 It's all yours. Okay, so we typically begin these sessions with 10 minutes of input from the public on other other subjects, I guess, or on any subject. And so I'm going to open up the floor for that. And I think that he wanted to go first. So he had three minutes and 40 seconds. He wanted to present about Ward 8 and people taking his name in vain at the last meeting. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rama. I wanted to kind of talk talk about what you were talking about. My wife and I have lived on University Terrace for 47 years. I have been the Ward clerk and it board eight since 2015. There are some statistics about Ward 8 voting taken from the city's website, verified by the tabulator list. The rate of registered voters is not much lower than the average of the registered voters in the seven other wars. Its voter participation, however, is significantly lower than the rest of the city. The voting from 4% participation mark 7th, 2018 to 29% November 3rd, 2020. Ward 8 town meeting participation is an average of about 15% compared to an average of 33% in the other seven wars. UVM is not in session on town meeting day. In March 2nd, 2021, the election workers registered 229 new voters in Ward 8. The 837 votes cast in that election was the lowest number of votes cast in all wards at 21%. Ward 8 has had the largest number of male ballots returned with addresses unknown. For the December 2021 election over 1800 ballot that have been mailed back, was returned because of address C unknown. Ward 8 consists of college campus residents south of Main Street, who comprise the majority of Ward 8 residents approximately 4,250 according to UVM. There is no neighborhood connection between the majority of voters in the ward and the rest of the ward. University Terrace is isolated in Ward 8, even though it is contiguous with Robinson Parkway in Ward 6. University Terrace has the most owner occupied homes and long term renters on a street in the ward. Locating 30 registered voters to sign a candidate's petition is difficult because so few off campus students are registered. UVM limits non-student candidates access to students on campus. The number of long term renters and homeowners is too small to be relied on for the 30 signatures. A year ago, Andrew Lee, many students have told me that they prefer to vote in their home towns. A large number of student senators in January 2020 when I talk with them were not registered to vote in Burlington. The majority of Ward 8 student voters do not vote in Burlington, but those that do easily outnumber the Ward 8 long term renters and homeowners. Recruiting election workers is difficult. A large majority of those working at the polls live outside of the ward and are unfamiliar with our ward boundaries. The three legislative district boundaries in our ward and the campus area in our ward. In addition to a large number of voter registration forms, a large number of changes of address forms are needed by the voter registration board before we can put the student on their checklist so that they can vote. There is a trend that students who get elected as inspector of elections are unable to complete their term. In my recommendation, I am supporting two city counselors and two school commissioners in seven equally populated wards. I think the student population at UVM and Champlain College should be divided equally among the many wards. Thank you. I think you wanted to go next, Leah. Is that correct? Maybe after we switch to the room and then switch back so everybody gets a chance to speak. Yeah, I agree. I was really interested in that data because some years ago I did similar data analysis of all of the wards, because I was very curious about the fact that for example wards to three. It was so much easier for a person to campaign in those wards because there were so many fewer registered voters. So I want to make people aware. I mean, I'm sure this group is aware, but census data counts everybody. It doesn't just count registered voters. It counts everybody, including babies and noncitizens, people that are just here for a few years to go to the university. Everybody is counted. So those numbers become kind of come difficult to work with because those 1800 ballots that came back that said no address. They got ballots because they were registered voters in that ward, but they had since moved on. And this, this happens every year. So that's why you get a very low percentage of registered voters voting in that ward. As compared to, for example, I live in Ward four. By the way, I didn't introduce myself. My name is Lee Ter Hewn. I'm the alternate ad hoc committee member from Ward four. We, we seem to have a large percentage of voters of registered voters who turn out at the polls, but that's because we don't have a very transient population. And so we don't have 1800 people on our registration role that in fact don't live here anymore. I was interested in that data and wanted to compare it to what I did a similar analysis about eight years ago, and I asked Keith to send it to me and he refused to send it to me. I was really upset by that. He said that I could be a UVM student or a realtor or I mean he named all these things that if I was any of those things I wasn't entitled to look at this data. So I therefore objected to it being interjected into the discussion tonight because it's very biased and prejudicial against decisions that this committee has to make. And it also can trigger bias in people that are here to testify. So that's why I objected to taking some sort of public comment before the hearing began, but now we've begun and I thank you very much for the, for the time. Thank you, Leah. So do you want to take it back to the room, whoever is in charge there. We're not able to hear. There you go. Are we live on zoom now. Yep. Okay, thanks. Okay, so I'll start over. I'm Jeff com stock participating as a resident word seven and a couple of overarching comments is, I like having two counselors and two school board members. So whether that configuration going forward is in the current ward and district structure, or each ward getting to two representatives for those separate bodies. My favor to counselors per ward. And part of the reason for that is one is that I appreciate having some options in terms of distributing my representation between the people that serve on the school board and city council because there's always a guarantee that, that I'm going to get along with who actually gets elected or feel adequately represented by them but say the current, you know, in the current situation of feeling like there are, I get to vote for two people that represent me feels like there's more of an opportunity to actually communicate. That's with folks serving on the school board and city council. My second major point is that neighborhoods and district representation is valuable and critical, because both for the residents who live here and for the people who serve on those bodies to have communication for and understand the neighborhoods and the communities that they serve and again going back to the idea of providing opportunity for more direct communication with our elected between elected officials and the residents. And so with that said as my approach. I know that there is a concept of citywide or at large counselors and school board members. And for me that would be an absolute non starter because it essentially violates any of the beneficial conditions that I talked about in terms of having two people that I feel that represent me on those. Yeah. So I'm going to leave it at that I also have some thoughts about the college student representation but I think Keith covered that fairly well so I will not go into that at this point. Thank you. Good. I think we've been doing the, the pre input session for 10 minutes now so maybe we should go. I think the next thing that we should do is to go around the and people in the committee can introduce themselves. I'll talk about what the process that we're using here is, and then we're going to turn the podium over to Dan who is the city attorney who's going to explain more about what is involved in the redistricting process. Let me just interject a quick sec and say that everyone will have an opportunity to speak don't feel like we're cutting you off we're not. We're going to have a larger discussion about redistricting so you'll have plenty of time. Once we finish these presentations. So just want to say that. Yes, thank you for clarifying that. So I'll go first. Can people who are speaking show their face when they're when they're speaking. If you have the if you're able to have enough bandwidth to do it. We'd love you to do that. Well, who's speaking right now I have no idea. Yeah, I should be there at the very top. Okay, I see. Okay, thank you. Sorry. Should say their names. Yes, say your name when you speak. So I'm Rama, Rama coach for Lakota. I am the ward six representative on the ad hoc committee on redistricting. I've been living in Burlington for 21 years. I'm going to go around the faces I can see from the committee on who are not on the room, who are sort of on zoom, and then people who are actually at Miller Center after that can introduce themselves. So first person I see is Daniel. Hello, everyone. My name is Daniel Montanum. I'm a graduate student at UVM I've lived in Burlington for a year and a half, and I am on the ad hoc committee from Ward number three. Thank you. Robert me. Okay, I thought. I'm both here in the, in the Miller Center online. I'm Robert Vista Johnson and I am the ward seven representative. Um, and. Hi, I'm and Brenia. I'm Robert Vista Johnson and I'm the ward seven representative. I'm and Brenia representing