 Good evening. Welcome. I'm Diane Meyerhoch. Welcome to the third and final listening session of the ad hoc committee on redistricting. I want to make a brief comment before we get started. We've heard many times over our previous meetings about the importance residents place on our shared sense of community. Those who have shared their thoughts clearly have the best interests of the city in mind. As such, I ask everyone to respect other points of view and treat one another in a civil manner. Everyone has the right to share their opinions. And while you may not agree, you need to give others the opportunity to speak freely. That's the essence of our political system. Burlington can be a model for thoughtful and respectful discourse. Please join me in making that a reality tonight. Thank you. I am going to turn it over to Rama, who is a member of our committee to have the official welcome. Rama. Thanks, Dan. So as Dan said, I'm Rama Coach Lakota. I'm a member of the committee. We're going to go through the agenda first. We're going to have an introduction. Well, first we're going to have a public forum. It might feel redundant in the situation where this whole meeting is essentially a public forum. But in case people have to have time limits and have to leave early, we're going to make that time available for people who are in that situation. Then there will be a welcome and the members of the committee will introduce themselves. And then there will be a redistricting overview by the members of the city staff. And then we'll have our discussion. So let's go to the public forum section. Is there anybody who would like to make a statement at this time? Anybody in the room? And are there any hands up remotely? If you are online and want to speak during the public forum, you can use the raise hand and we will call on you to enable your microphone. Is there anyone, Megan? Yeah, Gabe Arnold would like to speak. Go ahead, Gabe. Hey, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we can hear you. Cool. All right. I can't stay on for the whole thing, but I'm a word five resident live on fine street and I just wanted to throw in my opinion that I would love to see us transition to more of a hybrid model that includes some at large counselors. I think it's problematic that we don't have any counselors that are looking out for the overall good of the city. And I think, you know, there's benefits to both models where you have counselors that are representing just individual parts of the city and districts and benefits to the at large, but neither of these are perfect. I think it's been well studied. There's a lot of information online about the trade offs and benefits of either model. And I think we're too far in the direction of just having a counselor for each individual part of the city. And so, yeah, I think I just wanted to offer my opinion on that. And thank you for posting this. We will make a note of that. Any other raised hands or other people who want to speak. We get to lead her. I did see Lee's hand go up, but then it went down. I'll open her mic just in case she was trying to talk. Go ahead, Lee. I need to know how this is set up. I can only see three people. Rama Colby and I guess that's. Sorry, I forget your name, the facilitator. Where are the other people who are present at this meeting. We can turn the microphone around perhaps channel 17 will help us with that and you can see who's in the room. What about the other people that are? Is there nobody on? Is there nobody there on zoom? Nope. I think maybe what Lee is talking about is that in past meetings, we have maybe hosted this meeting a little bit differently. So every single person that was online, you could see them at the same time. Happy to do that right now. As we're listening to public comments. Well, most important, we could see the people who were speaking. And that Gabe Arnold just spoke and it was just a disembodied voice. We will work on inviting everybody into the same zoom room while we're moving on to the next comment. Thank you. All right. I do see a hand for Christopher Aaron Felker. Christopher, you should be able to speak. Christopher, are you with us? Did you want to speak? Yes. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Terrific. Sorry about that. Technology. So I have come this evening to advocate strongly in favor of a return to the Seven Ward with two counselors each ward model. I believe that it would be a mistake for us to continue down this path. I think it would be a mistake for us to continue down this path of the eight wards with one counselor and four district model. I believe that this four district model sets barriers in place to expanding our Equitable access and equitable participation in government. I also would furthermore like to state that I've heard that there are members of the administration or of council that are interested in quote at large districts. I live in Ward three, but I have supporters all around town. I personally would benefit from an at large district and the ability to pull votes from the entire city. But this isn't about me. This is about improving representation here in Burlington. And as such, I strongly advocate in favor of the Seven Ward with two counselor model. I believe that an at large districts will Will Will set barriers in place that are financial and time constraining to new members wanting to join the community conversation and advance Involvement in the city of Burlington the cost of an at large race will be upwards of Twenty twenty five thousand dollars per seat and that is just an insurmountable amount of money for For many people just trying to get involved in our community to try to advance the conversation. So my recommendation for what it's worth is that By returning to the Seven Ward with two counselor model Two counselor representation at each ward model that we create we tear down barriers and we create Opportunities for the diverse voices in our community to be heard and represented on council That's all I have for you this evening. Thank you for taking my testimony. I appreciate everybody who's come out tonight I think at this point Will Will go to the Introductory portion of the meeting and what there were plenty of time for people to present their views later on So why don't we Move to having people who are on the committee. So I say something about the committee first. Oh, and this is the slide So it should include one member from each war city ward and it should be independent of city council school board and former elected officials of these bodies And our charter is to gather community input To the current redistricting plan Review the past plan your opinions about the number of word counselors per ward and district and consider the current wars and districts configuration So I'll start by introducing myself. As I said, my name is Rama coach for Lakota. I'm a resident of Ward six I've been living in Burlington for the last 21 years And That's me So why don't we have the people who are actually in the Miller Center Introduce themselves I can't really see who they are and then anybody who is online who is a member of the committee can just raise their hand and we'll call on them to introduce themselves Someone out of order, but I'll start I'm from Ward five. I'm the representative for Ward five My name is Greg Schupler One reason why I wanted to start is to just to introduce to the rest of the committee The fact that Ward five has selected an alternate and he is on zoom. That's Colby LaMarche Richard Hilliard from Ward one. Thank you Thank you. My name is Ann Brenna and I'm representing Ward eight My name is Daniel Montana and I'm representing Ward number three My name is George Love and I'm representing Ward two Jim hallway from Ward four I am Robert Bristol Johnson and I represent Ward seven I think that's everyone in the room Rama I think that's everybody overall. In fact, I think we have somebody from every ward Introduce themselves So Next slide please. So So this is talking about what the purposes of the ad hoc committee on redistricting is so we were tasked with holding public meetings to get collect input from the community and This is as I said at the beginning. This is the third and final such meeting that's taken place and we're going to digest this input and meet as a group and Create a report for city council reflecting this input And then this input will oh The city council after that will take our input and make their recommendation as to what the The new wards and districts should look like and that will be Presented to the voters on in November, I guess next November 2022 There will be a Ballot change. Sorry a charter change ballot Item that will have to be voted on by the voters of the community And if that passes then that will constitute a recommendation to The folks in Montpelier State Legislature and they will actually have to make a change to the Burlington City Charter to reflect the new Wards and districts So our committee what we want to says we want to get general Perspectives about the number of counselors and words and districts and opinions about the current and most recent word plans Oh one question that people might have is why we're doing this now This is a response to the 2020 census After a census happens if there if the Number of people and then in the wards has departed Departed significantly from each other so that they aren't within 10% of each other then there has to be by law a Change the way that we lay out the districts and wards and we're taking this opportunity to just think more holistically about what What we want the wards and districts to look like On extra slide please And I think this is where I passed it on I think Dan is not yet here, but I believe Megan Tubble will be Speaking on his behalf and that Dan will be along later for the Q&A portion of this Alright, thanks Rama. I am going to Just move around slightly because it's really awkward to be sitting in a room with my back to everyone So I'm going to do my best to be visible to both everyone that's attending on zoom and everyone that's here in the room Great I will do that Alright, thank you So as Rama said I am not Dan Richardson. I'm not the city attorney. I'm Megan Tuttle. I'm the director of the office of city planning But we've been working together Dan and I have been working together as staff support to this committee and I will do my best to give a quick overview That Dan would have shared with all of you tonight so Rama did a really great job of introducing us about what is redistricting Redistricting is a process that occurs almost every 10 years