 Okay, that has started. So we are being recorded. All right, everyone. Welcome to our first meeting for the district thing advisory board. I'm Sue, I did on the town clerk. Thank you. Sorry. They're closing my office door. I'm making too much noise. And I thought we could start with just introductions will go around. And that'll also be our attendance. Okay, so as stated, I'm Sue, I did on the town clerk. So I'll be a non voting, like an ex official kind of member advisory. Okay. And Mike Warner, you want to next? Hi, I'm Mike Warner. I'm from the IT department for the town of Amherst. I'm also a non voting number. I'm the mapping guy in town. I've worked with data I've done representing before for other cities and towns. So I'm kind of the liaison between you folks and the state and I'll be drawing lines running stats and bringing them back and forth with each meeting so that we can make sure that we meet the state's criteria. And D, you want to go next? Yeah, I'm Demetrius Shabazz. And I'm the board of registrar's representative. All right, Tammy. I am Tammy Parks. And I'm in precinct six. Okay. Irene. Hi, I'm Irene LeCovne. I'm in precinct three, district one. Peggy. Hi, I'm Peggy Shannon. I'm in precinct seven. And I live on Mill Lane. That's it. Okay. Tracy. I'm Tracy Zafian. I live, I'm in district three. I live in precinct four. And I've, I've volunteered and worked on a lot of elections. Sure has. All right. And Joseph. Hello, my name is Joseph. I am in district two and I am a bus driver for UMass transit. All right. All right, so we have an attendant. Um, I think if we follow the order of our posted meeting, now that we've done the introductions, we can get the public comments section taken care of and then, and then go right into election of officers. So I'm going to look at the attendees. And we have one person attending, Adrienne Charizzi. So Adrienne, if you have anything to say, please raise your hand. Give her a second. Yep, there it is. So Mike, do I just click a lot of talk? Okay, Adrienne, I think you can talk. You'll need to unmute yourself. We don't hear you yet. Adrienne, you're still muted. Maybe you have to unmute her. I just asked her to unmute, but she may not be allowed to. Do you have the ability to unmute her, Sue? I don't have the ability to. I just clicked ask to unmute. So let me see if I can. That's how you do it when you're a host or a co-host. Yeah, I did that. I clicked on it, but nothing's happening. There's a removed permission to talk. That's not what we want. So. Do I need to promote her? I mean, you could promote her temporarily. I think she's not getting promoted. I think she's logging in with another co-host. She is. So maybe you need to allow the other. No, she's in there twice. All right, I'm going to hold on. Hello. Thank you for bearing with me. There we go. Hello, everyone. I'm attending this meeting as a past participant in the district advisory board back in 2011. It's a vital interest of mine, and I'm joining just to wish you well and to say go for it. A lot of work ahead. I'm going to try to lower my hand because I do not really have a public comment. As I said otherwise, other than to wish you all well. Thanks so much. Thank you, Adrienne. I'm going to try to get you out of here. Let's see. Thank you to work your magic because I can't I can't seem to do it at my end. OK, I'm working on it. Thank you. OK, all right. Thank you. There we go. All right. So with the public comment out of the way, thank you, Adrienne, for that comment. We'll move to the election of officers. We should elect a chair. We should also elect someone who can take the minutes and any other positions that we think we need. So normally what we would do is do we have any nominations for a chair from the voting members? Don't all speak at once. Is anyone want to self nominate? I don't know. We're just more quiet over here. Nobody wants to nominate a chair or self or nominate themselves as chair. Got to have a chair. Can we have a chair in the co-chair? If you want to and to share the load, that might be more amiable to. Yeah. I'm willing if I have a co-chair, but not. OK, anybody care to be a co-chair? Again, don't all speak at once. We do have to have a chair for the meeting. Unfortunately, Mike and I, and Demetri, can't help you with that because we're non voting members, so we can't take part in that. Tracy. I can be a co-chair, but I'm also a chair of another committee and we're getting busy. And so I would like to not have to do very much. But I want to share. That's why I said to share is I can do it. Yes. If we can be, yeah, we can do that. Yes. Awesome. So Irene has nominated herself as chair. Tracy has nominated herself as a co-chair. Do we have any other nominations? No. Do we have any? Can you just speak briefly to what the chair co-chair responsibilities are? And also, I mean, just in terms of what the updated time frame is for this committee. OK, so chair and coach, well, you know, the chair of responsibility normally is to just keep the order of the meeting, keep things flowing, you know, follow the agenda, make sure there's a second to every motion. Start the meeting and the meeting. That sort of thing. It's kind of administrative and just managing. How much like on the on the ranked choice commission, Tanya was also doing things like keeping receiving all the email from people and sending out agendas and stuff. Is that also part of the chair responsibility or is that something that you will be doing? Yeah, that's what I'll be doing because I'm the staff liaison pretty much. I post the meetings. I will be putting the agenda packets online and I, you know, I'm willing to be like just like, you know, starting off communication center for everybody, not a deliberation center, but a communication center. So, you know, I can I'm happy to do that part of it. This would mostly be for. Running the meetings themselves. OK. OK, I'm also I'm also willing to be a co-chair if Tracy feels like it's too much. OK, I mean, well, what Sue said is not that involved because my other chair position is more involved. In terms of us and I guess like when we have to, you know, write up our findings and our recommendations. And so like we would find somebody at that time to do those tasks, right. So I just know from my other committee, I'm the one writing those things. So I mean, I'm happy to do that. I would prefer that to be in the minute taker. I fear minutes. Yeah. The yeah. Just a related question is, Sue, did you send those like a I didn't see the agenda in the packet, right? Is it just on the posting only? It's actually it's on the website. There's a section on the DAB website. OK, I got it. Agendas, minutes and packets. And actually I was late in putting the agenda. I'm still getting my act together. I'm putting everything together for this. So I put the agenda. The agenda was on course in the official meeting posting on the town calendar. Right. No, I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, because there were also the DAB agendas from the last time this was done. That's what I saw. I cleaned that out this morning. Yeah, I said, was that from 2011? Yes. Yes. That's gone now. So then so the other question, though, part of this was the timeline. And Mike, did you want to talk about that? Or do we need to know that for the people that are nominating themselves? Do you still want to hear that? I think it's helpful just for people to have the context of like how long this will be and how many meetings we might anticipate and so on. But yeah, so I'm going to start and work from the deadline back. Um, we have a deadline from the Secretary of State's office to provide our finished product or what we believe to be our finished product, which is a is a map to the Secretary of State's office. And I believe it's one of it's one of the last days in October. It's the last week of October. Our goal, in my opinion, should be to finish before that. I procrastination really stresses me out. So like a week or two before that should be our ideal goal. But we will not be getting a copy of the official census data, which we we will really use to make these maps until the end of September because that's when the official census numbers come out. What we are working with between now and then are estimates and those estimates can be wildly inaccurate. So we're basically going to be doing practice exercises between now and then hoping that those estimates are going to be accurate. And if they are, if they are accurate and we get the official data at the end of September and we compare the data and it's all good, then we'll be sitting pretty if the data do not compare well. We're going to probably have to start all over again and at the end of September and rush like crazy to get it done. Oh, I guess I just have a related question. So I'd seen on the Census Bureau website that they're not promising the redistricting data to the states until the end of September. So it's is it likely or possible based on your past experience like that that could slide to or probably not. There's been room. There's been rumors that it's actually going to come out early. Yeah, but I would not hold my breath on that one. They're usually pretty good at getting it out by the deadline. And if they don't, then there's no way that the state, I don't think there's any way that the state can hold our feet to the fire of that October 31st deadline. That that would, especially if the data do not compare. That would that would be very difficult because. This is being done for 351 municipalities across Massachusetts. And the Secretary of State's Office is doing this work for the vast majority of those cities and towns. We are kind of in the minority in that the town is taking on the work and we're going to be drawing the lines. So. Yeah, I don't. If it came out late, I don't see how the Secretary of State's Office would be able to get it done in a timely manner. Sure. And it wouldn't I mean, it's not, it wouldn't affect anything until like the 2022 elections, right? So it's it's a little interesting that the deadline is right before the November. Correct. So elections, the work and the work in the bound, I know the work in the boundary line drawing that we will be doing do not affect this November election. And in fact, they will not take effect until December, December 31st, 2021. So, OK, yeah. I also wanted to mention that the town council has to vote on this. So we need to get this to the town council and then have their final say by October 30th or whatever the date is. So we need to, I would say, to shoot from mid October to be done. So I have that was my question. One, do we have to make it public? So do we need to allow some time for public comment from residents before we send it to the town council? Like to have a have a week or two so that we can before the final map is sent to the council for voting, whether we will need to have public input or share it out. And to that, yeah. OK, I was going to say we we do have to allow for public comment at every meeting. That was one of the things I wanted to talk about. But I think we should move on with electing our chair and getting that done because we're going way off tangent here and co-chair and minute taker so that we get the structure out of the way. And then we can talk about all the different things that we would like to do. Because, yeah, so before I jump into that again. So. Irene has nominated herself as chair and Tracy and Peggy both still vying for co-chair. Is that correct? Yes, absolutely. OK. OK. If Peggy wants to be co-chair, that's fine with me. Are you about I will withdraw my OK. OK. All right. So if we don't have any other nominations, we do need to vote. OK, so I'll I'll do roll call vote. I'll call you by name and you can say I or an A or yes or no, however you want to do it. And those can that can vote. So Tammy Parks. Oh, I'm sorry. You know what? Did I get a second? I didn't get a second. Did I? No. OK. Second. Thank you. Well, your second thing yourself. Yeah, that's I look and suck on myself. No, that's right. Just a second. Thank you. Thank you. OK, now we can vote. OK, so Tammy Parks. Immuted, Tammy. I. OK. Irene. I. All right. Peggy. We voted on Irene right now. You're voting on Irene as chair and you as co-chair. OK. I. The whole package. All right, Tracy. I. OK, and Joseph. I. All right. It's unanimous. All right. Welcome, new chair Irene and new chair Peggy. And with that, I'll turn the meeting over to the two of you. We should find someone who's going to take minutes. We'll have to vote on that next. So I'm done. OK, OK. So we need nominations for minute takers. I'm happy to nominate myself. OK. We have a second. I'll check that. OK, so I