 Okay, so percent. So this is the meeting of the district advisory board, September 14, 2021, and percent up to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public for which to access the meeting may do so in the following manner. We assume on the webinar ID eight to four, one, four, four, eight, three, three, five, five. No inference, no impersonal attendance of members of the public will be permitted and public participation in any public hearing conducted during this meeting shall be very non means only. Okay. Okay. So I mass apologize I didn't open the agenda in time. So let me open the agenda. The first item is always public comment and I think there's nobody but give me one second so that I can open the agenda. Oh, Tracy can't find the panelists link. I got an email. Hold on one second. Okay, something to it. Yep. Let me see. Okay, sending it. Yeah, I'm sorry about the delay. So if there's no. There's seven. In the 70s, Tracy or there's an attendee. Here comes Tracy, I'm going to move her. It looks like somebody has their hand up. That was Tracy. She was in the attendees. Okay. And she also had her hand up and here she comes. Great. Okay. So if there is no public comment, there's time to make public comments at the end of the meeting as well. So we continue with the agenda. And the next item is to approve the meetings. No, the first thing we're going to have to change slightly the order because Joseph is not here. And he said he requested that somebody else takes minutes because he won't be able to do the minutes of this meeting. So I need a volunteer to take the minutes for this meeting. Anyway, I'm hearing music. I'm hearing music also. Somebody has music on. We need one volunteer to have the minutes because Joseph said he cannot make it this week. All right, I'll do it. Thank you, Peggy. Thank you, Peggy. Thank you. So you can do it real time or as Joseph does it with the video. Yeah, I'll see. I'll see you guys. Okay. Thank you very much. So the next item on the agenda is to approve the minutes of last meeting of the meeting of September 8. I didn't see them in the packet. Or when did they get added? Joe sent them to me this morning. So they got out right after. So I'm going to call people. People have time to go over them or we postpone the discussion until next time. Since it was added so late. I did go over them, but since Joseph is not here, I'm wondering if we should just wait. Okay. So then. So I move that we postpone the discussion. We take over the discussion until next meeting. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So the minutes of September 8. I second that. Okay. So time in parks. I think we have to vote. My last day. Hi. Craig Meadows. Hi. Peggy Shannon. Hi. Tracy Safian. Hi. You didn't have any. So the motion passes. So we postpone the discussion. Okay. So we have to go over the discussion until. Next. Meeting. I'm sorry. I have too many windows open and I have to find. The next item to discuss is there. Does anybody have any announcement. To make. I do. Okay. Just very briefly. I was speaking with Mindy Dom. Our. Representative the other day. Just sort of catching her up to where we're at and what we were thinking. And she. She was well informed, of course, already. And. Said that whatever support we need or want, if there's anybody we want. Need to. For her to advocate for us and at the state house or anything that she is ready to do that. So. Excellent. Because. I was thinking that we might have. To contact somebody to see. Whether we can get. Some recommendation regarding the number of people in each. Precinct. Whether that's going to raise. Whether. They can tell us in advance. So when we discuss the, the response from the state that I got this week. We got partial response to the questions that we had last week. So maybe. I'm wondering whether she can help us. Find the answer to the second part of the question because we have not. Heard back. Tracy. So I have a related comment to that. So. I mean, I had. Well, Midi down was tabling at the farmers market a few weeks ago. Right. And so I talked with her then. Both about. Our committee, but then also about, you know, other town issues and so on. But. So I had been under the impression that. In terms of, you know, our, our maps need to get voted on and approved by the local. Election. Whatever it districts. For the board review commission. Sorry. And I had been under the impression just like with the. Representing. Board that's looking at like statewide with congressional precincts that. That that. Entity like was part of the legislature. But then I realized when I looked into it, that the local election. District review commission is actually part of the secretary of the Commonwealth's office. And I had been under the impression just like with the district review commission. And that was why I just had that I asked Sue to just include that part of the state statutes in the. In our packet for this week. Just as an information item. Because it's interesting because some of the correspondence, we've gotten from their office, like sort of says, well, this looks good to us, but we don't know what that redistricting committee is going to do. So you're going to need to get it approved by them. Like we can't actually confirm or deny that it's good or not. And it was really interesting to me to find out how that is composed at it's basically three representatives. There's an appointee from the attorney general's office. There's a pointy from the secretary. Of the state secretary of Commonwealth's office. And then there's also an appointee from the governor. I don't know who the other appointees are, but it's basically the three person committee. That is like the final approval checking at the state level. To say that our districts are okay. So I mean, I think it's great that Mindy Dom is willing to help us too, but I don't. Because it doesn't actually go through the legislature. I'm not sure how much. Her advocacy can help or not help. I mean, I think it's great that Mindy Dom is willing to help us too, but I don't know how much her advocacy can help or not help. I mean, I wish, I wish it wasn't the legislature and then we could get like her support and Joe Comifers and stuff. But so anyway, that was my take. And also I just had two other quick things. One is that I have to go pick up my child at six 30. And so I can be in the meeting, but on my phone for like probably like 10, 15 minutes. So if we have a quorum issue or anything, I can still be. I just won't be video. And also I was curious, like is Mike able to attend tonight or did you have Mike is going to be late? He has issues at home. And so he's going to be at. No, I was just, I was just checking. I think we can start with many things that don't require him. And then we might have to switch some order. Okay. Okay. Great. Thanks. Thank you. I want to let you all know that I have been working on a cost analysis, 10 precincts versus 15 precincts. I haven't posted anything yet because I'm waiting on some answers from some vendors, but just to give you a heads up. Payroll alone. Normal average preselection. 10 precincts is about $14,100 per election. 15 precincts would be 24,400. So a $10,300 difference roughly. Voting equipment. 14 tabulators right now is what we've got in the capital plan. For the new tabulators that will read the ranked choice voting ballot, we've priced out 14 tabulators and that's $80,300. And to have that go up to accommodate 15 precincts we're looking at, I get asked for 20 tabulators and that would be $114,000. So a $33,700 difference to purchase new equipment. And then we'd have like one time costs for supplies like ballot boxes, election supplied trunks, et cetera. So those would be one time costs and that came out to be roughly about, you know, $2,500. And then each time there's an election we have ballot printing encoding and the ballot itself for 10 precincts for the printing encoding is 33,36. And for 15 precincts it would be 37,08. So a $372 difference. The only thing I'm waiting on now is programming for the handicap voter assist terminals. We program those flash cards that assist people in voting and marking their ballots. It's a marking machine. One good thing is I checked with the secretary of state's office. They're checking to see if they have supplies. But if they don't, we can share because if polling places if there were two in one, we can share one unit amongst two precincts. So we wouldn't necessarily have to even get new equipment. So that cost would be the same. So. Well, thanks. I think that will be important to share with the council, like as we go forward with the proposal. Oh, and I will say just for later lead to, I did ask Mindy Dom recently just about, you know, given the fact that there is more early voting now and so on if the legislature, if anybody at the legislature has proposed increasing the maximum number of residents per precinct like beyond 4,000. People and I never heard back from her on that, but I mean, that would be a question. You know, to ask at the legislative level. Cause I would, I would think long-term they might change it, but it might not. I think at this point, definitely not within our timeframe, but like, you know, it's not within our timeframe. And again, I think the issue about the 15 precincts, I think at this point we have certain commitment to go with 10 precincts as long as we are told. That that would not be allowed. Right. I think that's under the premise that we are working. Is that we are working with that 10 precincts unless. Nigel council tell us you are too close or the state tell us you are too close. You are not allowed. So that's a, that's the basic assumption that we're having. So the cost is informative. But at some point it would be beyond our decision. It's not. If we are told you cannot have 10. At something during this process, then. That's it. There's no much we can do. I mean, I was sort of, I mean, just in terms of how the local election. District review committee works is like, I doubt if, if our proposal like has the support of. The council that they would want to like micromanage what's happening at the local level in case they had like super concerns about the way we created our precincts and what they call them boards with our districts. Right. I just like, I mean, there's 351 municipalities in the state. And I don't think that they'd want to get involved in local decision making unless they thought there was a major issue personally, but. I, I forgot. We had one email that could have counted as public comment. I don't know. It was added this afternoon. So I am bringing it to everybody's attention because it was added this afternoon when we got as soon as we got it, we added to the packet. I think maybe that's. So I just want to make it. I just want to make everybody aware about this. Can you just do a quick recap of what the. So the, the message was from. That's a manager manager. I want to say her name properly. And essentially is that it's asking that we, when we're making the precincts, we also think how the districts we would be built. So this asking because. The district building, what they're considering this is. The district building has an impact on the maps and how voters perceive the maps. So to go beyond the precincts and look at also put information about district building. How would each map have an impact on the possibilities of district building. That's my. Okay. Thanks. Okay. So. Okay. So is there any other announcements to Mike? Yeah. So I, what at my, my taking, my interpretation was of the maps that we have published in the map, in the packets is I think Mandy Joe is saying, Hey, don't just show the precincts and the statistics there, but also show the districts and the statistics for those districts and also show the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the demographics. And she was also asking for age. Information, but that information is only available as estimated data from 2019. And I don't, I'm not comfortable personally mixing and matching datasets. I don't think that's the smart thing to do. So. I mean, we can do it if we decide to, but I. I don't agree with that. I think we've got to keep that in mind. And we've got to take on it. And how we proceed. Though I think we're getting into other items. We basically agree on the precincts and then we move ahead with, and look at like different options for the districts, but. I actually don't agree with that. But I think we can talk about that later. Definitely. Yeah. We should talk about that later. I wanted to ask. I remember what they meant. And I wanted to bring it up. So I'll give it a attention. So they, So we have a general updates. I think part of all of this is part of the general updates. Tracy, you had asked to put this at the item separate as general updates. Oh, I mean, I think that was before when we didn't have any, I mean, it's a little bit redundant with announcement, we can maybe take off one of the items or something. So that day with the communication of the state. That's a separate item. This was, I said, oh, great, you have a. Well, I saw that Tammy had her hand up and, and we keep on talking over each other. Okay. When we want, when we want to talk and you can recognize them ever. Okay. Yeah, sure. I don't know if anyone else had difficulties looking reading some of the documents in today's packet. I had difficulties with two of the PDFs. It told me that I had to get a Adobe reader, which I had. And I'm working with Max and Apple products, but I couldn't open them. It was the Mandy Joe email and then it was the email from the state. Yeah, we did talk about that. Okay. No. Peggy. So Marilyn, yes, we were talking about that before you came in. So having that issue. And Sue is going to see if there's an easy fix for that. But I can tell you what I did to get around it, which is that, because I also had Adobe installed. I downloaded the document. Opened Adobe and then open the document. Okay, I wasn't able to download the document, but I fortunately, my husband was able to do it. Yeah, but I think you have to have Adobe. So if you don't have Adobe. I've got Acrobat. I mean, I've got the reader. Okay. You know, so that was like, yeah, I have this. Okay. I think it's all the app. And I was actually with, you know, I already have those apps. I think it has a. I think it's a bad compatibility issue with other. New version versus old version and how it's safe. Okay. But maybe not. Tommy. I just wanted to say that in the meeting packet, I don't see Peggy Shannon's map. In there. And then I also see that Mandy Joe's letter does not mention Peggy's map. And so I, I guess I'm requesting that Peggy's map be added to the materials for this meeting. Okay. I see arena and Tracy's maps, but I don't see Peggy's. Hey, I'll do that right now. Yeah. So that was an oversight. So the, the maps that are in the package are new maps. Are different versions. Not the ones from last week. Okay. But we can bring in all the maps, the, the biggest map from last week as well. Yeah, I just think it would be good if you're going to have them, just have all of them. Okay. Look like that one was left off. Yeah. I'm sorry for the other side. Thank you. So based on the conversations that we had last week, I sent an email to. The state requesting. Asking two questions, whether with this, the maps that we had last week. Whether they would be suitable considering. And there would be suitable and whether the issue about being close to 4,000 would be an issue. We only got. Responses regarding to the shape of some of the precincts, particularly person five in. The map I had. But no response regarding the number of people in each person. So I sent it again. Focusing on that question. But I haven't heard back. So every ask. I only focus. I focus on. But I haven't heard back from the state. So based. Based on the comment that we got about. The shape of one of the precincts. That's why I created a new, a new map, a new version. Trying to leave it at rest. Maybe address a little bit of the issue. With one. The map I had created. And I hope to hear from the state. Regarding the numbers, but I think the, the issue was they didn't want to commit and say, yes, everything's okay. Or no, they won't. They say they don't decide that it's going to go. To another. Group. So they only can advise. Maybe raise some flags, but that's it. That was my take on. And I hope to hear from the state regarding the numbers, but I think the issue was they didn't want to commit and say, that's it. That was my take on. I mean, it, it, the power is with that advice. Like the district came review committee, right? So it's not with the. Yeah. And that. Peggy. Only that, you know, we have followed the rules. Yeah. And we sent in two maps and nobody said anything about there being an issue for a number of people. I think we should put it to rest. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's also, I also asked them if at some point we, there's another chance to send them the maps for, for comments before because we don't want them to be rejected. And I, again, they did not comment on that issue. Okay. Yes, Mike. So that is something that they were mentioned in a, in a reply. I can't remember if it was from Michelle. Yeah, I can't remember if it was from Michelle. I don't know if it was from Michelle. I don't know if it was from Michelle or not, but they mentioned that. We have. The ability to participate in the, um, what is it? The ledrc. Is that it? Is that the acronym? Sue ledrc. In the ledrc. Hearing and. You know, if they have questions, we have the ability to make our case. I don't know. I imagine that it would be, you know, between the hours of nine and three. Um, during a work day. Um, but that might be something that we went to think about at some point, you know, if we get a hearing date. And we as a committee want to participate and make our voice heard. We should maybe at least have a representative there to. To make our case for why our district, why our numbers are so close to 4,000 and. I think we should make an effort. I don't know. Probably we don't even know which month it's going to be. We will decide it. But. I mean, I think also our report could speak to that too. Right. We explain like why, if anything looks quirky or something. Okay. The next item is about upcoming meetings and. Timeline. So I sent a, when it's good fall. Last week. Hoping to see, to try to schedule the next meetings. And. I have very few responses, but it seems that at least. We can have two meetings schedule. One is on a Tuesday, the September 28th. At six to eight PM. I'm sorry, Mike. I think there are only financial issues that I don't know if you can make it. Yeah, I'm muted. What day was this? September 28th. And what time is this? Six PM. Tuesday, September 28th. Six PM. I'll make it. I'll make it work. I might be late like it was today, but. I'll be there. And then Tuesday, October 5th, six to eight PM. Peggy. Only I noticed. I don't know if anyone else got the email from. I don't know. But she is not able to make any Tuesday meetings. And I appreciate that that. We may not be able to schedule around her, but I just want that noted. Yeah. I just replied to her email. I'm trying based on the, when it's good. And then. Well, can you just repeat what the next one is the one after the 28th is. Tuesday, October 5th. Again, six to eight PM. And then. And then we run into trouble the following week. Because we were not finding, I think the only time. Again, it was a Tuesday. I only got four responses. Sorry. I'm trying to, I'm hoping that other people can make it. That Tuesday, the earliest that we could start is seven PM. And I wanted to make sure before saying that time. Let's go ahead. I know that I was one of the people who couldn't meet earlier, but if everybody can meet at six, I can adjust that. And I'm going to go. I'm going to go run and get my kid. And then I'll be right back. Okay. Or if not, it could be Wednesday, but then I'll be right back. Okay. Or if not, it could be Wednesday, but Wednesday, October 13th is the day that we have to submit the material. So the material for the council has to be by Wednesday, October 13th. That's the day they wanted to have. They need to have it. So that's why I wanted to have a meeting just in case last minute. I wanted to have it on October 12th. If possible. Okay. Okay. So people would, if everybody would be able to make it at six PM, that would be great. Maybe it's a short meeting. Maybe we'll finish before the material, but I'll have in a meeting before we have to submit it to the council would be. Good to have. Okay. So we arranged that the next one is October. Okay. And hopefully we don't have to make any changes after submitting to the council on the, when they go over it. After they. Okay. The other. The things of the timeline is I put the document that they have a question. That they, they send us about. What's the procedure that we have to follow. Because I think at some point we're going to have to start working. Sooner than later on the report. That we have to submit. To justify. We're going to have to be justifying all the decisions that we have made. In creating the maps. So. I'm going to be asking for volunteers to have draft. The report. And maybe get started as we go along. Okay. So. I don't want to wait until the last minute. To start writing. Does anybody have any question about the timeline. Sorry. I just, I just want to make sure that I have the time and dates right for the next couple of meetings. So the next meeting would be the 21st at 530. Is that correct? That was sent at one point. I just want to make sure. I just want to make sure that. I just want to make sure that. I just want to make sure that. I just want to make sure that. I just want to make sure that. Six. Six. Okay. There's two of, and then October 5th at six. Yes. 12th at six. Yes. And then the 13th is when we need to report. Yes. All right. Just want to confirm. Thank you. Okay. So the next item. It's about. Rules and regulations. I was. We are going so fast with the timelines. We only have a week and it's usually when the work gets tennis over the weekend. I'm sorry, Mike. He gets to put the match together on Monday or sometimes even the weekend. But I don't know if people would be okay to ask that emails be sent. That if there's public comment, that is going to be sent by email to be sent by Monday night or the night before the meeting. So there's at least this email that we got today was in the afternoon. So it was very deep. Turn around for everybody to see. We are trying to get as much material before. Monday, actually to put in the package, but. Maybe we could clarify that we hope to get. Public comment by Monday night so it can be uploaded in time. To the package. I don't want to say we want to incorporate it, but we want to make an effort to try. It's. It's better for everybody to read. We could get it in before. Okay. Okay. Um, packet material, Adam, the maps, I think we, that's our next item. And I think we've been. I'm tired of being discussing something along the way. Um, I don't know. I don't know. Um, I don't know. Um, Some things are the documents that Tracy put on the package, but she's not Tracy. Can you talk? Um, She put some, she has to upload some information regarding, um, Who has authority. Yes. Yeah, I can talk for her, um, because she asked me to put it on there. Um, so basically she, um, just let me go there. It's in the reference materials. It's MGL here. Yeah. It's in the reference materials for all meetings. It's under that. Board or that packet. Folder. Um, and it's MGL chapter 54 sections one, two and four, which is what it stays in our charge that we are. Having to abide by. And so that's what. Um, defines how to re precinct and all of the different parameters. I think. And I think she wanted to put it in there because it says no more than 4,000 inhabitants. That was her main purpose, but so it's in there for reference. Okay. And the other material that I mentioned in the past is, um, the frequently asked questions regarding representing that, uh, I mentioned that that tells all. The steps that we should be taking and how, and it here talks about, um, the L. E. B. R. C. Um, that they're going to be voting after we submit. Uh, they're going to accept or not accept our masks after we submit them. So we might have amers might have. We might have to change them if they don't accept our maps. That's my take off. But they don't have to vote. And there is a standard material. Um, I'm not familiar with that. Okay. If you can track. With the material that you got. Um, what they say on this. Um, Do you have the material? What do we have to provide the town council that they have to vote on? They say that it came in the packet. What do you mean? I'm sorry. They have, they have a standard. Wording. For what has to be voted on. I'm not familiar with that. I'm not familiar with that. I'm not familiar with that. Um, In this particular as questions, they say that in the package. Get a standard. Wording what needs to be voted. Okay. The motion, the motion. So I think that. We're going to need this to provide it to the town council. I'm just submit. The material. Right, I'll look at it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? Thank you. Regarding the material. them with maps. So right now on the table, we have, I believe, three maps with 10 precincts, 10 possible maps with 10 precincts, the one that Peggy made, the new version, the version I sent, they're actually for maps, the version I sent to the state that they have based some objections to one of the precincts, the new version I created and the new version that Tracy created. So there are actually three maps that we could consider and we could make changes. One of the items I would like to see, based on the information that Mike put together about some demographics, is any of this map splitting communities when we are creating the maps. The idea would be not to split communities and have, that's part of one of the districting norms that we have to make sure that we are not splitting communities about communities of interest. The question I have for everybody is do we consider students because one community of interest is students. So do we consider that that we group students in one district or in precincts? So to which state, to which, Peggy, so I'm trying to put the words to which length do we consider students a community of interest and we try to group them together. Peggy? So to speak to that I would say that students in our town have a lot of diversity because we're not talking about just undergraduates, we're talking about graduate students, many of them are from other countries. So yes, I think it's a really good question, but I am not, I'm less concerned about that community of interest than some of the others. Yeah, okay. So, but I, go ahead. Okay, now Marilyn. I was also thinking about students because you know they are a diverse group and it's going to become increasingly diverse if you look at the trends of the university, but it's also a very transient group. So the students who are here now are not necessarily, there's a lot of turnovers so that it's going to be a different set of students particularly in the residence halls than are here this year or who are here in 2020. And as Peggy said, you know we've got graduate students, we've got graduate students with families who may have more of an investment in the community because they have kids in schools. So I think we do have to consider them to be a diverse group in many ways, rather than lumping them all together because they're different and they would, you know, for many reasons they're different. Other than for many of them, they're a transient population. Okay. No, I wanted to put it out. I don't say in one way or the other. I wanted to have, I think one of the issues that we're going to have is when we are writing the report, I think we're going to have to justify when we are building the precincts, whether we are splitting the students, some of the students, because we could have two or three precincts that are just students, right? We could draw the things, but I think everybody has been making an effort not to have precincts that are just students as much as we can. Okay. So that's the, I think we're going to have to have some language to put in the report why we build the precincts the way we do them. Peggy? So I wanted to speak, I agree with you on that. I wanted to speak to something that Tracy brought up earlier. And I think now is the time to do that, which is that we have we've been drawing these maps with 10 precincts and we're maybe getting ready to discuss them, but I really think at this point we need to start thinking about districts. So, and actually what Mandy Jo, Hanna Key was saying, kind of feeds into that as well. The, in terms of protecting communities of interest or splitting things, it's the voting power in Amherst that's even, that's, that's important. Yes, the districts, I mean, the precincts are important too, but they're not nearly as important as the districts. So I feel like what we should be doing at this point is considering what our priorities are in terms of how we draw the districts. And I actually have eight criteria that I think that we could discuss, you know, we can think about whether they, you know, our priorities around them, and then use that looking at the maps, we can use those criteria to say, okay, do