following the release of census data to determine the How we allocate voting districts essentially all the way from the US House of Representatives all the way down to electing our city counselors here in Burlington We apply similar principles to allocating our voting districts here in Burlington that we do for the census I'm sorry for the process of allocating district representatives for the United States House At that level it's called apportionment and here in Burlington. It's called redistricting Since 2014 2015 timeframe Burlington has had a system of voting districts that include eight city wards and four districts Each district is a combination of two of those city wards As we move into the process of considering redistricting at the local level There are a number of factors that we as a community and that the city council ultimately will consider In developing a map for our voting districts And our city attorney has talked to us about these as a series of must haves and then a series of should haves The things that are required in the redistricting process is that every person counts as one person in drawing our district boundaries This means every person not every registered voter What we have to do in drawing district boundaries is aim for a roughly equal population to be represented by each of our voting districts We use a metric here that's called a 10% deviation So we really want the size of each of our voting districts to be within 10% of the size of each other We're also looking for districts that have continuity in terms of the geographic area that they represent And what this really means is that voting districts should not be physically detached from various parts of itself The city attorney would insert here a famous reference to a district in the south that followed a highway corridor Rather than kind of representing a neighborhood or a geographic area And our districts also cannot separate our population on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion So then there are a series of things that we should have And many of these criteria are kind of the content that we have been discussing or hearing feedback on in the course of these meetings There are things that are good guidance about districts, the development of districts Such as maintaining existing political subdivision lines Honoring natural historic boundary lines The compactness of words, so making sure that they're kind of distinctly representative of a specific area of our community versus sprawling areas Respecting communities of interest, this can be different than race, ethnicity or religion that I mentioned at the top And could represent things like, you know, a college community for example Providing small districts with meaningful representation and using data based on the smallest unit of measurement that we get data from in the census Those are again things that districts should have in order to be defensible You can see here that there were a number of other factors that the process to redraw our district boundaries following the 2010 census also considered This was things like, how do we divide our counselors up according to our population? How do we minimize population difference between wards? What do we do with academic institutions and how should their campus areas and their populations be divided among wards in the city? We also considered factors like minimizing changes from the current ward system You can see here on the screen and I'll show just in a second that there were the map of the wards from previous to our last redistricting process Compared to the voting districts that we have now and you can see that there was a lot of similarity between many of those wards There is also often the question of how should our local wards relate to state voting districts as well So those were many of the questions that were considered in the process of drawing the district boundaries following the last census For the ward maps that we have effective in 2015 And there are a number of questions that have come up both by the city council's resolution that established this committee And through various conversations that we've heard about the redistricting process That are additional questions for consideration in this redistricting process To what degree should we preserve and compensate of the existing counselors? Do we want to keep our current number of districts and wards? Do we want to keep that system of districts and wards? Should areas of large student population be kept together or broken up in multiple wards? How do we keep neighborhoods intact? Should we consider at-large city counselors? Would we like to have an even or odd number of city counselors? And would we like to have single or multiple representatives on the council from each ward? So these are the kinds of questions that the committee is looking for your feedback on In order for them to help convey some of that feedback to the city council for their map drawing process I'll try to do my best here to summarize this process. This is a pretty detailed slide But I think Rama did a really good job of summarizing what this process will actually look like The redistricting process will actually look like First of all when we received our census data it was determined that we did need to pursue redistricting Due to population changes across the city's wards The council passed a resolution that established this ad hoc redistricting committee To specifically hold these sessions to hear input on the redistricting priorities And to generate a report for them In the first part of 2020 the city council will receive that report And they will develop some guidance for a map maker to bring them a draft map for the redistricting process And as the council considers that map and ultimately arrives on some recommendation about how we will update our city wards and or districts They will eventually begin the process of putting forth a question to the voters about amending our charter Rama was right in saying that our redistricting process does move forward as a charter change here in the city of Burlington So many of the steps that you see then at the end are the redistricting I'm sorry the charter change process that this will eventually move into Resulting in a question before the voters we anticipate in November of next year I'll quickly roll through just an update on the data for those of you who haven't seen this Again the change in the population in the city and where that population is located in the city is the basis for why we are doing redistricting So a quick update on the data that we received from the 2020 census for Burlington You can see here that between 2010 and 2020 the city's population grew by roughly 5% to just under 45,000 people in the city of Burlington And you can see how that compares to our population dating back to 2000 We experienced a growth in population in most of the city's wards You can see that Ward 1 experienced the greatest growth Ward 3 and 7 were wards that remained roughly the same as they were in 2010 And you can see there on the map on the right how this population corresponds to the existing wards of the city I mentioned earlier that one of the considerations for districts is for them to be roughly equal in size To represent roughly the same number of people in our population in Burlington So how we calculate that is by dividing the total city population, so 45,000 people, by the number of voting districts that we have And we arrive at an ideal size of about 5,600 people per voting district So one of the things that we look at is how much larger or smaller than that ideal size our current wards are And you can see again with Ward 1 being the largest ward by population It is just a little bit over that 10% deviation from the ideal size I think it's 11.5% larger than the ideal size And you can see that Ward 7 is just within that deviation I think it's about 9.5% smaller than the ideal size So this is really the reason why we're looking at redistricting is because some of our wards aren't quite fitting into that ideal size definition We also know that because of that the size between the largest and smallest wards is getting really out of line And so we want to try to make our wards be more equal in their population So I think that's about it as an intro just to cover some of the basics to set you up for your discussion So I will leave it at that Let me just check the Q&A really quick There was a question about whether the population includes students and yes it does That does include anyone that was residing in the city of Burlington on April 1 And of course the question is because of COVID last year on April 1 of 2020 We know that there were a lot of people who may have normally been living in Burlington that might not have been So the Champlain College and UVM closed But the Census Bureau did communicate with colleges and with college students specifically to ensure that they answered the census where they would have been living on April 1 if the pandemic hadn't happened So it does include those students And if there are any other questions that come up I'll try to address them Thank you Thank you so much Megan Dan Richardson is expected to come so if you have questions for the attorney we will have a chance to ask them of him as well Although I think Megan did a great job of summarizing his slides so thank you Megan for jumping in So this is the point where we want to hear from you, those of you who are out there and I don't have a sense of how many people are out in the remote on the virtual world Can someone maybe at Channel 17 tell me? Do we know? There are 25 people attending online 25 people online, okay So many of you have accepted the invitation to join the meeting as a panelist So we're going to put everybody's videos up here on the screen in just a second For those of you who have joined since that happened If you would like to be able to be visible Please accept the invite to join the meeting as a panelist If not that's totally fine If you raise your hand later we will make sure that you can be heard in this room Great, and also there was some issue about folks getting onto the zoom and did we solve that problem as far as you know Okay, so we do have someone trying to get on, hopefully Okay, hopefully that person will find their way on So we're going to put you all up on the screen here so we can see you all And we would just ask that you raise your hand and do we have anyone in the room who wants to make a comment as well? No, okay, so we're going to work with the folks virtually And if you just put your hand up we will