 Hello, Kirsten. Hi, Matt. Can you hear me? I can, Jeff. How are you? All right, very good. Thank you. The conference room. Kirsten, you ready to roll? Can you hear us in the? Yes. OK. Yes. Jeff, can you hear us? Yeah, I can hear you guys. Yes. Jeff, you can hear us in the conference room. You can hear Kirsten. This is Carol. Yes. OK, great. Thank you. OK, so is everybody, let's see. So is Jess acting as co-host to log everybody in? Is she caught up with her? Well, yeah, actually, Kirsten's been doing that. I don't have access to that, but I will be doing that. So, hi. OK, Kirsten, can we begin? Because it's already 7 o'clock. Good evening, folks. My name is Jeff Comstock. I will be serving as a moderator this evening. But before we get started, I guess I first thing I would like to do is for everyone is to acknowledge Kirsten Wilson, who is the new CEDO NPA liaison, who some of you may or may not have had an opportunity to meet her or talk with her. So she is our new contact person for NPA business down at the CEDO office. And I'd also like to take a quick minute to recognize Jonathan and Carol from the Ward 1 and 8 NPA for helping with planning and pulling this wing and a prayer meeting off this evening. And also Evan Litwing from the 4 and 7 steering committee who created some artwork for this purpose that some of you may have seen in the promotional material. So the other thing before I start with the idea of the context and the purpose of the meeting is there was a last minute agreement to do a little agenda shuffling this afternoon. So Justin St. James from the city attorney's office is actually going to go first to provide the legal framework presentation. And then councillors Barlow and Sarah Carpenter will deal with the resolution details. So just very quickly, the main purpose of the meeting today is because the NPA steering committee across the city have a fairly urgent task at hand in terms of preparing for special action that has to be taken by each NPA steering committee at each of our next meetings whenever that occurs. And I'm going to circle back and give each of the NPA reps a chance to remind us when their next meeting is. And almost more importantly, the purpose of this meeting is to create citizen interest in the ad hoc committee for redistricting, because that's actually the purpose of the next NPA meeting is for the steering committees and not just steering committees, but all of the neighborhoods to be electing the citizen representatives that are going to represent them on the ad hoc steering committee. So I'm really interested in generating some enthusiasm about maybe that should be you. And if not you, then who in your neighborhood would be well suited for this task. And then I guess the last introductory thought I would have is I want to ask if there are any other additional steering committee members from across the city who are also with us this evening. So I guess I'd like you to go ahead and speak up and tell us which ward you are so we get a sense of how represented we are across the city this evening. Matt, I can go ahead. So 1 and 8, so Tom and Carol from Wards 1 and 8 are here. Our meeting is September 8, the second Wednesday of the month. And on our agenda will be to have people be one representative to be elected by the participants who come. And we definitely are interested in having people who are interested contacting any steering committee person or even your city councilor if you're not sure who your NPA person is. But to contact us ahead so we can give you the time and the heads up that you needed our September 8th meeting. Thank you. Yeah. And I presume you'll be doing some promotional postings for that purpose between now and then, correct? Yes. OK. All right. Anybody from here from 2 and 3 this evening? Yeah. Hi, Jeff. This is Jess Viment. I'm here from Wards 3 and 2. And our next, our September meeting is on Thursday, September 9. And we'll also be, we'll also have this as an agenda item. And we'll be looking for a representative from each ward to sit on the committee. And we'll have more information available before the meeting and at the meeting. And folks can reach out to contact us if they're interested. It's great. All right. And thank you for being gatekeeper as co-host tonight, Jess. All right. Anybody from 5 or 6? I'll raise my hand, Jeff. Obviously, Ward 7. Next Wednesday in one week is our meeting. And I believe it's going to be an abridged shorter meeting just for this topic. So that's Wednesday, the 25th, 7 p.m. Yep. I would concur with that. And just for context for other non-steering committee folks on there with us this evening is the steering committees had to put this informational meeting together in fairly short notice at the request of the Sarah Carpenter and Mark Barlow. In order to, as you will hear later in the meeting, there is a schedule built into the city council resolution. And in order to meet that deadline, each NPA has to do this order of business at their next meeting. And for us in 4 and 7, we ended up with the shortest lead time because as Matt indicated, our meeting is next Wednesday. So we have a week between now and then. And each of the other NPAs still have their first meeting during the month of September to get this task done. So does anybody have any other questions on context and purpose before I turn it over to Justin from the city attorney's office? All right, with that. So Justin, it's good to see you. And thank you very much for being here this evening. So I'm going to turn it over to you. Great. Justin St. James, assistant city attorney. And our office provides, will provide guidance. And I'm sure some amount of information gathering and receiving and giving to the committee once it's established. I just wanted to give