guess we vote now. Tammy Parks. I. Peggy. Shannon. I. Tracy. I. I don't know if, Joseph, you can vote on yourself. I say I. And. I'm learning how to do this. Can Joseph bottle for himself? Yes. OK. Joseph. I. So it passes. Yes. OK, so we have a minute taker and. That's it, right? That's it. And I'm happy to share what's come before this point, Joseph. When you go to do the minutes from this meeting, I'll type up what I have. Before this and give it to you. OK. Sounds great. OK. OK, so we need an opening. I don't even have the agenda open. So I want to apologize. I need to get the agenda. So we need to discuss according to the agenda, the regulations and rules of procedures. And we have to establish them. We already talked about timeline and. We need to talk about duties and the package material. Since I'm not the expert, I'm learning about this, Susan. Is there anything that we should know? Yes, what I was going to. So it says any regulations or rules of procedures so that we may want to establish if we don't have to. But things. Well, I was modeling that on. So hold on one second. So for instance, the town council has a whole. They have a whole bunch of rules and regulations. Rules of procedure. But one of which is public participation. So something to think about because we're going to be moving fast and furious. And we have a lot of information to tackle in a very short period of time. We may want to set up some kind of. Outline that documents the length of public comment the time. And then we have a lot of information. And then we have a lot of information. How many times people can speak. You know, whether we want need to recognize them first. I'm just reading from the town council, just getting ideas. And. So, you know, we. This is something you can vote on today, or you can look it up further and then vote on at the next meeting as to how to structure this. But I thought that was a great idea to have something in writing on that. I think that's a great idea. I think that's a great idea to have. Per meeting because otherwise depends on what, you know, you could spend conceivably a half an hour in a two hour meeting. And that's a half an hour of time that's taken away. For the work that you have to do. So stuff to think about. So that that's. Yeah. Is there any other way that the public can give input besides public comment to us? Because it feels to me like if. You know, I think that's a great idea to have. Receptive to the public. I mean, that's. It's a, that's in our constitution. So if we limit the amount of time of public comment. That doesn't feel right to me unless there's another easy alternative. Yep. That's something you definitely can put in writing. Yeah. So we can invite public comment in other ways. Is that what you're saying? Well, I think that it allows for multiple member bodies to promulgate rules that regulate the period of public comment. So I would think based on that, you could also state how you would receive public comment. Well, can we have, for example, an email address for the committee that people could write us at the email address. We don't support that anymore. Any longer, Sue, that's no longer supported. So what happens now is emails need to go through the staff liaison. So if you're, if you're the staff liaison. Why? If that's just the IT department's policy at this point. For managing email addresses like, you know, this would be DAB at Amherst MA.gov that the town manager and does not want to support that anymore. But then. Then it's a double burden. So we are putting. But then Susan on filtering and. Compiling all the emails. Can we set that Gmail account? I know it doesn't look official, but are we allowed to set up a Gmail account? Well, the, one of the main reasons Irene is the. Things being public record. Yeah. So communication. So what happened with other boards and committees is emails would come in from the public. They would hit this DAB at Amherst MA.gov and they would get distributed to people outside of. Town, their personal emails. And there's no public records trail there. It, it does not touch the town of Amherst's email. System at all. So. By send by the public sending things to the staff liaison. Everything gets recorded. If somebody wanted to do a public records request and get all the emails. They would have to send it to the staff. If they wanted to do a public record request and get all the emails. Regarding this committee. It could be filtered. That way. So. What. So you're saying. If they are being forward. So if they're being received by the town and then forward into our emails, then there's no. Track. If the way. If we were to set up an email that's like DAB at Amherst it. It. Bounces off. It bounces off of it and goes directly to you folks. And so. Basically. There's no way for us to query that those public records to see. What the content of those emails were from the members of the public. So even though it's an MA.gov email. It's not. It's not really any. Yeah. Exactly. So what happens if it's just so that for Susan. If I don't know, maybe we don't get an email, maybe we'll get 20 emails. Right. I don't know how it's going to go. I know. School committee. Email sometimes they have. 50 emails. So. In order. Not to lose track. Can an email be set up so that, but not forwarded. Yeah. So it's an email, but then there's, so it's a distinguishing email, but it's not being forwarded to us. And then. Susan can this. She can access it. With another account, but it's an email that is only decent. Then it's very easy to track. Okay. All the emails to the. Yeah. Doesn't have to be forwarded. But I mean also, also if she has problems, she can't access it because she's very busy. She can give the login. So my concern is if Susan is busy with. Coming down election. So there are other things on the way she can say, okay, the login is this one. Yeah. So somebody else can access it and read and see if there's anything. We can, we can ask. And this will, this will need to go to the town manager to be approved. I think this was declined. So we can ask that. I mean, I think one challenge would be, I mean, I understand this because I know I've tried to contact certain committees and they don't have like general emails anymore. But. It is a burden on the staff liaison, but also from an open meeting law perspective. Like if you don't have a dedicated email address, and I'm sure if we are using town clerk at. Amherst at main.gov or something like Sue also gets a lot of other email. So, I mean, I would, I mean, if, I mean, I think it's great, you know, not to, it's good that there is a procedure in place with the liaison, but, but even from an open meeting law perspective, it would take Sue. Sue had to look at town clerk at her town clerk email to pull up all the DAB emails that would take some time. Yeah. So we'll even if there's like a secondary email in the town clerk's office or something, at least those messages would just congregate there and not in the main account or something. You know, in an election season, we have. I mean, is that something or is that what you're saying is not allowed anymore? It was, it's specifically for boards and committees. Sue is the, is the newest rule. It's been this way for about four months or five months or something. But we can, we can ask this most recently happened with the elementary school building committee or something. So then. Yeah. So we can ask that's. So Mike, you just said the policy now is that it goes to the liaison and then a liaison forwards them. Correct. Correct. Well, you know, I have a district thing, a redistricting folder already set up with all of this. So I'm just going to slide, click and drag and move it in there. And then I'll just forward it all off. You know, and you, we could, we could ask the public, whatever email address it is to put, like, do you be in the subject line or something? Yeah, but then I forget. So the first option would be to have a dedicated email address that doesn't forward, but it can be accessed. So then it's dedicated. So if you can request that. And if not, we have to set up a procedure for emails. The other thing, the other thing we could do is we could just build an online form. That people would, that people would fill out and hit submit. And that form would automatically, we could automatically program in a subject line, you know, it would automatically append. DAB to the beginning of it or something. And then that would get auto routed to the staff liaison. Like a Google form or something. Yeah, we're a Microsoft organization. So it's Microsoft forms. It's the same thing. Okay. I have a question regarding that doesn't usually have a, you need to add a layer of security people to log in so that you don't get spam. Usually forms that are not usually you don't have open forms on websites. Yeah, we do have open forms on our website. But it's just another option to consider. I mean, I think, I mean, that option seems okay to me too, but yeah. I can, how about this? I'll ask around to some of the other committee, some of the other staff liaisons and some of the other boards in committee folks that I work with and see, see what's working successfully for them. And, I mean, and we'll also ask about the, the DAB at Amherst and made up as a, as an example, one thing with, because just given the calendar and the election, right? And now there's vote by mail. I mean, people are able to just email Sue at like town clerk at amherst.ma.gov to request like vote by mail. So I don't know. I would think that your email would be even busier, but well, Tracy, we set up vote at Amherst. I know, but I'm not everybody will know that. I mean, I know that. I know we get, we check all our emails every day, all day long. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So the whole purpose of, I think, I think this committee is somewhat different because we are on a short timeline. Yes. We have a selection season. So, so it's going to get a lot of other emails at the same time. And we want to be clear and streamline the process. I'm not, I would present it that way to the town manager. It's not. It's a long process of two years. This is a very short timeframe. Right. And it conflicts on the same time scale on the same timeline with other big things going on in town. So let's make life easier. Understood. And I've already, I've found the email thread of the last request here. So I can just reply to this and to the town manager and see what we get. And I'll let you all know. Yeah. So, I mean, in terms of other public input questions. So one question is, so in the past, have the redistricting or the district and advisory boards from previous, following previous censuses, have they had any kind of, I mean, to Arini's point earlier, have they had any like public forums or anything just to have an extended period of time where the public can provide input just because I'm expecting that our meetings will be pretty tight, particularly, you know, in the one month between, you know, the end of September and the end of October or even mid October, if we're trying to get that to the council. I'd have to look through Sandra left a really thick binder, three ring binder full of stuff. And I'd have to look through it and see if there were any kind of forums or what, you know, but it was back in the day where it was in person, people will come and just be here and watch and listen. So, yeah, I'll check it out and see what I can find. And I mean, it would be great to, you know, if, I mean, even for us, you know, to have access to the maps and then to have ways in which the public can look at maps to like draft maps, like as we're getting to that stage, because I mean, I know, and it's hard at, you know, in terms of how people can access that information at like a detailed level. So, yeah, not just like screenshots or something, you know, historically, I believe they've always posted the different versions of things. You know, you start with this, you go to this, you go to this, you go to this. And my understanding is it typically leads to a lot more questions than it does. But I think we should be transparent and post all of that stuff. This is our work in progress. And this is where we started. This is where we got to map wise, because that's the, that's the final deliverable. Absolutely. So to speak to that mark and everyone. So from my understanding in 2011, there were quite, there was quite a bit of information available and the public was able to comment more freely. So I guess I'm advocating as someone who's representing the Board of Registers and who are simply interested in protecting the vote and assuring transparency in this town, that we figure out a way. I understand I'm a non voting