call on you. How's that? So who we got let's see so it looks like Lee you're first And we just need to have you unmute. Yeah, we go First of all the Q&A is closed to me. I don't know if it's closed to everybody I did see there was an anonymous question and I was able to type in a question as an answer But if you're going to open Q&A that'd be nice What I want to say is that Whenever I meet with people in my district actually anywhere I am I asked them a few basic questions just to see how they feel about the issue of wards districts numbers of counselors Even odd and all of that everything that Christopher Felker said earlier The people I talked with concur with 100% and Yeah, and we're talking all across the political spectrum Christopher is chair of the city Republican Party I've talked with a lot of Republican leaning people in Ward 4 as well as Democrats and progressives in Ward 4 Nobody likes ad hoc because The at-large because we all know what that leads to that leads to slick expensive campaigns And we get we lose the small Close relationship that people have with their counselors now I also he he's I could I couldn't add anything to what he said he covered everything The other thing is the idea that our city counselors don't vote the best interests of the city Is simply not true. I mean first of all City counselors within their ward Are people of all political persuasions and of all different opinions So the bottom line is they weigh things together and if you I mean I live in Ward 4 I mean I live in Ward 4 and we have independence and even people that call themselves a Democrat But they're pretty much independent. I think two of our counselors are independent So they are very much in the final vote thinking of the best interests of the city And I want to thank everybody for being here tonight And I'm trying to do a headcount of how many people are here from the community And how many are people that are associated With the ad hoc committee in one way or another either as a member as an alternate or as a staff person And I don't think we have very many members of the public So I want to raise again that question of where is the survey Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. And are there others who'd like to speak just please put your hand up So there's a question that was submitted in the Q&A which is open if anybody would like to use it The question is how is redistricting going to actually impact us and how will we notice it I think that the question is really premature to answer at this time I think ultimately how it will impact you and what you will notice depends on what changes are made To how voting districts are formed in the city and how whether there are awards and districts Whether they are just one or the other, how many representatives you have representing you So this is really the time for us to hear from all of you about what you feel is most important About how you will notice this change and what you would like to see out of this change So if the person who posted the question wants to tell us what you would like to see or maybe what your concerns are around what might change We would welcome that Okay, what we're going to leave this opportunity open. Is there anyone on the committee? Most of the committee members are in the room here with us Would anyone like to talk a little bit about what they've heard? I know you've been out at your NPAs Oh, do we have someone? Oh, we'll have Chris, but think about if there's something you want to share from your NPA meetings That perhaps has not been shared widely with the rest of the group might be an opportunity to do that Okay, so let's go to Chris Who is with us remotely? Hey folks, I apologize for the issues with the video feeds I think you're just going to have the name in the black background tonight But I want to thank you for taking the time to solicit the input from the community For those of you who know me, I lived in the downtown core near church and college and I've lived here about five years Out of the 20 plus years that I've lived in Burlington Having lived previously up in the old north end and traditionally our downtown core has been in the years that I've been in Burlington It's been kind of lumped in with the old north end district award three And as I've lived down in the downtown core, I've kind of realized that things are a little bit different for us and our concerns down here in terms of What the issues that we face, we have the retail shopping district with the Sure Street Marketplace here We have the downtown entertainment district, we have a variety of folks living in the downtown from all different types of backgrounds What not, and as I started looking into this process, particularly the historical boundaries that have been developed over the years, I noticed that for a long, long time I think close to the first hundred years that Burlington was in existence, there actually was a downtown ward That had existed with Pearl Street in the north It extended eastward up towards the university, I think the border was like South Willard or South William Street, and then down to Main Street And back to the waterfront, it was a nice neat little rectangle that satisfied the requirements for contiguity And I think that that might be something to consider as the folks, you know, consider how we're going to do this moving forward I know that there was concerns with different folks regarding the quote unquote gerrymander and the interesting configuration with Ward 8 I think that if the city were to consider such a downtown district, it would be a very rich and very diverse district It would incorporate, you know, the folks in the downtown core, but also a number of the student districts up in the Buol Bradley Street area As well as some of the folks from the Champlain College campus as well, so we'd have some diversity in that regard, but more importantly, it would preserve the King Maple district Which, as I understand, is one of the largest communities of color here in Vermont and at present, as I understand it, the dividing line actually goes I think King, I get confused on the streets, but it goes right through that the middle of that that neighborhood so if there was a way to maybe adjust that boundary so to preserve that community interest I think that there's a compelling argument to be made in that regard so I guess In light of those factors, I just wanted to say I think that that's a conversation that merits some discussion and I hope that folks will pass this feedback along to the folks that will be drawing the maps. Thank you Thank you very much. Of course, we will pass it along. Absolutely. Dave Hartnett is in the room and would like to make a comment. Dave Thanks for having us. I've been to the two previous meetings. It's interesting. I see new people at the meetings and all of a sudden Ward 8 always comes up, like how did Ward 8 happen? And I would just like to be clear about Ward 8. Ward 8 was never intended to be just the student ward. Ward 8 originally was Summit Street, half of Summit Street, Robinson Parkway. It was originally that was the original Ward 8. That's what we really wanted to look like. We wanted Ward 8 to include other neighborhoods and other streets, okay? But as I've warned you guys in the past, city counselors, if it's not in their best interest, will fight hard against it. And that's exactly what happened there in Ward 6. And so that was unfortunate because Ward 8 should have been made up of other neighborhoods. But my question really is, maybe to Megan, what's her vision of this going forward after the council? Because I think it's a big question that we had here today. Who is this going to affect? How is it going to affect? We won't know until we decide which format we're going to bring to the voters. So when will the council make a final decision? And how much time will we have between that decision and kind of getting back together in the community and giving information to the people how this might look? I think that's important, right? Because I do feel it's a great question. How will this impact us? You could have city counselors that are running this year for March, rerunning next year. You could possibly have city counselors running in one ward this year and next year living in a different ward, particularly in the New North End. So I think it's important that we kind of lay that process out of how this might look. Thanks. Megan, do you want to take a shot at that? Sure. I think ultimately the process that we'll use from here will be one that is determined by the city counselors. What we do know is that after tonight or after this committee's work is done, they will deliver a report to the city council in the beginning of January or middle of January, I think. And ultimately, I think the council from there will determine what their process will be for considering changes to the maps and what, how many meetings and what those look like. So I think if you have specific feedback for them about that process, I would encourage you to send that to them. At this point, ultimately, I think our goal has been the goal that has been shared with us as a staff. It's not ultimately our goal because this is the council's process. But the goal that has been shared with us at this point is to have some direction on a map that will be proposed to the voters in April of next year. And then put that to put that forward for a vote in November of next year. So again, I think any more specific questions about what that kind of iterative process looks like in the council's public engagement process are great questions to share with the council when they receive this committee's report. So basically at this point, it's unknown they have not developed that that calendar yet, but we know we do know that there is an April 22, some sort of draft map and we know there's a November election but beyond that, that's what we have right now. Yeah. Yes, please, Robert, someone else in the room. This is Robert and we're keeping an eye on if there's anyone with hands raised. Hi, so I am on the committee. I don't know if I'm if I'm supposed to be speaking now or not, but I'd like to suggest something about the calendar and to take it. We should take advantage of this coming town meeting day for at least a an advisory vote where there wouldn't have to be just a single map on it. I think when we make the real vote, which would be in November, it basically has to be yay or nay on a single map. I would think that that would have to be the case. But this coming town meeting day, we could put an we could make an advisory vote with multiple maps that look good to either the committee here or the city council want different possibilities, different schemes. And because it's an advisory vote, it wouldn't be it wouldn't be controlling, but we could find we could take the pulse of the city and find out how they might feel about, you know, one map versus another, and one scheme versus another, you know, because of course this thing with the districts and the wards as a scheme and see how people feel about that. That's something that I was planning on suggesting to the city council at some point in the future, but I don't know when that point exactly is going to be so I'm going to throw it out right now. Anyway, I mentioned the last meeting. I'm going to mention it again. I also I also put it on front porch form for people and if nobody pipes up from the West Old North End. That's then that's them. But the thing with Ward 8. The big trade off was this by by putting in Ward 8 and putting it where we did we were able to keep 82% of the city in the same ward and voting in the same place of the 18% that didn't get to stay in the same ward and vote in the same place. 