Ward eight. I live on Bradley Street where I've lived since 2001 I've lived in Burlington since 1994. Linda, are you on the committee. She's not Linda's not. And, Leah, you introduced yourself as the alternate. Alternate alternate ward for Burlington since 1967 UVM student who decided to raise my children here in this wonderful place. Ward for alternate. That's all I'm seeing on zoom if people want to. You could ask committee members to raise their hand. People line up so Richard. Richard Hill yard. Ward one, I've lived in Burlington for 26 years, and I've never been a student. George love representative for Ward two. I've lived in Burlington for six years. And in the old North end for the last three. I've been here for 33 years. Rex Doppler Ward five. I've been in Vermont for about 50 years. As a student of Vermont law school, then in Burlington for 20 years. I'm a retired high school history teacher. And I was married in the treehouse at Oakledge Park. I'm going to ask somebody else in the room. No, good drama back to you. Okay, I'm going to quickly go through what the process is that we're following for the redistricting and what the role of the ad hoc committee is. So the ad hoc committee was created by city council. And our goal is, and our, our charter is to solicit input from the community at large, and to find out what people want in terms of redistricting. If something happens every 10 years as in response to the census, or it can happen every 10 years in response to the census. If it is found that the census districts are out of alignment in terms of how big they are, they're supposed to be within 10% of each other in population. So our committee is going to solicit this input and we will present a report to city council. The council will then take that input and formulate a proposal for new districts which will be put on the ballot in November of 2022, I believe. And then if that is approved. The information will be passed on to the state legislature and they will make the actual approval. Burleys and unlike most cities in Vermont, maybe all cities in Vermont has it the boundaries of its districts set as part of the city charter, which is why we have to go through the folks in Montpelier to have the change made. That was quick. I think that I think Dan is going to go into more detail about what is involved and why we're doing this. So I think it's appropriate for me to pass this back to Miller Center now and Dan is going to speak. Thanks for on it. Okay. Dan Richardson city attorney. Okay, thank you everyone. My name is Dan Richardson. I am the city attorney for Burlington and I am once again happy to be with all of you talking about our mutual favorite topic of redistricting. I will pick up on the point that Ron, Ron has stated at the end of his comments, which was how the charter system works. And I was actually talking with Sarah carpenter about this earlier. So the way Burlington's charter works is it's set. The districts are set and very detailed descriptions within the city charter so anytime you want to change the charter. I mean, sorry, the districts as a city, you have to go and change the charter, which requires a legislative fix there are other models. And the city of Montpelier is a good example in that the city of Montpelier's charter sets out three districts, and then leaves it to city council to draw the boundaries subject to a popular vote of the citizens of the city. So there are certain differences in these things. Burlington's unique in a lot of ways because in Vermont, there are only a few cities that actually have this kind of proportional representation where you divide the city into these districts and units and wards for representation. The city of Vermont is governed at the local level by a select board, which is an at large body. So for example, our neighbors to South, the East and South Burlington are governed by a select board, which means if you're a voter in South Burlington, you vote for every single select board, but no single select board member represents perhaps your enclave or neighborhood within the city of Burlington as different than any other neighborhood or enclave in the city of South Burlington. It's all one at large district. So Burlington, I believe Rutland and Montpelier and I think Newport have the ward system that they've adopted where you do have this proportional representation, which does require us to do redistricting, which brings me to my first slide. Constitution provides that as sent senses every 10 years determines distribution of House of Representative seats, each state gets one house seat plus additional based on populations is what's known as a portion net. Each state must then adjust its voting districts to elect the number of seats allotted creating or changing geographic subdivisions or to have relatively equal size populations is known as redistricting. And these are just some of the terms of apportionment redistricting that are key in redistricting process the same principles that we see the national level apply at each level of government including the city of Burlington because you have this proportional representation. Currently all of Vermont if we look you know it's very easy at the federal level we have one house district currently occupied by Representative Peter Welch. That will remain the same forever because Vermont is such a small population we will never gain a second house seat in comparison to the rest of country unless there's a mass migration to the state so that's never an issue. Obviously the state level they're going through this process of just trying to figure out how do we draw the districts you've probably seen some of the data and information about that the big controversial change is that they're trying to, or the change that they're trying to make that has drawn some controversy is they're going from multi member house districts to single member house districts in their proposed plan. But just like this citizen board that's you know thinking about things thinking about ideas that redistricting board is just it's like a little bit more than the citizen board and that they draw up a plan. When they give it to the legislature and the legislature is going to do what they're going to do which may include that plan and it may or maybe something completely different. Vermont seven Vermont House districts in Burlington since 2014 Burlington has eight boards and four districts for a local elected offices so you create this district and ward system about six years ago. And the question that is before you today is whether or not you want to keep that system and make some boundary line adjustments or whether you want to re-envision the system in some ways, and that's part of what's the feedback we're selecting. There are some traditional redistricting factors. I've divided them into the must house and the should house must have one person one vote part of our 14th amendment populations of each district is Rama pointed out have to be nearly equal to every other district is practical with deviations of less than 10% contiguity contiguity of territory. One part of the district cannot be physically separated or attached from the other parts there may not be a north and south ward eight there has to be one single ward eight. And even if it's just a street, it still has to be connected. You cannot separate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion, those are for Bowdoin categories, and you may not make any determinations on those categories, as well as other protected classes should have maintaining existing political subdivision lines, always a good thing because those worked at one point or another, honoring natural or historical boundary lines, if the neighborhoods have if there's, for example, the interval that is a big non voting block of land that separates certain neighborhoods honoring that is probably good thing. Compactness, you know, I think some of the criticism, and of course the gerrymander or gerrymander depending on how you choose to pronounce it is of course parody because it looks like this creature, because it's not a compact nice district. The law favors compact districts but obviously doesn't require them to exist that way. Respect for communities of interest and that's different and we've gotten questions as to wait a minute so we couldn't make a separation on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion. And it's not in communities of interest are not necessarily defined. There's a concept that, you know, if there is a community of interest that is worth respecting or considering in some way this any type of redistricting plan. It would favor taking that account taking that community into account. In one way or the other that might mean putting them in one district that might mean giving them making sure that they're not packed into a particular district to me, but again these are the should house, providing small districts and meaningful representation. One of the reasons why I think Burlington went to the warden district system is because it wanted to make sure, could you imagine if all of your city counselors were elected city why you probably wouldn't have the same type of relationship that you do with your individual ward or district city counselor. And that's why cities above a certain population do tend to go into this division of different voting districts. Use of census blocks grouping of houses and apartment buildings are smallest unit of sense that the census uses. Obviously we want to follow that. That's a recommendation. Okay, historically 2010 Burlington use the following criteria on the left side. I'm not going to read through all of them, but it just gives you a sense about