any of these maps work with the kinds of districts that we want to have. So for example, like with the arenas maps, it was clear that you were making a lot of effort to distribute the students throughout into every precinct. But actually we don't need to do that. What we need to do is, because we can combine two precincts into a district, we don't have to worry so much about making sure that there are students in every precinct, we want to make sure there are students in every district. So, so that's why I think at this point, we could look at the what's important to us around districts and then apply that to the maps. So would you like to hear my criteria? Go ahead. Oh, Tracy, and then maybe you'll go the criteria. Do you want to answer? Yeah, I mean, I think could we, I mean, I think your criteria is important. I guess I was, I mean, my thinking about it was that we would do something similar to the way the Charter Commission did it, is that, I mean, I do, I do agree with your point that the precincts matter, you know, in terms of creating districts. And one of the things that I think each of us who created the maps we're doing is we were trying to make sure, for example, that there were like different connected points, so that we could have different options for the districts. I mean, I was, my thinking on it was that, you know, we do have three maps. And we can, we can each speak to the maps that were created. And I know Peggy, like you had said that your map was somewhat based on the current pre, the current precincts. And I think that I based my map predominantly on the current precincts and also the looking at what you had done to and sort of comparing. And I ran some statistics in terms of like under your maps, or, you know, under my maps, like how many of the census blocks change precincts. And just, oh, in terms of, and you could also look at that like at a district level, like at a district level, you know, under different district proposals, how many are changing districts, and how many are consistent, and, you know, are they sort of making sense? I mean, people don't, you know, I noticed, like after last meeting, and I noticed that, you know, some of the ways that districts, the precincts had been drawn, like for example, that a number of the elected counselors who are currently on the town council would be changing precincts. I mean, not that that's like a major factor for us, but even in terms of getting council support and also public support, I mean, people, they often resist change. And, you know, if we're doing something super different, like that might be harder to get approved. So, so I was, I mean, I was thinking about it, like I know with the charter commission, what Mandy Jo did is she took the current precincts, the precincts that were there then, and that she came up with like the eight different, she actually did it, and I, she did it, I think, with like colored pencils or crayons or something. She had like a blank map of Amherst, and she drew, and I think that was in one of our initial packets, she drew the eight different configurations you could have to create the five districts in Amherst. It was very low GIS, just to show like the different options and so on. And so, I, so part of my thinking was that we could follow a similar procedure for us, where we, it is important, you know, in terms of the way precincts are defined, it is important to have commonality, because, you know, over time, the districts can always change, like the next chart, you know, the next DAB could always change the district. So, I was thinking that we could do something similar, that if there's a version of the 10 precinct map that we agree with, or like we could use that as a starting place, and then do something similar to what Mandy Jo did in terms of coming up with all the different potential configurations of districts, and then deciding which to pursue, using things like your criteria and so on. So, I don't feel like we're super far apart. I just was starting, like, with the districts, I mean, with the precincts as the building block initially. So, I wanted to make a comment. This is as a, I think it took a completely different approach to Peggy and Tracy to building the maps. My thought, and then we can go back to Peggy to your criteria. When I built the maps, my thought was the previous precincts were built when there was a different type of government in town, right? All the precincts, so that was when it was 10-minute town meetings, and what was important was the precincts and the districts came later, right now. Right now, we have a different form of government. So, what usually matters for elected officials are the districts, but the underlying there are the precincts. But I'm not so attached to keeping everything the same because the form of government has changed in Amherst, considerable. So, I think that's a perspective that we, yes, there's some attachment, but everything's going to change because many census blocks has changed, for many people that are going to change, and the boundaries are going to have to change. So, I would not, I'm not as attached to things because the form of government has changed in Amherst. Marilyn and then Peggy is going back to your criteria. Yes. So, I think, I agree with you on the precincts, but I think we do have to be mindful of the districts because that does define, you know, our representation and, I mean, to some extent, the precincts define where people vote, and I know that for some people, if they vote in a different location, that could be problematic for them. But I think we probably want the districts to be as similar as possible to the districts in the last census that was proposed by the last redistricting committee. Because I think one of the guidelines is that you want it as best, as close as possible to conform to the former district boundaries. That's not, that is not one of the... Well, I think actually one of the criteria used by the last committee was that the redistricting would minimize changes to the existing precinct boundaries as possible. But again, it was the same type of government, right? The precincts were... But I'm suggesting it's not necessarily precincts but districts and that is how we're defined now. Okay. Tracy and then Peggy. So, to Marilyn's point, like, so, right, so that was one of the criteria of the 2011 Districting Advisory Board to follow the precincts from previous, from the year 2000 that were created in 2001. And so, I think, and that we could say that that is one of our main criteria too, I think it is something to consider. I don't know if I would say it was like the only thing to consider, like the priority to consider. But one thing is if, like, if each Districting Advisory Board says we want to follow the boundaries as close as the last Districting Board, then, you know, over time, so even, so if 2011 group was following the districts that were set in, sorry, the precincts that were set in 2001, and now we're saying we want to follow the districts, the precincts, sorry, that were set in 2011, like over 20 years or even a longer period of time, we're saying we want to perpetuate the precincts as they were created earlier. And so, I mean, I don't want to, I mean, the reason I ran some of the numbers is I don't want to completely upend everything and create completely different precincts. But I think it is worth noticing too that, you know, in the last 10 or 20 or 30 years, like however long we've had these same precincts that, you know, that there have been changes in Amherst, you know, in terms of where there's growth, in terms of diversity, and so on like that. So, I don't, and it has shifted, you know, certain neighborhoods and things like that. So, I don't want to be completely wedded to those earlier versions. But I mean, in terms of the map, you know, where, I mean, one of the things I was thinking about is, you know, if I don't really like them, some of those long precincts, the ones the state were asking about, that Arina had created, where you'll have a district that will go, I mean, sorry, a precinct that will go all the way from like, you know, the south end of Amherst, like Bay Road, like all the way up to the center of Amherst. And, you know, I'm, you know, if I lived in that zone, not just in terms of where I vote, but also just in terms of who's representing me, because the population density is so much greater in the center of town. Like, if I live on Bay Road, I want somebody sort of in my neighborhood or my part of town to be my representative. And so, if you have those really elongated precincts, then it's possible that people who are running my elected officials will only be from the center of town. And that could be the true with any of these elongated districts. And so then what happens to the voice in the town government of the people who are in those other areas? So I think it is important to have certain geographies that we're making sure are represented in the precincts and the districts that we draw. For example, like North Amherst and South Amherst and things like that. I think it is important to have some of those there. Okay. I've got to agree with most of what Tracy says that one thing that's happened over the last 10 and 20 years is there have been shifts in the population. There have been shifts as far as where the students are living. They've been essentially moving out of the university as the university increases the number of students, but doesn't increase the amount of housing. And consequently, there's a student population in many areas in the town that wasn't there 10 years ago. So we've got to be cognizant of who's living where. And as far as the districts are concerned with the precincts, there needs to be a way to make those districts so they're fairly flexible in terms of which precincts they encompass. And it may not be the same as what they are now at all. But a lot of that is due to the population changes. We've got to be cognizant of that. So Peggy, what is going back here? Okay. I saw the cut. I'm sorry. That's the message my students will bring in the class. No, it's fine, actually, because I'm going to read my criteria. I have eight of them. Many will sound familiar to you because we've been talking about them all along. And my point is that as we look at these precinct maps, we are already using these criteria to choose among them. And so that's why I think we need to talk about the criteria first, because we need to decide is it more important to distribute students evenly, or is it more important to consider the fact that some of the housing complexes were undercounted, that sort of thing. So let me read their criteria. And so I think you'll understand why I feel like we need to talk about these before we decide on which map is our best map. Okay. So one, no tails or fingers. That's what the state says. Two, can't result in dilution of minority group members' votes. State says that also. Three, we don't want to break up neighborhoods. I think we all know that. So many of all of our maps break up some neighborhoods. But we want to keep that to a minimum, partly because of what Tracy just said, right? You want to be represented by somebody from your neighborhood. Four, we don't want to disenfranchise marginalized communities. So if there are already communities that are marginalized in this town, we don't want to make it worse. Five, we want to distribute students and permanent residents as evenly as possible. This comes back to Irena's point. I'm proposing these criteria not necessarily because I believe all of them, but I think these are all things that we've talked about or need to talk about. Six, preserving current districts. That's a possible criterion. Seven, give a boost to districts that were especially undercounted. So our first couple of meetings when we were worried about whether all these different places in town that we knew were undercounted, do we want to consider that? We thought so at the time. But now, do we know better or not? And finally, do we want to give a boost to districts that contain communities that have been historically less represented? So there are communities in our town that traditionally have had less of a voice in our government. Do we want to consider those communities and try to make sure that they're not, that if anything, those districts have fewer voters. So the people who do vote have a greater voice. Okay. Can we comment on pace? I thought I think your list is really good. I think one thing is with your fifth criteria about, I don't think it's just students versus permanent residents. You also have other more transient populations. You know, as Marilyn was saying, students are not just a monolith that you also have graduate students and you have people in low-income housing and things like that. So I mean, you can, and I mean, some of those proposed populations are most transient too. So I wouldn't just make it students versus everybody else. And also there are students who are really invested in our community. And I guess with the idea of preserving the current districts, like I don't feel that wedded to that personally. Like when I go back at what the Charter Commission looked at, I mean, I feel like there were, you know, they did the analysis and they did the analysis based somewhat on voter turnout in different areas, how competitive races were and things and they were trying to, they were trying to make sure that different groups would be represented too. But looking at their analysis, there were some other pairings that they could have come up with that were pretty close, you know, in meeting their criteria too and they decided to choose one model. So I'm not, I'm not sure we have to choose exactly the same approach. So one thing I've been thinking about, you know, just in terms of the different, the variations of the different precincts maps is one thing is like is, you know, we talk about the different parts of town and including different voices, but do people feel like if we were to combine certain precincts geographically, like are people more tied to being in the same, in creating districts, is it more important to have people in districts with like people like to have precincts of like characteristics, you know, for example, like could we create a minority majority district or something like that where you have like two diverse districts together? I mean, two diverse precincts together in a district versus like say, you know, we have parts of town that are more rural. So does it, even if those rural parts aren't adjacent, you know, aren't super close to each other? Like does it make sense to have, you know, the higher density precincts be together and like the more rural be together too? I mean, it's