13 of those 18% was Ward 8 itself. Only 5% of the city was in one of the seven wards and found a line moved on them and was another. Now some of those folks did better. For the most part, people living in Lakeview Terrace were pleased to go from Ward 7 into Ward 3. Now here's a consequence. If we go back to seven wards, which has been called for multiple times and I'm just I'm actually kind of neutral on it myself, but I just want to let you know this is what's going to happen. Seven wards mean that they're bigger wards than eight wards and that little point on North Avenue right by Yankee Medical. That's a pinch point. There's no place for the new North ends to expand anywhere except down. And if we go to seven wards and the wards get bigger, it is absolutely necessary cannot be avoided that one of Ward 4 or Ward 7 will come down as far as North Street. That means people living in Convent Square, people living in Lakeview Terrace, people living on a piece of Manhattan Drive, Washington Street, those people will be going up to the Miller Center to vote or up to the Catholic Church to vote, or people from the new North end will have to come down to the old North end to vote. That is unavoidable with a seven ward map. There's also a possibility of a six ward map, but then there's no Ward 7 left anymore. There'd be Ward 4 in the new North end, and there'd be a big mass of Ward 3 that wouldn't contain downtown and would go all the way up to Village Green and all the way up to Stannerford Road. That's what a six ward map would do for us. Now it might be okay, but I just want to let people know that the consequence of making bigger wards, going from an eight ward map to a seven ward map or a six ward map, is that this part of the old North end and the new North end must be straddled to be one ward and that cannot be avoided. Thanks, Robert. Just a quick question for the city folks. What is the deadline for the city council for town meeting day items? That's got to be coming up, right? It's actually December 13th. That's the last city council meeting for something to be added, but I guess I would just make a suggestion that if this committee wanted to conduct sort of a straw poll, there would actually be some legal problem with putting it on to the city ballot officially. But what I would recommend, you know, for years and years, people when they've sought out these kind of public feedback have just gone to the polling stations and conducted their own polling, whether it be the, you know, the now famous doil poll that was done, or more specific questions that were often given to voters at city council outside of the actual voting booths to get their feedback and opinions and information about. Great. Thank you. I wonder how long that'll last with a mail-in voting, how that'll affect when we all used to go. We all picked up the doil ballot, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it does have that impact, but it's also, I mean, there's still a substantial number of people that vote and, you know, some feedback being better than no feedback. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Do you want to make a comment? You have to come up to the mic so that people can hear you. And then, Gabe, I see your hand. We'll go to you next. Three quick things. One is I would like some clarification on the December 13th because from the state point of view, you have entered into January. So that's a choice on city side to go that early as the last date. And that precedes the date at which this committee would be doing its sit down and talk about what we've heard and so on. So it's a cart before the horse. The other is that two other speakers raised questions and I want to be sure we don't just gloss over questions that are asked by people in the community. Lee asked about where the survey is and I'd like to be able to have an answer for that for her. And I think that how I interpret part of Dave's question is one that perhaps we should take this last opportunity to talk a little bit about because what I'm, if the answer is, we wait until we hear from city council. When they talk about that, that's an important element. We always think about redistricting is just maps. It's not it's it is the question really isn't I believe isn't just about the process of how we get to the recommendation. But the question that we should consider is the transition from all the current model to the new model. In the last time when we did transition. It took a somebody whose term was within a year of being up actually ended up getting more time because that got to legal questions about well if the voters voted for someone for two years, then if you cut them back, is that a problem with what the voters asked for. But that still remains an interesting question about transition. So I think Dan if you wouldn't mind elaborate a little bit more on transition legalities about what voters have already said to where we need to go. And maybe open that question to Dave's important question, and then also Lee's question to be answered. Sure. And I'd actually like to make a quick correction. I just got out of a charter change committee meeting so that's where my mind was but that the December 13 deadline is for charter changes because that requires a public meeting for for the deadline for nominating petitions consent forms and and other petitions is Monday, January 24. So I apologize for that. Error, when we talk about transitional provisions where we talk about what happens to the terms the unexpired terms when a new effectively regimen comes into play. That's a good question. Oftentimes what it's usually done is the, the enabling legislation will in provide for that to transition. So if for example we are talking about a change where, you know, the you're substantially altering the the districts, the enabling legislation would say that you know all all currently occupied seats will be vacated as of this date, and the new meetings will be called as of that date and so even if somebody is has still sort of a two year term left, the legislature can cut that off with the with the new system. Obviously that's a nuance that you try and avoid where some people can feel that you know the person they voted for, you know, but that's just simply the nature of these type of transitions that if it does require a substantial change or an alteration of these districts you would effectively have a clean slate election to elect new representatives from the various districts and then start to stagger their terms or, you know, play them out so that some people may just simply be up for election for a two year term versus a two year term. And that's, we talked about criteria earlier, one of those criteria on was on incumbency, and I know we had a little chat about that the last meeting so that's basically what you're talking about, right, and that's part of it's it's the piece what happens to folks. Absolutely. Um, did you want to add something, Jim? Yeah, you have to come up to the microphone please. Sorry. So, so the incumbency in the example that you gave down that you might cut a term short. Another option that we certainly can make is extend and in fact that's what happened last time so I would be curious to hear people's thoughts about that because on the one hand, you have let's say and this is not in any way an announcement but let's say I was City Councilor in Word 4 and we move the line and I'm suddenly in 7 that that changes an interest. It's an interesting debate and I would just be curious how you might look at that in on the legal side and I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on that because it does make a difference. It certainly made a difference in the political makeup of City Council before so while people pay mostly attention to the maths these other things are also very important to the process so if you wouldn't mind elaborating a little bit more, Dan. Oh, sure. Um, no, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. It could be extended or could be limited. And, you know, what happens is, you know, when these districts are redrawn and part of it is the nature of this process which is a charter change driven process so ultimately what's happening is the Legislature is weighing in on this and really nothing is determined until the Legislature fully weighs in and approves this so if the Legislature chooses to adopt these transitional provisions, if we the citizens want them in there, the City Council approves them and the Legislature doesn't, they don't go in. If the Legislature wants them but they weren't in there then they'll get put in and they get added. And oftentimes, you know, when we have these redistricting people's addresses shift through no action of their own into another district or ward, in which case you become ineligible if you're representative of Ward 3, and now all of a sudden you're in Ward 2, that you can no longer be a Ward 3 representative under this. And so it either forces a resignation or there are these transitional provisions and I would recommend them, especially if there is a big sort of shakeup. And part of this depends upon, what I would say is that it can be tailored to the type of change that is being enacted. Some changes are more radical or more substantial than others. And so what happened last time was that you came up with a system that largely preserved a lot of the status quo boundaries and did some other alterations but did not create sort of this marooning of