the name of it to be, but that was just showing population distribution and grouping it into different colors. That was the first map we had up and so I called it interactive map so that we could, you guys knew that you could click on it and zoom in and zoom out, but it's probably worth renaming at this point. I guess the main map that I spent a lot of time searching for was the map that we were working on in the last meeting. And I found it by looking at the census block and then eliminating 2010 and then putting in the precincts. And I didn't, it took me a very long time to figure out that that's how to get to the map that we were looking at. And so I don't know if I wasn't paying attention and that's, or if you can use that interactive map and get to that layer. We look at something here. I mean, maybe two, we could put that interactive map towards the bottom because we're not really using it as much anymore as like we've been working on the precincts. I have a suggestion we were talking about the minutes I would like to close that item before we get, because we're going to forget about the minutes. I don't want to forget. So would somebody want to make a motion to approve the minutes pending the changes or you would like to see the changes instituted before we approve the minutes. And we postpone the discussion for next time. I move to approve the minutes with Tracy's suggestions. I second that. Okay. So I'm going to make a call. Joseph Gordon. Hi. Tammy Parks. Hi. Peggy Shannon. Hi. Craig Meadows. Hi. Tracy Safian. Hi. So the minutes are pending the corrections. So now we can go back to discussion. About the space. Organization. So, um, Mike, do you want to, to share so they, they excite them on, on agenda is about announcements. And I think we can consider our discussion part of announcements that we need clarification of where things are. Um, or how to use, um, interactive map. Mike, do you want to show how to use the interactive map? Um, yeah. So are we talking about showing the, the map that, um, that some folks used to draw precincts this past week? Is that what you're referring to? Yeah. I believe that's the one that. Yeah. What is that map called? Which one is it? So let me, I'm looking up something. Um, but I thought that I load the PDF instructions for how to use this into the, I know I sent it to everyone in an email last week. Um, PDF instructions for how to use the interactive map to build precincts. Maybe we should have a link to that on our page or something. Yeah, I'm looking for it. Yeah. So I'm sorry. Go ahead. I don't remember seeing it posted. I just was using it from the email. But I also think that it might be, you know, if there's one map that we're really focusing on, it might be confusing to people if there's a lot of different maps up there. I mean that one map, Mike, you've added like so much functionality to it. Maybe that's the one we want to promote on our site. Yeah, maybe we, maybe we, maybe we pull the others. Down off of the main page and instead like put a reference in the reference materials, maybe we. Provide links to the old maps, but we take them down off the website since people aren't using them anymore. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And does someone have the date that Mike sent that because I do not have it in my email. He sent it out on Friday, I think. And it was a PDF. Yeah, I'm looking at my email here. Friday. At 202 PM. Right. So it's the subject line is read 10 verse 15 precincts. Oh, okay. So that's, that's within the package materials. I was actually an email that Mike sent out. I don't have, I do not have that email. So I don't know if I didn't get it or. I categorized it incorrectly. Interesting. So I have, I have Craig's email here and I have. Tammy's email here that I sent this to. It's maybe I went to your spam folder or something. But anyway, there is a document within the, and I'll share my screen here. There is a document here within reference materials for all meetings called a precinct mapping how to guide. And in here it's, and this is what I emailed folks. I'm actively working on a map that can help us build our precinct boundaries, how to access the map you click on this link. And it takes you to a map and I highlighted on where that link is on the webpage. And then it was a step by step guide for how to go and draw and create. Your own, your own precinct boundaries. And total up the number of people that you've selected within, or the number of sense, the number of people within each census block. So it sounds like a couple of people didn't. Didn't find this material. But I know, I know a few others did because that, that was how they ended up producing some maps that are linked in the packet for this week. So. Yeah, I'm sorry. So, um, you said, so is that on here now? I mean, on the dab website or no. So if you go into reference materials, under reference materials for all meetings, there's a reference, there's a reference guide here that says precinct mapping how to guide. And I sent an email to the committee, to the board on, on Friday at 202 saying, Hey, I'm loading this into this area of the website. Okay, maybe you should check. I don't know. I need to check my email because I, I, I haven't gotten emails from you. I have gotten them from Peggy and Tracy. The one from Mike was in sort of embedded in a stream. That I think I started. Yeah. So. It was a response to that. 10 or 15 precinct. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Perhaps, perhaps while we're all here, we could decide on what the appropriate name for the map. That will be that we will all be using the, or the map resource that we'll all be using. Um, cause I think it's a little confusing the current name. But I think we would all know what it was. And anybody in the public who wanted to follow around with it, would also know. Right. So the name still has 2010 in it. Um, right. Which that is still a layer, but maybe we just talk about. Interactive map for creating precincts or something like that. Right. Or precinct building map. Yeah, something like that. Something like that. So the people. So we all know, but also anybody coming onto the site would have some idea of what they should. Look at if they want to try to draw some lines themselves. And then if Mike's. Um, how to guide is like right below that link that would be super helpful, I think. Okay. Um, and I was also wondering on the map itself, like when you're in the tool. Like maybe is there a way to, I mean, I think you said there was, but is there a way to as a default to suppress some of the columns we don't need. Um, Like at least from dislaying. I would have to republish everything. Yeah. Yeah. And I have another question. Is it possible to be able to change the color of the layers that you create? Yes. That would be very helpful because right now. Every layer that you create is blue. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I can, I can look into that. It would be great because I was, I think at some point I was missing. It was good to know which ones I had marked. But if you want to try different options, then you lose track. What's right. But I had, I had something with the color where the. The current senses precinct. I'm in the current precincts. That the boundaries are like red orange or something. But I don't remember that. I don't remember that. That is the same color as the block boundaries. Which I don't remember that from the earlier iteration of the map. No. It was true earlier. Yeah. So. Um, okay. So tell me if you should. Do you don't get any emails from Mike? I admit it. Yeah. We can't hear you. Sorry about that. Um, I searched through all my email, all the committees that I'm on. And I do not find anything from Mike. I do have from Peggy though. And I looked in those and I don't see that. And I did look at the guide. Um, and. Used it, but I, I, I have to honestly say, I had a very hard time using the map. I didn't know that I could draw a precinct lines. I did not figure out how to do that. Um, I'm not sure that actually drawing lines on the map was included as instructions. It was more, my understanding was that you could choose blocks. Um, groups of blocks in fact. Yeah. And then determine what the population in each group was. Right. That's, I think that's how you draw. That's how I draw precinct boundaries is by selecting those groups of blocks. But there wasn't a tool. There wasn't a tool to actually draw the lines on a map. Right. I mean, Correct. I was drawing them on, I was drawing mine on paper once I had calculated my blocks. Yeah. In fact, I didn't read that you could add up. So I was pasting everything into extent. Gotcha. Yeah. The producing the summary stats right here. That's how you, you can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I guess for myself, what I suggest is that if Mike has time during the day, then you have to teach me how to use this because I, I could not have the counts come up. You know how you had the, the count at the bottom. As you were marking off the blocks, it was giving you the count. I could, I looked through every single layer in screen and could not make it. Come up. So I was doing hand counts of everything. And it's almost impossible to do that. Only because I couldn't draw the line. So I'm trying to memorize what I did before. Sure. Yeah. So I would say I would