a sort of very large overview so folks had an understanding of the task that is being set up here in terms of the committee's going to tackle. So I just wanted to go over quickly. If there are specific questions, I'll try to answer them. If I don't have one, I'll follow up with Jeff or with you directly, whatever you'd like. So redistricting is the process of adjusting the electoral district boundaries basically to meet US constitutional requirements of equal representation. It happens every 10 years. And the Constitution provides that the census occurs every 10 years to determine the distribution of actually US House of Representative seats. So every state gets one House seat and then additional seats based on representation. And that's actually called apportionment. And so then each state adjusted voting districts to elect the number of seats allotted by creating or changing geographic subdivisions so you have relatively equal sized populations. And that's known as redistricting. And the same principles apply to the various levels of government, including the city of Burlington. Burlington currently has one US House district, which appears to remain the same. And Burlington's divided into seven Vermont House districts. And so to ensure equal representation, the city has a responsibility to redraw ward boundaries and get voter and legislative approval for charter change if there's large enough discrepancies in terms of if populations have shifted since this was last done. And we'll get into it quickly, just some of the factors they look at. But courts have determined that, except in very narrow or extreme circumstances, the difference between the highest and lowest number of people that I see counselor represent should be less than 10% when you're looking at ward to ward or district to district. So we are currently awaiting information specifically both the state and the city down to the granular level in Burlington. I believe that it is promised to be here by September 30, I believe, is the timing. It could be a little earlier. And how it may or may not affect Burlington's current wards and district system. Just for overall context, Burlington is divided currently, or the state council, is into eight wards and four districts, with two wards being included in each district for a total of 12 counselors. If the city were to decide to request voter approval for a different plan, either in the number of representatives of the ward and district system, or if there were changes to that, the city's new districting plan would not be limited to the current configuration. The new plan could involve a different number of wards or counselors or districts as long as it provides approximately equal representation to all Burlington residents. State law does provide some policies that can be used to guide the redistricting policy, including this is statutory, preserving existing political subdivision lines, keeping neighborhoods intact, using districts that are compact and contiguous. And when Burlington last redistricted, the factors chosen by the city sort of in line with case law to guide in the decision-making process were, just in general, the total number of counselors and then divided by the population, the number of wards, once again, keeping geographic areas intact, minimizing population difference between wards that goes to the sort of constitutionality issue. The boundaries would follow major roads as much as possible. Academic institutions should be in more than one ward because ward size mattered for citizen communication and campaigning. And so I think that was a factor. Minimizing changes from current wards was an interest that was expressed last time, relationship to state legislative districts and then the overall deviation of less than 10%. And it gets sort of into case law, but I think that that's a real guiding factor. That 10% number is very important. And so I think when numbers come in and the analysis is done, I think that'll be an overarching theme is those factors and other factors that folks, including this committee would decide, maybe they're different, maybe they're the same to be considered this time as changes are contemplated, but certainly the equal representation is sort of an overarching theme and a constant when these different possibilities are being contemplated to send back to city council. And then just a little bit, just so folks understand the process overall, if changes are going to occur, there's reviewing the census results, determining if redistricting, that's that number again, in terms of how large the deviation there is, if it's changed, establishing evaluation criteria and keeping record of how they're met. So that way, the process folks can have a checklist and understand how we got here using GIS software to review maps, folks who have seen them, it gets very fancy and granular and you can find your domicile on there and see where the lines are. And so that's helpful in applying the evaluation criteria. And so the sort of process is determining if there is by the, because of the deviation, if a charter change has to occur, there's sort of a very long process when it comes to charter changes in the public hearings that you have to hold are set forth statutorily. So you have to have public hearings and warn it. And so it starts fairly early if this was to be, I think as council says in the resolution, potentially brought to voters for town meeting day 2022, that process, usually I believe the first warnings are usually held or are issued in late December for the public hearings just to keep that going. And then it would require voter approval. And then just so folks understand, charter changes go to the legislature, they get introduced and usually start in house government