member, but there's a way to be figured out where the public can have access to the materials to be able to make informed comments and decisions, at least to be able to help shape our understanding as well. So I would just, you know, I've been listening, but 2011 there was more of an independence in terms of what was available information wise to the public and how the public was able to comment. So that's, that's what I'd like to add. So how was that information made available to the public in 2011? Like where the maps posted in the library or people had to come to the meeting or what? So I think they must have been probably how town meeting was set up, not town meeting. Well, yeah, back then where you would, they were printed out. So now everything is digital. So we certainly can make those available online. I did see where the town website for this meeting did have the state information from Gavin as well. So yeah, I would just, you know, again stress that this is about transparency and if it's not transparent, this is immersed, you know, that's, that's not going to be a good thing for anyone. So I would just really, you know, caution and again as someone that is on the board of registrar for that reason, that we try to assure as much transparency and participation as we can. Speaking of which, Sue, I think you inadvertently knocked Adrienne Terracia off the public zoom. So she doesn't want to comment, but she can participate in the public zoom. Can't she? An attendee. Yeah. Yeah. Well, she's, she can't get back on. That happens. If you kick somebody out after being an attendee, you cannot log in back again. Oh. Oh, but what should have done is just like decreased her status, not like kicked her out. Yeah. Oh, I'm still learning how to do all this. All right. Yeah. You don't want to kick somebody out. You just want to make them not a panelist. So that's all I wanted to share. Thank you. So Demetria to your point, I think, I think we, we will absolutely publish every, every map that we produce and that where we work on and that we talk about, we'll put online with obviously with all the agenda and minutes and stuff. And then we can, we can also physically print copies and put them at the library and put them at the senior center and put them in town hall, like on the wall, right? By the clerk's office, you know, we, we, we can do all of those sort of things. So we should, we should come up with a procedure where we're 100% going to put it on the website. But if we want to print materials and hang them somewhere, we should think about physically where we want to put those so that the public can go there and look at them in person. I think that's a great idea, Mike. And also like I said about, you know, public comment or comments in general, there should be a way to independently have as much as we can have those available. I don't know what happened four months ago and why that suddenly became the policy, but, you know, it's important that folks communicate with the chairs and the committee. So, so Sue, a related question to that. So with the district advisory board, you said that you had, you know, a lot of people have gone on the website for the committee and like cleaned it up and removed some of the stuff from the last time. Like is it actually still in the archives though? If anybody wanted to look up how the procedures were done before. Pretty sure I unpublished them. I didn't delete them. So then if they're unpublished, how can people access them? Mike, if I unpublished them from the archive center. Do I need to put them into the document center? We should probably just publish them, republish them. That's a, that's a question for Brianna. She knows that really the intricacies of that. We can talk about her tomorrow. I mean, I would think you'd want to keep them. I mean, yes, when I went to the website at first, it says, Oh, these are these 10 year old agendas and so on, but that does show what the process was. Yeah. We may want to, we may want to branch it out and have, you know, it's the same board name, but it's, it's kind of like a different board. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can, we can have a different name or something, but just to still have them there in the archives. Absolutely. Yeah. I think it just will, will have folders for years. Right. Every 10 years. Yeah. So getting back to the original point, which is do we want to set some rules and regulations about. Public input at our meetings. I would suggest that we wait on that. I don't want to do anything to discourage public input at this point. And if it turns out that we need to do that for time considerations, we could do it then. Right. Hi. That's a motion. Want to make a motion. Sure. Make that a motion. Second. Second. Well. Yeah. So I just, I have one. Well, we can, but we could have a motion on this, but I do have one related comment. Yes. Sorry. I should have access. So my, my comment would just be just in general, I know we're still filling out how involved the public will want to be and how people will want to provide feedback. I mean, one suggestion I have is that, and I've seen this on some other committee agendas is that they have a public comment period, both at the beginning of the meeting and at the end of the meeting. So if people have listened in to the discussion and then they want to make a motion, I think that would be a separate motion. I think that would be a separate motion. And they, they realize that they have comments based on what they've just heard and seen and so on, that they do have an opportunity to comment before the meeting adjourns. So maybe that could be a separate motion. What do you guys think. I think that makes sense. Yeah. I'll come down to time. How much time we have. No, exactly. Yeah. Everybody's okay with the. Do we have to vote on. Or we postpone a vote until for regulations and team. I'm new. Please correct me. First time I'm chairing anything. So please. I don't know if we need to vote or we, we decide to postpone any vote until we. I don't, I'd like to make a motion that we include a public comment period at the end of each of our meeting agendas. And at the end of our meetings. Okay. If anybody wants to second that. I would second that. Okay. So we are voting. We're going to be voting on the two things together or only. I think one at a time. Yes. So let's vote on Tracy's proposal first because that was the last one that was second. I think. Okay. That is to have a public comment at the beginning and at the end of each meeting. I'm going to call Peggy Shannon. Hi. Tracy. Hi. Joseph Gordon. Hi. Patty. Tell me parks. I. And I, I. And we had another motion that it was from Peggy Shannon about postponing any decision. And I think that was the last one. And I think that was the last one. And. We figured out that we need to put. All seven regulations. If we need to put other rules and regulations. But I don't like to have to vote on that. Yeah, I don't. That doesn't really seem like something we need to have a motion on. We could just have it on the agenda for next time and then create a motion about. Yeah. So I think that should be a standing. Item on the agenda. So then in case we need to set up some rules, we can do it for next time. I would like to, to make one comment about that. Yes. And as I think it is good to set up a time limit. For how long people share. And I think it's better to do it before the meeting start. Because it can seem punitive to someone who. Shares a lot. And then you suddenly take a vote and say, we're not going to share that long. I know in the ZBA, I think it's two or three minutes. I think it's better to do it before someone to share. And then there's also some. Something about, you know, if it's a new share, you know, so that people don't. Kind of repeat the same thing. So. I guess what I'm suggesting is that we pick a time limit. And we put that on the agenda. And then we add the time limit. So we could do a public comment. Periods. Right. So people would be comfortable double the sharing is setting up. Now a time limit. And it's. Okay. So the motion is to set up a time limit of. Three minutes. This is. This is three minutes per person, right? So somebody wants to make a comment. They have, they have three minutes. Yes. To make three minutes per person for comment. That's reasonable. And that's to interject. That's what I was trying to say. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. That's what that I was referring to the town council. Procedures and that's one of the things they said link the public comment up to three minutes, depending on you know, number of public comments one per person per comment period. So yeah, those were two of the points that I was trying to make earlier. Sorry, Sue, I guess I misunderstood. No, that's okay. I don't want to limit this point. I don't want to put the limits on the number of times a person can talk because you might need to a conversation and we. I don't want to. I'm not in favor, but I don't know how the other people in the committee are feeling. I think it's fine to just make a motion that it's a three minute limit. Yeah, per share. Yeah. You know, I think we'll just also have to see, I mean, if I mean, yes, meetings can be taken up a lot of time with public comment if everybody wants to make a three minute comment. So I think if that's the case and if we do have a lot of people wanting to come to meetings and make comments and we will, we really should be looking at like other opportunities for comment, including forums and other outreach that we can do because we dedicate a whole meeting to public comment is important as it is. So I don't really want to cut people off, but we I guess we'll just have to take it by just have to see it becomes an issue that too much of our meeting is taken up with comic. Okay. So somebody wants to share a second and the motion of having a limit of three minutes per share. A second. I'm going to call Joseph Gordon. For the vote. Yes. Tracy step in. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I got. Yeah, I think we could also revisit that if we don't have, you know, many people, but as a starting place I think that's okay. I think I said starting place. Okay. Peggy Shannon. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. So for what seems to be the structure, if I'm ready for the meetings is going to be, we're going to have public comment at the beginning and at the end with three minutes. People want to talk or share. And this is going to be revised as needed in future meetings based on the public comments that we get. Okay. The next item on the agenda was timeline. We started talking before about the timeline I wonder if we need to. We know, we know that we have to deliver by October 31. And the town council needs to vote on this. So, can we request. Would I be requesting that the town council puts it on their agenda. So we are on the agenda of the town council on the last week of October. I don't know if they have the meetings already planned that as far ahead. I mean, I, I don't think we need to do it at this time. But, um, I mean, the council typically meets like every other week. Sometimes now they're meeting in the summer. They're meeting, I think every three weeks and someone to meet every week. They do plan out the agenda in advance. And so it is good to be in touch with the council president in terms of like where we think that that would be. Because we want to make sure that we they're not voting on October 31 or we are they're not voting on October 30. So we need to look at the their schedule and we need to make sure. That we have some because if they have comments, we need to be able to meet one more time just in case. So maybe to have a backup. That's, I don't know. And they also, the council, they also have a procedure under the council rules or procedure that they need to have an item come before the council twice before they vote on it. I can choose if a timeline is tight to not follow that rule, but like typically that's the rule. And I think also that we should probably look to it going to the council twice just to fulfill that rule, but also because that gives people that gives a public more opportunity to comment. But the major the major issue with that is that if they meet every other week. No, no, I agree. I'm checking the council schedule right now. Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah, Irene is share you can be in touch with actually the clerk of the council, Athena Oki. And discuss with her when she would need this spy to put it on the agenda. Her email, if you want it, it's all our emails are our last name and our first initial. Okay, can you repeat the name. Okay, so it's okay. So it's okay. E F F E. And then a for Athena at Amherst MA dot go. Okay. So the, the timeframe with the council, which this is not going to work very well with our timeframe and with the council rule that requires it to come before the council twice. Is that the council currently has meetings scheduled on September 27. They have a meeting on October 4. They have a meeting on October 18. And then because of the election, they do not have their next meeting until November 8. So, so maybe we could, we could maybe request that they have an additional meeting. So that might be a good thing to be in touch with Athena and also the president of the council about Lynn Grismar. Yeah, because we need to have one that we could have before. Yeah, it's just not going to, you know, that timeframe doesn't work at all with the information that we're going to be getting. Yeah. So if they, if they could have an additional meeting on say the 25th, something like that, then we could perhaps give them something on the 18th. And that gives a week for public input and the council to consider things before the 25th. And for us, it's going to be very tight because if we get the results, we forget the final information on the, on the last week of September. If we have to give them something on the 18th, that gives us 18 days for actual work. Yeah. Well, maybe as Mike said, it will come early. You're optimistic. Yes. Can I just ask Sue in, so 10 years ago when this was done, how many meetings, how did they set up the meetings to make this work? I mean, were they meeting once a week, twice a week? I don't know, Tammy, I wasn't, it was Sandra at the time I wasn't involved at all. I know they met in the first floor meeting room and I know she came out of there pulling her hair out of her. But they met. I'd have to look. There was a way that we can think about it. And I'm also wondering how long we're going to have meetings. Like, you know, when I was on town meeting, you know, sometimes running until 10 o'clock is not great. So I'm just wondering how we want to structure the meeting time. For me, I work and I'm on other committees. And so, you know, I can't do Thursdays. It's never going to happen. Right. Right, Tammy, just about how often they met from what I understand, and this is something to check in the archives, they met weekly. So, you know, that might be something that you all need to decide how often and how long, but particularly the first, the first meetings, the first two to three months they met weekly. Does it say how long their meetings were? That I'm not sure. I think we need to check those archives. And that's 10 years ago. So, um, I'll just say for that for me, I work at a college and I work in student life and September is the very busiest time. And so I need to know, like right now today, if I put on my calendar that I'm going to be out every single Wednesday at a certain time, it will work. So, coming in week to week, I'm going to get bumped every week. So, I'm hoping that we can come out of this picking a time every single week that we can meet until October 31. Because that I can manage easily, but not, you know, having a changeable time there also does not work for me. Yes, I would agree. And I mean, that's not an official item on our agenda, but that's something we should talk about having like a standing meeting time. Yeah. For the duration. I think, I think what I was supposed to say set up I went to meet, because not everybody's here today. We can decide maybe we can make it easier trying to figure out what times we might be able to meet. I would prefer not during working hours and I don't know if that is having an impact on the other people on the committee that are not here today, because right now is 330. I would say we would should set up and trying to find a time that we cannot meet and set up it up as a fixed time schedule for the reminder. If there's no a single time that everybody can meet, maybe we have to have alternating like one week, one schedule another week, another schedule to run to maximize the participation of everybody in the community. So if you all email me what your availability is during the week, day and day and night and I can look at it and see if there's a common. I would suggest I mean that's a pretty huge calendar. I mean I would suggest actually checking like Sue and Mike if you want to tell us like your general availability. Like you know in terms of what slots you are available particularly as some people have asked for like outside of working hours, like in evening hours and then we could go, we could go, we could just go with that if that works, if that works for you at all Mike. I mean that's fine that's, I mean, that's what I have to do that's that's totally fine. I mean, I'm in it I'm on call 24 seven so. I'm sure Sue that like sometimes you have conflicts with standing obligations or whatever if we want it. I like just like what Tammy said for me as long as we nail it if we if it's going to be an after hours thing, you know I have two young children as long as we nail it down and we have a plan. It'll work. I mean, I'm not going to be here. Or maybe even like 4pm or something we could offer you know some slots that are towards the end of the day or something, not, you know, six or seven or. Yeah, because you have to think about so I mean the councils meet the council meets on Monday. So I would think that we wouldn't want to do it on the night the council meets, even though they don't meet every Monday. We don't want to do a Friday either. We don't want to do a Friday. I think we'd need to look at like Tuesdays or Wednesdays probably. Does that make sense to people. What did you say, Joseph. Oh, I just mentioned if Tuesdays were better since I heard a lot of people were having conflicts on Thursdays. And Demetria. Are you the after hours thing or during the day does that. Right. Right now I'm flexible, but I would need to narrow it down as my courses as an adjunct are getting pretty narrow down Thursdays are no good for me. I usually have other board meetings on Thursdays. Okay. So it sounds like we're looking at Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Yes, for people preferably later in the day or in the evening but it sounds like we'd like to get clarity also from the people who aren't here. Yeah, can we send. Can we send up a poll regarding between four and eight PM that would be okay with everybody or eight between four and eight 39 to people mark the calendar some Wednesdays. I mean, I guess I mean that's now down enough. I mean, Sue, if you felt comfortable maybe send out an email and just say we're looking for meetings that would start. I would prefer a meeting not started eight, because like if we have no no no no finishing. Tracy, I'm saying, I'm saying trying to finish by eight or nine, eight or eight or nine. Yes, the latest start time would be 7pm. Yes. That would be that would be the latest start time would be 7pm. Maybe start at the start time would be 4pm. Okay, I will email those not here and see how their schedule looks for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Any time to start between four and 7pm. Real quick, I just, you know, again, on the on the side of transparency with people are we're of course the committee and we're serving but also just to have the public way in it's going to be even more important to have a means outside of the times in which we are meeting for the public to weigh in. Okay, so I think that it's it's important again that that gets solved, because a lot of folks are available during the day as opposed to in the evening as well when they like Mike have small children or other obligations so that's that's all I'm saying just different ways and availability for the public. And you're suggesting that we have kind of a we cannot have office hours because right. I think we cannot have office hours because of public meeting though and one person being. So what you're suggesting is to have alternate times of meeting so that we could catch people. That's oftentimes the case with with committees to have folks within the public be able to weigh in and attend and participate even you know whether it's through the public comment or to listen in as attendees. What I'm also saying is that it will be important to have a means in which the public are able to offer commentary when we are not meeting since there's a small window of time in which you all are setting the availability. Okay, and it won't be meeting alternatively. I mean there's nothing wrong with that. You're the committee, but what I'm saying is that we need to make ourselves you all available somehow to the public. I'm sure this is going to be recorded. It will be uploaded. I'm not going to be able to watch it afterwards and so most likely they're it's based on the previous meeting. So, you know, you just have to kind of keep in mind that although people didn't attend that meeting, because they're not available to attend that meeting and there was no public comment, because people couldn't attend the meeting. That doesn't mean they don't have an opinion and an opinion that they would like to share and communicate to the committee. Until we sort of get more information from Mike about possibly having an email set up. Is it for the time being okay do you think to have public comments sent to our staff liaison until we sort of get more information and if we can like have our own email address. Sue, are you are you listed as the staff liaison on the on the DAB page. I'm actually not listed as so that's that's the that's a really important component, you know, the DAB page I am I am town clerk staff liaison. Okay, okay, so it's there. Can it be clear that email should be sent to there can we put a comment that email should be sent there. On the web page. Yeah, we can, we can run that by Brianna, Brianna has been setting things up. Okay, and that that's the other question I have regarding the material on the page. When I was on the school building feasibility study. A couple of members of the committee had access to set up things on the page so that we didn't depend on Brianna on uploading documents. I had, I had privileges to upload all the documents for the feasibility study. I managed the page. So I don't know if we could have something like that. I know that record and see would have to be you, but to post the agendas and any other document to make sure that everything's posted on time come. We're going to have to depend on Brianna or Mike can do it every week before we meet, make sure that everything's posted. You talking about all the materials for the board. And that we see to be posted on the website, everything that we see should be posted on the board at the same time. So that's, that's what I was going to do. I'm fine with that but I mean if I can share the duties I'm happy with that too. I'll be publishing the meetings, you know posting the meetings once we get the agenda together. But then as far as uploading all of the materials we're using if you want to share those duties if it's possible for you to get the permissions I'm happy to share. But me or Mike when he's creating the maps to upload and that's a way of the same instead of disseminating to us via email and having that we can go to the website and see everything the material the same way that the public is going to see the material. And that be done that way. There are multiple different ways that we can do it. I have seen it that members, you know, someone like yourself Irene could, could load the documents and edit the website I've seen that done. I will have to run it by Brianna to see what the policy with the policy currently is, but there's, there's multiple people here that could potentially manage that stuff and me to I guess you're going to be creating the maps. Sure. Yeah, that's why I was volunteering you. Yeah, yeah, no I will definitely be uploading certain things they're probably all the maps. Since you've been creating so that we make sure that everything is public and everything is very transparent that the moment if we're going to get a document, it should be posted. Correct. First. Correct. Also, because of our elements might get lost. Tracy. I went just to the point that the Shabazz brought up about the recordings of the meetings. If we could, I know that, you know, some committees, the meetings don't get the videos don't get posted, like, very, very soon after meetings, you know, it can, there can be like a huge delay but because this does involve elections and people can feel so strongly about elections and election rights and so on. If these could be like prioritized for posting as soon as possible after meetings that would be really helpful. And I understand that there's many committees but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a that's something where after every meeting I can put it on my to do list to put in. We have a ticketing system in it and it's, it's up to staff liaisons to communicate with it that a recording is going to be uploaded to YouTube. So that doesn't always happen. But I can put it on my note to create a ticket to upload the upload the recording to YouTube is, you know, as soon as the meeting's over with somebody from the IT staff will load that as soon as possible. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you. So Mike when this is when I get it because I set up the meeting I'll get the recording I'll just forward it to you each time. I think you need to forward it because I think our team can we have admin access to zoom. I think we can we can go in and grab any recording. Okay. It's just that there's a lot of them. Okay. So, I guess the next item is to discuss the package material so I want to be conscious of the time is 350, but I think it's very important so the two items that we need to discuss today one is the package of the material. Two, we would have to see set up our main principle maybe we could have to do is set up a tentative meeting for next week I would prefer to do that. We can go come back to later so that to keep the momentum going fast until we get the final schedule. And what are our next steps, what's our to do before next meeting. I think those are the three items that we need to discuss right now. Okay. I think we're missing something. I hadn't planned to be chair so I'm going along the way so you're doing great. Yes, thank you. You're doing a great job. Yes. Okay, great. So, um, the material. I have it as a PDF. I have it as a PDF open as multiple PDFs if we if we need me to share my screen. So I, I don't know if anybody has questions. I have several questions but I want to. Shall we go over the material together and try to see if Susan can, can answer questions or probably will be Mike but yes, Mike do which which document you know I'll get first. Well, so there, let me share my screen here. Okay, so there are three PDFs that were a part of the agenda packet I believe there was a voting in district districts and precincts map. There is this presentation from the secretaries of state, and there was this kind of this fact I call this a fact sheet from Secretary Galvin's office. I think most of your, if any of you have any questions, it's probably going to be from this content of this fact sheet or the contents of this big presentation. But I personally thought that looking at the current map is a good way to start I don't know how familiar with people I didn't know how familiar people were with what districts are and what precincts are. It's pretty experienced and understand it, but I don't know that was just the way I was kind of approaching today and reviewing things like kind of starting with this and then going into more detailed questions. So, can somebody just speak a little bit to this, the emails that were circulated yesterday about the idea that we may have to have the 15 precincts. Yes. So the, the secretary's office reached out to us in April or May and shared a preliminary. Basically they reach out to every city in town, and they say, hey, your projected population is going to be X. That means you need to change your precincts or you can leave your precincts alone and they told us that our population number had increased to the point where we need to add two districts, or two precincts. I'm going to make that mistake a lot. We need to add two precincts. And that kind of messes with the geography that we currently have now which is that precincts nest perfectly within districts districts are the dark blue lines in the precincts nest within them perfectly. So we reached out to the, we replied to that to the secretary's office and said, can we go with 15 instead. Can you produce a rough draft of a map that would be 15. And that's what they did for us as as as a starting foundation they they do that sort of exercise with every all 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. So, so I guess so what what Galvin's office is saying is that you can only. So, under state laws I guess right that each precinct has to have its own voting or each like its own poll workers and so on like its own polling place even though sometimes are co located. Is that correct. So, and so it's based on like after you hit like after I guess you had a certain number like a certain population number say like 1200 people or 13 whatever the cutoff is and that says okay now you need to have a new precinct you can't have a precinct with say like 2000 or 3000 people or whatever is that right. I'm just trying to make sure I understand. Yes, the number is the max. Sorry. No, go ahead. The maximum number of people that can be in a precinct is 4000. Okay, there's there's two important statistics. One is the maximum number of people that you can have in a precinct is 4000. The second number is what makes it complicated is that the, the variants between all the different precincts. They all have to have as close. They have to be within 5%, 5% difference of each other. So, for example, you can't have one district that have or one precinct that has 1000 people in it and one precinct that has 4000 people in it, they all need to be very close together number wise to just population wise. So Mike, I have a question regarding that, because yeah I think it was when they made the charted that was a mistake of making five precincts because districts because it was clear that the population was going to go over the 40,000 soon and we will need more precincts very soon. But now we're stuck with that. Now, the problem they have is that with 15 precincts, the 5% is, so 15 precincts is about 2800 people per precinct, right? So 5% is 140 people. I think that's very, with 140, variability of less than 140 between precincts, what happens, that's a building, less than a building. Correct, exactly. So that's less than a building. How do we go about with, we know that people have submitted papers for new buildings? How do we go? Because that tips the point. Correct. That's more than one, the 5% difference. So how do we go about that? That's one of the things that we are supposed to consider when we're doing this, this drawing of these lines is understanding where potential development is, where properties can be developed, what developments are currently in process, like they may have been applied for. For example, I believe there's a new set of UMass storms that are going up, I believe in precinct 10 right now on the map that we're looking at. I think 10 and 3. Or 1. I'm sorry, say that again. And I think in 1, I think they're in 1 and in 10. And I mean, I believe that the one that's in number 10, I believe it's going to have 600 people, it's going to be able to house 600 students. So we have to factor that into our, our equations when we're drawing these boundaries. So the question is how far down the line, because you say, if that building won't come in into five years from now, that's already maybe it has to be taken into account in the next census, whereas, or if it's, where do we put the line? Because we don't know what's going to be five years down the line. We might know one or two years. I don't know the answer to that. Dmitri, do you have a, you have your hand raised? Yeah, I, it's a clarifying question. And hopefully, Mike, since you are doing the maps, you can provide this information. Is there a way to get a mapping of buildings that have been approved thus far? And the amount in terms of population potentially for that. The second question I have, and so, you know, the can, can utilize that as a resource. The second question I have, what, what are the predicted, where the predicted areas of population don't have a sense of that and won't have a sense of that until September? Is there an idea of the population growth in certain sectors, precincts and districts and otherwise? It's right here. It's UMass. So UMass having to do with the apartments that are being built for students, but no. Or are you saying for new development, Dmitri? Are you saying, so there's, there's both? Yeah. So I know that there's at least two developments going on in UMass, but there's, there's other potential new developments. There's like a big apartment complex off of Southeast Street that is being proposed. There's the property off of one university drive south that's going to be able to hold 200 people or something like that. So I've, I've started the groundwork for gathering that data. I have to reach out to our planning department and our inspectors and say, hey, what's crossing your desk? As you know, are there any subdivisions that are going to be a bunch of single family homes that I've reached out and started that process? So you're saying, Mike, that the population growth is based on like we build it, they will type of mentality and not actually numbers of population growth in terms of people currently existing since 2011? Well, we have, we have to factor in both. We have to. Yes, I understand that. Right. I just, I know that there's a distinction though, however, so yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I don't know if this is in order, but Tracy, are you, do you have another question? I think, I think Peggy put her hand up first. Okay. Okay. So I have a couple of questions. One is, I just want to be clear, because of the, how the charters written and so on. We can't have a precinct that straddles two districts. Is that correct? So if, if we need 12 precincts, we actually are going to need 15 precincts. Is that right? Actually, the charter does not say anything about precincts. They only says districts. I understand that, but given that precincts are a single voting place, but that what our ballots look like depend on the districts. It just basically a practicality that you can't have a precinct that straddles two districts. Can I speak? I mean, I would think that we would not want to have a, that we would not want to have a precinct that straddles two districts that we would want, but we can, but we can adjust the district lines. Because for example, because we're electing, say, town council members at a district level, right, you would want everybody in a precinct to get the same ballot. And the only way they can all get the same ballot is if it's in the same district. Yeah, but you cannot divide 12 by divided by five. Right. Well, that, I mean, that's why that 15 was proposed, but we can, we can adjust the boundaries of a district. Yeah. I mean, and we can adjust the boundaries of precincts. We have to do both. We have to draw district boundaries and precinct boundaries as part of this. What we have to deliver to the state by October 1st is the precinct boundaries. But we have, we, we're going to need to draw the dark blue lines that you see on this map, as well as the, the, the areas that the precincts that are shown on this map, we have to do both. So, Okay, I'd still actually had another. Well, yeah, more questions. My next couple of questions. One is that in terms of the UMass population. If, say, UMass is putting in a new big dorm, is that considered permanent population in Amherst, even though that it's somewhat seasonal. I think for this. Well, I think that so it depends where people are declaring their residency, like the US census. For example, some college students will continue to be registered to vote and have their residency at their hometowns, like where their parents live. And then some will say that they now live in the town where they go to college. And, and the US census, right. I mean, so the dorms are all counted as like group living quarters. And so as they, they do count as residents. And they do count as housing units. So I think it's like one unit per quarter or something. So they would count. But I did, I did have a few questions. Well, I'd raise my hand to Peggy. Where are you done? I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. So one was that it is pretty interesting that the, the precincts are the lines like from the, the directive from Galvin's office and I guess it's probably state law is that the precincts are. It's drawn by population and not just like voting age population, right. So like if you did have areas that had a lot of kids or something that that that's going to shift our boundaries to. And I also do wonder, you know, as part of, I mean, I understand why they want there to be precincts so that everybody has good access to vote. But if as voting by mail is increasing, like if the legislature does choose to make it permanent for local elections as well. Like I wonder