all about like how people identify. Like is it more important that South Amherst Bay to gather or anyway? So those are some things I was thinking about. I have a comment regarding that as a member, not as a chair. I think that has an impact on, the voter turnout has an impact because if you have our representation in the government government right now, we have two representatives per district and we some, if we group only by common interests. So for example, that would be maybe two precincts that they have majority of permanent residents, whereas then we're going to have a district that is going to be majority non-permanent residents, right? That they have less invested on the local government. And we might end up having no representatives. This is hypothesis. We might end up having no representatives for one district that is majority non-permanent residents. That might be a big assumption on my side, but that's something to consider. They have had ways. So I guess I'm asking for a definition of what's considered permanent resident and someone kind of defined transient as being more student, but since you're using these terms to define precincts and then eventually districts, could you flush out what do you mean by permanent? My take on permanent is usually we have residents that have a vested interest in the community. Sometimes students, somebody was saying students are here nine months and they might not come back. Most likely maybe they are living completely different precincts next time. That's what I'm saying transient population, somebody that doesn't have a... So I guess I want to just ask for clarity as I'm listening because although I do appreciate Peggy providing these criteria and then Tracy trying to ask some critical questions, it might be of use to also have some working definitions because on one hand you're talking about dividing the precincts geographically in some way and then on another based on certain assumptions of who these populations are transient, equal to student population or is transient equal to graduate students, is transient equal to you know renters as opposed to homeowners. So I think as we go through this type of conversation and you're trying to figure out precincts, you know it would help to have some of these working definitions and be careful in terms of the language and it's not like I'm policing the language, it's just that I think it's confusing. What do you actually mean by a transient population and trying to divide that up precinct wise and how does that correspond then to your geographic specifications for your mapping and likewise permanent populations? How does that correspond to where does that look, where is that on the map? Because it's based on certain assumptions and I think we had talked about this before and I'd ask for you know like maybe Mike to provide some way of understanding homeowners as opposed to renters because you're again using these assumptions instead of some data as to who lives in these areas. Students if it's a dorm we could say okay that's a dorm but when it comes to the rental population homeowners who are renting homes as well then it gets really confusing and basing precincts on that instead of just looking at voters in general. I think you're going to run into a problem where you could say well you're assuming things and then you're going to be splitting up these precincts perhaps to the detriment of their voting power. Yes I actually I'm really glad you said that D and also I think Craig said something related which is that we're it's one thing to look at the student population that's living in the residence halls around UMass and something entirely different to think about where the students are living around town and who else might be living there as well. So in all the various apartment complexes many of them have a large student population which would appear no different from a lot of the students that live in the residence halls and then they also have lots of other different kinds of people. So I think that when we think about um trying to distribute the students in the residence halls which I feel like every map that we are considering made an attempt to do that to some degree we didn't or at least I didn't also know enough to think about well what does that mean about the various other populations around town so can we so to look at the data so do we have about voter registration statistics by precincts if that could inform us in voter turnout and things like that right I think voter registration I don't know if voter turnout I don't know but and this voter registration that would be an indication of strengths in somebody that does not even register with the town to register in town. I don't know if it's a good definition I'm asking Tracy and Sue I think so I mean I think one you know one thing with with our precincts and I think we don't really have a lot of choice with this um is that our the greatest population density is in the dorms like particularly the ums dorms but the dorms are not neighborhoods right and so each year students will change dorms I mean and I know I've been an election worker right and it's actually pretty unfortunate that the town census is done in the spring and the elections are in the fall and by then the students have moved and so those are not I mean those are you know groups of people living together but they do not have a neighborhood type identity because the next year they'll be in a different dorm as unless I don't know how many students opt to stay in the same dorm like year after year and say like this is my identity I'm a southwest resident but I don't think it's that many um and so those are different than the other areas with population density um like such as the housing complexes and like other neighborhoods and I mean you could have tenants there who live there for years right I mean some of them are students but then some of them aren't and some of them are long-term residents in terms of living I don't know if anybody's permanent but in terms of living in Amherst like year after year and being engaged in Amherst as a community and so I feel like we do need to balance it somewhat um just in terms of that I mean I think you know in terms of our definition we do want to look we do want to focus on neighborhoods and also and also look to a certain extent about engagement right like if there are certain precincts or districts currently like that really do not necessarily have as much engagement in terms of voter turnout or even registration in terms of being actively involved I mean I know that there's reasons that that's the case but at the same time we don't want to set up certain districts to sort of fail and not be able to even find people to run and things like that so it is a balance I think between I mean I had brought up the issue just about clustering like similar types of precincts together like similar demographic precincts together just because I was wondering if that would give more of a voice like for example I've been concerned ever since the precincts were created originally about South Amherst a little bit and that precinct seven was matched with precinct eight so to me like precinct seven they voted Crocker Farm it includes all of East Hadley Road it includes you know some other apartment complexes and so on and and they have lower voter turnout because they have people who are not who do not necessarily stay in Amherst as long and have other reasons for not being as engaged as other people but then to have it matched with precinct eight which is like voted the months in and includes Applewood and includes I remember when we had town meeting in order to get elected as a town meeting rep from precinct eight you had to have hundreds of votes you had to have like 300 or four it was always crazy to me because I live in a downtown precinct and for me to get elected to town meeting I had to have like five votes or six votes and so I always wondered whether that was the best way to combine those two precinct seven and precinct eight and would them would the people who live in precinct seven be more empowered if they were matched differently so that's always been a concern for me with the current precinct renderings and so that was one of the things I was thinking about whether we would want to draw it differently so and then Marley so I was gonna say two things um yes you can look back in the town records and see the voter turnout of all the different precincts but traditionally in the last 15 years precincts one three and ten have the lowest turnout constantly yes um two six seven eight and nine are always the highest and four and five are pretty good showing but I can request through the state voter registration system at any point a there's reports and there's extracts but I can get like how many registered voters per precinct if that would be helpful right you know as of the moment I requested so I can do that if that if you think that would help yes yes okay I think it gives us an idea so it gives us a picture thank you Marley a couple of points um and just something to think about so when we look at these these districts or precincts um you know I live in a name a residential neighborhood it's primarily owner-occupied housing but we have a number of kids who you know they're counted in the census but they aren't old enough to vote we have a number of residents who are international and have not um have green cards but at this point have no intent of voting in Amherst we have residents who have moved recently to the area and are not registered to vote and we also have a handful who are have been here for a while but because of their work situation are registered in another state so um you know it's really hard to say what in there in many of these cases they're engaged in the community because they have children in the schools or will have children in the schools so there's an involvement but not they're not voting and they can't serve as elected officials right if they're not yeah and whereas if you look at the student population they are all eligible to vote they are all eligible to run for election most of them I shouldn't say all because again we have students who are non-residents and um do not us citizens but um well I can't even say the majority of registered to vote I mean they're registered to vote in other communities and not we don't necessarily know I guess we would know that from based on the number of students registered here but do we know that or this is anecdotal Marilyn from what you're you're sharing who's voting and who's not from your antidote there see we don't really know we think it would be I don't know what we had get and I don't know what's the time yet I mean you know I don't not everybody responds to the census so I don't think we know I mean do we have a sense of how many I mean there are people of non-voting age or in the community so me so okay yes um again you can request that information um if somebody responded on the census and listed their children on the census we'd have it but like you said nobody you know not everybody responds to the census it's not a complete listing whatsoever and it's not I mean some people have told me for example they won't list their children like they just don't think it's the town's business about kids no you can only use the the data that you have with any survey uh surveys are never 100 so you you utilize the data that was turned in and you try to make an educated uh guest as we're all doing with the census data and trying to figure this out but I think any and all of that would help to give a more complete picture is is all I'm I'm saying instead of just making assumptions about international students or international families and are they voting or not voting I don't think that's a a good way to try to make this determination Mike and then Peggy hey I want to say I don't know if it's my head or I'm hearing some lovely music in the background um it's very nice um but yeah we keep hearing that somebody has music or something yeah um but the second thing I wanted to mention D um so I did follow up with our team in town about the rental data that we talked about I believe two meetings ago the problem is is that we changed databases at the beginning of COVID um in I believe like the spring of 2020 and so the last good rental data that we have is from 2018 to 2019 um 2019 to 2020 2020 to 2021 it's it's very incomplete so the person who's in charge of the rental program said to me you know honestly I wouldn't even rely on even that old stuff so I mean I can still produce it if you folks want it but it they they said that it was very incomplete um so whatever you guys want if you want it I'll produce it but there are big caveats about it so Peggy and then I held on um so it seems I mean I feel like I've really appreciated hearing all of this discussion and I think we could probably talk about um priorities for for weeks but we also have a map to draw so I'm wondering if it might make sense at this point to look at the maps and my request is that we be cognizant of the assumptions that we are taking in about our priorities as we do that so if we look at a map or we we try to draw precincts and um that I request that we while as we do that we think about what the districts would look like from those precincts and also what assumptions we're making um or priorities we're holding um as we make those choices so for example Tracy's point about putting district seven and district eight together I think it's a really good one I would probably choose not to do that I would probably choose to put district seven with southwest something like that which to me gives more voting power to the people in district seven um but other people may have other ideas so I but I'm asking that we all try to be aware of those as we go forward Tracy and then so I think I mean I think I mean my you know as I was saying earlier I would like us to you know look as Peggy's saying look at the precinct maps and think about the districts but I would feel most comfortable not deciding on the districts for certain at this stage until we've we've come up with our precinct map and maybe not to the extent that Mandy Jo and the Charter Commission did but we we look at different options and then we pull together some of the data in terms of diversity and what data whatever data we do have and using the criterias that you're talking about you know are some of these districts I mean Mandy Jo point made a couple comments about how the different if you do do different matches so I guess she tried to do different matches but if we do different matches like what the implications are and how it could affect the criteria um and so I mean I I I would like