things that when we looked at the historic record when I was going back. There were things that were important and held to be important for the criteria when they were doing this the last time. Some of these things obviously were followed some of these things were obviously not followed. So, for example, academic institutions should be more than one board, you know, word size matters for citizen communication campaigning, you know, relationship to state districts is obviously something that is not quite followed. And part of it is, you know, that may or may not be important. That's certainly from an insider point of view, as somebody who helps the city run its processes. So for these city council districts look like the state districts, the easier it is to run an election, because you don't have to print out multiple ballots. But practically speaking for you as citizens of voters that may not be in a priority or care, and there may be more important cares that you want to push forward. I've added some additional potential considerations for 2021 and they all have question marks, not because, well, because I expect you to answer them tonight, but they are the questions and they are the things that you as as people thinking about these issues, probably want to do you want to preserve a competency? Do you want to keep the current number of awards? Do you want to keep the district system? We've already heard public comment in favor of, you know, one of the benefits of the district system that it ensures that you have double number of city counselors reporting to you as an individual voter. But, you know, I've referred to other comments where people are saying, well, districts are a little bit large and they're hard to run, as opposed to a city counselor from award who has the same thing. Alright, even our odd number at large. Okay. Moving on, as we can see, the various census maps and how things have changed with awards and with the populations from 1990 to 2010. I'm going to go forward. Okay, I'm going to go through this very quickly. This is the redistricting process detailed or everything you always wanted to ask about redistricting, but we're afraid to ask. Determine the need for a chart change. We've done that. We need it because the population has changed. It's growing. Current ad hoc redistricting committee meetings, that's where we are right now. You're getting feedback and information, giving this kind of data for the city counselors to consider. But number three city council develops a proofs redistricting plan. That's where they draw the maps. That's where the road rubber hits the road. Followed by that, you get some public hearings and you get a public warning, letting everybody know letting everybody get feedback. November 2022 is when it's going to go to the voters as we plan right now. And then it goes to the house and Senate to be voted upon scrutinized and debated, following their approval. Hopefully we get governor's approval and then you have new voting districts. And that is really redistricting in a nutshell. So thank you all very much for listening and I'm going to turn it over to the very capable hands of our new city planner. Okay, I will be really quick. Just to tee us up in terms of helping elaborate on the point that Dan shared about why redistricting is necessary. So we have received the apportionment data that Dan referred to from the Census Bureau, which contains some of the basic data points about our city's population in 2020 that we need to consider the question about redistricting. So to share a few of those highlights with you here is some information about the city's population on the whole so currently in 2020 our population is just under 45,000 at 44,743, and that represents a 5% growth from the 2010 census. So you can see some information about past census data for the city. And there's also a link here in the slides that will be posted online. If you'd like to look at data about other communities in Vermont. And we're talking about redistricting of course what we care about is how this population breaks down at the ward level, and this map shows our current words and the chart here shows the change in population from 2010 to 2020 for each of the city's wards. You can see that most of the wards in the city did experience some population growth, except for wards three and seven which remained fairly flat from the last census. Both Rama and Dan mentioned that one of the key things that we look at when considering whether our wards are roughly the same size is this term of kind of ideal size or deviation. So what that means is that we take the city wide population and divide it by the number of wards, and that's our target ward size, or ideal size which in this case is about 5600 people. And this chart shows how each of the words populations compare to that ideal size. And we're really looking to make sure that each of the wards is within 10% plus or minus of that ideal size. So you can see that word one is our most populous word, and it is actually a little bit more than 10% larger than the ideal size it's about 11, I want to say it's 11 and a half percent larger. You can also see that word seven is our least populous word and it is about nine and a half percent smaller than the ideal size. So one of the other factors that we look at then is, what is the difference between the largest and the smallest word. That's another factor that we take into consideration. So we can see that the difference between word one and word seven is also more than 10%. So we have two factors that are really driving this reconsideration of the population. One of the other questions that we have received in one of our past meetings was just what about the districts. And while none of the individual districts we have four districts exceed the 10% plus or minus the ideal on their own. There is more than 10% difference between the largest and smallest district so really our population has shifted in a way that is, you know, calling into question are our voting districts at every level. I think the other thing that I just wanted to mention here is that when Dan share these maps they are also in the back of the room. We can see more closely the difference between the most previous ward plan that you have from the voting districts that we have today. That was based on the 1990 census. Our ward population did not require us or I'm sorry our census population did not require us to redistrict after the 2000 census. So that was the ward plan that was in place from the mid 90s until early 90s until 2015 when you adopted the current ward plan. So I think that's all I have to add actually beyond what Dan shared and I'll turn it back over to Diane and the committee to walk through the discussion. Thank you. That's one more thing I'm going to do. Hello everyone, this is Diane Meyer hop. We've actually completed sort of the presentation part of our discussion tonight we promised we'd have time for folks to give us their opinions their thoughts to the committee this is our listening session. So, Ramo would you help me and perhaps you can do the online I think we had a number of people with their hands up and I wondered if maybe they wanted to give us their thoughts. Um, yeah, there you are. Thank you. Are there folks I see some hands up. Don chapel circle. You're muted. There you go. Hi there. Hi, thank you. Can I, can I mention, can I talk about two different things one's really about anything you'd like. Oh, thank you. I want to just, I want to just say one thing that I just noticed on Megan's chart on the population by ward that honoring the, the natural boundary of the new north end will mean that words four and seven or whatever those get mixed to be are always going to be lower populations than the other wards because there's just fewer people up there. And so they will naturally have a, there will be a bias towards representation up there if we honor the boundaries. I just thought that was interesting. What, what I really want to talk about. And Jeff constock talked about it earlier and I completely agree with his concerns and I want to offer an alternative solution or alternative way of thinking about it. My concern is I want my city counselors as representatives of my wards not just to represent not just to listen to me, but also really represent the needs of my ward. And I think that, that as structured, most of the city counselors are looking citywide at what they're doing. And that's, that's wonderful but it, but it means that the, that my local needs are not necessarily being represented. What I would propose is a structure where ward city counselors and then there are at large city counselors as well. So maybe there will be seven or nine wards and then add four at large, the at large city counselors can think about the whole city. But what it will do is it will force the ward city counselors to focus on their individual wards. I did a very small poll of my city counselors and asked them what they thought. And I think that was one of the main priorities for their war ward was. And I liked the answers, but I, I didn't love them. And what I heard was that they basically understood the needs of the wards from campaigning. And that's fine but campaigning is just not frequent enough, they need to understand the needs of the wards by knowing the people in the wards on a regular basis. I want to try to focus the concerns of the city counselors directly onto the ward. And I think one way of doing it would be to take some of these city counselors and make them at large, let them worry about the bigger pictures, and then, and then have enough individual ward representatives so that they can actually think the ward is their most