if they would change this like 4,000 people per precinct, like if, if they would increase it to say like 5,000 people per precinct or 6,000 or something, just if it turns out that now. And in the future, the populace will be voting much less in person than by mail. That's just a side question. And I guess, and I do have a conceptual question just for my fellow committee members as we start to think about it is whether it makes. Whether it makes the most sense to start like thinking about precincts and how we'd want us, and then come up with districts or whether to start with districts and then go to precincts. And I know in terms of like, if we're trying to, if we do decide to go with 12 or 15, and you know, it's been suggested by the town. You know, to cluster those and then after those precincts are created, or at least drafted, then to think about how they could be put into districts. So that's a conceptual question. And I also just had just one question just related to the emails that came out yesterday. So, you know, in, in the email that was forwarded from counselor. Hannah key, who had, you know, been involved with the charter commission. You know, so she had some advice to us. Based on her experiences and, you know, she did have a number of things where she, you know, in her email she did say no, I think you should look at this I think you should look at this and so on. And so I wondered, does she have any official role beyond being a council member and turn in the redistricting process, because her email did seem pretty directive so I didn't know if she has been involved beyond being a counselor. So can I speak I put my hand up. Yes. Okay. So first, before I answer that question I just wanted to reference everybody to the mass general law the sections 54 sections 12 and four that we're going to be using to do this because that pretty much describes dividing cities into voting precincts and districts. And that might answer some, some, but you know, some of your questions. And I'll Tracy you said something that sparked me to mention that. And then as far as counselor, Hannah key, she's not a part of the district thing advisory board so I really don't know what her extension of authority is over this group I really I don't think she has any. I think we could ask of, you know, Irene maybe you want to email counselor president if you really want to. I was very surprised to receive the email, because my understanding that we should be an independent board and we should not get any directive from the counseling I think. I was, I was, I was, I think one thing is to receive I was I think the same question as Tracy is one thing is to receive something from the state. The first thing is why the 15. I thought that's something that you should have come from us and not from the town manager or from the counseling it should have come. I think this committee is the one in charge of doing the redistricting so I was very surprised that decisions were made for us before we met. But again it wasn't a decision it was a let's explore this scenario so that we have some maps that we can start with. It wasn't a decision it was a pretty much this have 15 and look at these things or her email yeah yeah I'm just talking about also also the 15 I think. And on regulations, so they, the only only way would be to have a prison straight into districts that that's something that we need to discuss whether it's physical or not, I think that's my take. Because my question is as follows, what takes precedent on districting, which was the 5% difference between precincts, or. So, do we need to make a rank thing to what is going to have precedent when setting up the precincts, because I think the 5% difference between precincts is going to be very hard when you have 15 precincts and you have very small numbers. It's going to be very hard, due to the type of population that we have in Amherst that you have some buildings are very concentrated, and then very sparse population, having these 5% is going to be very hard to set up. I think, as a committee we're going to have to see figure out how to what we give more priority, or do we have to have something to be priority of the 5% takes presence over, going through main roads, or some type of, some type of culture within the precinct. That's something I think we should be discussing for the meetings, how are we, what is going to be taking precedence, because we can, I think it's otherwise to set up some rules before we start playing with the maps. I can ask the council, but I don't, I think we should start with a killing slate, and we should start from this map, and with the facts, what are the facts that we have, right. So, from the state law, what is the state law standing us. I don't know if anybody agrees or anybody has any other comment. I don't disagree I have to say I didn't read Mandy's email the way you did I read it as I for me what I heard was, the state had put the put out this, you know, example of a map and she wanted to say, This is an example and we don't we don't need to pay any attention to this. So that that that was the tone that I got so I'm just. Yeah, but that they already had the decision from going to 15 in there. The, yes, I mean if the state is saying that we need to have 12, then, then I guess the question is 12 or 15 but if we feel that straddling a district is not feasible, then it's got to be 15. So, I, yes, I think you're right we look at the question we have to look deeply at the question of 12 versus 15 but we may not have a choice in the end. Just because of both how the districts are done, and the state indicating 12, but yeah, absolutely we start with what the state has said, and we go from there. All districts are representative of precincts precincts don't straddle districts again it would be a nightmare on a ballot. So as it's currently I'm looking at the charter you know you've got district one our precincts blank and blank district to play. So if we, if you did decide to adjust the two precincts you'd have to figure out which district are each one of those two going to go in and then the numbers have to work. Whereas if it was 15 precincts you can just add one extra precinct into each one of the districts and then you have an even breakdown. So yeah you've got to work with the charter and you've got to work with Mass General on it all has to work together. Anybody else? Yeah just real quick. Yeah just about Hanna key you know and I appreciate what you're offering there Sue, but I think if there's a committee that's appointed that there should be faith in the, you know, the intelligence and the ability of that committee and that they should have decided they might have come to the same conclusion, but what's the worth of having a committee. So it's kind of like jumping the gun and shaping the narrative prior to even meeting. So I just thought it was really out of line and inappropriate. I wasn't supportive I was passing it along, I was asked to pass it along so I passed it along, and I would look at it as a public comment myself. Okay. So, yes, Mike. So I just want to be clear the based on the population estimates that we have received from the state. We will at least have to do 12 precincts. There's, we can't go to 11 we can't stay with 10 we have to at least go with 12 based on the estimates. If the estimates are really bad. So one way or the other it's going to completely change that completely change everything. So, which we won't know until the end of September. But there, the state did tell us that there is no minimum to the number of precincts that we could go to 30 if we wanted to but obviously we're we don't probably not going to consider that but we at least have to go to 12. So, I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that. Tracy. Um, so I have a just like a logistical question for Mike and it seems to me as like as I look at our, you know the process that we're going to be going through in the next few months and we are waiting for the official estimates until September I was curious about. If there is any population information on a geographic level that's already available in terms of the updates or if the town just has numbers. That's part one of my question, but Mike if you want to. Yeah, no I can talk about that. So I have the estimate data. I had to sign some sort of non it's not really a non disclosure agreement but I, it's the data comes from the Donahue Institute, and I had to sign some sort of waiver saying don't share this data, except with our working group here and share the results with you. I can look into that a little bit more and see if, because what I'm thinking is I would love to take this population data and publish it to an online interactive web map. And then you guys can all kind of play with stuff. Yeah, play with. Yeah, I mean it seems like if we, if you have, I mean this is the best we have right now. And if there's a certain, during a confidence in what we have like it seems like we should be in the next few months until we have the data, the final data we should be like working on clustering creating these clusters. My approach would probably be to start at the precinct level, and then like work to the districts, you know, in terms of what would make sense but just to think about, you know, North Amherst, Central Amherst, South Amherst and like the different clusters you mass and so on. Right. And if, so if we have a certain degree of confidence in what those populate if what, like kind of where the population centers aren't Amherst as we try to split them up and I mean I agree with every day that it would be really hard to get, you know, to the 5% and of course we couldn't do that piece until later in the process when we have the final numbers but but that would be a great resource to have. I was going to, I was going to suggest that we, we try to come up with a, with a list of data that we think that we need at this point, because Mike is going to have to generate. So, for us to make informed decisions if each, if the data cannot be publicly published, what information do we need. Right. You already mentioned the growth, the potential buildings are coming but we will need to have the current population of the districts, I would guess in precincts and what has been the changes in each area. Right. At least to have a bird's eye view of what's happening in town so that we can start forming before moving lines. And, and I guess our, our related question is just at what geographic level, like, is the data is the population data available. It's down to the census block. So, do people under, I don't know if people how experienced people are with. You might want to have a little tutorial on that but yeah, I mean how large or census box typically. It depends is the answer census boundaries, and I'm sure is as part of this big PDF here if you go into the weeds there. You know it says it tells us that we cannot arbitrarily draw precinct boundaries they have to follow. Roads, roads, miles of roads or streams in cases. Power line cuts in a drastic situation which believe it or not we actually have a power line cut that was a big census block driver. So census blocks can be very small, like I think on the UMass campus there are census blocks that like maybe just focus on the Southwest dormitory and that's it. Some of the apartment complexes that are down here off of East Hadley Road, like this is all one census block and so there's like 1000 people in that census block. Meanwhile, right across the street there's 100 people in the census block. So it can, it can the size of them can vary. And that's something that I can show you guys when we really want to get into the data. Maybe that could be something for next week. So how many census blocks are there in Amherst? Roughly. I don't know off the top of my head. Well, I mean, like is it like dozens or hundreds? Oh, there are hundreds of census blocks. Oh, good. So we do have like a pretty fine level of detail. That's great. Okay. So, I mean, sort of as a first exercise, I wonder if it would be helpful for us to know where the like where the preliminary data is showing the changes. So would the census block boundaries be the same as last census? I believe they are. I believe, I believe with what the Donahue Institute provided, I believe that they are. Yes. So then we could do like a, you know, comparison about where there were increases and where there were decreases. And just as a start to try to change things, I guess. So, I mean, I would love it if data is available if we could start to maybe get into the weeds. And maybe I was part of, I was on a committee recently where we were revising a map through our zoom meetings. And we were, we basically