the idea and maybe again not trying like every single option but maybe looking at just deciding on the precincts like roughly at this time first and then looking exploring different options for districts and in kind of researching those more before we make a decision like for example the thing about South Amherst or something I'm not wedded to it either way it's just something I was thinking about so I want to bring up something maybe none of the maps that we currently have are the final maps I think one thing is can we display the three of them and based on the criteria we start talking about the three options that we have right now at hand whether they would fit some of these criteria items which one would be more or less and then just the first things to compare the three side by side and so some are similar some are different and what are the personal costs maybe of each of the maps as a starting point Tracy um so I I I don't recall exactly but I feel like at the last meeting right that Peggy went and explained her map and and you would explain your map and I would like to yeah I mean I would like to also have an opportunity to just explain like how I created my map and like maybe I did because because Peggy's precincts I mean because Peggy's precincts and mine lined up more than yours and mine because yours were so different than the current precincts I did you know map like where Peggy and mine were the same and where they were different and so on and so so can we display the three of them and I could explain some of those choices might do you think they're gonna fit next to each other I'm working on that right now thank you why you pay me the big bucks like we all have this big monitor like this in front of us right yeah I'm sure Mike has the biggest multiple right if you have multiple screens that can be tricky one two three four I have four um okay so it's going to be small on some people's screens but this is can you all see that three side by side by side mm-hmm okay so it's arena's on the left Peggy's in the middle and Tracy's on the right okay thank you so I think you know regarding the one on the left so arena can you explain like how you changed it from the last time a little bit and then so they made two changes where a little bit at the center where there's that white because that white are all zero so I left them oh sure because they could be connected to anyone uh there were concerns about precinct five that is the cream color maybe this color yes there was too long uh so I tried to shorten it and try to keep communities as much as I could change communities of interest uh my so that was essentially what I changed was mainly changed this was and rebalance everything so that they match all I tried as much as possible I think I explained before that I try to the dorms try to distribute the dorms it's as many as many spaces as possible because I thought that would give us more options when building the districts to have a more balanced population so I didn't want except the green person here they said that there's only two there's only dorms uh and maybe the light violet just knows that that's majority dorms but have some other complexes attached to it um all the rest is a combination of balance between dorms and non-dorms that's what I I try except again uh maybe the pink this uses all I made the effort of grouping make sure that the complexes on this hardly rolled the were belonging to the same precinct that was my my thought because uh okay so I wanted to go in circles so there could be different matches um trying to create as many possible combinations of that we could have different districts based on different categories so depending how you would group these ones you could have very elongated or more wider and shorter depending how you group them that was like the blue could be matched with the center of town or it could be matched with the south the southwest that was my my logic um okay I had a big I I I thought to remember that um particularly on the southeast and center of town was where there was much bigger voter um turnout um so I wanted um I had a view I thought that if they would they would split they would have more voices because they would have uh if they don't have only one represented two representatives is they all know a group in the same district that they might have a bigger voice in the government maybe that's not a way to so can we just so in terms of how far north you're at these southern these long southern districts go so they go might could just explain so that is that strong street how far yes this is so this peach color goes all the way to strong street okay yeah this goes triangle to pray street the purple goes to pray street right in the middle of downtown yeah so that one is a pretty long one I must confess but population down there is very uh the last census brooks covers all the whole south amherst and it's 178 people I believe right yeah okay so that's why I was okay okay I cannot see if anybody has raised hands Tracy so I I appreciate what you were trying to do with this map in terms of diversity of the population and you know making sure that districts had both students and non other populations but I to me I mean there are a few parts of your map but seem somewhat similar to current precincts like some of the north amherst sections you know some of the west sections but I I mean and this is not critical of your map I just don't I think that I don't feel like this would be right I think it would be too radically different from our current precincts and I still don't feel that comfortable with having the districts I'm not crazy about these large south amherst globs but I I don't like the idea of these districts that go from so far south like right into the center of town and and also the idea that their elected officials or could come from like the center of town and not be representing south amherst but I mean that might just be me and so I don't know I just I mean the other two maps are more similar but I mean it just if we're trying to think about the future and you know getting public support for it getting council support I think that the map it's very innovative I just think it might be too much for us to consider and I don't see it passing the way it is so I have concern so I I did change the northern part my concern is about voter turnout in north amherst so it was so was mentioning I'm aware that person one and three as they are currently they have very low voter turnout and they're currently together in district one one yes they're ready to get in district one so they have I didn't know whether I was trying to compliment and have a different somewhat different also in that area I see both of how do we move from here do we want to go looking at the different maps do we think that we could take combination of these same east these maps and have different because if we were looking at district we could have one district that is all south amherst right so we could have based on the two maps we could have one that is all south amherst or one that is all almost all east amherst I'm concerned about the big loves yeah but I think with that I mean that's what I think about and that's what we have in our current precincts too I mean those are some of the choices that the Charter Commission made I mean that's a question I think that I don't know if we have to solve that question right now right but we I think we do need to get a place like where we're we're limiting some of our choices just to narrow things down I have a question on this map I don't see precinct 10 am I missing something oh it's out of order okay yes no well I the numbers are random it's not that's one of the difficulties I'm having because your numbers sort of go south to north and the others there's a different order to the precinct numbers when I looked at Irene's map I renumbered them to try to make them the same like in terms of having the north precincts be like one and two and things but then I sort of ran into issues just because some of them are you can't I mean can you claim that it's like the same precinct because the geography is so different so I sort of gave up that comparison a little bit and then I was comparing mine to Peggy's just to see how those looked yeah but I do think the sort of the north south orientation might be better in terms of the way we assign the precinct numbers even though they're they're vastly different there's also a reality to the fact that people think in terms of being a resident of south Amherst or being a resident of north Amherst or being and if there's precincts or being in the center of town if the precincts range from south Amherst to the center of town north Amherst to the center of town as Tracy has indicated there's an identity that people have within town is is typical with most people and started losing that identity and losing the the even though there are a lot of different variations of the as far as the people that live in any one area they still identify with the geographical area I think that the Irene is kind of distorts that identity I would be interested in hearing Tracy's description of her own map could we okay would that be okay to get that now yeah sure okay so as I was saying I started with the the current precincts and I also looked at Peggy's map including some of the parts that I wanted to change on Peggy's map and so I mean the reality is that I'm sorry I meant to write this up more and I just ran out of time the reality is that you know Amherst between 2010 and 2020 changed by about 1700 people and in terms of where those where some of the big population changes were like we know that UMass built the Commonwealth College dorms that were part of precinct 10 which I think it's like 800 or 900 beds we know that the population decreased at Hampshire College we know that you know student enrollments increased and there were more students under graduate students living in more neighborhoods and so there's certain like densification there I mean in terms of you know how did we how did we change the population but I saw those as sort of some of the main trends just really generally speaking so in terms of things you know I wanted to so I mean there there were a few place smaller places where um I actually wanted to change some of the precinct boundaries just because I thought that they weren't ideal the way they were before so one example of that is on at like North Pleasant Street and Pine Street like Mike if you could show that corner there the corner of North Pleasant Pine it's like the top of orange know that isn't that pine on the north yeah so in the current precincts maps and also in Peggy's map if you see Coutures is purple and then the green there's this little green corner which is in green and not purple so that I believe is the intersection with like the little block with like House of Teriyaki and things I have a feeling that that might have been put there put into green and not purple as it was in the earlier precinct the 2011 precinct just because of balancing the population but to me it made sense to reunite it and so that's why I put that into the the group that included that section of North Pleasant Street and also that section of Pine Street both of which particularly on the North Pleasant Street portion like there's other student rentals and things too so in terms of things I changed from Peggy's map so I mean one thing I did want to change is that so I'm in precinct four myself you know as part of district three and so precinct four and on district three went up a lot in current population and the reason that happened was because of the construction of the Commonwealth College dorms on the UMass campus and so Peggy when she created her district you know base it seems pretty similar to that where you have both some sections of Southwest as well as the Commonwealth College dorms and this precinct extends all the way from North Hampton Road Route 9 like all the way up to towards North Amherst as somebody who lives in that precinct I felt like that was too large a geography for me and I didn't want and I didn't want so many dorms to be in my precinct so I cut this off at Mass Ave which is like the center of the UMass campus I also added along North Pleasant I mean along Route 9 North Hampton Road so if you look south of North Hampton Road on Peggy's map towards the western side these these properties in here which include green sleeves and hawking meadow and things so whoa Mike so those those census blocks Peggy had put them in those census blocks Peggy had put them into South Amherst they're currently in precinct five which is a downtown district I didn't really see you know this is an area again it's really close to my precinct precinct four and I'm in this quite a bit I didn't really think that they would feel like they're part of South Amherst so I chose to extend precinct four down into that area and there is a certain amount of density there it's actually interesting because there's a bit of an aside but there's already additional housing there right so Barry Roberts has the new housing that he built across from stop and shop so there's already new density in that area which didn't exist in 2020 when the census was done and so that's one change I made um I have a question on the your map there seems to be uh the precinct with the dorm in between the other one um in floors it goes on both sides of the yeah so that was just an oversight on my part and it was really helpful to have Mike's map to just show that I didn't connect those fully I have fixed that now um Mike you could even zoom in there it zooms in I know we're trying to do too much um so what happened there is that I guess I wasn't sure exactly where the boundaries were um but that this you know the with with this section of precinct four I was running it between mass av and fearing and then we have the southwest dorms so I didn't ask my Mike to redraw this but what I did to address it is that there is a small census block that runs along mouse av and so on east of Lincoln I had made it the district for the pink and then west of Lincoln I had made it blue which is part of the cluster with the 2512 um very large that's our largest census block for population so what I did to try to connect it a little better is I put this um the census block that runs on mass av I turn on that pink and then where Mike's cursor is that's actually a precinct I mean that's a block with zero population so I changed that to be pink and then I also changed the block right to the south of it to be pink as well and and it's possible that the there could be concerns about that but I'm not really sure like how to address that I mean I think we're always going to have