email you and we can schedule a time to meet, but I'm afraid. Why don't you eat? Why don't you email me? Okay. And then I'll respond to your email. I'll do that. I have your incorrect email address. And then I'll meet with you and, and we can, we can go through a little step by step training. You're also. Are you, what sort of computer are you using? Are you comfortable with a windows computer or an Apple computer? I have an Apple. I have a map. Okay. All right. It's just something for me to be aware of because there could be something glitchy with a Mac that I'm. That I'm not aware of. So it's just something for me to test on my end before we meet. To see if there's something going on there. All right. I don't know. Craig wants to join us. That might be a good idea. If that doesn't. If that's okay with the, you know, with the rules that we have to follow. I don't know that it is. It's okay. It's no quorum and you're going to be discussing that. So. It's my understanding that if it's just two of you. It should be okay. You're learning how to use a tool. You're not talking about policies. Yeah. And I might have to do it during a lunch hour and I might have to do it on my laptop. Since I have to do it at work. But I'll talk to you about it personally, Mike and Craig. Yep. It's probably best to do it. It's probably best to do it one-on-one because what you may be experiencing Tammy may be very different from what you're experiencing, Craig. So. I think we should not try to do it. In a group because. I find that the wheels can fall off there. So let's, let's do it one-on-one and I'll make. I'll make time, you know, if we even needed to meet on a weekend, I'll, we'll do that too. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And it is really powerful. Like, I mean, Mike built some functionality into it that. It's easy to get lost and I kept. Yeah. So. It's got a lot you can do. Okay. Let me have that announcement. No. Actually, can I jump in? Yes. I have been, I was asked. At the last meeting to talk about the cost of 15 precincts, as opposed to 10. And payroll alone. And this is cutting back because we don't have to do a checkout table currently, but I'm not sure if that's going to stay. But at the current rate, 10 precincts right now is about 14,000 for payroll. That doesn't include early voting. That's just election day. And so that would bring it up to. Somewhere around 21,000. For 15 precincts and that's only payroll. So just give you an idea. So that would be for each election. There would be a difference of about $7,000. For the town. Right. For payroll only. So that doesn't include like coding and printing. You know, they have to code the memory cards for the tabulators for each election. And, you know, I'm printing the ballots. So you've got more ballots now. Because it's 15 precincts. Different ballot faces, things like that. So that's going to go up. Some, some things will stay the same. Like, you know, we pay for van rentals and polling places, rentals and custodial things like that. That will stay the same. But the ballot printing coding, the auto mark coding, that will also increase. I don't know how much. Just a question on what you just said. The rental place and the van and stuff that all assumes that the additional precincts are in places where we already have precincts. No, we have, it's a flat fee. We pay for the, it's actually based on mileage. And time. So we get a van for a whole day. Right. But in terms of like renting a place to have the precinct, have voting. Right. So it's the same. Right. It's the same. As long as the new precincts are doubled up on the old precincts. Yes. Yes. Tracy, how's her hand up. Well, I think that's interesting. And I think we're segueing into. Hey, it's a memo and so on. Does in terms of having this discussion. I think that. It would be interesting maybe. So like if at some point, I mean, I'm sure it would be interesting. Or somebody might ask for this about just kind of writing it up. Right. So we are down to one election a year now. I think typically. Except for in, I guess, presidential. Oh, there's primaries. Yeah. Yeah. No, next year we've got two. So in the presidential primary year, do you have three? Yes. Because you would have the presidential primary and then the state primary and then the state. Exactly. Yeah. So. Yeah. But anyway, one, one other announcement is a D. Shabazz got kicked off because. Neighborhood is having internet issues. She said she would try to get back on, but she might have to call in. Thanks. Yeah. So if you can write that summary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so, so if you can write that summary, that I think that can be part of our report or we're going to have to include it somehow. I think. If. I would like to follow up on, and I think this goes again with Vegas, the item on the agenda. I think we're going to have a little bit of a discussion. I think we're going to have a little bit of a discussion about the, about the 10% on the package. About getting legal counsel, whether. We are so close to the edge. We know there must have been some undercounting whether. We are okay. So we don't want to go all the way in the past. We can keep this. We're going to discuss it, but I think. I think we're going to have a little bit of a discussion. I think we're going to have a little bit of a discussion about the government. It's going to ask for this information. But I think we want to have a whole package of information when we present, whether we go with 10 or 15, it has to be a whole package. So we have to have all the information as possible. And I did reach out to legal counsel and I'm still waiting to hear back. Okay. Great. I mean, it did seem right. So that. I think we're going to have a whole package of information. I think we're going to have a whole package of information as we are under 40,000. That like technically we could. Maybe have just the 10 precincts. If we keep each of them below or below 4,000. Yeah. But they did actually, I think it says right in that email to like check with town council. And. And one question I had come up to is like, I know somebody had mentioned in the last redistricting in 2010. So I think that was a little bit of a question. I think that was a little bit of a question. I think that the office was concerned about some of the precincts that are like super close to the maximum. So I don't know whether that's like, we might. Whether that would be a concern as well. So Tracy, can we put that on hold until we, we get to the package material. Yeah. And maps. Okay. So if they're, I want to move the agenda and. Be concerned about time. So the next items about rules and regulations that we have outstanding item, whether we want to change anything and how the meetings are. Conducted. If nobody has, we can. Move forward and start talking. At the packet material. Okay. So one of the items in the package material. So the package material has. Some information. So there are maps that were created by multiple people. I think Tracy Peggy and I contributed to maps, possible maps. So we went ahead with the idea of playing. How to build precincts because I, we knew that at least for me was, I knew that I wanted to see how it would look like. And I think that's a good idea. Because we have a short amount of time. And if you try to do everything live. I don't know if you're going to make it on time. So I went ahead and played around. And I created two maps, 10 and 15 precincts. I think they created one with 10. And Tracy one with 15. If I'm correct. And then there's the memo that. The 10 precincts that essentially. You want to. Talk about it. Sure. So I'm assuming you've read it. I. I think it makes sense to check with town council. I assume I think town council, meaning SEL, the legal. To make sure that there isn't going to be an issue without doing 10 precincts. But if that is the case, I suspect it is fine because they let, they set a limit of 40,000. They didn't set a limit of 39,000. Then I think we really should go with 10. I feel very strongly because I think it saves us a lot of money. I think it saves us time and allows us now. The ability to start actually talking about some maps that, that can work. And then that means that we can talk about some of the other things that we have to talk about, which is. Communities of interest and whether they're getting. Appropriately represented. It allows us more time to choose what the districts would look like. It allows us time to write the report. And I just don't see any advantage really to that. Well, I see one advantage to 15 districts, which is it with 15 districts. I think there are probably more options for how we. Go to 15, 15 precincts. There are more options for how we draw the districts. But I'm not sure that's true. And I, I don't think we have the time to find out. So to me, it just feels like a very costly decision to go to 15, both in money and time. If we stick with 10. And we have, have the existing 10. Do we have an indication, Mike of, of. What the numbers are in the existing 10 so that. It would be easy to adjust. Can we see that on the screen. So great. They are. To. Precinct to precincts that are way off. And they're not next to each other. So you need to shift everything. To too much. So. So both Peggy and I played around with precincts. Precinct formation. Trying to see if