operations, then have to make their way through the house and the Senate and then end up eventually if they pass both bodies, they end up on the governor's desk, either passing the law without signature be signed or be vetoed. So just overall, that's a bit of the process. So our office will certainly be helping this committee as their work proceeds, but I just wanted to give a bit of a high level overview tonight. All right, thank you. I'm looking at the participant list to see if I see any hands right off the bat. And while people may be pondering a question, you talked about the sort of the criteria. And I know, so is that evaluation criteria document? Is that available for people access? And is, was that revised? Also revised the last time we went through this or is that a standing document? And then the revision sort of comes out of that. Where might people find it? I can actually send, I can send you the link for distribution right after. That's actually from the city's website. And it might be helpful. I can share a PowerPoint that our office created as well. I think that we shared with city council if it'd be helpful to, I can email those resources to you. Okay, cause I'm sure that's Oh, yeah, I'm sure that's something you'll provide the ad hoc committee when they get to work, but just thinking in terms of preparing for our next NPA meetings that that would be helpful to have for steering committees to have at that time too. Perfect, absolutely. Okay, so, okay, I see a couple of hands. So let's start with Bridget, so you can unmute yourself, please. Thank you, Justin and Jeff. Justin, a question for you. I understand one of the criteria being the 10% shift. Do we know yet whether there has been in fact a 10% shift either way in any of the wards? And my follow-up question is if we, if there is no 10% shift in any of the wards, what happens then? Can the, can we live with this? Constitutionally and legally do, can we live with the status quo? So first is, no, I don't think in any official capacity, at least to my knowledge, the city has not received that granular level of census data. I did see that some started sneaking out for Vermont this week, but certainly I haven't seen anything official. So, and it's a little early given the delays that folks had due to the pandemic. And then the second piece is, so have no idea whether a threshold is hit or not. And so then I do think it'll be up to, frankly, the committee and counselors and voters about whether the current system fits the needs and the wants of the city. But I certainly think, I think the current system is legal. So I think that it'll be a choice by the folks who are either appointed or elected to make those decisions about any changes that might be brought to voters. And then ultimately, like all things, two voters. Thank you. Thank you. Robert, looks like you're up. Okay, so your criteria about the 10% that the most populated ward could not be more than 10% more than the least populated ward, which is what we did actually hit back in 2014. But I have heard from the state redistricting discussion that actually the criteria that the courts are using is plus or minus 10% from the mean. And so that we actually would calculate the optimal or mean population per ward by dividing the city by eight. And then each ward can't be more than plus or minus 10% away deviating from that. And that's a larger target to hit. Okay, so okay. And I do not know what the deviation versus the mean. So I do think you're, I think you are correct though. I think that's a better way of summarizing it than I did. So I can see that part of the challenge for the ad hoc committee and the city council itself is gonna be revisit the statistics that they didn't wanna learn in college in the first place. So here we go. Well, and there might be enough slop allowed us that we might not have to redistrict by any. We might not be forced by any courts to redistrict. Now, Robert, I know that you were very much involved in that the last time through. And so I'm gonna ask this question, both Robert and Justin. So that criteria that you just talked about in terms of variance from the mean, does that apply at the state level and the local level or does each sort of municipal entity, are there different criteria that apply at the state versus local level? So that 10% is usually a deviation more than 10% is actually could be allowed for states. It's usually not for municipalities. So there is a little tighter reins on us in terms of the math. The state has some ways that they could, for instance, articulate a reasonable government policy to justify that deviation and they have some ways that they could potentially be closer or be above that 10% where municipalities normally don't. And just that 10% number, a deviation less than 10% is usually presumed to be constitutional just to reiterate that. So I think we have less wiggle room when it comes to 10% than the state may have. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, we're doing well for schedule so far. Any of our other citizen participants that have a question at this point? Yeah. Yes. When people make comments, I'm not familiar with all the people who are speaking. But they say what word they're in because I'm interested in, I'm on the steering committee of word one. And if someone from my ward showed up here, I'd like to know. Okay, well, so far a budget is you're in word four. Is that correct? And Robert is in word seven. Correct. Okay. Thank you. All right, so with that, Justin, I guess we can go ahead and we'll move on to the city councilor portion. But thank you very much. There was a question from Olivia. She had her hand up. Oh, okay. I missed it. All right, Olivia. Ward seven. And your question? I didn't have a question. I'm just identifying myself as a citizen who wanted to hear about this. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, then we'll see you next week. Okay. Right. I hope so. I've got it down. Thank you. All right. So thank you very much, Justin, for taking this on on short notice and we'll look forward to that material you send us and we'll share that with the other steering committees. Great. Thank you. Jeff. Yes. I think we have one other person who was interested in speaking. Is that really Justin? Yeah, I looked at it. Olivia has her hand up. Oh. Okay. I didn't hear who that was, but... Leah. Leah. Leigh Terchewan has her hand up. All right, Leigh, you're on. You do have to unmute yourself. Okay. I'm a process question. I have no raised hand function. Q&A says it's closed. Could you tell us how we're supposed to communicate to you that we would like to ask a question? I mean, I had my hand up. I don't know how you missed it. Do you not see the screen, Jeff? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we can definitely see your screen. So we saw your physical hand up. Okay. So why can't you give us a raised hand function or a Q&A function? We're in the webinar format, so there is no Q&A, but you should be able to raise your hand. Am I the only one that doesn't have raised hand? Okay. If I'm the only one, just please be aware that when I have a question, I'm going to have to put my hand in front of the screen. All right. That sounds good. Thanks. Thanks. Evan also had his hand up. No, I was just testing the raised hand feature to see if that was working for me. Leah, if you don't see it, it's at the bottom of the screen, but I'm watching and I see you. And if there's any way I can help you, Jeff, just promote me to a host and I'm happy to try and assist with that because you're doing a lot. Okay. All right. I will count on everybody else's eyes to help with that. So if you see somebody that wants to ask a question, speak up. All right. With that, I guess I'd like to transition into our city councilor portion. And so I'll ask Sarah and Mark, you want to take it from here? Sure. Thanks, Jeff. And thanks everybody for being here tonight. On June 28th, the city council passed a resolution to establish an ad hoc committee on redistricting. And that committee is to be composed of one member from each ward appointed or elected by their NPAs. By their NPAs. The council thought that it'd be better to get the process going early. This time, the last time we did redistricting, the process took almost two years. And so we wanted to get ahead of it, even though we don't have all the data in yet. What we do know right now is some gross numbers. I think Mayor Weinberger did a press release last week that said that the population has grown 2,326 from 42,417 to 44,743. He also indicated there's an increase of 1,500 new homes. I asked the mayor and his team about more granular information. And as Attorney St. James said, we just don't have that yet, but we're expecting to have that soon. And the city is working on it or are waiting for it. I'm not clear on which, but we do expect to have it soon. We don't know if these changes will require redistricting, but we wanna have a committee that can look at the various issues around redistricting. One of the outcomes may be that we don't have redistricting, but even if we don't have a constitutional mandate to redistrict, we're empowering the committee to make recommendations on the current system even and any changes that they might recommend for a new system. What we're asking the committee to do is to meet and oversee at least two public meetings to collect input from the public on anything to do with redistricting. Those things might include the current configurations of wards and districts. Do we want the districts east? The districts have been a point of discussion, let's say over the last several years. So people pointed out that those entities are, they have a larger burden, the representatives of a larger burden because they have doubled the number of representatives. We also want to collect information on that number of counselors. And previous to the current district model, we had 14 counselors. We currently have 12, the number per ward. We used to have two per ward. Now we have one per ward and an additional seat per district with each district encompassing two wards. And also considering other things, like the ward boundaries, the locations of polling places that are most important is in commoncy important. So these are the kinds of considerations but not limited to just those that a committee can take up and collect public input. What we're hoping is that through that process, the committee will make recommendations to the city council. And I believe the resolution says by the last meeting in October, and the council will then take that information and those recommendations and create a resolution and part of the resolution will be to incorporate the recommendations and to give that work then to a mapping specialist to make, to create one or more maps that the council will then consider and select for inclusion, ideally on town meeting day next year in 2022. We do understand that the timeline is tight and the resolution even says we'll try to place a redistricting plan on the March 22 ballot. We do understand it's a lot of work. So be mindful of that. Did you have anything you'd like to add to that, Sarah? I don't have a lot to add Mark. I think I almost apologize for the tightness of this but I think it is important to get and at the same time, make sure we get everything on the table. I think that's important just to, even if nothing changes, we just need to get it out there. We need to get the public input. What changes would you like to see? And that's really