an issue in that we have the cluster there so that's so that it's an island within the blue one would be an island within that yes the blue would be an island within pink that's true so so then we are forced to that's a district or actually I'm sorry so what we could do then is we could keep mass av blue and then we could also connect the blue to the one the like beige tan one above it but like if I connect the sections are precinct four on the south side so so my concern there was so we are limiting again when we are limiting the the the if you are thinking about districts is that uh this would be dorms the only portion that are not dorms in the night tan is the portion between the train tracks and is pleasant street but this is this is residential neighborhoods this is so that's the only that is non dorms within that district would be if we have a district that is the blue plus the tan also isn't there some up towards oh no I see it's like Eastman lane that's correct yeah so so if we have it so embedded inside we kind of forced to have a district that the only portion that is non dorm would be the portion between east east and the red good lane no I was sure that that's something we could look at um can I just kind of finish like wrapping up my okay so Mike if you go to the north a little bit and we can we can stay zoomed in it's okay um so the oh well wait now we can't see Peggy's but one thing I did is that so Peggy's district one map the the northwest district she had one block that was in the dorms on eastman lane and that felt a little awkward to me just to have a single dorm as part of that so what I chose to do is to put that into the purple district I'm sorry into the orange districts and then balance that population by changing the boundings along like east Leverett road and so I'm doing it like along a river and so I moved some of those over um and then you know one of the other things I did in South Amherst I mean I'm not crazy about South Amherst being so big but I don't really know what to do about that because as we talked about the Hampshire college lost population um but so the what I did here was along Shea Street and to Pomeroy Lane so you know as my kids went to Crocker and I was trying to sort of unite this neighborhood a little bit I think it's important that you know you have Orchard Valley which is to the south of Pomeroy Lane um in the yellow mic so those are you know that's a that's a neighborhood Orchard Valley and then you have East Hadley Road with all the apartment complexes is the apartment complexes are on the south of East Hadley Road and then you also have the residential on the north which is in this dense and then I also just included again so Crocker Farm is a little bit south of Shea Street and yeah so you have Mount Holyoke Drive and things right in there um and I mean there there is definitely like a neighborhood connection around Crocker Farm um in terms of uniting that area and um and then so that's like how I change South Amherst and then I mean in terms of some of the other areas I tried to make I tried to reduce the number of tails and whatever tails and fingers and things as we talked about it's weird that there are a couple little tails and fingers I saw are still on my map but some of them are actually figments of the census block data so Mike I there was one I I I went and looked back at them and I would love for you to just zoom into this I think if you zoom in on the green the two um yeah in here if you can like zoom in more yeah yeah there's one where it looks like the maybe the polygon should have been closed or something that's not and then it looks weird I mean I kind of look like oh look there's an error but um so I I'm not sure how we would agree adjust that so where is it exactly so I was just you know there were like a few places when I started scanning around the map that you created yeah it's in the green so where was it oh yeah so sorry there's this little sliver off east Hadley Road just below the east Hadley Road words like North Bridge Street I thought you said up north I'm sorry but there's there's one census block that is all river that crosses other other ones no I'm saying go north north like north of Bridge Street and there's that little polygon and then in south of east Levitt Road okay you said east Hadley I'm sorry that's why I was sorry east Levitt Road so if you zoom in like right below the words of like east Levitt Road there's like that little green part that like kind of sticks out this right here yeah but that's actually a super weird polygon it's like it looks like it looks like it's supposed to be closed or something I don't know yeah I don't know I can look at that yeah this little this little spike and this little sliver up north like at the end of the east Levitt Road that's actually the polygon too but that wasn't as weird as the other ones yeah Peggy you have your hand so that I really like Tracy's map I mean I like my map also but I really like Tracy's map for some of the things and I played around with it as well and you know I was able to fix the I mean there are ways to fix that purple and I don't know what color that is dark blue or black problem the island problem without having to yeah without having to use the UMass sure I'm sorry the Mass Ave district but it but they break up this neighborhood the sort of Lincoln Street right neighborhood which is of course already broken up so maybe that doesn't matter anyway but I think any one of the little problems that we see may be fixable because there are lots of ways to adjust things so I I'm trying to think about what we do for homework like how we go forward and it seems to me that the next step is to start is to either pick a map or pick a couple of maps and start drawing some districts to see what we come up with in terms of how many voters are registered in those districts in as much as we can tell of course since we've changed the lines we won't actually have the data so we have to guess how many neighborhoods we've cut because I don't think any of the maps get away without cutting some neighborhood somehow so which neighborhoods does it feel okay to cut which one's not how many how how we've distributed the residence halls how we've distributed the apartment complexes is that something we want to consider whether we want to try to have a district that has several so that maybe that gives people more voting power or is it something we want to distribute because that's more neighborly I don't these are things questions but you know it's quarter of and so I think we need to decide what we're going to do this week so that we have something really to really work on next week so would people want to vote on one map at this moment to focus on one map and see how it would work based on out of the three possibilities that might be some might need some thinking that we want to commit to one map right now or the problem of having options we have options yeah right the problem having options at some point we're gonna say okay that's it we stick with to this to this one but I think the so I think just in the discussion and I'm maybe if you all haven't settled but maybe you can begin to narrow and vote on the two best representations for right now and then you rework those so at least you've eliminated maybe one and you get closer to going to a single map to work on but that's just a suggestion in order to begin narrowing things down yes I mean I was going to say that I would like to proceed with one map and I'm not you know wedded to my map but just I would I mean I was explaining how I changed the map a little bit and I'm sure that there could be tweaks that we can do but just generally speaking I'd like to really start to think about the districts and how we could do the districts and even I was wondering Mike if you have like a blank map of Amherst sort of thing or maybe maybe if we could do something with the map that we're going to choose to move forward with and then you know we could instead of having you do it repeatedly like maybe draw some different districts to try to like look at the different configurations and what might work and we could each come back with based on the map that we if we choose a map tonight based on that map like how people would configure the districts to see if people have similar ideas or different ideas and then maybe fall in the next meeting we could like run preliminary statistics on those or something Mike it's impossible to have a layer that is on the map so that that it has the prisons as they are drawn so that we can we can start combining the same way that we were combining census blocks we can combine the prisons and get the statistics from the prisons as we combine them um so I so maybe my brain is behind where you guys are thinking um what I was thinking was you know if we pick one map or two maps would it would be nice I think what would be helpful would be to load that map into um into kind of our our into here yeah as a as another layer um so that you know if we pick one map and we load it in here as another layer then you guys could you folks could turn it on and have the the population numbers kind of there on top of it just in case you wanted to kind of play with a boundary here or there like move move this block from Tracy's map precinct seven into precinct eight or something like that um and then then creating the statistics and stuff would be really easy because it would be like oh we just moved 42 people from here to there um that's kind of what I was thinking and we could do it with more than one map we could put two maps in here as a as kind of a working list um I don't know if that is what people are thinking or if that's what you were getting at arena kind of Marlene no just for context would it I mean for me I think it would be helpful to know what the existing precincts and or districts are and I think there have been arguments made for changing the districts which I you know could sort of agree with but it would be nice to know where we are now compared to where we're going and how much how much we're changing the existing configuration so if if we if we take my idea to load it into this interactive map then you would be able to turn you know you would be able to turn zoom out and turn turn on the existing voting districts for the existing voting precincts to kind of to kind of compare that to whichever map we're deciding to work on it's just an idea so I'll say I didn't share it before the meeting um I mean I can share my screen but I did have a spreadsheet like where I had calculated the current voting districts I mean sorry the current voting precincts for like each of the blocks to the extent I could except for some of the ones around southwest which got changed like so dramatically um and I did map where which um precincts like Peggy's map put them into and which precinct my map put them into and how many precinct I mean how many census blocks were changed under each of the maps and what the population was that was affected I mean I can I can show I mean I'm happy to share that spreadsheet with people I didn't really want to put it in the packet and make it a pdf and have it be garbage and I mean if it's okay and if it's considered data that's something I could email around okay so Craig and then Tammy and then Mike I was just going to ask if we could have the voting records put on as another layer so that we could see where where the vote most of the voting takes place now so can okay got Mike can you show them up I think the first thing that we can look at but by um just as an information we could add this other layer but if you based on Sue's information she said the lowest turn right was precincts one three and ten and highest turnout was precincts two six seven and eight I don't know and uh precincts one and three are district one I don't know how the others combine in the different districts that mean you had your hand raised um yeah I just I think it would be very nice if each of us had a chance to say where we are with this yeah okay so that there's an equal conversation about it okay you want to start I think we can stop the share and then we go around so it's uh it's 750 so I think that this is a good time okay I wanted to say that I I mean I really appreciate your map because that's what I was trying to do when I originally was doing this idea but I kind of came back around to the idea that I preferred to be closer to the current precincts that we have and so since I had Peggy's map to work with I actually ran the numbers for the districts and it is the numbers come out really good and really close I think the biggest variation is 149 people of a possible 400 so um I prefer Peggy's map um I I see what Tracy is trying to do and I guess when I look at her map I see some extra fingers that um and that island that I think is somewhat problematic and so that's that's what I have to say and that's that I would like to focus on that map and if it needs tweaking then to move towards Tracy's map okay Mike you have a new hand raised I want all of you folks to have your say as as the voting members um I just have two data points I want to talk about before we we break away so you guys go ahead but I'm going to leave my hand up okay my name I'm going to go for there um I I think I agree with what Tammy said I'm not going to elaborate on it in the interest of time okay um great I'm I'm fine with both Peggy's map and Tracy's map either one of them all right I think are excellent starting points for us here hopefully to work towards the finish okay Peggy uh I feel the same as Craig I'd be very happy to work with either Tracy's or my map okay Tracy I would like us to switch over to one map though I guess we can keep two because originally we had talked about having all of our precincts and districts done by next week so I don't know if that's still the time frame I mean maybe we've backed that off a little bit because we've already gotten feedback from the state and if that's the case then I feel like we really do need to narrow it down with one map and maybe see where we can tweak or fix you know any concerns that people have with either map um I mean I will say just you know in a little bit in defense of my map I don't aside from that issue with precinct 10 being surrounded by precinct four which I think Peggy said she has some ways to address it I don't really see any fingers on my map like for the most part there are a few fingers related to really dense storms which was sort of unavoidable the other fingers are actually that I see are actually results of the way the census box are currently drawn um so if we decide to use Peggy's map as a priority map like some of the some of the comments I made or the changes