we could, one of the major issues on this was my. Question was, can we build the precincts? And from the point of view that they have to be under 40,000. With the census blocks, right? We are limited by the census blocks that vary between. The census blocks. The census blocks. They're widely in random numbers. Right. So can we build this. The 10 persons with the census blocks as they are defined now, because the census blocks also have changed with respect. To last. To the precincts that we had in the past. Right. The, the, the census, the, even the precincts that we have right now, they will not align with current precincts because the census blocks have shifted. Yeah. You know, you, you, you're way ahead of me on all of this. I just. Have not got a sense of what it just looks like at this point. Yeah. And I'm looking in the, I'm, I know that did we. I believe that was something that we shared in one of the first meetings or the second meeting. The balance of people. Per block. I can't remember. I'll have to, I'll try to find it, Craig. I'll look through it now as you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to add one more piece to my argument, which is that the, the reason that the state is capping. How many people can be in a precinct is because they don't want. To have overcrowding at the polls. It's a very reasonable rule that they have, that you can't have too many people in a precinct. But given the fact that we have so many fewer registered voters in this town than other towns. Of comparable size. And I'd be happy. I've been looking at the numbers. I'd be happy to give you a dozen towns. That are similar in size and have fewer precincts altogether. And far more people going to the, to each precinct than we do. It's, we. We no longer should feel constrained by the spirit of the law. By the idea that we want to make sure that we're, you know, making enough precincts. We are making enough precincts with 10. So. Hi. Hi, how about. Yeah. Tracy and. Okay. Tracy go first. If you want. Oh yeah. No. So, um, so thank you. When I read your memo, I mean, I completely agree about, um, student voters and students not coming to. The local elections and I've worked, I've worked as an election worker for over 20 years in Amherst. And I've been in elections with really poor turnout. And I do think, I mean, I've been wondering about this 4,000 limit ever since like, we started having so much more early voting, you know, and mail in voting and things like that, because it seems like that would depress the number of people coming on election day to, um, I mean, right now we're constrained to not go over 4,000 in any of them, just because that's when the, in the state statutes and the legislature hasn't changed that yet, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't be surprised if the legislature did that at some point. Um, particularly like, I don't think currently they've only extended the, the mail in voting, the, the extensive mail in voting, um, until the end of the year, you know, for all of the fall elections and they haven't passed it yet, like permanently. But if they did that, that would make sense. So. So my. I'm going to play that a little bit. They will say, okay, my concern. I agree with that 10 would make, make sense. Except I'm scared that I'm going to be 10 and then the state said, oh, some of the precincts are 3,978. And that's too close to 4,000. And we have not one, but multiple. We're going to have to have multiple. I mean, yeah, there are a number of precincts that are less than like 10 away from 4,000. I think including Peggy. So, so, so my concern is, um, that, uh, I don't know how, how to approach it because I, we, we need to ask the state for feedback. Maybe, maybe one option would be if we think that 10 would be the way to approach it. So my concern is, can we have a preliminary map today and send it up to the state with the state approved something like, in like this. Because my concern is, uh, we don't have that much time. And we can spend weeks discussing 10 and they say, no, they're too close to 4,000. Uh, you're not taking into account the fact that in the future I'm going to have development. So then they know, yes, Mike. I would recommend, um, arena that, you know, maybe we don't, I think there's only, you know, there's two 10 precinct maps. You created one and Peggy created one. Maybe we take one or both of those and we send them to our contacts at the state. Um, John, John Barr, Uriel Molina and William Palmer. And we send them to those three people and we say, Hey, we're working under a couple of different scenarios, but with playing with 10, which is keeping the number of precincts, our numbers are approaching the 4,000. Do you foresee this causing a problem for us in the approval process? Um, and if we sent them that email tomorrow, I would not be surprised if they got back to us very quickly because we're not asking them to do any work. We're just asking them to kind of quickly glance at the map and the statistics that we have. No, I think that's a great idea just to get some preliminary feedback. I mean, the other idea I had is that, I mean, is that we could say that we've looked at 15 precincts too, and we started to map it out. I mean, I even thought, you know, when we go to the council, we could do that that I just because like, we do have a few versions of a 15 precinct map. And so I just to say that we've thought about the 15, um, but, uh, I mean, I think it would be a lot of work to carry like both of the options, like going forward. Um, so. Tammy. I also agree with the 10 precincts. And after reading, reading Peggy's letter, I did think about the fact that two, two of the places that I've worked as a warden, um, have, you know, or either Hamster college or UMass and, you know, for our state elections, um, you know, we, we get the, the number of people who come to the polls is very low. Um, it is higher during, you know, a regular four year presidential elections, but it's still not the entire student population. And so, you know, I, I guess I'm just wondering why when we're making these maps of precincts that we're not also considering the number of registered voters. I mean, I know that for the purposes of the state, you don't do that. But I do think for places that have college, you know, 20,000, more than 20,000 college students. Um, you know, that it has a huge impact on who's voting where. Because students are not necessarily registered to vote. Where are they going to college? Tracy. Yeah, so, um, to Tammy's point, so that's something I went back and looked at how the chart, the charter commission created the districts from the precincts. And they did look a lot at the registered voter stats and also turn outs and competitiveness of races. And a lot of factors relating to. Like how to have districts like where people would be adequately represented. And there wouldn't be like great burdens in terms of. Um, People getting elected and so on. So. I mean, I think the, the census bureau, this does it based on the population because that number. Registered voters is just so much more complicated, I guess. Right. And this is just like a total number. But, um, So, I mean, we are sort of stuck using that framework, but then I definitely think we could look at things like that with the districts. I think we are limited. So we, our task is based on the census. We cannot look at. For prisons. We cannot. Say about registered voters. We have to look at our population because we need. That's what we know. Somebody might not be registered today, but might register tomorrow. So we have to look at our population because we need. That's what we know. We might not be registered today, but my register tomorrow. So we have to assume that everybody. It's going to register on both. There might be some issues so we cannot. We might. As internally in knowledge, we might build. The districts or build the person thinking that we. Have in mind that we have to build districts. And we want to build districts that are balanced out. So when we are creating the prisons, we. We have to look at. We have to look at. We have to look at. We have to look at. We have to look at. When we created the prisons was trying to look as maximum connectivity between the different prisons. Trying to think. How. If there. If we have big blocks of. You must. Dorm center. And then we cannot provide connections between other places. Then we're going to have a good district. There's only new mass dorms. That would not be a good. District. For the town. Maybe the state considers as fingers or more. Extended. Just so that I could provide some connection between different prisons. Then we could build them more balance in a more balanced way. But we cannot say anything about the number of registered voters. Maybe in a memo afterwards. We have to assume that everybody is going to be a registered voter. Peggy. So, yeah, so I too thought about that when I was making my map. And, and I think we. Really need to think about those zero blocks. As ways. To allow. You know, We sent to the state. That's why we are keeping the numbers high. But in principle, we cannot assume that somebody. Will not vote. Right. We have to assume that everybody's going to be a registered voter. Peggy. So, yeah. So I too thought about that when I was making my map. I think that there are a number