important mission. One other just one other quick comment on that. One of the concerns I've heard about at large is the difficulty in campaigning. And I understand that but at this stage, so much campaigning is being done by parties, not by individuals. And that's, and that's doesn't. So that doesn't make it. That doesn't sound like a valid argument that campaigning would be hard because the parties are basically doing it. And maybe what it would do is it would, it would, it, it would incent more independence to be running locally, because they're, you know, they're really trying to connect with the people in their, in their community rather than connecting through their party. Thank you very much. Thanks so much john and I see Linda you have your hand up and then Lee, anyone else please put your hand up I can, I can see all of you so we can hopefully go work out with your hearts after that. Now, please next. You have to unmute yourself. Are you saying Lee. Yes. Okay. A clarification on the last on the presentation was just done. Did I hear correctly that you said there was no redistricting done after the 2000 census. Because didn't we do redistricting. After the 2000 census. No. No. Lee. Is 2010 that we did get dance going to come and not. Sorry, I was just going to add, you know, certainly we did it at the state level, every 10 years, but my understanding is that 2000 at the municipal level. The districts didn't or the wards didn't require redistricting the population haven't shifted enough. It wasn't 2010 that it had to be redone. Okay, I guess my confusion was it showed 1992 and it showed 2021 and what was in between there was the last redistricting we did like eight years ago. Okay, so speaking as a private citizen as a as a resident. I'm very much in favor of Jeff Comstock's idea of two counselors per ward, and very much opposed to district counselors because they are representing such a large area, and it's going to encourage them running like the mayor with slick ads and TV and all of that. I'm going to have the face to face door to door personal contact that we have had with our counselors. My experience is very different from the last person who spoke. My counselors who are Ali Yang, Mark Barlow and Sarah carpenter are very tuned in to the wards. They come to all the NPA meetings, they email back and forth with residents. They also represent us on the ward level. And we appreciate that very much previous to that we had two counselors per ward with seven wards. We had people representing two different parties. It was really great because people in Ward four felt represented because we had two different kinds of counselors. We don't have parties running campaigns in Ward four. I don't know what Ward the previous speaker was from, but I can say we don't have parties running campaigns. In fact, two of our counselors are independent. I'm pretty sure Ali Yang and Mark Barlow. So we don't. Yeah, thank you very much Robert. So we don't have a big party push here. We have to keep it local. And we are most likely to keep it local. If we have smaller wards with in Burlington to counselors per ward. I also want to speak to the workload of city counselors. Since the, we had seven wards and two counselors per ward. We shrunk it down from 14 to 12. We added another standing committee. And we added another city department. And I attend a lot of city meetings because I'm just interested in what's going on and the amount of time that I see city counselors at meetings. It's nine, 10, 11 o'clock at night. They're sitting on several committees. Their committees are very active. 15 years ago, the committees weren't that active. It wasn't unusual for a standing committee to not meet for four months because they didn't have anything to do. That isn't the way it is today. We have very active hard working standing committees. I want to think about if we keep shrinking council, we're going to get less, less output from our city counselors. And I don't want that. I like representative democracy. I think the more the better. I like the small districts that the state has proposed to Burlington. I hope that we follow through on that. I think the district system, and by the way, I don't think Jeff Constock was speaking in favor of the district system or maybe I misheard him and maybe he'll clarify that. So, thanks everybody. Thanks. Thank you, Linda. Hi. Good evening. My name is Linda Rizvi. I've been a Burlington resident for over 30 years and I live in Ward 8. And I'm basically reading from my comments on redistricting that I made at our MPA meeting last month. My first comment is that the redistricted map should not be gerrymandered. In general, there are principles of proper redistricting to avoid gerrymandering, which are available to read and learn about. And that's what we're going to get here to. More than one of them have relevance for Ward 8. One that I'd like to address here is called compactness, which was mentioned earlier. Individual districts should be compact in appearance without wing-like protrusions on a map. Wings are an excellent indicator of gerrymandering. If you look at the map of Ward 8, you see that it is nothing if not a wink. This should be addressed with the new map by changing the boundaries for Ward 8 or eliminating Ward 8 altogether. Another point relevant for Ward construction that came to my attention when I was on the MPA steering committee, and Keith alluded to it earlier, is that UVM limits access to the campus if you're not a student or otherwise affiliated with the university. And that's understandable. However, what it means is that for contested races in Ward 8, in comparison to a candidate who does have an affiliation with UVM, a non-affiliated candidate is at a deep structural disadvantage. That's because the student population studying and often living on campus is such a large proportion of our voter base, and that voter base is not so accessible for direct grassroots campaigning by any candidate not affiliated with the university. I think that's basically undemocratic with a small D and needs to be corrected with redistricting. I just close by saying that those are only two of the reasons that I think that Ward 8 is problematic. I hope the committee will consider a broad range of changes to the current Ward structure, including eliminating Ward 8 altogether. And I think that the committee should consider both the ideas suggested here about having some out large reps or maybe going back to two counselors with, I don't know, large rewards. I'm not really sure, but I hope that the problematic Ward 8 situation is resolved. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm going to switch to the room now. Dave Hartman is up. And then we'll go to you, Erhan. And I also see there's another hand up too. Hi, I'm Dave Hartman from Ward 4. I'd really like to talk about the process a little bit, and particularly in the format where we showed the slide where there were steps in the format where this step is going on now, which is our work that we're doing. Right. And it's really going out and we have a big survey that's been well worked on and, and then we hand off this work to the city council. And I think that's where I'm concerned about where the disconnect might come in a little bit because the city council doesn't have to take any of this information. Right. They're going to hand it off. I've served on the council. I've been there before the council's going to kind of, I hope they won't, but they have a tendency to do because it's in their best interest when we talk about jury manager. What's best for the city council and what's best for the voters are two different things. And to me there's not a lot of teeth in this resolution. As far as holding the council accountable from our public input that we're going to get we're going to hand it to them and we're going to hope that they listen. And, but they could choose not to they could go in a whole different direction. And I'm worried that that could happen. I hope it doesn't happen. And so I think part of the work on this committee should be going forward is to have conversations with the council to make sure that all this work that we're doing is for not. Right. I hope that's not the case. Right. You guys are going to spend many hours getting input from many people working on surveys that have been done. And I'm in hopes that the council will respect the work of this committee. Listen to the people and although they may not like it. I accept the work that this committee has done and hopefully use the information they get and take the recommendations. Quickly, I am also not for at large counselors in the city. I am for seven words and seven to counselors in each word for 14 counselors. I think bar from words to present a map. The last time we met. I looked at that map. I liked that map. I think it was well done. But I think at large counselors previous to the other speaker one city council races are not party driven. Right. Their community driven with about maybe 10 to 15 people working on a campaign. Hardly any party money involved. You go out do your own fundraising. You get into out large seats across the city. They're going to be expensive. So the elitist will win the person with the most money will win. And I think that will be unfortunate because that's not democracy. Right. That's not city government. So I would hope we would stay away from at large counselors. Thanks. Thanks Dave on air hard you're up next. Hi, can you hear me okay. Okay. Yes. Thanks. And thanks for folks who are volunteering to serve on the redistricting redistricting committee really appreciate your, your spending time on this. So I'm speaking from the vantage point of having