I made I would want to like implement those into that map like particularly um with some of the South Amherst pieces and that along North Hampton Road and not having the Commonwealth College dorm and Southwest dorm in the same precinct personally thanks so I want to give a voice also to the non-voting members um these two Mike do you want to comment or yeah I um I felt that you know in looking at the um the previous uh map the Peggy and Tracy's share some similarities with the previous uh districting map um it's hard for me to say like there's big differences in those two because honestly I don't see large differences uh within those two maps my concern for Colonial Village um is always grouped with um you know a district that doesn't have a lot in common with it so it's continually getting grouped in a way that it doesn't share many commonalities um but I don't know how to really uh get over that problem you know whereas you have a Palm Roy Village and you have a Butternut which are two apartment complexes that seem to group with um um what we're assuming to be homeowners right within those communities as well but it's just very different it's it's um it's hard to I guess address my concerns about the majority minority uh because it's it's uh couched with class um or assumptions around renters I guess as opposed to homeowners and uh if you look at where Colonial Village is each time whether it's Peggy's map or Tracy's map it's still uh grouped with this um kind of a community that may not have so much in common with it is I guess what I'm trying to say so um those are those are my concerns but I think Tracy and Peggy both try to take it on and it's still it still hasn't solved it in a way so I just think they're yeah yeah yeah I don't know maybe you all could figure it out uh for it to have um just you know in terms of a voting uh block and more commonality in some way situate it um but I just think those two maps are are similar and maybe that's something for you all to to really try to take on like which one is the the better representation of um you know what we have in terms of census that's all Tracy two yeah no I don't have any comments tonight okay and then no I I mean I honestly think looking at them from purely a geographic perspective I don't think the I would not think that the LEDRC would have any issues with you know fingers or appendages here for any of these I think they're they're both very well balanced I um when you look at the population numbers the variance numbers and then the overall shape of them um I was trying to think D um with Colonial Village um I mean what what would be the best thing to do with that it's just situated between Belcher Town Road and Southeast Street I'm wondering like but that's a go ahead sorry Mike um but isn't Colonial Village in the same um precinct as the um the housing complex is out at Route 9 like at the um Belcher Town Amherst line isn't that part of the same which I call rolling rolling green so isn't that isn't Colonial Village and rolling green in both Peggy's map and my map in the same precinct it is it is yeah I mean that and rolling green is a larger population than Colonial Village I think and it it has similar demographics I think the Colonial Village probably has more grad students than rolling green there's another complex in terms of Gatehouse Road and Echo Village and then there's um the condos on Gatehouse Road yeah so I think just the opposite Tracy that rolling green has more grad students than Colonial Village but yeah I could be totally wrong maybe there's a good mix I don't know I mean no I just I see I know a lot of grad students you live in Colonial Village that's why yeah and I know just the opposite so it is it's all anecdotal there we go there's a lot more there's more affordable housing and rolling green that's what I think yeah yeah I mean because right some of it was protected that was the thing right right section 8 housing that they re protected housing and rolling green yeah yeah so Peggy ask her hand up well we haven't heard from you Irina uh I like mine but yes an exercise I like puzzles so uh but I I don't know if there's some items I know that mine is too radical and I went I said okay let's I went to clean slate I didn't look at previous maps so that was me going from that extreme I think I wanted on purpose I wanted to see what it would look like look at the statistics without looking at current precincts and what it would look like and I agree that maybe it's too long but I think there are some I wonder if whether some things um could be taken into account sometimes a part of the North Amherst or towards the West um I have an issue with there's such a big block on the southeast but wait that's the population yeah no that's unfortunately that's how and my concern is building districts particularly at the center of town we have to be very careful about the center of the two maps how we've been because we know that current districts sometimes have an issue about representation about voter turnout so the question is whether one of our premises is trying to address this issue if we could stay too close we won't be able to we won't be addressing that issue so that would be part of part of our list so if we stay very close to what we have we won't be addressing one of the issues so I think that's something to have into account when we are building maybe we have to look for a different combination of precincts so that to address one of the items that we had sought about voter turnout um representation of people that I'm okay going with any map that people want and majority but I want to be calling me said that we know that current districts and precincts there are some issues about representation so whether we want to use this opportunity data that goes contrary to keeping the lines as they are Tracy and then I think we should put that sorry so as I said earlier and I'm happy to share my screen if it's helpful I can send people this I did check to compare Peggy's census box with mine in terms of where they were assigned is it helpful if I just show it briefly I think the interesting time I guess so one of the things is that so basically so our precincts are 80% the same the way we drew them in terms of the census box they're of the 423 precincts um all but 81 of them agree and some of them are just very minor changes and some of the ones that don't agree are zeros with population so we're talking about we them our two maps are identical except for say 20% so if people want to continue with bone math we could do that I just was trying to sort of simplify it and it sounds like from what the feedback that people are giving about different neighborhoods that they that both maps could be like tweaked a little bit but I find it comforting that you know that they're 80% the same right now so okay so I was going to suggest we have we have to make the exercise of creating districts and looking at statistics based I would say we could assign half the people to one map and half the other people to the other map to do to look at the district or Marilyn you are shaking your head I think you know given the amount of time we have I think we should just decide on one given that both Peggy's and the two of the maps are almost identical if we're talking about tweaking them let's just go with one and then play with it it would be my recommendation Peggy I appreciate that I also appreciate that in the past people have committees have put up different precincting maps for the community to look at as they're deciding so if we decide on a single map now we're not actually giving the community time to input on precincts we may be giving them input on districts and that doesn't feel quite right to me I feel like we should have a couple of maps out there of different precincts people may or may not comment but at least we're trying and then we go with the districts and we're going to do the same thing again with the districts I like that idea I like the idea and I like I've been trying to probably say as much as with the people I know about the this work to see if we can get any comment and I appreciate if anybody can do the same all of us because we want to have as much input as we can so I think I think my map I think is out of the question right now we have two maps we never down to two that they might change but I think it's important that we look at the demographics and districting how they would look like so I think the homework for next week is Mike has put up information about some demographics a layer so on the map you can click layers about demographics he sent this information today so one of the issues that we want to look is whether any check whether any of these maps is splitting communities just by looking at the demographics whether there's a line going through some density of demographics I'm thinking about and I'm open to everybody have suggestions so I'm coming to this as I go so everybody could see that and then based on the two maps that we have is what would be possible configuration of districts because that's what people that at the end they're gonna care a lot also so which of the maps may give us more configurations of which one is the more balanced configurations just based on the information and some of the information might be anecdotal so we we have to run with the new knowledge that we have with the neighborhoods as much as we can because we don't have the full demographic information we don't have so I think part of the information that we have is anecdotal and when we are building the districts we're going to have to use that because we don't have the demographic but I think the homework is to try to build as many district configurations that make sense following the some of the criteria that Peggy suggested today trying to check for that yes Tracy and then Mike. Okay so I had one request in terms of I like the idea of going forward to the public with two maps and letting people weigh in if people do see specific issues with my map like I would including that southwest area which I didn't notice until the map was published but if people do see particular concerns or Peggy mentioned she had a solution to that like I would like to incorporate those into the version that goes out to the public so maybe we don't send it to the public like until later the week today's Tuesday we could release it to the public on say Thursday or something and just as a housekeeping thing Mike I noticed sometimes when we've given you updated versions of the map like they're still published in the packet with the same exact name and so perhaps you know at some point we want to just do want to have like the different iterations available it also shows people that we've tried different iterations and we've gone through this process multiple times right so I don't I don't know if it's a big challenge to change the names or not um anyway so one other comment I had is I mean I had done that calculation of like looking at each of the census blocks describing them assigning them I mean comparing them to the current precinct map and where they would fall into I mean Peggy gave me the list of where hers um fallen to and where mine fallen to and so I'd be happy to share that that actual is also linked with all the original population data that was shared the full data set like with all the different race subgroups and stuff and if that doesn't sound like an issue I'm happy to send it after the meeting and I would send it it's an excel file which again is why I didn't put in the packet because it would be PDFed yeah is there an issue with sharing that it's just data but I think no but I think Mike was going to make a layer a word we could overlay the two like the current sense the current districts with the new precincts and and the precincts that we create so I don't think the going through the spreadsheet is going to give I don't know to me it's actually helpful to look at the spreadsheet and do some of the calculations and it ties into the race I mean I think it's helpful to have both like if we're going to have an interactive map we can look at it on the map side and in terms of the numbers we also have to have in this spreadsheet form it's easy to do sums and look at the population like Tammy mentioned she had already calculated the districts and so on so personally I like it in both but Mike and then Craig so I want to just talk about one thing Craig you asked about voter data I can only speak from my experience in the past is sometimes and Sue correct me if I'm wrong but sometimes the state can be very protective of registered voter voter data and like taking that data and creating products from it like creating maps would be an example of that I don't know what sort of limitations the state may put on that data so I can't promise that we'll be able to take the registered voters and map them I know in the past they have restricted certain things like that one other thing is from counselor Hanukkah's email in the agenda packet she mentioned an interest in the maps that we produce to show proposed district boundaries but also demographic statistics and I was curious if anybody had any opinions for what sort of demographic stats they would like to see would that be like percentage breakdowns of race per potential precinct that we're looking at what what sort of metric would we like to see there and then I just want to procedurally say what I'm hearing as my to-do list is to take both Peggy's map and Tracy's map and to load it into the interactive map so that you folks can interact with it and you know play around with maybe changing a boundary or comparing it to the current precinct boundaries or the current district boundaries and looking at it I just want to confirm that that's correct yes okay thank you yes so I wanted to wait like a day or two to just tweak mine I don't know if Peggy feels the courage to tonight tweaks but I'd like to fix right I was simply going to suggest that Mike indicate what revision it is as as Tracy indicated and maybe Tracy could say what revision it is if Peggy could say what revision yours is because it's certainly not the first iteration of either one of them so this is the first iteration of both of these maps well you're individually it is more than one iteration this is Tracy's first iteration of 10 precincts but yours had yours had errors on it right there there were things that were there were like blocks there were islands within other blocks and so I wasn't going to publish one that had like a blatant kind of oh no I understand yeah it was just a little confusing just in terms of also I mean just for the archives like I think it's okay you know in the packet like when I had when you published my first 15 map