of ways to allow those, those can easily be changed from one. Free sync to another and can allow for more connectivity. But what I'd say about right now is. I think my idea of sending maps, a couple of maps off. And getting immediate feedback is excellent. When we don't have that. What is our best route forward? Like for example, how are we going to spend the next hour. We're going to have to spend the next hour. And we're going to have to spend the next hour. Produce more productively. I think. Nothing. The first thing is would be to look at the maps and. Get the okay with it from everybody else. The two maps that we send. Of the 10. I think that would be the first thing. And I know mine. I think I skip. One block. Somebody Tracy. Yeah, you're missing one block that if you attach it to one of the adjacent ones, it goes over the fourth. And. So the money that's one. We're sending out. And that map also says 15 precincts, even though it's 10 precincts. At the title, I think. Okay. I know I got it updated. Okay. I think we could look at both. I think for the next hour. So, so that everybody has an idea. Would be to look at the two 10 and the two 15 that are there. So. Yeah. So. I would like to see. Yes. How. As I, as a starting point, sending this in case. We hear back. Like get everybody playing or tweaking these maps. To move forward. Oh, create an alternative. I think they don't like it. Just create an alternative, but. we send, right? That it's just a draft, like that we've been working on different versions or something. So then nothing is like final yet. Yeah. I mean, they must have sent us, I don't know, Mike, did they, did the state originally send us a 10 precinct map or no, they only send us a 12 and a 15? Yeah, because the original estimate was over 40,000 was 41,600. Okay, got it. Okay. So, Mike, is there a way to share both maps, the two tens, at the same time? Yes, let me. Oh, that's complicated. I mean, maybe. You probably have a big screen, Mike. Yeah, I know, but it might look crazy on your folks screen. So we're pulling up, I'm pulling up the two 10 precinct maps, correct? Yes. I really liked my 15, but I agree. But I like also my 15. I also like the 10. Okay, bear with me. And as a note, don't let your 10 year old talk to you when you're doing the maps. That's how I lost my first version of 15. That's why, yeah, there were so many revisions, huh? Yeah. Well, and also with the map tool, it lets us see, like, when I saw the holes I had and stuff, it lets us kind of clean it up. Right. Can you guys see those? Look how tiny. Yeah, can you can you kill the two columns on the right? Yeah. So on the right is PS that's Peggy and on the left is ID. Yeah. So do you see so that the one on the right, it says 15 and it's 10? Yeah. Oh, okay. Sorry title. Yeah. I was doing these late at night. Give me give me a break. No, well, thank you. Just kidding. All right. So yeah, I'll edit that and republish it. Question on precinct 10 from Irene's map. It's a 6.09% variance that goes over the 5%. Well, so she needs to add. Yeah, she needs to adjust it a little. So Mike, can you scroll down so we can see the correlation with the colors and the. Yeah, try it's hard without I mean, I guess we have to zoom out or something. Yeah. But yeah, so well, so Irene's map. So if you look at the white polygons on her map, like there's a couple of different ones. So that is actually that one that your pointer was that that's a zero population. So we could make that, you know, go away. It could be the purple. And then the little one at Mass Ave, that's a population of two because that's the parking lot that shouldn't have anybody. And then there's a couple other little corners like that seem like they like there's one up here. So that is actually 143 people because that's one of the dorms, I think. And so that is where we need to shift. If it gets, it needs to. Yeah, so like you can't add it to the blue, like the royal color. You can't add it to that would go over. But then so what you really need to do is adjust like the red brown a little bit and make it work. I can work on that. So my underlying thought on when I created this one was to create, try to create particular random new mass areas that you can move in different directions for connecting precincts. So. So I did wonder about your your green one, your like precinct seven. So we'd had the lengthy, you know, we'd had quite a bit of discussion last time about how so much of the population are students like trying to have precincts that aren't just students. And yeah, it is really complicated in Amherst because I mean, my sense of the census data for Amherst since I've lived here for the past 20 years is that of Amherst, roughly, you know, now we have roughly 40,000 people that around 22 to 25,000 people in the population are students. So like we're never, I mean, I know we have that kind of discussion about it. But I mean, that's close to 60% of our population. So we're never really going to be able to, you know, have a lot of non student areas. But it seemed like this one in particular, it might, I don't know, Mike, can you zoom in on that like precinct seven. So my idea when I was, my idea was to, when we made districts to be able to move down like all the bottom ones, see how we can group them, but having maybe the purple one connect to the green one or the brownish one to another student, because then you catch that size of non student non dorms with the dorms. So that was my idea. So if you have them elongated, then we can each, we can start catching dorms with different. No, sure. But so, I mean, Mike, if you zoomed in on that one, like, isn't it because that one basically starts around like that precinct seven. Yeah, I don't know if you want me to zoom in on this or I don't know, I guess I can zoom in myself, I guess. I'm like my own. But it basically goes, I mean, it doesn't, what's like the northern boundary of it? It's sort of. Of precinct, which of which one of that seven of precinct seven. So this, this, this is, that would be like puffed in. Right. And so actually that seems like, you know, that that area is a little strange in that. So they use a road through puffed in village as a census block boundary. Like even though so part of puffed in village is to the north and part of it's to the south or things like that. I mean, I just found sometimes when I was looking at how the blocks were drawn as they seem like they split up things that maybe you shouldn't necessarily be split up in that. And in other cases, I wish they had split them up more. But so, I mean, I think that it's great that both of these maps, you know, basically work except for the 143 that just needs to be assigned. So I think those are good places to start with the state, but yeah, essentially, I would have wanted to have all puffed on together, but the numbers are so high that then no, I would have created whole blocks that you cannot. It's all the students. That was Peggy, you had a comment. I just wanted to speak to my map for a few minutes. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So the way I approached this map was to actually try to keep the lines that exist as much as possible. And I know that I don't necessarily believe that we have the very best districts or precincts, but I also think that if you don't have a good reason to change something, then you're going to annoy the populace if we make changes. So I just wondered, like, can you make a map that keeps the lines where they are as much, you know, a lot? And so that was one thing. And then the other thing is you'll see that very, you know, you'll see the Southwest block down there. It's the moon number 10, that very small one. Yeah, thank you. That I also wanted to connect, be as connectable to every other block as many other blocks as possible. So right now it connects to four and five and nine. But if we turn UMass, the campus of UMass is almost all zeros. So that can be easily attached to any of the blocks that it talks to, that it's next to. So it can be part of nine, it could be part of three, it could be part of one, which allows 10 to connect to any one of those three. So anyway, so I just wanted to give some background of where this map came from and the idea of trying to always keep connection points as flexible as possible. I think that's huge. That's yeah. My biggest concern on this one, I think is that if we were to look into registered voters and people that go to the polls, you're going to have a large majority in the blue area. And then you're going to have people might get disenfranchised. I say that if you have the majority of registered voters group into only one district, that's why I wanted to be able to have more registered voters in most districts. So the impact, but maybe that's an assumption. No, I think that's absolutely right. That is something we need to think about. I was trying to look at that. It turns out six, seven and eight are current six, seven and eight, which actually is sort of the six, seven and eight here as well, have the highest percentage of the highest number of people that go to the polls during the last two presidential elections. Those are the only two I looked at. I didn't look at the local election so much. And so I think that's something that we really need to consider. I will also say that those, that only affects the local, the