individual representatives. And so you could have an extension that seemed to work. Thank you. We have two folks online who want to speak. Gabe, you were on, did you change your mind or did your question get answered? Well, no, it didn't get answered. Just maybe a quick question. I guess I'm just looking to understand better the decision making process by this body. So, how are we all going to decide what you bring to the council to consider? And like, how is the stakeholder input from the public considered? Is it basically who you're hearing from the most or the most well articulated arguments that you'll consider? I'm trying to jump in at least from my perspective. What we're charged to do is to bring to the city council what we hear. So not necessarily our own opinions as individuals, although we could certainly add that, but we're really supposed to be kind of a conduit, if you will, for what you all are telling us to the city council. So we're going to include information from all three meetings, as well as we also have a lot of written comments that are coming in as well. So we're going to make sure those are included. We're not going to actually make a recommendation. That's actually not our job. It's more to pass through that information. So that's where, so whether people are articulate or not, as long as we understand what they're telling us, we're going to report that to the city council. Thank you. Okay, great. So I think, Carolyn, Karen, you are next. Thank you for making me appreciate it. That's fine. So my name is Karen Long, and I live in Ward one. The last time this was done, Ward one was underrepresented and severely. It was still when you redistrict. So nothing was solved last time. So I hope this time you will correct that. And I am. I think you should break up the student ward. I think that Ward eight has not been helpful for us. I know that we kind of took them under our wing for award and PA meetings and we get, you know, one to four people. There are people that come. It's not really popular. Basically, I think that by creating Ward eight you really hurt our longtime homeowners that live in Ward one and Ward six, and you bunch them in with Ward eight, and that did not help anything. It's really hard to get people to help with the election process. So, and you know how did you come up with that. It seems illegal to have made that snake like district that was done so please address that and remove that. I also feel that the at large districts are. They just don't work they represent too many constituents and it's not helpful we are really leads to under representation. So I would like to see you get rid of that. And you know maybe if seven words is, you know, maybe we need nine words, you know, like, if that seems to be the problem that if we get rid of this Ward eight which to me was the total number here, then, you know, maybe try something else. I guess basically that I've been listening to people and we all it seems like there's a lot of people that realize that the so called student ward has not really been a benefit for us. So I'd like to see you address that. And we should have equal representation. If you look at the charts. Certain awards are way over represented and really the closer to downtown we are the more underrepresented we are. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Do you want to address staff want to address that at all. No. Okay, I'm not forgotten about the survey I'm going I'm saving I've got it on my list so don't worry I just want to make sure that the folks who have their hands up get get her will just give you can we just keep going. Yeah. Okay, you have to get the microphone so she can hear you. And then we're going to go to you Barbara we have not forgotten about you. Sorry, Karen, can you explain a little bit by which would you mean by underrepresented and overrepresented because the math is how that works but I'm just curious what you mean. I'm still on the per, you know, for the number of people in Ward one, and our counselor and a half that we have. There are a lot more people in Ward one for one and a half counselors than in other words it's all, it's a big chart. It's you know I've I've looked at the math that's, it's a form, you know, a chart that I saw. Like just factual I believe Richard Hilliard had the chart I saw it from him. So, yeah, it's just like the facts the numbers of people that live in Ward one, and the number of people that live in other words, we have less. Yeah, we have a lot more people in Ward one and the same number of reps as in other words. Okay, thank you, Karen. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. You want to. May, may I present a point of information. Sure. Christopher Aaron Felker. So I, I, I understand that we base every decision of solely primarily upon census data and I think that is incredibly important to this but at the same time we should recognize a somewhat transient nature that takes place in Burlington people come to Burlington and they might live some place for a year but they might bounce to a different ward. And so there's additional data and information out there that can be also beneficial to this process including say voter turnout in an area or how many people actually are actually still residing there and that data can be referred to because our, our voter data might not be as current as we'd like it to be. And so we could reach out to the postmaster general and try and cross reference that data to make sure that people are accurately represented in our city where they actually are. Okay, I'm going to go to Barbara right now Hendrick. Yep. Okay, hi everybody. Hi. So, I appreciate Robert pointing out the pinch point on North Avenue. And I also appreciate him mentioning the idea, again, of combining wards four and seven. I think maybe we should look at that and having one word out there. And maybe having three city counselors represent the combined wards four and seven. But the real message I wanted to use my time for is to explain that it would be really bad idea to take Robinson Parkway and South Prospect Street part of South Prospect Street. That's near Maple Street and combine that into Ward eight. I think it would be a bad idea to extend Ward eight down Main Street to Edmonds, as was one time suggested along, you know, in the last reiteration, because Main Street is largely again, a lot of student housing. So even though they aren't on campus, it ends up putting too few single families and long term residents in with, you know, four to 6000 students and ends up being that the long term residents aren't getting good representation and good voice because the students just aren't that involved in our community. So I encourage you please to keep Robinson Parkway and the east side of South Prospect Street with the west side of South Prospect Street and clip Street and the farce height sparse road and, you know, with us keep us with Ward six don't parse us off into any type of modified ward eight. Thank you so much. Thanks Barbara. George, do you want to talk a little bit about the survey. Is this a good time or or whoever knows about the survey. Are you the person who knows. Okay, so oh so maybe I'm one of the CETO folks can you give us an update on the survey and where we're at. Maybe we don't have anyone over there is Ethan on the line. Ethan are you there. Hi, yeah I'm here. That is not really an area that I'm involved in. Unfortunately, but you can always reach out to our front desk. I think Bridget is the one that you've been in contact with George. Okay. So sorry about that. Okay so unfortunately we don't have any on the spot even. Yeah sorry, we don't have an answer for that tonight apologies. Have people seen it. I mean, I wonder, has anyone. No, okay so I'm assuming it has not gone out broadly at this point because none of us have seen it. So I will follow up with CETO with Bridget and find out where we're at on that it's kind of out of the committee's hands at this point so apologies that we don't have more information. But we'll try. Richard, did you want to add something you're going to have to come to the microphone if you don't mind or grab that one. So, one of the questions you asked Diane was, what is the committee hearing and the most contentious apart from actual physical boundary lines the most contentious thing that I've heard is, and it's come up a little bit this evening is the notion of at large districts versus districts are at large counselors of value. Does it drive expensive campaigns, etc. So, to me that's the most contentious general thing that we've come across. And are you mostly hearing negative about it from what you've heard both both sides both sides, which is if anyone is zooming or in the room that wants to speak. Contra to Lea's or Christopher's gave did earlier. And if there's anyone else would be good to hear that because I think that's something that that people are divided on. Okay. The second thing. We really have to understand the elephant in the room, which is how the city is going to behave by the city. I mean city hall. Morel. One of the problems last time. Robert is, is no, no, no, it's not is that one of the mantras was smaller city council. And we got a smaller city council. One of the possibilities that was mooted last time is what about a 15 city counts 15 person city council, which would be the traditional seven wards. An extra counselor between wards one wards six to account for the gerrymandered ward eight. And I'm just throwing that back out there. It went down like a lead balloon last time. And I don't know what the, I haven't done the algorithms on the latest census data to see to what extent would be viable this time. But that's a note that was an alternative that went down the drain, but it is an option. To explain the idea would be that you had seven wards. Two counselors per ward, except ward one and ward six, which are basically joined by the university. And you would have an extra counselor at large for ward one plus ward six. Ward eight would disappear. Yes. So six, six and one would be one and a half. Six and one would be five sitting counselors between the two. I mean, they, they had a proposition for that for the new north then. Yeah. But do you understand what I'm saying? You understand what I'm saying. I do, but I've never heard them saying that I understand now, but it's news to me. Okay. Good. Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it. We are going to go back remote and Lee looks like you're up. I just want to comment that that last discussion that took place. One person was off mic. So we don't know. Yeah, we only got one side of that. I've taken some notes as people have spoken and I'd like if it is the city attorney still there. Yep, I see you. Because we're going to need you to bring in on this. Christopher talked about, he's talking about voters, the numbers of voters. And redistricting is not related in any way to the number of voters in each voting district. It is strictly residents residents in each district. So when Karen said that Ward one is underrepresented, I that confused me Karen because Ward one and Ward eight by the numbers were equal at the time. Now I understand that it turned out that UVM under reported something and that resulted in a problem after the fact. But when those wards were established, the number of residents in Ward one, excuse, I'm sorry about the dog barking and the number of residents in Ward eight were equalized. If somebody was speaking like they were off mic. No, it was that keep going like okay on the second or third slide that Megan presented. It was under the under considerations of the previous previous redistricting group and their priorities. It was one there that puzzled me it said, small. I don't know if it was small voting district or small whatever small area would have meaningful representation. Towards the end of the slides, we're talking about equalized representation with a 10%, the maximum 10% deviation. So, and then Richard starts talking about an extra ward with an at large, I mean, come on, we want equal voting districts. That's what the law requires the law has nothing to do with how many voters are in one district or whether there's a lot of students in one district. The law requires that the number of residents as per the census be equalized in each voting district. Now we know that we can have districts that have two representatives or three like we have with the state legislature now. And I just want to point out that the, the apportionment committee at the state level has recommended smaller districts one representative per district. Now that doesn't mean that the incumbents and the legislature won't overrule that for their own self interest. But the state committee that looked at and recommended the very best possible way of doing this small districts, one representative per district, or it could be to per district, but an equal number per district. Karen, you referred to that board eight looking like a snake. Karen, it's a salamander. It's an orange salamander. Okay. The eyes, I think was Richard talking about combined and Robert to combining word for and word seven and having five representatives or whatever. I really think we need to keep it simple. Small districts equal number of representatives in each district. Christopher talked about the seven and two. People I talked to, like the seven voting districts with two representatives per district. The pro and con of at large Richard, maybe you came a little late, the very first person who spoke during public forum advocated strongly for at large and reiterated a number of reasons why he advocated for at large. Then Christopher spoke and gave the other point of view. So I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't an all all one sided discussion of that large. Can you wrap up because we have a number of people. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I'm just gonna let Chris go first because he's been waiting quite a while. Chris you're up. Thanks. I think Lee kind of made one of my points but speaking as an individual I think one of the things that's important for me in the process is the content you know that the districts to the words be contiguous. And that you know they'd be close to equals possible and I know that there's, I think a 10% threshold that can be met but really, I think kind of tight to what Lee was saying. In my view, we should really endeavor to try to get these as close to equals possible. And I think that you know we should be able to do that based upon the data that's being provided to us. And then the other thing is is, you know, Burlington has always been an inclusive community. And there's been a lot of comments about the war day and with the student community and it's like, kind of feel like, you know, we should be welcoming them into the community and just kind of putting them to their own little district I don't know what kind of message that sense but I want folks to feel like they're part of the larger community that they live in. And I think that you know that's something we should be looking at as well. Thanks Chris, Barbara you had had your hand up did you want to make. Did you want to say something. Thank you. Okay, all right. Okay, Megan's going to go and then we'll go to Robert. Okay, so there's someone who hasn't identified themselves but has generally expressed a concern that there's not enough balance between long term residents and student residents and Ward eight concerned about the transient nature of that ward, and the idea that was suggested about two counselors for seven words and one at large counselor, representing the university area between Ward one and six. And then another person commented with a concern that the way Ward eight is drawn right now, without including Robinson Parkway and Summit Street South prospect doesn't include more permanent residents in Ward eight. So there were just some additional comments that were shared about that issue. Great. Thank you Megan and Robert you want to speak. Okay, so there's, there's a few different things that come up. I'm going to say this very quickly about Ward eight. In 2013 the very first eight ward map that I drew did have Henderson and Robinson and the mayor's house part of summit that was in Ward eight. The mayor was okay with it. But some counselors in Ward six were not. And, and I won't go through more of the history but that's that is what that's what happened to that. There's a more compact ward eight, but the folks in Henderson and Robinson maybe weren't happy about being in it, or their counselor. I want to say something about this thing with the Ward one and Ward six and an extra counselor. This sounds a lot like what was suggested eight years ago there was a third a couple of different 13 counselor maps. And one version had a large Ward four that had three counselors where everybody else had two counselors. And what that meant was that for those of us in the new north end, it meant that one year, we would be electing one counselor. And then the staggered year, we would be electing two counselors, and it would be the top two vote getters would win, which is kind of normally happens. Different rules for us. I don't know. And this has to a little bit to do with the district, the state district anything, but when you have top two vote getters, you have a different voting dynamic that happens. And it was something that the new north end was looking at nobody else was. And it was another version of the 13 counselor map was a ward four with two counselors and a ward seven with just one counselor. And then there's even another version had a ward four with just one counselor and Ward seven with two. But the problem with that is that that Ward say seven with one counselor is really a half of a ward. And those persons would only get to weigh in every other year on their console. They couldn't weigh in every year, like everybody else in the city. All they could do is they'd have to sit out one year and then weigh in the next year on that and that was considered unfair. And so at least that was where I was actually getting involved where I had had a real opinion. We wanted to have the same rules for everybody. And so that then it was back to how many wards, how many counselors per ward, how to do that. Now, this is kind of how the district thing happened. And it was because they didn't want to and the mayor was dead set against it and some others. They didn't want to have 16 counselors. If we had eight ward map. And so, you know, 16 counselors was two counselors per ward, eight counselors would have been one counselor per ward, but that was considered too small. And so it's essentially this was one and a half counselors per ward. That's basically what we have. We have one and a half counselors per ward for Ward seven. We get half of Mark Barlow Ward four gets the other half of Mark Barlow. It's pardon me. We get the better you get the better half. All right. But anyway, it's not necessarily pretty. It's ugly, but it did. It did have some geographical distribution. It was a little bit halfway between at large and districts. It was a semi at large. And I don't it's ugly. I don't like it. But it was it was the solution at the time. How are we going to not increase city council? How are we going to keep seven wards about the same as they were before? 82% of the city got to stay in the same ward. How are we going to satisfy the constitutional requirements of having equal population within 10%. And then how are we going to keep Ward six folks happy because of the other problem with the original eight ward map was that Ward six lost their voting place. It would have put Edmund school into Ward eight. And so that last modification that happened was there also to put Edmund school back into Ward six. And it was it was it was an ugly solution, but it was about the only solution that they were able to get through. And this slugfest didn't happen in the redistrict committee. And it really happened in city council. Thanks, Robert. We got two more people in the room. I just is there anyone who has not spoken who would like to speak. I just want to make sure you get a chance. Anyone remote. Please put your hand up. Okay. What do we got? We got a Dave Hartnett. And then Jim. Okay. What do we do? We'll go one, two, three. And then I think we're going to do our mentee poll pretty soon. So stay tuned. I just like to make a last couple of comments. Robert was right. It was a slugfest. It was a slugfest at the council. And nobody was in love with this format of the districts. And so that's where I came to say, okay, well, that's what redistricting is all about. This isn't about what counselors should want. This isn't about self serving our cell phone interests. This is about putting a fair method out there. And this was the fairest that we could come up with. And so was I in love with it? No. Do I hope to get rid of the districts this time? Yes. Right. Do I think and I kind of disagree a little bit with Richard? I think the most consistent message we've heard since these meetings have started is nobody likes Ward 8. And then I would jump to the seven wards and two counselors each. But I haven't heard one