and it had errors and then I fixed the errors and you published it again but it I mean because this is still draft like it's okay but to continually have the map called version one when I know that there's been like a bunch of earlier iterations and also just for the public to see that like we are tweaking it and we are adjusting it and things like that that's all do you have your fundraise so two things since you all are now seeking with these two maps public input what's your method or plan of getting the word out for folks to go onto the town website and take a look at it before the next meeting is there some discussion of that and then secondly the TOA potential developments at what point are you all going to include that within your map making or have you have Peggy you and Tracy looked at those potential developments and the numbers there's at least two pretty large ones and figured out is that are those potential proportions okay for when those developments go up so that's my two questions so I can say a little bit about the potential development I think right now it's everything's potential that if we were to consider every single potential development we have to scrap the 10 precincts and go to 15 because any any any any development in Amherst is going to tip us over the 40 000 so we don't know the timeline we don't know what's the impact of the pandemic on some of this development I think the committee made a some point of choice to go with the 10 but if we if we if we incorporate any potential the only thing that we can say is try to keep where they are the potential for the development to include them in precincts trying to put them on the lower bound if possible but we don't have much we will if not we have to stop right now the 10 precincts I would go with 15 and to try to look at the different and that's complicated I mean 15 is much more complicated yeah no I I appreciate the clarification that's what I wanted to know had it been considered already within your boundaries and I think that's going to be an important response for when when folks do inquire so going back to the first question what is the plan I mean I've been sharing like on social media meeting dates and links obviously it's my small circle it's not like folks are clamoring to to be out here I've been also sharing with people but we have one one one person in the audience yeah and they actually have their hand raised oh well there we go for the public comment some more minutes so I would love to have a press release but with the with the timeline that we have I don't know we have time and I don't know how to publicize I'm open to suggestions I have a quick comment on that I mean could we just say that you know the district advisory board is continuing its work and we've created two draft maps for precincts and we're starting to look at districts and we welcome feedback it could be like a very short release and we could ask um we could ask the yeah Brianna at the town to just even just send it out on the email let's say like we welcome feedback and people can email feedback to sue okay I mean I just I mean it could be very short so real quick within that sue and I don't know how that totally works I know I subscribe to the text messaging for the town and certain things are announced it's not always just meeting announcement sometimes it's an announcement and then it it's a link that takes you to let's say a press release or further elaboration is there a way to maybe do that because folks that subscribe to those text messages they get you know it's a pretty quick turnaround and they get those pretty regularly is there a way to do that yeah Mike can talk about that that's the notify me correct um no I think what I think what um D is referring to is something that's called a news and announcements on our webpage when you go to the amherstime.gov webpage there's like a you can scroll down a little bit and there's like a pant there's um there's you know paving on this street or are those the sort of things that you receive messages for D like paving here or road closures there or yes yes so it would be a news and announcement sue that it's more than just a press release it's also a news item and it would come with a picture and it automatically goes from there to Facebook and Twitter and a whole bunch of other social media things so maybe that's what we talked to Brianna about is creating a note um a news item for it Craig you have to hang up I'm Peggy if you send it to the indie by Friday they'll put it out on Saturdays indie yeah a lot of response well we can send it to the current we can send it to you know the gazette we can send it everywhere if we're willing to get feedback Peggy same thing that Craig said okay so do we have a volunteer that was willing to write us for online press release to send it around I can uh because I did the last one it's just you know send uh specifically I guess what you want in it um and then I can put it up Tracy so I just have a question going back to our earlier item but just in terms of our time frame right so we're talking about like after this meeting before the next meeting exploring the districts these two precinct maps we came up with and looking at districts but when is it we do need to report to the council in a month so what is your current time frame that you're thinking of in terms of when we need to finalize the precincts and districts and kind of going back before we go to the council I'm thinking ideally by the end of the month okay because so like two more meetings two more meetings that I'm taking I'm hoping to suggestion but I want to have at least a solid two week two week time to tweak whatever things that might come up and to write the report that we have to submit and the districts yes Craig I just have to on a personal note say that I have to go to California in two weeks we're indefinite for you at the time and I may not make all the meetings okay okay thanks for letting us know um so do I think that press release and I I want to say it right now so that we don't have problems we meet upper meeting law and communicating I think the the message should be the district that was a month continues to meet we have some preliminary maps and we welcome suggestions and comments to this email address or at our next meeting on Tuesday and we don't have demographic data except for the population and race data I mean people can also look at themselves yes based on the spreadsheet those other yeah I think that essentially short and to the point where we added this point so it's a midpoint announcement and then Mike you'll send like the links to add to that for those maps because we could just include it okay okay correct those links those and I can send those to you D when Tracy is because I believe and I if I heard correctly Peggy your map is staying static correct I make we get a little bit okay all right well when do you want those by like Mike can we get them to you by like Thursday morning or something we can do a press release by Friday yeah that sounds fine to me okay so D what I'll do is I'll I will send you the links to them when Peggy and Tracy give me the thumbs up that their maps are complete and no more changes are occurring I'll send you to those those and then you can put that embed that in your text got it so our next meeting is Tuesday next Tuesday so the agenda has to be published by Friday so if anybody wants an item please send it to me before Friday morning I usually try to send it to the Thursday night or early Friday morning so that we have some wiggle boom just in case and we don't want to miss a meeting okay and I think too yes I just want to make sure we don't forget the the person's public comment to the person yeah no no no no no no no no no the the other issue is so the homework is Mike can you let us know when you have updated the interactive map with the layers so that people can start playing that won't be until Tracy and Peggy give me a thumbs up which is Thursday ish Friday I'm going to give you like you know within 24 hours it will be okay I'm not changing much at this point thank you so let us know as soon as done because then we can start working for next meeting and then hopefully we can send you something before okay Friday before Monday so that we have some time yes Tracy I was gonna say and that could go in the press release too that like again like we have the interactive similar to the language we had before that we have an interactive map like on our website and people can play with it themselves and the spreadsheet is there as well for anybody who's like a data head who likes to do this as some members of the public already are as I can see so okay do you want to include in the press release the date we're hoping to have it done by so people don't think they have a long time to play with it yes so that we have a hope to have a final version in the next two weeks yeah thank you so I think we can finish the discussion this and go to public comment at the end of the meeting sorry about the time I'm going to allow it's Meg Gage allowed to talk and I just brought her in thank you so much can you hear me okay yes yes I appreciate this long meeting and the thoughtfulness I really liked Peggy's eight criteria very much I want to encourage you to think of what you're doing in the context of the master plan which is the supposed to be the kind of guiding outline of what we all do and particularly focus on village centers there's actually going to be a primer on Monday that 27th of this month at 5 30 a primer and then at six o'clock a public forum on the master plan if that would be helpful for you to understand it but I think the master plan is a document that we can all use to coordinate our strategies I also was on the charter commission and involved in deciding how the different districts would be organized and originally the idea was to organize the districts in terms of precincts that had mixing up high combining high and low voter turnout and it would have created districts that would have been without any rational relationship to geography so for example the original proposal for district one would have been the top half of North Amherst the half of the intersection of North Amherst the north side of Pine Street going all the way to Atkins reservoir and down to Helm Road and districts two would have been the south side of Pine Street the other half of the intersection in North Amherst so we need to think about how neighborhoods work and how village centers work and particularly some of the dynamics that relate to unique circumstances so this is not sure this is the most important thing but in North Amherst for example we're in so-called opportunity zone which is part of the Trump 2017 tax bill which determines identified certain parts of the country that were blighted and like industrial blight and rural poverty and North Amherst qualified because of the low income of all the students and so there's this huge taxing incentive for people in investors to put money into North Amherst with tax write-offs that creates a dynamic that gives us a particular it's an opportunity for sure but it's also a circumstance that requires our counselors to be paying attention and so if you divide up North Amherst into two parts I'm giving you this as an example we aren't able to respond so creatively or effectively to some of these things that happen one of the curious things about I used to be in I'm still in precinct one we have 11 department complexes in precinct one we had one of the as she was reported earlier in this meeting lowest voter turnouts in the whole town but we had the most competitive town meeting elections because those of us who voted were very engaged so that we need to look deeply at how neighborhoods work how communities how village centers work and particularly paying attention to protecting our rural agricultural parts of this town that are important to us um so I guess I just encourage I've said enough in the meeting's gone on a long time so I'll stop there but I appreciate very very much the work you're all doing I appreciated the three maps I studied them carefully I figured out how to screen save them all so I can look at them later but I really encourage you not to divide out that village centers and I know that you could have a precinct you could combine a district you could combine two precincts into one district that wouldn't divide up a bill at village centers so that's but you know we need to give our counselors an ability to represent neighborhoods that are uh intact or that represent us a set of interests and not be fragmented this this issue of the students is really difficult and I appreciated very much your discussion about whether you divide them up among different precincts or you consolidate them into one but students aren't going to vote in local elections they just aren't and you may try and you can go into a dorm and have a meeting but why would they I didn't vote and when I was in college in local elections and so we just have to accept that as a fact I think and figure out how to deal with that anyway sorry to blab on here but I appreciate all you're doing also I couldn't retrieve those two documents that others couldn't it went to you know it's like I really wanted to see what Mandy wrote because she and I were on the charter commission together we agreed about a bunch of things and didn't always agree but I was like oh I want to see what Mandy wrote but anyway they were hard I couldn't open them and I have dropped you know whatever the program is you're supposed to I couldn't get them open anyway thank you very much for public comment so I want to clarify goodbye Meg I want to clarify the maps you don't need to take a screenshot they are on the on the packet material you can have access to it without us they're having to take a screenshot okay so actually so Mike when you when we're updating these materials can you put them in the packet for next week can we do it that way and just we'll start that packet yes yes thank you thanks yes whatever any changes the the tweaks to Peggy's map the tweaks to Tracy's map those PDF maps that I make I'm going to load them into next week's packet and then I'm going to when they're finalized I'm going to take those those precinct layers and I'm going to load those layers into the interactive map and I will send you folks an email saying hey the data has been loaded in there get to work thank you so it's 8 30 um they're here motion I moved to a check second okay great uh Craig Meadows hi Tracy Safian hi Peggy Shana hi my name is Maelstein hi Telling Parks hi you didn't know how many I so the meeting is adjourned thank you very much for everybody thank you good night all good night