district counselors. Everything else is townwide. So the school committee and the at large and the library is all townwide. So not that those district counselors aren't important. They are. But it's not, it doesn't feel like as big a disenfranchisement as it might if there were more things that were based just on district. And also I'm going to say I live in this, I live in the blue area. And I decided, yeah, you know what, I wanted to try to extend district five, which is the lime green one in the middle one. I want to extend it down thinking about similar thing to what you were saying, Irina Irina. And that ended up moving my house into district five. And I looked at it and I thought, I don't want to vote in town. Now, obviously I will vote wherever, right? But it just was a sort of a visceral reaction of like, wait, you're taking away my voting place and I'm going to have to vote in town. That's much less convenient than Crocker Farm. And that's what I mean about we do need to be a little bit careful about what we do to what changes we make because people will be unhappy. Disenfranchisement is a really good reason not, you know, to allow people to be unhappy, but just there is a trade off. I will agree with Peggy has said. We hear it all the time. So, I mean, it is interesting when we look at the two maps, like how many, and maybe Mike could, you know, share some of this data with us, but how, where they overlap a lot and so on. Is that the immediate exercise is to look at these and say, okay, let's send them to the state and see what their reaction is. And I think, you know, both of these allow a lot of flexibility to do different things. But the question that Marina brought up is, is the state going to accept it? And if we want to try by sending both of these to the state and say, this is the direction that we're thinking of, are we going to have any problems if we continue in this direction as far as numbers are concerned and get a reaction from it? I mean, so one thing with Peggy's map is I was concerned about how large the blue area is. I mean, I understand like how that happened, but it just covers, it covers, I don't know, it covers a lot of blocks. And I mean, I know a lot of them are zeros and small numbers, and that's how it got to be so big. But just that it is such a large swath of south emers, like including going east, west of like, going west of like 116 and so on. So, I don't know, like that area is Hampshire College. And so like, so that was an area that lost a lot of population, right? So I think it went down like four or 500 people compared to in 2010, which is how that district was able to expand. But like, I personally might try to maybe maybe leave Hampshire College in with the pink and maybe expand the blue district like to the north a little bit, even though I understand that the current that that green district, whatever that is, the six that actually matches pretty closely with the current precinct six. But maybe extend it like a long route nine or something. It does that to me just like looks like Can we come to an agreement that this that we can test the state with these? Oh, yeah, no. Yeah, I'm trying to say, Tracy, that this is the way. No, absolutely. Absolutely. If you're saying can we can we agree at least to do this one thing? Yeah, I think we should. Yeah, and I think I think what the test is is Craig and other other people as well is precinct two has 3997 people in it. And that is that's up here. Yeah, precinct six. I mean, has 3975 precinct eight has. And they're all below 4000. They're all below that. The question is, is this is the state going to say, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, you know, that's too close. Let's I wonder, I wonder, Mike, with that in mind, if we'd want to tweak them at all before we send them. So I don't I don't I wouldn't. I think this is a great dramatic example of like how bad it could possibly get. It's less than 4000. That's right. You know, it's they're all look at the balance here. That's what's great about Peggy's map that the there's only one of them that's above 2% variants from all the others. The distribution of people was very clean. So they're going to be very happy with that. But some of those get very close to the upper threshold. So, Mike, I would like to tweak. I can do it offline with you. Maybe help to tweak the other map so that we make sure that it's I didn't realize I was missing one block. Yeah, I can help you with that too. I can look at it a little bit before sending it because if not, they're going to raise a red flag because there's a 6% there. But I would like to send it tomorrow. We can work. Yes. That's what I was going to recommend. I would recommend we get this email out as soon as possible so that we would get a response back and in the packet before next week's meeting so that we can because we talked about it. We really need to start. If we can do 10 and we want to do 10, we need to start producing something a couple of different scenarios of 10 so that we can really hash out what we want to have. And because we what we have two meetings before we need to deliver something to meeting staff so that's not much time. So my suggestion about time and procedure based on the two 10s would be if somebody wants to have a go and create another one that maybe hashes out some of the issues that were raised today between large, the big large, the large one or make it too many changes. Go ahead and we can discuss in the next meeting but also at the same time the other thing that we can do is if this one of if this either of these two maps were to stay would we be able to have balanced districts? I think that's our next step because that has to be although it's not part of our task. It's part of our task but it's not what the state is looking that state wants the precincts. We need to make sure that we can build with either of these ones can we build balanced districts and whether they can be balanced districts not just on population because they have to be within five percent as well but also about based on our knowledge of either register voters or student population that we can estimate by looking at the maps. We cannot know exactly for sure where the students are but there are some areas that we already know that are heavily populated by students. I would be concerned too. I mean I would want to tweak it on the edges just like to try to make sure we're not breaking up neighborhoods and things like that. Yeah so for example I had one version on the maps where I was breaking I mean many of the complexes on East Hadley Road. East Hadley Road. Yes East Hadley Road and I had to redo to make sure I started by building that block because in the end it's a lot of population not to break it up. Sure. I couldn't avoid it on Pafton. Yes great. May I make a suggestion that we I don't know if we wouldn't need a vote to send these in to the state to get a reaction from them and then we've got what about 45 minutes left in the meeting. Maybe we could we could spend 20 minutes tweaking one and then 20 minutes tweaking the other one having a discussion on each one and I'm saying send them in the way they are but start playing in that regard to see if there's anything that really anyone's adamant about changing. There are two hands raised Peggy and Tracy. Okay two comments. One just commenting about what I just said. I also think it's worth our looking at the 15 precinct maps a little bit today and not waiting until next week just in case the news from the state is bad news. Great point. And then the other thing I want to say is that in terms of the neighborhoods we know where the housing complexes are like where the large apartment complexes are but I don't know myself and I don't know if other people do if there are other communities of interest in the town that may not be defined by those and and that's something that we're supposed to look at. I mean we're not supposed to just do it based on roads we are supposed to look at you know making sure that we're not disenfranchising minorities or other communities. So I'd like us to think about how we're going to get that information soon. Yeah okay that's so to answer sorry Tracy to interject can we because we have some information we got we have some demographic information for these ones right we have the column the other columns with some information about demographics. A little bit of race. Yes have a race that's the only information that we have so far so we we could look at that information on these precincts whether we're splitting but I don't know how we're gonna do it if we're gonna be splitting a block neighboring blocks if we look at neighboring blocks as we were splitting or I'm a accept suggestions I don't know how to do it. So I mean I think go ahead Mike. So can I share something with regarding the demographic stuff can I show a couple of things that I've been working on to I don't know how to most effectively display this to you folks into the public but I've been working on a way to kind of show race let's see he's not showing and show it in a way that would Amherst is the vast majority of I forget the exact percentage but I believe it's like 66 percent white white alone this time around so I'm trying to I was trying to show the data in a way where it would show concentrations of other other races and so what I ended up