been a Burlington residents since the mid 70s and like Dave have also served on the city council. So it's been quite a while back in the 80s. I guess my first point is I agree with Dave and Lee and others who've spoken. I think pretty articulately against at large districts I think at large districts would be a really serious mistake for many of the reasons that have already been provided. One other one I'll just add is that, you know, at large districts have definitely been shown in other areas to be really less representative and less democratic. Dave mentioned, you know, and others mentioned that, you know, it would really fall to folks with with big bucks. There would be more campaign money going in and it would just, and those folks would be really removed from the neighborhoods and representing neighborhoods. So the other thing that I would really like to see is I always thought that when we went to the district and word system a few years back that that was really kind of one of those compromises that's forged by, you know, a bad compromise forged a number of different interests to kind of satisfy or maybe not satisfy everyone. I think the districts are. I like the purely ward system and would love to see us get rid of the districts and also agree with the sentiments around two folks per ward wherever possible. And also, for all the reasons that folks have mentioned already, I mean word aid is just completely gerrymandered. It is really pretty undemocratic and I would support the elimination of word aid and combining it back or combining most of it back into into ward one. One thing that I'll throw out there, having served on a city council it was very much like the one in from 1990 to 2010, I really liked 13 people on the city council. I think sometimes, you know, having even numbers really, you know, causes difficulties, because you don't have, you can have you can have a split split votes and we've seen those happen. And it can result in some, some stalemate. We used to have three counselors from the new north end so from a combination of words for and seven. I'm not suggesting and we actually kind of spoke to this because you know even though she lives in word for she feels represented by all three of the new north end counselors. I do think that it would be good to go back to, if you're going to try and have 13 have 13 members, it might be good to have most words have to, and then create one larger word that might have three, or alternatively have a smaller word that has that has just one. So my vote would be to try and reach out the map in a way that allows for 13 counselors so I haven't done a lot of looking at the actual map but you know, the extent that neighborhoods can be represented I think you want to eat you really should draw the line so that there's communities of interest and neighborhoods are well represented. So thanks for the time and thanks for hearing my, my comments. Thanks, Gerhard up next Christopher Aaron. Yes, good evening. My name's Christopher Aaron Felker I'm the chairman of the barlington GOP, and I'm here today to speak on redistricting. I'd like to begin by saying that I to share many of the concerns that have been articulated this evening regarding Gary and Ward eight. Not only does it make me feel uncomfortable it. It just doesn't seem democratic like, like others have mentioned from here I'd like to move on to the current model that we have of eight dis eight wards and four districts. I'd like to speak to how the council and the city in general is attempting to take steps to ensure that we have more equitable representation in our government and that we tear down barriers that tend to impede or obstruct individuals of diversity from running for office. One of these obstructions is the four district system, a much larger area to cover, undoubtedly requires almost twice the amount of money to campaign and reach and connect with with voters on your messaging. And as such, I think that it is a relic that is a failed experiment. I think that what would be best in the best interest of Berlin Tonians and our city as a whole would be to switch back to the seven board with two counselors per council. This has already mentioned by some other great people this evening allows for neighborhoods and wards to have even two counselors of potentially both different parties that come together to represent that community. That's representation in action. That's our democracy in action that is ensuring that voices of not just the majority but everybody are being heard in our government. And it also serves to tear down those barriers so that way people of different backgrounds and our new Americans in our community can actually run and achieve office and representation and service in our city. So I strongly encourage the people in charge of redistricting and I echo Dave's sentiments earlier about how it's important that council really take this to heart and not just look out to preserving the incumbents. It is about the best interest of our city preserving and promoting democracy in our city and allowing for full representation and equal access and I strongly believe and encourage everybody that we should move towards back towards the seven ward with two counselor model. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is Evan. Hello, good evening. I'm going to try to turn my camera on but I'm having some bandwidth. Okay. Okay, thanks. So I don't have prepared remarks. I just really wanted to listen mostly to everybody who is here tonight. My name is Evan Litwin. I live in Ward four in the southern most. I'm the southern most neighbor of Ward four. So for me, my concerns will lie in, you know, do I end up in Ward in Ward three? Do I end up in Ward four? What ends up happening? And one of the things that I'm thinking about is the diversity of my community. Ward four and seven will ultimately have to change in some way, most likely. And the graph was very helpful to see for me that Ward seven actually had was likely going to need to grow. And so that made me think, well, how does Ward seven grow? Maybe it grows into Ward four, maybe it grows into Ward three and then Ward three would need to grow into Ward one. So, so I wouldn't necessarily say that we have a bias of representation in the north end, but that it'll be, we'll have to consider what that looks like many different ways. Surprisingly, I would say I agree with pretty much everything that's been said tonight. And so I would just actually reiterate that I think that eliminating the district positions would be helpful and returning back to a two representative system in the wards, I think would be great. One thing I've been concerned about as well is the workload that Lee just mentioned, the workload of our city councillors. It's a burden. It's a massive amount of work. And in terms of independence running, actually one of the big problems for independence who choose to run, they don't have access to the data that the parties actually offer. So if you declare yourself as a Democrat, you're going to have access to all their data, phone numbers, addresses and so forth. And so when you're trying to campaign in the middle of winter and going door knocking, it's a huge burden for independent candidates. So if we want to see more independent candidates, we actually have to consider are they are they having to cover too much ground. And then additionally, I would just say, I actually support the feedback around gerrymandering that's been offered. However, I guess as a ward for resident, which is as far away from there as you could really get I, I would defer more to residents in wards one and two to see how they feel about how that would impact them, should they have to absorb the dormitories of UVM into their wards. And additionally, one of the biggest concerns I have and I think, I think it was Keith Pillsbury who added quite a bit of interesting data at the very beginning of the meeting is that it sounds like some candidates don't have access, the same level of access to others and I'd be surprised if our city attorney doesn't say that that was a big problem. The other question I guess I would pose is why seven wards. You know, and my worry is, if I guess we don't want 20 city counselors, maybe we do maybe we don't. But I know that it would be helpful for them to have more hands because many hands make light work. And so they'd be able to divide themselves among amongst these committees and kind of divide up work, collaboratively and collegially so I'll leave that there. I'm, I guess I would just say, as somebody who lives on the front lines of three wards where three ward boundaries meet, and in a highly diverse community, I would be concerned that we would be then lumped into the old north end. And then we would have a problem where people, we have a highly diverse neighborhood that's all been kind of put into one area. And so that for me raises representation questions right so food for thought, and I appreciate the time thanks. Great. Thanks so much, Evan. Is there anyone in the room would like to make a comment question suggestion. How about online is there anyone else hands up. Rama do you see anyone's hands up that I don't see. Okay, so, yeah, Sarah, would you like to Sarah. Sarah carpenter happened to be war for city council and I'm really not going to a pine on this but attorney Dan Richardson brought up an interesting point I'm just going to toss it out there for pondering which is, we, the city could amend our charter. Which is a legislative process so that next time we don't have to go to the legislature for approval, we could just do it by the voters. So, as the committee is gathering thought on that I'd actually like them to just ponder that question one of our problems in the process, meaning the charter change deadline. And if we could eliminate that and just have the voters decide. Next time that might smooth the process. Thank you Sarah, and I see Bill church you have your hand up. Yeah thanks. I'm sorry I joined late I'm sure I'm just going to echo what has been said and some of what I've heard. I think two considerations need to be put into this one is to increase the diversity of the warts. And that is, is the student war war eight. I think the students would benefit from being parts of other warts, where their voices could be multiplied, instead of being stuck in one ward where there's somewhat peripheral to the other meeting other groups of people in the city. The second thing I'd like to echo is that these warts should reflect the neighborhoods. The issues on Bradley Street are very much different than issues on other neighborhoods. And so if we could somehow co localize people. And really I think it's important to the city because we've always been proud of our communities. And I think that one of the changes that's happened in the city and 40 years I've lived here is the polarization and the fact that people don't seem to want to interact and work with each other anymore and I think we need to push back against that. So I think you have a great opportunity I appreciate everybody's help on this. And that's all for me. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else online or in the room. Okay, I think we're going to go on to our, there's a list of the considerations that we talked about earlier, and we have a little exercise in ranking I'm going to ask you all to participate in. I'm going to hand you over to Megan to explain that. So, Diane has created an activity so that we can get everyone's direct feedback on each of the different considerations that the city attorney Dan Richardson shared with us, and a lot of the things that have been discussed tonight. So I'm going to share my screen again. For those of you that are online or those of you that are in the room that just prefer to do this virtually. This is something that is called a mentee poll. So if you go to mentee.com that's M E N T I dot com. There is a code on the screen here, you can see if I'm sharing my screen appropriately. Can you see my screen. I'm not sharing it one second. You could read the number off. There we go. We're on the screen now. So again, the website you can visit on a phone or a computer is M E N T I dot com. And there is a code then that you can enter on the screen that pops up for you. So there will be seven five three seven three seven nine. So there will be two questions here on the poll that you will be able to answer that will help us get a sense from you about how you view these criteria in order of importance. You can rank each of these criteria from one to five with one being the least important and five being the most important for you. I'm actually going to switch and start sharing the actual poll so that as you all are voting virtually we can see your voices come in. And there are also folks in the room that are voting on paper if they prefer they're doing the same exercise just on a piece of paper. Yes, Jeff. My screen has a whole whole list of questions rather than just the first two. Oh, okay, keep going. Yes, so there should be the first slide here the first set of questions are about the considerations about how we divide up the number of counselors or the council seats. So these are things like would you like to keep the current number of wards, would you like to keep districts in addition to wards. Would you like to preserve incumbency you can vote for each one of them. And then in just a second we'll move on to a question about how to draw the boundaries, but if you're anxious, they can keep going. I think so, you should be able to. So far we have about it looks like 12 people that have entered their preferences online. And it definitely looks like we're hearing a reiteration of the comments we heard about having multiple representatives in wards. That is ranking highly. Yes, so the numbers these little dots that you see as everyone is voting it represents an average score so as everyone is ranking this one through five this represents an average so it looks like at an average score of four, having multiple representatives for per ward is one of the most important criteria of those that are voting tonight, where at us an average score of 1.4, keeping districts in addition to wards is one of the least important criteria to those that are voting tonight. Yes, you, the committee will be provided with a report for everybody that is voting and how they rank each of these criteria. My choices kept jumping around without me changing them is anybody else experiencing that. No, I had no problem. We definitely are seeing the little dots bounce around as everyone is voting because it's averaging everybody's input. So we're kind of seeing the result of everybody participating together. Right now we have 21 people that have voted on this. All right, so I think we'll wrap this question and we'll move on to the next one. What people expected to see based on what we heard. Sorry, Diane asked if this is what you all were expecting to see based on the comments you heard. Okay, nothing surprising. All right, so same exercise here. These are five different criteria that relate to how the boundaries of wards could be drawn. Making them from one being the least important to five being the most important. I'm sorry. This is our heart. I'm having real difficulty. I do not understand how this is supposed to work. Try to do this on my phone and essentially you would just kind of, are you able to slide the button. I mean I touched the screen and it creates all these lines on the screen. Sorry, maybe I just won't participate. Earhart, we can actually see the lines, the red lines. I wondered who drew those. It looks like you may have a zoom setting that's turned on. So you're doing something in zoom instead of on the poll maybe. Yeah, I just won't participate. And we can, this will actually be open through tomorrow. So we can, you can participate later if you want on a computer when you have access to a computer. Okay, so far we have about 11 looks like 11 people have submitted their thoughts on how to draw boundaries. Right now it looks like minimizing the population differences between the wards is one of the higher ranked criteria here at an average score of 4.1. We're also seeing a lot of folks indicating that keeping neighborhoods and geographic areas intact is highly ranked criteria, which again I think is what we were hearing in the room at an average score of 3.9. And also reflecting comments we heard keeping the student population in a single ward is one of the lower ranked criteria at an average score of 1.2. And it looks like we also have 21 folks who have voted there. So the same number that voted in the last question so again, this will be open for the next, you know, 48 hours and if you would like to vote or send this to anybody that would like to vote. Feel free to pass it along to your friends and neighbors and they can contribute as well. Quick questions sorry Megan where's this going to be posted. The slides from tonight's presentation will be posted online, but the same link menti.com and that nine digit code will be the same way that you can access this website after this meeting. So we'll make sure that it's posted on the CDO website. Thank you. Okay, so it's not the same as slides from the last meeting just so you don't go low make sure you look for tonight's slides. Okay, to be sure. All right, so that was what we all have planned for the evening but we are happy to stay here and there are more people who want to make comments or express concerns. We're happy to do that. We'll tell you what's up next we have one more listening session. This is our second three, and we'll be doing that on December. Let's have a look at the date. I'll find it I apologize. We are I'm sorry we're meeting oh yes December 6. We're going to be at Champlain Colleges Miller room Miller building, which is on Lakeside, and we'll be doing the same session that we did we did tonight. So yeah another Miller Center I know it's confusing. On December 15. We were going to have a ad hoc committee meeting. We're going to talk about what we've heard of a recap. And then we will move our memo to the city council and that will be presented to them. It's likely the end of January. That's our schedule right now. So those are our next steps. We're taking on public comment in addition to the meetings also through this through CEDO so you can feel free to send any comments to them they'll be compiling them and getting them ready for the committee to review. So any other last minute yes we do we have. Evan, did you want to. Yeah, is a train Richardson still in the Miller Center. He is not I'm sorry to say. Okay, I would just be curious and maybe other people would to if we could get maybe his, his read on a lot of comments tonight and allegations of gerrymandering around eight and so I would be and some some comments about arguments about why that's gerrymandering and and not allowing access for example to campus creates a problem for certain candidates and I would would have been very curious to hear his legal read on that. We'll see if we can follow up with him open something in the meeting notes. Well, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Barbara. Hi everybody. I am think that we really need to be open minded about the shape and the length of wards, because the city is sort of elongated along the lake and it has odd shape also along the Winooski river. Every time