positive thing about Ward 8 at any of these meetings. And the last thing I'll say and Lee touched on this and I'll say it again because it's really simple. Right. We are all very close to this. We think we understand it. We want to understand it. But 8 out of 10 people in Burlington have two jobs raising their family, working hard. Don't even have a clue this is going on. Won't even have a clue this is going on until they told where to go vote and all this stuff. If we can keep it fair and simple with as little changes as possible to people's lifestyles, we would be winning this. Okay. And I think that's the message. Fair, consistent and don't change it so much where people are so confusing that they don't understand it. Thanks. Thanks, Dave. You guys can work it out. We've got some folks in the room and no one remote at the moment. Hi, my name is Greg Schupler. First of all, just would agree with what Dave just mentioned that although our charge is to gather community input. As he mentioned, you know, somewhat close to 80% of the people just are not real tuned into this. And it's that's difficult to get community input when a lot of people are not really aware of what's going on. I mean, the devil is in the details. This is this is thick stuff. And if you haven't been a part of some of the meetings, it's tough to answer a survey even a simple survey. Well, you know, how do you do that without a certain level of understanding that is going to be worthwhile and effective in the long term? I will mention that since I represent Ward 5, I have received some emails from people and since our charge is to gather input from community members, I would like to spend a couple of minutes just reading some of that input into the record because these folks did take the time to contact me and and I want to share that. And I'm not putting this out here to ascertain the the truthfulness of their comments. They're just comments. So no one really needs to latch on to them and debate them. We should just honor the comments that that that people have put forth. And would you also send those over to CEDA so they can add them to the written comments? Yes, certainly. Thank you. Okay, one Ward 5 member says the city would be better run and all would be better represented with less in fighting and more cooperation. And most importantly, counselors who would be forced to consider the impact of their decisions and actions on all residents and all areas, not just their ward, if we had all counselors at large. At the recent NPA meeting, someone else spoke for Ward 5, someone else spoke about the one member districts. He did advocate and like the simplicity of it. At the same time, he also mentioned that city council is overwhelmed. They're not professional legislators. They're busy. And this person felt that that would be better off if we had more city counselors rather than less. And lastly, here's one that reads regarding the redistricting of Burlington. And after reviewing the presentation materials and also a brief history of Burlington redistricting through the years, I have formed the following opinions. I think that a simplification of the city council would be best. A reduction of wards would create a council that not only represented its constituents better, but also one that would be more efficient and effective at moving forward on matters of all kinds. I propose that we look at reducing Burlington into maybe three wards and have three at-large city counselors. We also keep our districts and those city counselors for a more regional perspective on issues. With this reduction of city counselors, it would mean that voters would have more influence over city matters with more simplified representation rather than what we have now, which is diluted and divided council, where citizens feel like they are powerless in making changes in the city. As a voter, I only have influence over two of our 12 city counselors. How disheartening and frustrating is this? I find this ward, which means Ward 5 here, takes to complaining about issues a lot in hopes of other city counselors hearing us. In reality, they could care less about what Ward 5 has to say. They don't represent Ward 5. Also on the flip side, we as citizens would be more connected to each other if there were larger wards. As a south-ender, I am less invested in what happens on campus or downtown per se, but if I were combined with that area of the city, I would feel the desire to be more informed and considerate of those issues that affect my fellow citizens. I would love to see a city that represents its people better and where people really feel their votes matter over city issues. I would also love to see a city council that is more efficient and effective, be that for what I believe or not. And that is a Pine Street resident, Monica Kikinsnimi. Great. Thanks so much. Really appreciate that. The wards have been talking a lot about this issue, so it's great to get some of the feedback. We appreciate that. So, other comments? I think we might move to the poll. Oh, we got one more. Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to miss you. Oh, got you. Okay. We have two more in the room, and then I think we'll go to the poll. Yeah, I just had two quick things. This might be more for the recap meeting that we're going to have, but hopefully this could inspire some more thoughts from the public. Two things that struck home with me were keeping the voting scheme or the city council scheme simple seems like a very good suggestion because getting into the weeds of this very complicated process. I think the easiest way to create a fair system is to not add more complexity to it. And then the other thing would be the suggestion that maps are multiple options for maps are put to the public. I think this is a way of cutting through all the complexity that leads up to drawing the maps and allows the public to give feedback directly on the end result. And like I said, that cuts through a lot of the complicated nuances of redistricting. So I think that is something that hopefully the rest of the committee agrees with me on is that it's something we've struggled from from the beginning is how do we even garner feedback without showing people maps. Yeah, so the the one and a half. I think whoever said the one and a half counselor compromise was to satisfy the shrink the size of the council mantra. And my recollection was that that was driven by incumbents. I didn't hear it much from anybody else. And that really points to the fact that what what our job was is to get the community voice. And we as a committee have talked a lot. But if I count the people who have spoken that I wanted to have taken notes on anybody, especially if they're not a committee member, our community voice thus far is is under 30 maybe in the entire city that city voice this this process. You know, I don't want to create conflict, but the truth is a slug fest increases participation, unfortunately. But the fact that we're trying to keep it peaceful, we're trying to ask people for an opinion before a single map or single rule has has been made. I've said it in each of these meetings. This process is just us being asked to be recorders and simply say to the city counselors what they could see if they just watch these meetings where this is is not a process by which you've gotten community voice. And I respect CEDO very much. I always have. But wherever the ball got dropped, if it's in CEDO on this this survey, that's what I was counting on for community voice, because it certainly has not been advertised well enough to get participation into the room. So we're going to decide for the next 10 years how how these lines are who what the rules are at the very core of of democracy based off of maybe a participation of 30 people. Because we now we don't have this the survey that we were counting on as at least some way to get more voices. The whole thing that I respect the people who tried to put it together. I respect their reasoning, but front loading it and putting the NPA as the the here here's our public process. Last time we didn't like the NPAs and how they did the the the public process and and tried really hard to push back some of the the manipulation like the shrink the council mantra. That's what happened is it was elected officials at the time trying to create a mantra and ultimately they did and ultimately many of them don't like what came out of it now. So what I as a closing remark, I do want to say this thus far has not been a fair balanced community voice when I'm sitting there thinking about if I were to write my list of what I've heard. I haven't heard enough beyond the people who are sitting here who are only supposed to be note takers so we can pass it on to City Council. It is it is not an appropriate public participation. It is so you can check a box. So with that I also want to point out that within the conversation the people who have paid attention to committee members who've either done it once or twice at least there's been a lot of great ideas. And unfortunately no matter which way someone else goes we are going to have compromise. And so I do want to say that that when we say you can't do a seven word you can't do an eight word you can't do a nine word you can't do a six word. No we can we can do any of those but they are going to mean some compromises. And I'm really hoping that this is not the end of public participation but it so far that's what it's been spelled out as I'm just very disappointed with the process. Thanks Jim and so I'm trying to represent word eight but I don't think I've heard from one single UVM students. I know how my non student neighbors feel loud and clear not all of them have spoken up. They haven't submitted formal comments to me but I know how they feel without exception. They don't like the way the boundaries of the word are drawn but I do worry that we're not getting a lot of representation representation of what people think. And I'm also intrigued about this public comment that people are getting from people in their district are we supposed to be soliciting comments from people in our district in our ward. And then I guess the final thing is the survey because the survey will be an opportunity for more people to participate in the process. And we've got one more Lee and then I think we're going to go to the survey is that work for you Megan. Good minty. Okay. Yeah. Okay Lee. I want to thank Jim hallway and I concur with what he said 100%. There's a big difference between the redistricting process this time, and last time, and that is, there is going to be a meaningful vote. Last