with is showing standard deviation for each race so this is black or african-american alone and then I did that for each race that was I didn't do it for the ones that are two races or more three races or more just because that would I would be producing 200 maps but I did this and I don't know if this is the most effective way to display this sort of information so are the numbers are they based on the percentages or like an actual count the percentages of the block or actual count yeah the these numbers are it's based off of the count per block so it's a count so because I mean we could have an area that's like a small precinct I mean a small block population-wise but it could have a large percentage of a certain group right right and and you didn't so you were just doing it like race by race but so this is going to be people I mean I think it's it's important I think how many people identify as more than one race absolutely and also with the Hispanic origin data too so I mean not you know to merge some of but not to merge all those different categories together but the way we have them now they're they are pretty general like they don't represent I know somebody had brought up you know the Cape Verdean community and different Hispanic communities in Amherst right and we're not going to capture any of that because we don't have that 2020 data and it won't be available I think Mike you had said last time right it wouldn't be available for like up to a year or something but even just to like see the parts that have like the most diversity what I had found when I was looking at the numbers earlier is you know and I think you're seeing some of that too is that like some of the biggest counts are going to be where the students live just because of the sheer number of students like so some of the high density dorms are going to show like the largest number of people of certain races or something compared to because you know in that one block you'll have what we have that one block that has 2,500 people or you have the other block in um in Orchard Hill that has you know 1,200 1,265 people and so those numbers are going to be some of the highest like on the block level I think but I mean I think it is good to look at those too for sure but one thing is if we stay with the map of 10 um that we just are not going to have much flexibility in terms of like adding and subtracting blocks you know from the different precincts because we're just so close like even though we could go up to 5% technically which is you know 5% of almost 4,000 is like almost 200 people but we can't do that because we can't go over the 4,000 so I mean I think that's one reason that like Piggy's variances are so small they have to be yeah they have to be I mean because we have like this upper ceiling and so okay yeah I mean I am just sorry go ahead Mike can you share those maps anyhow whatever you have so then I think one way even if it's not our um it would be a first approach on how to overlay with our maps to make sure that when we have kind of concentration we could see if we are putting a line in between one of those areas one of one of these like an area like this yeah yes yes I can yes I can't share this so I have a question about what we're that's why I raised my hand before about what we're sending to the state I mean I I like the idea of sending two maps I mean I you know I worked a lot on a 15 map and I could come up with a 10 map I don't really want to send this state like too many maps because like with the 10 maps I'm a little afraid that they're going to be like well we like this one and not this one and and so and I just I want them to sort of endorse the concept of it but I mean I think we could maybe share with the state too that we've also drafted 15 maps of 15 too I mean they had drafted one for us as well we're just I mean just because we currently have 10 and there's no way for us to go to 12 right even though the state had recommended we to go to 12 and we can't do that because we have the five districts so I mean what do people think if we even tell the state that we have maps of 15 or we share those maps or I don't I don't want to send this state too much data and sort of muddle the message but I think if we want to find out if we can do 10 precincts we send them a 10 precinct map if we if we send them a 10 precinct map and a 12 and a 15 then they may very well write back and say we want you to do the 15 even though legally we may be able to do the 10 so I think if we're trying to find out specifically whether they would approve a 10 we should ask that okay I have a suggestion but I mean they did say like in the letter before that it said right according to because our population the letter that um Irina had received does say it would appear that we can remain at 10 because we're under the 40,000 yeah but so so Mike you had a comment I would I would one of the things I would recommend Irina is definitely you mentioned this in one of your previous emails to the state definitely make note please respond via email because what they'll do is they'll they'll call me they'll call they'll call sue they they would much rather prefer to pick up a phone and talk to somebody about this instead of go back and forth via email so I prefer via email because then absolutely absolutely I completely agree but I'm just just telling you with other projects that I work on this group with they'll they they'll call me on my drive home okay okay great so uh Peggy has suggested that we take before we go back to looking at the these two maps that we quickly take a look at the two 15 maps so on the right is Irina's map and on the left is Tracy's 15 precinct map I think it's right first but now mine is and mine is on the right remind on the left yeah did I say that I said I don't know uh yours go again I went up with dailongated shape that's the overall shape of Amherst right no it's true I mean that's how we end up with that yeah uh Joe I stated this earlier in the meeting but I just have to head out a little bit early so I'm gonna head out but I'll finish watching the meeting and get them in his back we still have him right yeah I think so we still have five yeah uh Craig I was just gonna say before he goes uh could I make a motion that we send the two 10 precinct maps to the state to get a sense of whether they're going to accept it or not okay somebody wants to second I can second it uh Craig meadows yes the parks hi hi uh Peggy Shannon hi Tracy Saphia hi you're in the home on AI so and Joseph already left um so we're gonna send the two 10 precinct maps and we're just gonna tweak yours right just to make that 143 work okay yes um but um so on the 15 um sometimes it's harder to make uh because the numbers are smaller and again thinking about connectivity I have some weird in the one I created I had this some weird uh shape and it was mainly for connectivity and trust to make the bottom um boundary so the one if you can see it here on the left there's one that is very elongated and thin yeah it was the only way I could get to not go over the limit but I think so that one I think that precinct I mean that block only has like a population of 12 or something isn't that right yeah but yes but if I didn't have that it was under the 5% no but yeah no but I'll say too I think so when I look back at how the 2011 redistricting was done is that the state really didn't like like elongated shapes like that very much um just uh yeah I mean unless you had unless there was no way around it like with the big dorms and stuff that you had that all around it is big dorms so whenever I did oh I understand yeah you would jump um my thought was okay we can incorporate that one with others to create the district then the district would look whole and not fingery sure that would be the justification yeah so the great the good thing about both of these maps is that both of them all 15 of the precincts were below on both maps were below the 5% variance either way so um shape would probably come into the state's play um this one is just weird because there are no residential areas in that in that strip on the west side don't we think that it should be a zero we think it should be a zero yeah yeah yeah and I confirmed that with multiple I mean one of these is the the vacant land across from southwest yeah that's the post office in big y and cbs down here and then up here there are 12 people in I believe that is completely vacant land like all the way down to amity street it's UMass property and like the parking lot to the football stadium so it's just it's just egregious errors that lead to that shape right but I needed those 12 to if not I was more than 5% so I yeah but I guess so Mike so when when this when the Census Bureau I guess we'll fix some of like we'll tweak the map and address some of the places where population should have been assigned to one block and it was assigned to the adjacent block like in the case of what you had mentioned the southwest right there's a dining hall that has a population and a dorm that doesn't um like when what's the time frame time frame for that like that wouldn't really affect our process I mean I guess the thing is I mean that of course I realize that like that's down the road but it's is it possible that that could mean that some of our blocks could go over or something if they if they change