went, I think it took like three meetings and we went through different parts of Amherst at each meeting and we talked about like where we wanted to change things and so on. So, if that's something that people would be interested in, I think that would be powerful. And I do think the manager brought up some good points about not necessarily staying with the same district boundaries and the same precincts that we have right now. Just as kind of also thinking about what other clusters make sense. I think Tracy to follow up on that I think we should all come up. I don't know how we're going to do this collectively to pinpoint or everybody knows their own districts and other districts. What are the, the idea of the redistricting should be around common points of interest. I think that's part of the charter. So we should have identify what are focal points throughout Amherst that can be anchor points for the 15 districts, precincts. I don't know if that's a way to start. Identify throughout Amherst different points that are kind of anchor points in the community in that area from the center villages to those are the bigger and more known to more smaller ones because if we have 15 that's a lot. And if the schools would have that's a meeting point or center point. And I think everybody agrees Tracy. So one suggestion I have for that is just because you know there have been district being committees in the past. And I think that what they identified as the clusters and I also know that the people on the charter commission, including Manji Joe Henneke which I think is why she weighed in that they had also spent time, you know, thinking about what are the clusters and so I'm there may be new clusters now, as we talked about if there's new housing developments, but we could even, but even just starting with those older lists and saying yes, like these are still clusters, no populations change and these are also new clusters that have been identified that weren't there say 10 years ago or something as some of the new developments come in like for example like butternut. Like butternut was not online 10 years ago when the last census was done, which is the affordable housing project in South Amherst off of root 116. So we would want to identify where those new clusters are. So, that's, that's just my suggestion. That can be so I'm looking for action items before next meeting so that I will need to find that on the cluster and send it out so that everybody can take a look and we can discuss in next meeting to see which ones are missing. So Mike, I have a question about the Donahue Institute because they have certain summaries that are on their website and through their newsletter. So these are like their latest statistics. Is that what you're asking. I'm just interested in what yeah what extra information because I have quite a bit on their website and then their newsletter. What what do you mean by what extra so what you said that the Donahue Institute has information that you have been sworn to secrecy. No, I know I'm just okay. Maybe also it would be helpful, I didn't need to look at the Donahue Institute what they already have on their website as some helpful predictors to guide. Yeah, so the Donahue, I have not looked at the Donahue website I can take a look at that but I can tell you that the data that they provided to me is an estimate of, for example, how many people are going to live in this apartment complex off of East Hadley Road. Okay, it like down to that level of specificity, you know, right, the butternut development. It's going to show how many people are estimated to be there in in that development in this 2020 census, but it's an estimate. I've, I've heard from other cities in towns that they do not like the quality of the data, but that doesn't mean that our town's data is not good. I have a question regarding the quality of the data. The fact that the census was done during the pandemic and the university was closed. And many students were not in the dorms. Do we have an estimate of what was the impact of this? I don't know officially, but my understanding is that the UMass population numbers were the main driver in the increase in population from 2010 to now. So I can't speak for that. I don't know if you have any details, Sue, if you remember. No, I think I remember hearing something about, as I had a note on that I just read about it a little while ago, and it was that they weren't really sure on that number. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, no, I just remember reading that they weren't confident with the numbers because of COVID. Yeah. So I want, I'm concerned that most of the conversation that we're having about population is geographically based, you know, where if somebody's in a housing development or dorm or whatever and I really want us to be aware also that there are communities of interest that may not be represented geographically. And I don't know how we're going to get that information. Is that something that will come through? Is that available either from 2011? Is that available from the census data? Is that just available from the fact that we live in town? If that's the case, we don't need to reach out to the community so they're not represented on this board. So I'm not sure how to do that, but I really think it's important that we do. Let's go through the 2011 binder and see if I can see anything on clusters and what they grouped as communities. I'm going to check that out and see if I can find anything. Yeah, so I mean, relatedly, so Mike, do you have, I mean, will the final, do the preliminary estimates or the final estimates, do they include additional types of census data, like including like socio-economic data? No. Racial data, any of that data? No, it's purely housing, I think it's housing units, it's population count, and maybe group quarter count, but there's no demographic information in those estimates at all from what I've seen. Now, when we receive the information in September, will that include those additional details in your experience? In my experience, yes, it can be there. I've worked with census data a lot. Census data is a lot of tables of information, right? It's just massive database worth of data. But it's all, you can tie everything together. You can say this socio-economic information, tie it to this geography, you know. We can, we'll be able to do that sort of analysis if we want to when it comes time. But right now, I have not seen any sort of socio-economic data for the estimates. So does the American Community Survey, like the one, the census data that's produced in between the decennial census, like it does have some of the socio-economic estimates, right? Yes. And are those, so, I mean, if you go on the, I've worked with census data quite a bit too, because I have a background in planning, and I've done some GIS work and so on. But if you go, you know, if I, as a member of the public, like go to the Census Bureau's website, the smallest geography you can typically get data for is like at the census block group level, not the block level. And so do you have access to data that's more than, I mean, some of the block groups in Amherst are pretty large. Right. And they don't always make a lot of sense geographically, like in terms of, like, I think there's one that crosses like 116 or something, you know, anyway. But do you have access to like more fine data that also has those socio-economic components? Not for the, not, not that I'm aware of for the American Community Survey data. No, no. I'm digging to see if I can find some. I mean, I think that the planning department, I asked the planning department this for this other community I serve on. You know, in terms of estimating the impacts, you know, of a certain project on a community or something like who, how many people are impacted or things. And I think they just, they try to do the best they can in terms of surveys and stuff. They actually will go out and conduct their own sort of surveys, which is maybe on our scope. Right. I don't think they found it in data that was already available. Yeah. One thing, so one thing, and I'm sorry. There's a couple other hands up. But one thing that I've heard from other municipalities who are doing this work is that they've been frustrated by the projections of the Donahue Institute and instead they've been relying on their own town census, their own city or town census that was done, which I don't know anything about Sue. I don't, do we do a town census? Yes, we do. Do we, when's the last time we did one? Every single year. Every single year and what level of geography does that go down to? Like, see, I don't know how they would be. We send census forms out per household. So it has. And what are the results? I've never seen the results. It has age. So only if people answer it. No, it's not complete by any means. Oh, no, no, those are optional. Yeah. A lot of optional information on there that people don't choose to answer. It does have age. Yeah, date of birth is on there. That's definitely on all of them. Name, address, date of birth, if they're registered voter, what the party is. And if they choose to fill in occupation. Or if they're a veteran. What else is on there? Not a whole lot. And not everybody answers. And I just wanted to mention one other thing that's been brought up once or twice. I've talked to other cities and towns who this is Amherst's first time having to draw precincts and boundaries in the past historically Amherst has only had to draw precincts. So this is our first time having to edit both geographies. And I've talked to other cities and towns. How do you do this? And every town that I've talked to has said that they draw the precincts first because that's where you have the limitations of number of people and the variance between those. They're called polygons. And then afterwards after that is settled upon you draw your, your districts around those. Not saying that that's what we have to do, but I just wanted to mention that that's what other communities have told me. So, I, I have a question about the starting point because at some point when I have to start to have a starting point and when I have to start drawing maps and so on. Since we have, we might have to redraw districts. I think the first exercise would be, because we got this 15 map, 15 precincts just for math issues. Is there a way to keep the districts? So I have a question for you. If the districts as they are, if we divided the precincts that we have, so each two precincts that we have now we divide them into three. Is there a way. That's to have another starting point for this conversation is the idea of dividing each of our districts into three without having to change the district boundaries. I don't know. I did run. I added my own curiosity. I took the estimate data and I ran a calculated statistics to show how many estimated people were in each district, and I left those number on my work desk. So, but that would have been that would have given us a good idea of like how evenly would we be able to divide the districts into three without changing the boundaries. I know that this might not be something that we want to do. This is something that we have to discuss, but I thought at some point we're going to have to have different starting points of how to change things. There are different ways of approaching. That's my one is we can say we have a blank slate. This is our opportunity to look at the centers and start from there. So I think that's one way we can tackle I think this is a conversation that we all have to have that. We can have we have a blank slate with erase all boundaries as they are now we look at the cluster centers and we start building from there. That's one one extreme. And I think the other extreme might be we have these districts people are attached to the districts maybe we have already represented is based on these districts. And we keep the districts and divide them into three. So I think those are the two extremes as I see them, but everybody can have different ideas and I think we should welcome with ideas how to tackle this problem. I think I went to two extremes, but they might be intermediate points. I'm starting to think, how are we going to tackle the information this are going to be a lot of information. And then I have to figure out a way to narrow down and proceed. So, kind of the question that might relate to that. I don't know. I'm sort of asking for information on this but would our redrawing of the precincts would we also choose where the new polling places would be. Is that in our. No, okay. Um, I just wanted to like, see if that was something that would affect how we draw these precincts if they