we do this exercise wards seven ends up being too small compared to the other wards. And so I think it's worth a while to be thinking out of the box about how Ward seven is shaped. And maybe it should be including the intervail and some of the old North and where there's a ravine that separates part of the old North and down near the river. And those people would still be together in their neighborhood they wouldn't be parsed away from who they think their community, maybe at least I don't know that should be explored with them. But it would go a long way towards in the future, not having Ward seven always be too small. And likewise Ward four I think could extend further down the lake and include the whole bike path area. Because there's a common theme there and that's the bike path issues you know with traffic and bikes intersecting. And use of marinas and that type of thing so I think it part of the survey has to also be looking at what are the common issues in neighborhoods, not just at geographic boundaries. People want to be with people who share the same issues and concerns. Thank you very much. Thank you Barbara Lee, Lee you're muted. Earhart's remarks about boards, even know even number of counselors and odd number. A six six vote, which is a tie vote is a no vote. It isn't a gridlock. It's a no vote. It takes eight votes to get to yes. And Burlington does things this way. You'll notice that we've got two bond issues coming up on the ballot. One of them is a go bond a general obligation bond that requires 60% to get to yes 60, I guess 63%. Where's Robert. It takes a two thirds it takes a two thirds vote to get to yes. Burlington likes to make it a little harder to get to yes than to get to no. And I've lived here for a long time and one of the things about Ward four and seven that people don't seem to realize is Ward four and seven used to be right now we're split by the avenue. But we used to be one ward with the people in Kalarney Drive in the same voting district as the people in Village Green. And so an easy way to manipulate the numbers of Ward four and Ward seven is to take, move some of Ward seven into Ward four. You can equalize wards four and seven that way and we've done that traditionally over the years. People in wards four and Ward seven don't really feel like they're, they have different interests. Because we, we have the shopping center, which brings everybody together and we have the Miller Center which brings everybody together and we have the Heineberg senior center. Which brings everybody together. And so the, the fluctuation of boundaries between wards four and Ward seven is pretty easy to do. And I also really enjoyed when we talked about how we really don't vote strongly by parties in wards four and Ward seven. I love agreeing with Christopher. Christopher and I agree on this. And I just love it. And we're different parties. There's a lot of that commonality in wards four and Ward seven. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that we've had two counselors per ward and that they work together collaboratively and collegially somebody use those words I thought it was really great. I think it was Erhard who mentioned we could have larger wards and smaller wards and have a larger ward with three districts. Well, folks, that isn't equal representation. You have to have your voting districts have to be largely equalized. Okay, thank you. Erhard you're up next. Well, yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't resist the bait Lee. I was actually thinking about harkening back to when wards four and seven were Ward four and you, you all had three folks. It may not work with equal representation. That is true, but that was not a bad system. It sounded to me like you were actually thinking that the same so that that was kind of what I was thinking that some of my comments before, in terms of a potentially larger, larger work because what you have right now is a large and a small word. You have, you know, Ward seven, and you've got, you know, word, word, word for so. Thank you, anyone else online. I don't see any hands up. Hi, Greg Shepler part of the redistricting committee board five. I just want to thank all the zoom participants I know we had a little difficult time getting started here, but you were persistent. And it was great for committee members and just speaking on behalf of myself but I'm sure that others feel the same way to hear from the public we. That's part of our charge, but we haven't really heard a lot from the public until tonight so really appreciate your efforts to enlighten us. Thanks Greg, Ron, do you want to say anything in our summer. Actually, I just wanted to ask if we could get some guidance from the city attorney about if we did have a larger larger award with three representatives so if it was one and a half times as big in population and had three representatives with that. Would that comply with the requirements for equality. It seems to me that it should mean you still have the same number of representatives per person. But that would be something we'd want to get some feedback from Dan unfortunately Dan's already left but I will keep that question and we'll ask him to give us an answer on that. Okay, we have one person here just one second. Yep. Can we talk about the survey. I don't know. Let's. So I'm Robert Bristol Johnson. I'm the ward seven representative on the committee. And I just want to give you some technical information that has about what we were talking about. So before 1990, there was a 13 ward map and there was no word seven or four was the most of the entire North and it had three counselors. And on one year, one counselor was up for reelection and on the off the other year to counselors were up for reelection. And it was the top two vote getters win. So that award had a different system and none of the other words had none of the other words had a multi winner election on the odd year. And when that was proposed in 2013, that ran up against the block up here in the new north end. Nobody seemed to like it up in the new north end. The other option was either Ward four Ward seven would continue to be a two counselor ward. And then the other one, one map had Ward four being a single counselor ward of half the population. And another one had Ward seven along Plattsburg Avenue being a single counselor ward. And that problem with that, as viewed by some was that the people in that half war that smaller war, they did not get to weigh in on the city council every year like everybody else in the city, everybody else in the city got to weigh in on the content of city council except for that one word that would have only one representative in with a two year term. And so one of the things that was important eight years ago was that the same, not just the population equality which was required by a law and a constitution, but the same rules applied that we had the same structure for each ward, but instead of a different structure for one Lord, and then the rest of the city having something, another stroke that might have might have been considered less owners. And so, I would just would like you to consider that no I won't want to also say something about seven words of equal population. Even before the 2014 map word seven extended down into Lakeview Terrace, part of the old north end was in Ward seven. I'm going to tell you a little story about an election that happened in there was around I don't know 2009 maybe where a candidate named Eli Lester Goldsmith who lived in Lakeview. And this was running for Ward seven counselor, and his opponent said that one of his campaign points was that a counselor for Ward seven must really be from the new north there and that that the the Lakeview Terrace. We didn't want we didn't want to have a counselor from Lakeview Terrace because it wasn't me north there. And that I objected to that. I felt that, you know, person lives in a word seven he's just as eligible as anybody else who lives in word seven. But there was, there was an issue about the old north and being attached to a new north end ward that some people didn't like. And if we, if we had stayed with seven words, eight years ago, we would have had to expand further into the old north end, namely convent square Manhattan Drive Washington Street, even farther but probably all the way down to north street. And that is certainly the case this time. It turns out from Ward four and seven together at the moment the north district is still within 5% of being exactly one quarter of the city. So it is still possible from the point of view of numbers, we would not be over represented in the north end in this terms of numbers. Ward seven can still be an equal population in the current scheme. It may not be the way for us to proceed but I'm just saying that if we go to seven words, or six words, or nine words, it is unavoidable that a part of the old north end will be attached to a part of the new north end in a single war that cannot be avoided. It could only be avoided with a four ward map, or an eight ward map, or a 12 ward map. Thank you Robert. And I think Lee, thank you for reminding me about the survey. I think George is going to give us a little update about where they're at. Hi. So, for those of you who have been paying attention since the beginning, the subcommittee or working group on the survey has been a bit of a roller coaster. I started out with Chris, who was removed from the committee because of prior position on the school board. So, I just want to thank everyone for their patience on getting the survey completed. What I have decided to do after receiving conflicting feedback from fellow committee members is to propose three ways to move