it yeah I'm not sure I don't think they'll change it unless we tell them that there's an error there um I don't think they're going to go and just change the population per block unless we pointed out to them which and even if we did I have no idea how long it would take for them to kind of resolve that sort of issue that that could be another question that we ask the state in the correspondence and what is the what happens to like with some of those zero blocks like it seems like sometimes there's a lot of them like in an area do they I mean in some of them they seem like they're just like sort of abandoned slivers or something this do they clean those up in between the censuses or do they do the number always grow of blocks or um I don't know the answer to that I've never I haven't been here in Amherst long enough to really to really see that um but I can go see if I can find it no I was just curious and so also in that letter from the secretary of the commonwealth's office right they did say because arena had brought up the question about if there's an undercount and um I mean the town is not pursuing the idea of an undercount we cannot the the undercount my understanding after looking at the documents is that they don't recount they only think that we do they would stay with do changes on the census is to shift populations around so if the census blocks should not have a zero and whether the limits are right whether the there are some issues with the borders but my understanding from reading and that was my reading was that these are the numbers we cannot no I mean but they had mentioned in that last paragraph like it says that there's an appeal process or something yeah but the appeal process is mainly for these errors that was my understanding somebody had a different read of that uh so regarding the maps I have a comment and I don't but I don't know if anybody else have a comment about the 15 maps go ahead so my my concern is if we were so these are the alternatives and um by looking at yours Tracy my concern is that we kind of are um we have this point here in the center where many persons touch but there's not a significant overlay so that if we actually we are kind of limiting the way we can build districts oh I yeah I think I feel like because because I feel like there's a lot of connectivity because the the light green cannot go the light green can only go with one two three the dark green can go with more but the the so the the student population the heavily areas where the student population would not be able to be more distributed we're going to end up with some areas that are going to be more heavy student dollars yeah I mean I I do feel like I mean I I was maybe I was grouping them a little bit um I mean I think there's always going to be limits on how they can be grouped yeah I'm just given the shape of Amherst and I I mean it seems from what I've seen like both the 15 precinct maps and the 10 did a better job of of in the past compared to in the past like when there really aren't that many connection points right yeah so I mean I still feel like I mean the fact that almost every except for on the south and the north that like most of them connect to like a good number of precincts I think that that does give some flexibility but because you have to group them you are sort of limited to like you know and because of the shape of the town yeah so um I feel like it's sufficient but I think we're coming up against a basic here which is that there because the population is so heavily focused in one area we can either have a lot of possible ways to connect um or we can have a map that doesn't have fingers right I mean that in order to in order to be able to to spread that central population out to the outer edges of the town we need fingers and that's what Irena's map gives us um if we want to have more polygonal shapes to our precincts then we have something that um Tracy gives us but then it's much harder to spread that population beyond the sort of center of the town yeah I think yeah I mean I think you could see some of the same with like the 10 precincts I mean and that's a question too right the state has brought into question like when you create a lot of little fingers like are they necessary are they not necessary like we can't create fingers just because we want the connectivity I think it's like I don't know I mean I don't know what the justification for creating them is from the state's perspective it's it seems like you know one justification is just when there's those large populations in a block and just trying to deal with it that way and I know on my original version of my map like there was one I did clean it up a little bit but there was one precinct I mean there was one census block that one of the dorm ones that had the 1265 from Orchard Hill and it barely connected to the other ones in its precincts like in its in the one I was still assigning to the same precinct like it would you know it was a very minor connection and whether the state would be okay with that or not okay so so um it's 737 so we agreed that we're going to be sending the maps the question is do we want to look now on based on the information that Mike has about a limit of the demographics of the 10 to see whether they would agree or we leave that as a homework to try to come up I mean I feel like our efforts might be best I mean this is my perspective but just waiting to hear back from the state um and seeing what the state tells us because if the state says you know this type of map is acceptable this type of map isn't acceptable or 10 isn't I mean it's just all those other numbers are going to relate to like what we hear from the state and I mean I am anticipating you know it could be possible as we're working on some of the details that we could end up with some meetings that go longer than two hours like if we have to um so maybe we could have a meeting that ends early okay which is not really hard of an Amherst but I it's a nice thing I think and I'm sure but I want to make sure and I don't think that people I want to make sure because we only have more or less two weeks to meetings to kind of find so I would I would like us to I don't know give us a little homework for all of us and this is okay let's assume base case scenario the state says go ahead with the 10 and either of these two maps would be acceptable maybe we don't get that answer so I think the homework for us would be for both of us for all of us would be A think critically would people feel comfortable with these maps and then we can discuss it see you have a different idea than other maps that can work there are infinite number of configurations that can work on this probably not infinite but a big number of configurations that we could make work um it's is there a better option than these ones that we were created as starting points and two at the same and at the same time let's look at start thinking if we consider these two okay can we build districts that are balanced based on this one as because that it's gonna that would it's gonna inform us whether we have to tweak again the precincts because if we cannot build districts then we have an issue so I think that would be the homework okay we can okay so let's finish early the meeting but let's give us ourselves a homework so that we do offline what we're waiting like a mental experiment can we build based on these ones can we build different districts that are balanced in numbers yeah population as much as we can yes three six so could you recap again so we need to submit a report to um the council by what like the 12th or something right they 15 they have to be inside the council has to have everything by the 15th okay by the 15th and so so if we go back like that's over a month that's not but was it because we were saying that we would spend like a few weeks working on the precincts and then a few weeks working on the districts or what was your no my thought was that we once we had a map we wanted to hear one from the state right okay again so one is the state we want to hear we don't know how it's going to take two we want to make some I would like to make some notes that people know that these are maps out there and to get feedback as much as we possible can so that's why I wanted because the 15th has to be the final version so maybe even have some preliminary that we can share around so then the council knows that it's coming and that's the shape and we don't want to have the council say no we don't approve it right sure so that's why we have to have some time maybe to share around and have more input from the public about these maps so that's why I wanted to have more time right I don't want to be the last minute and they say no start again and also the issue of the state because we might have to send we're going to take them I think I would like to hear again from the state the final version of it submitted before submitting get a yes or no maybe not final approval but maybe you are in the right direction well and I think I mean if the state approves us to have 10 I mean I would like to look more closely at both of the 10 maps and just think about I mean you know not to I mean there are places where they overlap a lot you know yeah but I think about like where they're different and what makes sense and you know it is I think it is I mean