the past of the APOC committee is bring back to us as best they can as much feedback as they can about kind of what's working and what's not working. I think it's important to say that they may come back and say the committee may come back and say they're like the system that we have just fine. And if we are constitutionally mandated to make changes, we may elect not to. But it'll be interesting, I think, to see if there are discrepancies that exceed that threshold of 10% from the mean where they are and if we have to move lines. A last thing I would say, if we're getting questions is one of the things that is also important and we talked about while drafting the resolution was consideration of the neighborhood identities and the issues of New North End is different than the old North End, which is different than the Hill section in the South End. And we have a system now that sort of is drawn around, that encompasses those various community interests and if that's an important committee to consider. But again, you know, not to complicate this, but there may be different iterations. And I'll just use our own district, which is where we're cut North and South. You know, could you cut East and West and still preserve the neighborhood? Finding those are things that, you know, ought to be considered when you're looking at it. So I think neighborhood identity is key, but that could mean another way of looking at it. Okay. Oh, Jack, okay. You're up. Great. Hey everyone, this is Jack Hansen. I'm the East District City Councilor and just wanted to add one detail that I think has been coming up as we prepared for this meeting, which is just that the NPA's job right now isn't to figure all of these questions out. The NPA's job right now is to really to identify a delegate or a member to serve on this ad hoc committee and the ad hoc committee will really dive into that deeper level. So obviously any discussions that NPAs want to have about these issues is great and dig in, but I don't want people to feel overwhelmed that you as NPA steering committees have to determine all of these things. Really what you have to determine is that delegate to join the ad hoc committee. All right. Well, thank you for the clarification. And yeah, more than anything, I think as steering committee, I speak for myself as a steering committee member, is like, I don't think we're looking to take this on. We're very much interested in being in the recruiting business, but not... Jeff, we can't hear you. Oh yeah, okay. It's a little bit windy, so I was trying to avoid that, but yeah, so I was just trying to follow up with Jack and say that we understand that this is a recruiting process for the steering committee, not one that we are feeling the need to do ourselves. Oh, Jeff, you have it? Is now an okay time to start questions? Yes. Yeah, I think we should head in that direction. I just had a burning question. So my question is, we can use this camera in the door. Oh, so my question is, so given the amount of time that the delegates will be spending on this committee and it's an important job, I'm wondering if there's any money in the budget for stipends for the delegates and also if there's any money budgeted for the outreach activities. So, for example, for the community meetings and other outreach, it would be really helpful to have a budget for snacks or extra advertising or things that could make the jobs of the delegates to get public feedback easier. I think we need to clarify that. I know that we put in the budget generally for committee stipends, but to be honest, I haven't heard from the administration how that's intended to be used. And I don't believe we, the council have set a policy on it even though it's sort of parked there. I guess I'll ask the CEDA office to come back and clarify for us if there's certainly not money for outreach and sort of PR and so we'll have to find that out. I would suggest if getting some of those funds from other sources were sort of a logistical headache that I think that the existing allocation that the NPAs get from the city council could actually be used for that purpose. Whereas each ward is currently receiving $2,500 support from the city council that I don't see why we couldn't be using a little bit of those funds to help support our NPA members in this task without trying to create a new budget allocation. Carol? Yeah, I would be a little defensive about that myself as far as the 2,500 and we struggled to figure out what to spend it on to be perfectly honest. But I think we're also looking at the NPAs taking on more responsibilities. I think that's something that for example, Jane Stromberg has raised at city council about the NPAs participating more. So I'd hate, I feel like the city has some money right now. This is a city task and I think they've asked the NPAs to run it, which is great, but I don't think, to be honest, I don't think we should fund it, but my other question really is about, it sounds like, I know, it is not easy to hold public meetings and to get people to come and give our feedback. For example, I'd be interested in how many people have attended tonight. I'd say, of course, 22 on line. Great, which is, I mean, and we were NPA-ing, we're lucky if it's 25 or 30. And it's the same folks and it's white elderly people. To be honest. And so I think our city is very different than who we are as their communities. And we work really hard trying to figure out ways to broaden that, but I think this committee can't be in the business of trying to get a lot of public information and people to come without a lot of support. I think they've got a lot on their plate. I think another aspect that really needs to be looked at is how do we get more people involved in this very important process? I