forward. One would be the full survey as is which I've added some language. I've been capitalized in there asking folks to prioritize just the last few questions, which would be an open response and a ranking of priorities. Another option would be to simply remove the majority of the survey and just leave that priority ranking and open response. And another option would be that some folks on the more extreme end have suggested that because this survey would be imperfect that maybe the data would be misleading and that it should be just canned all together. So, I've asked the voting committee members to vote on that after they review the current version of the survey. And then I'm going to just move forward with whatever that decision is. Thank you very much. Any other questions? We do have, oh, and again you have your hand up. Yeah, I have a question for George. So are you going to be emailing us a copy of the revised survey or is that right on the Google Docs already. It's both I just sent out an email. Okay, thanks. I don't see any more hands up. And anyone else in the room. Okay, I think our meeting is adjourned for that evening. Thank you all so much for joining me really appreciate it. I'm sorry, am I hearing someone. What was what was the decision on the survey? Oh, I don't know. I think the committee needs to discuss that. What you said, sorry, I missed that. When. Okay, one second. We were here now why don't we vote on it right now. Well, I was going to give folks a chance to review the current version, but if that's possibility, I would like to move forward as quickly as possible. Is everyone here. I don't know folks left. I mean, the deadline for Diane's paper is the 15th. And so yes, we should move forward on it quickly how many committee members are here we need six people, or five people. Yeah, I mean the other option also if you do want more time, if folks want more time, we can always put the information together from the survey and get it to the council separately. I mean, doesn't, you know, I think in the ideal world we put it all together once but if we just need more time that's okay too. So it's really up to you all on what you're most comfortable with. And, you know, Georgia been spearheading this so I would leave it up to you to tell us what works for you. Okay, I am the beginning of this email states that I'm hoping that this is my last duty as a some committee member for the redistricting survey. As soon as those emails those votes came in, then I would consider it done. I think that can be done either right now if people have access to that or within the next 24 hours I think is pretty reasonable. And then I, I guess the next step would be to hand that off to CEDO and get that into the issue of community news and also ask each committee member to post the survey link on their front porch forum and distribute it as they see fit. Okay, do you want me to run through the committee members and see if folks want to decide I'll give Jim. Yeah, Jim, Greg, you have things you want to discuss, please. Did I did I hear whether or not this survey is going in the community news. We're processing the question I think what I wanted to do was propose a question for us to vote on, which is we can understand it's not going to be a perfect survey. But it's rarely ever have a perfect survey so I would pose that we don't allow that question we just that it's valuable data. The other is the survey in its long form is probably so long that you reduce the chance of participation so I would propose that we accept the imperfections of an understanding and then do the short version that with the priority because then it's essentially a very similar data that as you're doing through mentee and through the survey, and therefore you've got more data, a very similar data point so of all possibilities. It is the best, it would seem to me to be the best approach to getting useful data that's consistent so my proposal would be that of the three options storage suggested that we go with the the ranked choices and open ended, and then get that out as soon as possible. And to do that, all before the deadline for the north of the community news so we can get it in there. So if we could vote tonight, then we can go forward and get that in the paper. Okay, so do I have this correct move forward with the short version of the survey. Is that right. So, and get it in the paper. And get it in the paper. Yeah. Communities. Okay, does anybody want to discuss that anymore online or it looks like you have your hand up. Diane thank you. I don't mean to distract from the committee's discussion but I'm looking at the website the committee's website and I'm not seeing the survey. There is, is that going to be. I don't think it's up yet. Yeah, got it. So, return tomorrow or something. Well, we're going to vote. So, if we decide to go forward, I will, it will, it will, we will distribute it absolutely. Yes. Okay, thank you. Anybody else on the committee want to say anything before we run through the role. Okay. Yep, go ahead. So, in looking at the survey, I'm fine with the way it is, except I'm still concerned about the information about you. And I understand the importance of getting sort of cross representation. I think that is important in a in the demographics in the survey. I just think that it might turn people off if it's one of if it appears at the beginning of the survey. And so if we if we could possibly move that information to the end of the survey. And then people still have filled out some of the information that's going to be helpful to the committee and then they can decide whether or not they want to answer the information about themselves. Okay, so that's the demographic information, right? Okay, so the proposal to move that to the end of the survey correct you have issues with that or maybe short, go ahead. I agree. Okay. With that, would that be the longer version or the shorter? Oh, I'm voting on the shorter version. Okay. Okay, so we're going to pick, so we're back to the short version and getting it in the community news. That's what we're voting on. Does that, is that clear to everyone? Okay, and is everyone all right with just throwing out the third option of getting rid of the survey completely then? It's just long or short, long being moving demographic questions to the end. Is there anybody who is not going to do the survey? Okay, okay, so we're okay, so we're, so we're actually voting on both the short and the long which let's go on the short first. Okay, so let's say if you're in favor of voting of the short version of the survey. Okay, everybody clear on that? Okay, so Richard Hillion. Yay. George Love. No, Daniel. Daniel. He's off. And Jim. Sure. Yes. Greg Scheppler. Sure. Sure. Yes. Robert. Sure. Yes. Yeah. I think you're muted. Yeah, short. Yes. Yeah. And that's, oh, so is anybody. No, okay. So it looks like that passes by 12345 to one. Is that what you need, George? Yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to go back to the question. I'm going to go back to question five. What was the vote? I couldn't hear it to vote for the short version. Yeah. So there will be a two question survey, which I can pass along to CEDO. Yeah. Okay. That's what all the. And what are the two questions on the survey? Rank your top five priorities. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And open response question. So our charge to ask people whether they want. Um, district and ward and. How many counselors per ward and how many wards. We're just leaving that out. Some of that is touched upon in the ranking of priorities, but yes, it's going to be forgotten for gone for the, but the logic that more people will answer. Well, George, you did a terrific job. You really did a terrific job. And I'm sorry that it didn't come together the way you hope, but you really did a beautiful job with that survey. Thank you. I appreciate that Lee. Thanks. All right, everyone. Thank you all so much for coming out. We appreciate it. Yes. One more Richard. Yes. Can I just ask one thing of the city? Sure. We have each committee members should be posting on front. Four and shouldn't the city be posting on front porch forum. So that there's a consistency across the city. All I hear from CEDA is no, but. CEDA has posted. I know that the, they sent out a message about your first meeting, which obviously included the wrong link, but this meeting was included in a city wide front porch forum that CEDA sent out. And I think your meeting in December, on December 6th was also about the survey. Oh, if, if you can get the survey to CEDA, I would imagine that they could include a link to that when they, if they have another posting going out. I would, I would have thought that you would want the uniformity across the city. That's my. Just saying post the survey that we just agreed to. Yeah. That city does the posting to front porch forum as well. Yep. Yep. I understand. I think if, if the link can be provided, I personally haven't seen the survey at all. So if we make sure that somebody from CEDA gets that, if they have another posting that's going out about this process, we can make sure to include the link for you. Yep. Okay. Hi. This is a Ethan from CEDA, by the way, and I just want to reiterate that all city. Presentations and information can be found on the city website. And you can always check it out there. All the updated agendas and meeting times and everything. And this survey will also be posted there. Thank you, Ethan. Okay. Diane said that we should say good night. So thank you to everyone who zoomed into this meeting. The Miller center will be signing off. Have a great evening. Right. Recording stopped. Recording stopped. Recording stopped.