time it was pushed up until the last minute. City councilors threatened voters that they dare not vote it down because if they did we could get a lawsuit. It's not going to be that way this time. The calendar we've seen is that their a proposal is going to be made in April. There's going to be a vote in November. Now why November and not town meeting. That's another question I have. This is a town meeting issue. Really not a November issue, but at any rate, there's going to be plenty of time. And the reason for this public these public meetings is to give council a sense of how strongly people feel about one thing or another. And if they mess around with it like they did last time and come up with that cockamamie district or at large or whatever, there's going to be a strong campaign launched to get a no vote on the redistricting proposal. Nobody wants that because it sends it back to back to zero and they have to start the whole thing all over again. So it it beholds the city to get a fair reading of how citizens feel how residents feel about this. And as Jim says, we're definitely not getting it in these public forums. Thank you. Thank you, Lee. I'm going to let Megan take over the mentee poll that some of you have already done, but we'll do it again. This is looking at the criteria that we have for redistricting and giving you a chance to do a voting process, if you will, to look at some of the criteria that are most important to you. And here is can everyone hope everyone can see that in the virtual. Is that right folks to see it. Yeah. Okay, good. You want to talk about this Megan. Sure. So this is one of the forms of a straw pool that Dan mentioned earlier that the committee has used at their meetings to just get some input from folks in the room about some of the criteria that we've been talking about and quantify them. So if you visit mentee.com M E N T I dot com and enter the code 36421688. You can participate in two questions to help give your feedback about how important a number of criteria are to you in this redistricting process. The first asks you to consider the criteria related to how to divide the council seats. So that is issues like the number of wards or districts, the number of counselors, whether we have out large counselors, how many representatives per ward and whether preservation of incumbency is important. This will also be posted on the CDO website through Wednesday if you aren't you aren't able to access it tonight. But again, it's T dot com. And you enter the code 36421688. And as folks are voting, I'm actually going to bring up a screen so we can see how these are being voted on. There we go. So far, three people have indicated their order of importance for these criteria. So we can start to see an average vote in terms of the ranking here of the people that are participating. We see that having multiple representatives per ward is one of the higher ranked criteria and one of the most important criteria. We'll see how as more polls come in. Okay, the next question in this poll. Oops, I'm sorry, it looks like we just got a couple more. You'll be able to keep voting. But I think it looks definitely like from the folks that are participating at this moment that the number of representatives per ward is one of the most important factors here. The next question asks you the same the same exercise. Giving your preference on the importance of these criteria related to how to draw district boundaries. So things like keeping neighborhoods and geographic areas intact, whether we want to consider the relationship between city and state districts. The question that was talked about a lot tonight about student population, etc. So you can rank each of these criteria from a one to five with one being the least important and five being the most important. We have a tie. Do we have a time. Yeah, we have a tie between a whistle. Yeah. While these votes are coming in. There is a hand raised. I am if you would like to take any more comments. Sure. Go ahead. I can't see it. So I don't know who it is. It's Barbara Hedrick Barbara go ahead. I think that the wording on keep neighborhoods slash geographic areas intact can be misleading, because again you take Robinson Parkway. And we're really part of the neighborhood that includes summit south of maple and cliff street. So geographically, you might consider is us part of the university campus because we're on the east side of South prospect so I would like to yes have my neighbor be intact with my residential neighborhood, but I don't want to be lumped in with the university. I think how that one is unclear. When you have little streets like Robinson Parkway that are geographically an elbow into the university. Thank you yeah that the comment was recorded your your feedback on that was recorded. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. It looks like we have five people who have submitted their feedback on this one as well so you can see the rough level of prioritization among those folks so. This this poll these two questions will be available on the CETO website with the minutes from tonight's meeting through Wednesday at 4pm. If you know of anybody who would like to wasn't here tonight but would like to weigh in on these questions. Thank you Megan so please pass along to your friends family etc etc. I'm I think at this point we're going to do next steps although I think we've gone over them quite a few times at this point, but we do have a slide of next steps yes. Oh we have one. We have a hand up wait. Let's just let Jeff. Yes, Jeff, please. Yes, this is a question for attorney Richardson on your slide set on constitutional requirements number two. Where you talk about the 10% deviation being allowed for states but not usually for municipalities. Is it possible to do a sort of a quick overview of the law behind that distinction because I've heard Tom little with the legislative apportionment board talk about how the state having more flexibility to vary from 10% to 10% and why are municipalities held to a tighter standard. Thank you. Sure. I mean I think the, the short answer and somewhat pithy answer is that we're smaller. You're dealing with smaller populations. It's easier to get closer to an even divide. When you're talking about parsing a municipality as opposed to a state. So is there actually case law to that question. There there is. I don't have the cases in in front of me, but in general, what what the courts look to obviously the goal is one person one vote. That's the constitutional standard. What states have accepted for deviation, you know, varies, and it's a very fact specific set of circumstances. Some of the presentations I've talked about, you know why that fact specific result may have may come out it could be because of geographical issues. And I use the example of Granville which is separated physically by a mountain. So part of it is, and that might make a difficulty in creating even districts because it would force a district that would straddle the mountain. It's actually the why the reason Baltimore Vermont exists as a separate entity from Cavendish because they got sick of driving over the mountain to go to town meetings so they started their own. But these are, you know, practical concerns. The thing is, is that when you're dealing with smaller numbers and you can be more precise and exact. The court is going to hold you to that standard. And so, you know, what we do with the 10% deviation is that's a safe harbor there are cases out there that say 10% you know is generally good if you've worked and you've tried to get it and you're within that 10% 10% zone. And I think some other people have spoken and said, you know, you don't want to be at like 9.5% at the beginning of your 10 year term because that sets you up for, you know, put you out of compliance much quicker. But it's the idea that because you're dealing with say, you know, look at we're dealing with state of the city of Burlington 44,000 people, as opposed to what Tom Little's dealing with which is, you know, 650,000 people over a much broader and diverse geographic area. So courts are more forgiving when those challenges arise, knowing that it doesn't make sense to take one person, you know, from, say, Starksboro, and stick them into, you know, a district with weights field when they may never have communicated and when it's only like a handful of people from Starksboro who will never ever vote, you know, the majority of the town of the weights field. You know, I think I think courts have recognized that that's a that those can be practical limitations that may cause it to stretch a little bit. And certainly in Burlington, you know, we do have geographic features. The intervail as I've pointed out before and others that that may require a certain, you know, how we bend and how we how we set up these districts because going back to the constitutional requirements were to get as close to even as possible, but we have to do it in a contiguous manner. And we can't have divided districts or wards. All right, thank you for that. Thanks. Any other questions or comments before we wrap up. Hey, this is Ethan. Sorry about earlier I just double checked with some of my colleagues and the survey has been distributed, both on social media and front porch form is what I'm getting. Are you sure the results of those we you would know that we don't have access to that. So I don't know what the results are. Okay, so more information to follow on that, I think, and hopefully we'll have that we have a next we have a next meeting of our committee on December 15 that 630 at con toys. That's going to be kind of our wrap up meeting. We're working on the agenda for that now we'll have that out soon. And that's our our immediate next step. After that, we will have a what I'm calling a memo to the council by the middle of January. And we we've been asked to make a presentation the end of January early February to the council. We don't have a date for that yet. But that's that's at least what the council is going to be doing. I mean, we're going to be at how committee is going to be doing. And then you saw the longer process that we still are waiting on more details from the city council. So I think with that, I'm going to wrap it up and thank you all so much for participating. We really appreciate it. I think it's been a great meeting. I feel like we got a lot of information. You had raised your hand. I don't know if you still have a question. I think we're okay. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you all so much again. And hopefully we'll see you soon. Good night.