would be either like, like I know four and five are both at the community center. I didn't know if like how we drew our the boundaries would affect. Actually, yes, I had to cut you off. Actually, that would be involved, but it's still up to the town council to vote where the precincts are. I'm going to make a note to get clarification on that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, in other words, do we recommend where the precincts were the voting. We have our current established ones, but we'd have to depending on. Yeah, I think the idea might be to double up where they currently exist, but yeah, I'll check on that. So I want to be conscious of the time and I think I think I don't know if we are making progress, but I think it's at least on our ideas and there are some to do this. I think at least for me. Yeah, so I Renee, I think, um, you know, definitely paying attention to the time but you brought up how to begin to proceed I think that's an important question because if it's about the precincts then to me that's the logical place to try to figure out where the precincts should be and then the districts because the districts will follow how you create the precincts and it's an opportunity, as you say, not necessarily for a total clean slate. We can't, you know, disregard history, but it would be an opportunity to redraw based on population and based on projected population growth. So in terms of what we're going to do for next week. We need to set a meeting time and then we to do list. I actually, I agree with everybody saying that we started the precinct level, but I also would very much like to see Mike's numbers. We just knowing whether or not it's possible to keep the districts the same will be important for how we think about this and also how we present our results to the public. If, for example, we know we can't keep the districts the same because of the population numbers. That's, that's something that we just have to put out right from the beginning. So, I think that both of Irene's extremes are worth looking at. So, yes, Michael. So I have a, I have a list of things to do. So I'm hearing, we want to see kind of a population difference at the census block level from 2010 to 2020, I believe Tracy's the one who said that. I mean, I did ask for that if there are this, I don't think that's the most important thing right now, like as we're talking about clusters and like some bigger picture it was just more if that information is available and people trust it. Yeah, I think it would be just good to see where the differences are in terms of as we're shifting them out, but it's totally doable it would take time to produce its analysis but it could be done. I don't think it's like the top priority or anything. I'm going to get the list of growth from the growth potential growth locations, the major developments from planning. Basically running running statistics on the estimate population and comparing that to the kind of what's the population of each district based on the estimate data to see if we can break them up into three, and I'll do that for the current precincts as well. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. No, I think those are the most important information that we need to start having the discussion. And the other point of information that we need is the cluster list that was using for the chartered when they were discussing the charter and system you have access to the 2011. I think those would be good to distribute before the meeting so that every all of us can take a look at it and see what's new was missing. We cannot exchange events because of open meeting loss we should discuss it here but I think everybody should look at the list and say okay in this precinct I think these are the things that are missing. So, yes, I'd be happy to research that on the charter level, because it sounds like I mean if Sue is going to look at what the last district gene board did I can look at what the charter had identified. Okay, great. Can we, if Tracy you have it before the meeting can we try to post it so that we have access to the documents before the meeting. You can send it to me. Send anything meeting posting to me and I will put it into the. And then, Mike to I think right he was going to check about if we can have some kind of email address or something. Yes. Yeah, or maybe what other committees are other committees doing. By the way, if we if we do get permission to have an address email address what's it going to be what do we want it to be. Dab at Amherst MA.gov. And a dab is. I would say, I would say like, you know, this just saying. And the year. And the year. And the year or two. Yeah. How about district 2021. I guess. Yeah. One other question I just had is about, you know, Mike, you were mentioning what other municipalities who are starting to work on this process are doing and I was wondering if the state does offer like any kind of training to municipalities that are taking this on themselves. So I mean, that would be helpful for us as members of this board, not, not super technical GIS, but even just like in terms of how to think about it beyond the basic PowerPoint. They. They are of them. They are of the mentality that either you're doing this, or we're doing it for you. And there's kind of no. There isn't a lot of middle ground. Okay. So, Okay, I have a question regarding that. Why was it decided so you said the most house actually the state does it for them. That's correct. Amherst does it themselves. It's in the charter. Okay, there shall be a district thing advisory board. Every 10 years. Yeah, it's telling us this is what you have to do. So, okay. Just wondering what's the story behind it. And so we don't need to worry about how, what, how the charter is going to need to change right to reflect. They can't change the charter that takes a act of legislation we have to abide by what the charter says and go from there. They don't mention precincts. The Charter doesn't mention the precincts. No, only for the first election. I got it. Okay. I checked that. Right. The five districts only. Yep. And it does say district one shall be precincts one and three and district two shall be blah, blah, blah. But that's for the first election. I think that is actually in the charter language itself. It is section 10 points something. Yeah, let me see. I had it open in section. Yeah, it wasn't the transition section. Let me see. 32. Right. There we go. So the town election described in 10.7 D hold on. That is the first election shall be to elect 10 district counselors. Correct. So first election. Correct. First regular election under this charter for town council as provided in article seven, which is the election section shall be in the year 2021. Two district counselors shall be elected from each of the five following districts. So that's talking about both elections. The first and then the regular one. But then we have a problem because. Right, because it's if we're going to have extra precincts. This is only talking about the 10. This is what we have to determine what to do. So that, that was a question. That's what I was trying to understand what was reading here, whether it was only applying for the first election. Or the first election and this year's election or. All the elections. Because if we need to change the number of precincts that we need to have a charter. So clarification on that item. Yep. We need the council to say, tell us that. Right. That's what I'm saying. Right. Yeah. I'm a physical system, not a lawyer. So I was trying to understand whether this applied to all the elections or only these elections. So that's something I can send to town council. And get a determination on section 10.7 E. And if that applies only to the first election or to all elections. Yeah, I can do that. Okay. Any other. Am I missing something for the agenda for today? I cannot see if anybody has space. So. Tell me. I just, I just want to make sure that we set up the meeting for next week. And I'm, you know, I'm wondering if we, like right now we, we've been meeting for a little over two hours. Does this seem like a good block of time? And I guess I'm wondering if we can tentatively set the meeting for five to seven for next Wednesday to try to catch the other people who did not make it. Is that reasonable or not reasonable? I wanted to, yes, I wanted to set up the meeting for next week. And I think Susan has identified might have more information about what the times are better for the other people. Okay. Right. I'm going to email them and find out those five to seven next Wednesday work for all of us here right now. Tentatively works for me. Okay. Yes. It's better meeting during the work day, actually, for me, but it's answering. Oh, I just said it's better than meeting earlier, right? Because it's, you know, five to seven or something. Yeah, I have three and, and while I've been here, I keep having my supervisors come in and wanting to talk to me. Being is also is not a great thing. No, okay. So, it's all right, somebody set the alarm on me earlier. That's why I had a bolt. Okay, so I will call I'll find out if the other three members can meet next Wednesday at 11 from five to 7pm. And if so, I'll go ahead and set up the next meeting but we I need to have an agenda. So, okay, so I think that I can send you the agenda and I think everybody, if anybody has items I think one of them is the standard item about the rules that we're going to have. I mean, I feel like the main update would just be updates on what we talked about, you know, the extent to which Mike finds information or she finds information. What information or what maps can be available to us. And any details we can find about like the clustering that was used previously and how we may want to adapt it. Yeah, I think that we could be updates on the information requested. Right. That comprises is broad enough that comprises on the topics that we discussed today. You want to be specific though I've known groups get into trouble when they go to broad you want to be very specific about what you're talking about. Okay. But you don't have to do it right then right now. Okay. You can spell that. When you give it to me if there's anything else that comes through before I post this the next Wednesday on the 811 at night. I won't need to post that until Monday morning on the night. Okay, we have some time. Okay. Yeah, I might have to go back and forth because I never brought an agenda song. I'll help you. I send the minutes to you. When they're all typed up. Yeah, so that's why I have to be on the agenda discuss the minutes so we should have them distributed as soon as possible so that we can vote on the minutes before they're posted. Should I send them to everyone or should I just send them to Susan they uploaded to the website. What should be the procedure for that. No, um, well, I have to send you what the part that I have. So yeah, I suppose you can send to me and I can add the part from the beginning of the meeting before you were put in place. And then what I can do is send it to the chair. And if that's okay with you Irene. Yeah, I can. So that I can't. I don't know if I have everybody's email to send to everybody on the package. How the head doesn't usually work you send things so I send whatever information before the meeting I should send it. You should send it now that your chair so I'll give you. Yeah. Right before you just sent us the, you send us the panelists links because we each need panelists links. And then if you continue to post them online right you send us an email and said all the materials are posted online for the meeting. Yeah, that would be great. I mean if we could just have that as like the. Yeah, the procedure there shouldn't be too much that arena has to send out I don't think. Okay, so then we make sure that everything is posted and publicly that everybody has access to the documents and the minute should just say draft right into. Exactly. That's what I'll do. Okay. Okay, so yeah, Joseph send to me. Thanks. All right. Thank you, everyone. I'm going to request that if anybody has something to add to the agenda item if they can send it by Friday so that I can send it by Friday I would like to send it to you, Susan by Friday. Actually I'm not here Friday so don't rush I'll be I'll look at it Monday morning. I'm off this Friday. Okay. So don't rush. All right. Okay, so I think we need to make a motion to adjourn. Second. Okay. So we won't. Yeah. Okay. Tell me parks. I pay Shannon. I Tracy second. Hi. Jeff Gordon. Hi. I need to know how many I. Thank you. Right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you all. Bye bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.