know Pet, if I'm seeing how he's been working on coming up with the data as well as information to expand how we reach folks who we don't hear from. And I think we could look at Pet for maybe some help. I'm Haji who sits on the school board as we're hard to try to provide opportunities. If we look at Talitha's survey, if we saw that in Digger, they did not reach the communities that we're talking about. They reached middle of an upper income and a higher income folks. So- Okay Carol, I appreciate, I understand the comment and the frustration because I think at each steering committee struggles with that question as well. And I think that that's a challenge that the ad hoc committee can come back to. So I see a couple of other hands that I'd like to move on and so Evan, I believe you're next in the queue. Sure, thanks so much Jeff and thanks for facilitating. I really appreciate Carol's question because it was a really good segue to what I wanted to ask. And I hope that I see Justin St. James is still on. So he may be able to also answer. But this is really directed towards our city councilors. So to what degree can, so what role would actually Tayisha Green's office potentially have, not just in outreach but also in the actual redistricting work and to what degree if at all are the changing racial demographics of Burlington taken into account in the redistricting kind of process? So in other words, I'm particularly sensitive about my geographic location because we straddle the line between actually four wards. And so we are the southernmost portion of the New North End and many people would consider this the old North End and we're also one of the most growing to be one of the most racially diverse areas of this particular area of the city. So I just have some sensitivities about can that be looked at? Is it constitutional for that to be looked at? And if so, what are the city's plans to incorporate both Director Green's office input from her office and folks from other organizations who represent those communities that Carol is talking about? Justin, is that something you wanna try to address now or is that a question that the ad hoc committee and the city council can grapple with? I think it's that one as much as I'd like to I don't get to tell other departments what to do or who staffs what, which I would like to do but it's not one of my powers. So I don't have any information but perhaps the counselor does. All right, thank you. Okay, so Robert. May I respond? Oh, all right. Well, I was gonna circle back to you, Sarah, but yeah. So let's get Robert's question in and then come back to you, okay? Well, no, let's get Sarah first and I'll ask a question later. All right. Well, I was gonna comment that racial demographics will be presented to us when we get in the census data. So that's data that will be available and I'm not a constitutional expert but there will need to be conversations about how that's sort of in and around where you draw the lines. So that is a piece of conversation. But I did want to comment. We struggled when we put together this resolution. What was the best way to get public input? And for better or worse, the NPAs are the group that we have charged to do that and recognizing that it's a system that's probably not as robust as we would like it to be. You know, the sponsors had talked about should we do this out of whole cloth and like do it over here. And I think we thought, no, the NPAs really are earnestly trying to work at more outreach. And so I think your comments are fair about how can we support that outreach? So I think we need to have a conversation with the administration and ZEDO that how can we beef up because again, the NPA structure is what we've got today. And I think we need support from folks like Dr. Green's armor. So how do we get more input from folks? Thank you, Sarah. So it is Jermaine. Hi, Robert. So the question I was gonna ask, I was gonna kind of give people a little bit of the history of eight years ago. The thing that really got the public involved was after about a year of not having much agreement with the District Committee, they decided to crowdsource the map. And there's a web application called district builder and you have to set it up with all the population information from the census blocks that will come from the census. And I don't think we have those numbers yet. I think they'll come later this year. Anyway, that got the public involved and that got a map drawn that actually made it through council and made it onto the ballot. And so I'm just asking if that's something that is planned on by the council or by the people proposing this. I find it interesting that the conversation and the challenge of this whole proposal goes back to one of engagement. How do you promote involvement? How do you promote engagement regardless of what the subject matter is? So I mean, that's a topic that kind of continues to bother me all the time that if we were to get that figured out, we could solve all kinds of city problems. So I mean, I recognize that that challenge of engagement is at the core of this question as much as it is many other questions. So, is anybody seeing any other? I could lead you there. Yeah, I wanted to comment on Jack's remarks and Sarah's. I appreciate that Jack was trying to relieve the steering committees of anxiety that they were gonna have a lot of work. But I wanna say that it's important that once you choose a person to represent the ward, and there should be qualifiers and prequalifiers involved, this shouldn't be a popularity contest. It should, the steering committee should decide what are the qualifications of the person who serves? And then the people that are nominated should speak to those qualifications. The other point I wanna make is that it's important that that person come back to the NPAs and tell the NPAs what's happening in their committee. Ask for advice from the NPAs. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? We did that with the North Avenue Corridor Study. Very effectively, every NPA meeting, the representatives who were on that committee came to the meeting and had a half an hour to tell what they were doing and get input from people. So that's part of an answer of your engagement process. Yeah, people have to come to the NPA meeting and they're gonna be, aren't they, Jeff, gonna also be on Zoom so people can both be in person or virtual? We're struggling with that logistic right now and we're not prepared to do both at the same time at the ward level. Well, the reason I ask is, I'm in touch with a lot of senior citizens who are going back to masking and avoiding indoor groups. So you've really gotta face the fact that we don't have open public meetings at this time if there isn't a virtual access. Anyway, people have to go to their NPA in order to interact with the person in this case, ward seven will be two people who are serving on that ad hoc committee. Talk things over, say how they feel and then those members as representing us take that information back to the committee. We don't just appoint them and then they're off on their own doing whatever they want. Okay, thank you. So Matt, I see you have your hand up. Thank you, Jeff. This question is not meant to be wise, but could someone explain to me what racial diversity has to do with counting bodies for a voting district? I thought this was about evening numbers, not race. Well, I think that's a fair question. And I was a little sensitive, quite frankly, when that question arose because I can't think of a faster route to a lawsuit than to be drawing district value based on what you want to do, but maybe someone from city council could answer or the city attorney. Thank you, Matt. My comment is I think we just have to have the data and if we're moving street lines, for example and you had a block or a building that was housing one group or another, I think you're totally right, it's mostly population based, but you're gonna get down to some fine tuning at a certain level. I mean, we know some boards are divided right down the middle of the street. So I think it's a sensitivity as much as anything. And it's not, you can't, we clearly can't gerrymander or put everybody one place or another. I just think it's data worthy of looking at and when you're splitting hairs, like should it be on this block or that block? It's just information you need. It just seems to me like it shouldn't be a consideration. But that's my ignorant opinion. I think it is a conscious iteration. It's not that consideration, it's a consideration. Justin, you have an opportunity to follow up. Yeah, just, and this is probably getting more granular than I think we were planning tonight, but you cannot separate on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. So just to be clear, you can get down to the granular level of what they call census blocks which are groupings of houses and apartment buildings. That's the sort of smallest granular level. So I understand, so I just think we wanna be careful and that's probably something that we'll get more into with the steering committee and certainly the interactive process once numbers come back. Thank you. I have a question that goes in a slightly in a more administrative direction. And this is for Kirsten. So you're serving as our CEDO host. I'm curious, did you have any interaction or inquiry from any of the folks in five or six in leading up to this meeting? I don't have any participation, but I understand that they're going through their own processes to promote the application district. Okay, because I'm envisioning that as we go forward as with this assignment as individual steering committees that is, are we going to be coordinating and moving forward and coordinating through you and your office or are we reporting to the city council for this next phase of the project? You mean the selection of members, Jeff? Yeah, so as the NPAs begin to select the eight ward reps, are we submitting that roster to Kirsten at the CEDO office or are we supposed to be submitting that roster to you at the city council? How is the, who's essentially going to administer and manage the ad hoc committee? I mean, I think the intent, and this is, and I'm trying to read, we have this discussion, that we want you to be as independent as possible. So going at the gate, the eight people need to sort of manage themselves, but it's clear we need to sort of figure out logistical support, like who sends the meeting notices and finds the place. So we will clarify that and Councilor Brown and we'll make a note to say that. But I mean, I have a division, you will pick a chair or not you'll pick a chair, you'll organize your own meetings and decide when how you want to do them and we need to come back with you or to you or to the committee, but how to give you some support. So that is less than clear in this resolution, but I think the intent was that the committee have a lot of independence. You're not reporting yet to the city council. CEDO may be the more logical agency to give you logistical support and we need to clarify that. Yeah, some of you have organized this meeting, right? Two with the eight representatives and say, you've been chosen because they know who they are and they have someone leave them. And we will clarify that. And we talked about that, and we talked about having city staffs as well and the support from the city council. That kind of will work. All right, well, thank you for that. I mean, I wasn't trying to throw too serious a wrench in the