you got you both did like amazing jobs like balancing all the numbers because we can't even go to the 5% you know with the cap so yeah so so that's why I want like a homework is like let's look at this map while we are waiting to hear right let's look at this map assuming that the state says okay with them and I think we would need to like in our final report even if our report itself or our memo to the council is pretty small like I think we would need to at least show them that we had thought about like I know with the charter commission right they actually mapped there were nine different configurations that would work with 10 precincts to create five districts right so I think we would want to actually have like a list of all the options and then you know the ones that we've we haven't gone with or whatever yeah just to to show that the to show the council and then the state as well that we went through like the process of looking at everything I mean so okay well hopefully we hear back from the state we they're normally pretty good at getting back to us pretty quickly especially since they know that we we are basically the ones that are taking on this work you know a lot of other communities they're doing this work for the communities they should be pretty responsive to us since we're doing we're doing all the legwork here and if they're not we just we continue to continue to follow up with them right and and I guess if we got the something from council to council SEL like saying it's okay then we can proceed so yeah before we break away I I did make a couple changes to the website over here on the right hand side I put in maps and data and then I create I use what Peggy said precinct building map precinct construction map I don't know what to work whatever you guys want it to say we can make it say that link there so I made that edit and then I'm going to create a kind of a document within the all meeting thing that it's basically an index of all the different interactive maps that we're creating and so that somebody can go there and click on links to kind of get to all of them but I'll keep this area right here very clean that this is our working area um this is the raw data so that if somebody in the public wants to download it and start playing it within themselves they have access to it um Peggy I can you say raw data raw data yeah that's and raw data so then well even that to label that census 2020 block data like raw data I think or something just to make sure that it's not like people understand it's not a map or something sure yep um but then if there is a way I mean I think that that um little tutorial document is super helpful oh to put it right here beneath this I would put it like almost right there just as an explanation just sure because I mean I do understand what people are saying about how you know some information's in the packets but then also when you go to the packet you can't get back to the committee page and I mean just to make it like super obvious yep no problem um just making that note um and then Peggy I'm going to republish your map because I as people pointed out I did it too late at night and I put 15 precincts up here so I will fix that I'll republish this map it will look identical same colors and everything it'll just say 10 at the top and then that will be the map that we send to the states so Mike I had a question just like in terms of clean them on next to them on the table with precinct two like what is the road there oh this right there yeah what is that that's just yeah that's just a label for east heavily road I can hide it wait yeah I'm sorry um I'm sorry that is um what does it turn to that turns into north Hadley road north yeah yeah yeah well it's in Hadley too right so we can yeah we can pretend yeah yep can hide um and then Peggy and Craig I've I've sent both of you one just a separate standalone email I know Craig you've received it I said Peggy I meant Tammy Tammy I don't know if you received it but just reply back to me with days and times that would work for you to connect you know half an hour probably would work and I'll make it work whatever suits you folks thank you and if anyone else needs help trying to find a way to build something just just let me know and we can connect Mike can we set up a time I think it was going to be easier can we do interactively the trick in this area yes can I set up a time afterwards I send you an email yeah absolutely yep thank you send me an email and we'll get it done sooner than later thank you okay so um well I'd be happy to help with that I mean I was looking at it a little bit I just didn't have time to know if you want to go ahead so with that 143 I mean so we need to just fill in the two zeros or the you know that that zero yeah so that's the 143 which is the smallest one um and so yeah I think I mean it might I can take a look and just see if there we can get the numbers to add up or something is there is there a way Mike that you could send the like some kind of table or something not the summary table but um the list like with the block groups that shows yes or maybe you can show it yeah okay I can send you the spreadsheet that I send to Mike okay great does not does it still have a different tab for each um precinct or where they merged into one I merged them into one so okay so can you send it to Tracy then yeah that'd be great thank you so Tracy if you can take a pass I'll take a look yeah because tomorrow morning I'm teaching second I can of course I send Mike stuff too late at night too so I cannot do it it's an illness okay sure thank you um well thank you for contacting the state so hopefully so then yes so if you take a look at then tomorrow afternoon I can send it yeah the state sure yeah I'll confirm I'll confirm with with you or you know when everything is all set on the website because then what what you should just be able to do is just send them links to the pdf so you don't need to attach them because you can just link them to the ones that are on the publish on the website so okay okay because the state's email system is very very very thinnicky they'll reject attachments um certain attachments and things so sending them a link might be better okay we can talk about them because I want to make sure that we only send them the link for the 10 and not the 15 so yes I don't want to send the link to the package because then they see everything right right well I can I can I can send the links to you and then you can basically use those links to send to the state so that would be perfect thank you I don't think they'll go looking through our packets if we don't tell them about the packet they'll just look for the direction okay great um so um we made it to 750 in the end we we made it um so I don't see any participants we don't have any public so so am I correct that we only have our meeting scheduled out for the next two weeks is that right yep yes so I can send a new all the fields so that we set up the future meetings wait for an email that's gonna come probably later in the week or in the weekend I don't think I'll ever uh when to meet to set up the future three meetings after this one okay so we'd probably want to have I mean if well if we had to keep meeting every week we'd have two meetings more before the um before the deadline with the council yeah so I gonna send for those two and even one after we in case we have to revise something between the council that has to go that would like to have three meetings schedule just in case okay and now just a logistical question with the council I know that they're um they're typically required and they might want to do this anyway um they they typically review something twice before they vote on something substantive so they were considering scheduling another meeting on the 25th to vote on this only oh okay that we had a communication and that was so they would meet on the 18th and then they would meet again on the 25th and okay yes all right so then the following week is the election I guess so so then I'm wrong so I think it has to be five days in advance so maybe the dates are wrong notice the 15 is the 13th that they have to be I have to check well I think the 15th would be the Friday but we would probably want to give them something sooner I think they have to be five days in advance that might be my mistake I can I'm going to check on that and then if their meeting is on the 18th it has to be by the 17th and I mean and I guess too we could have an option if we weren't done with the memo or something that we could present the map and then on the 18th and then between the 18th and 25th we could like prepare a memo or something yeah but okay tell me you had to I was just going to confirm that I have that our next meeting is Tuesday the 14th at 6 p.m. and the following meeting is Tuesday the 21st at 5 30 p.m. or is that correct um and then I have yes and then the 29th or whatever the following week is not scheduled at this time no okay so we had only we had done it for three weeks so that's what I'm going to send now for the next meeting okay okay great thank you thank you somebody wants to make a motion I move to adjourn second okay thank you Shannon hi Craig Meadows hi Jesse Safian hi Tony Parks hi you didn't call me hi so I'll see you next week all right thank you thank you bye bye everybody bye good night