works, but I mean, it does go back to the question that Jess asked about, you know, sort of practical or logistical support and granted, you know, we do have several weeks between now and, you know, the middle of September when the committee is supposed to convene. So I hope that as NPA steering committee folks, we can, you know, talk to you and try to get that detail worked out. So it's not a showstopper at this point because we've got a few weeks to figure it out, but I'm hoping we kind of have some sense of direction when we get there. Thank you. And I think it talks about the first meeting in mid-September. So it'll be a fairly intense time between then and the end of October. Okay. Okay, are there, we're moving, well, it's time for us to wrap up. So are there any closing questions that we can get to before we conclude? Oh, Virgit, I'm squeezing one more. Virgit? Thank you and I will be very, very quick. As a relative newcomer to Burlington, my question is what was the structure during the last census survey when we were redistricting here in Burlington? Was it an NPA-led initiative and is therefore this effort a new creation? Very different from the last exercise. The quick answer to your question is this is a new creation. Previously, the city council had one, each ward, yeah, each ward had two reps. Or no, there were seven wards with two reps in each ward. So for a total of 14 people, okay? And then, so the process that Robert was describing, drew some of the ward boundaries and ward eight came into creation. So we created a new ward, ward eight, and then each ward got one representative and then the districts were created. So two wards were paired together with one district representative for it. So it was eight plus four makes a total of 12 which is where we are now. Jeff, I see Lee and she was involved last night. I think Virgit was asking sort of the process and it predates me a little bit. I will say from our perspective, the point of offering the MPAs was to try to unpoliticize it if that's possible. So that the counselors and the administration would not be actively involved at this point in time. Ultimately, it comes to the council, but the point of this was to get more citizens put. And I see Lee has her hand because I know she was involved at that time. Yeah, Virgit, the answer to your question is that each NPA chose a representative and an alternate. The representatives were allowed to speak and participate in the meeting. Alternates were allowed to give input sometimes. We were not allowed to participate officially and we were not allowed to vote. One of the problems that happened with ward four is when it came to the last final decision, our representative didn't vote. Our representative abstained and they would not allow the alternate to vote because their role was that the alternate could only take part if the representative was not physically present and had given an excuse for not being there. So I would disagree with the idea that this is very different. The NPAs were very much involved before and the recommendations, there were three recommendations that were sent to city council and city council created a hybrid fourth option that they then put before the voters. So the NPAs were very much involved and I really credit city council with not only making the NPAs involved again but even strengthening their role. Thank you for doing that. I think it's really important. Thank you, Lee. All right, so yeah, so part of how at least my understanding of this goes is that the role of the NPA this time around with the ad hoc committee is really gonna be gathering feedback and intelligence reporting that in the next phase of redistricting the city council will appoint a separate independent formal redistricting committee which will happen sometime later in the process. So, all right, so I wanna give a, no, Tom, quickly please. I got a quick question. What does the city council expect in terms of how to handle this committee? What are you expecting to be delivered to? Recommendations around redistricting but unlike the previous time that we have the NPAs involved that Lee described, we're not asking you to deliver a map. We're asking for the recommendations that will then be further incorporated into a resolution that will be created by the city council incorporating the recommendations and then a map will be, map or maps will be drawn. And you want something that's great. Yes, and presented to the city council. Okay, with that Sarah and Mark, do you have any closing remarks that you would like to make or do you feel as if we're ready to convene? Jack Hansen has his hand up. All right, Jack, you're gonna have to make it quick. Yeah, no, I was just gonna respond and say, I agree with Mark and we wanna know what's important whether that be the number of city councillors, how many per district are we going back to just wards? How many do people want one councillor to councillors? Questions like that. And then also just to respond to the other thing, the council isn't, we're not gonna have a formal commission or another body after this. It's just gonna be one individual person who's a mapping specialist that we will then give guidance and that mapping specialist will draft up some maps from there. Okay, well, all right, thanks for that clarification. So I guess I would add that when the eight representatives are selected that it would be, I think it would be fair for the city council to provide an orientation session to that ad hoc committee. All right, so with that, I guess we're ready to adjourn for the evening and I thank everyone for their participation and good luck with the next, in your NPAs with the next round of this process. So thanks folks and good night. Bye, thank you. Thanks everyone, good night.