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1/29/20 ‑ NYC Civil Engagement 

SARAH SAYEED:  Okay, the meeting comes to order. Thank you so much to the videotaping and the captioning services, and I want to remind people that there is a sign‑in sheet and it should be going on and somebody from this team should make sure it's going around and then, also, wanted to mention that we do have Spanish interpretation today if anybody needs that, please let us know. We are suppose to have someone in the public comment from Harlem media institute, Carol Garca, not sure if that person is here today but I will pass around the attendance sheet for the commissioners to add their signature onto the sheet and since we don't have, there is one, two, three, four, five of us here which does not constitute a quorum so we cannot vote on the minutes, I will make a motion to reorder the items on the agenda and both on the minutes after we have a quorum. Okay, thank you. All in favor?  
	(All in favor) 
	Anybody oppose?  Okay, great, we will update the agenda to move the vote on the minutes to a point in the meeting when we do have a quorum.  Oh, Annetta, are you on the phone still?  
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  I am. But do I count part as the quorum?  
SARAH SAYEED:  It does not. But thank you for joining us, but one of the topics we will be discussing today as last time is the full site methodology and the deep dive on that and wanting as many people as possible to be apart of that and thank you so much, Annetta for being apart on the phone. 
	I will give you an update where we are programatically. One thing I want to tell you is that CBC has filled all the lines that we allocated. Very exciting, we allocated 7 lines and they have been filled and we are at full capacity, which is very exciting. Leslie Brown, she started 2 days ago. And our participatory budget advisor also started in January and it's thrilled and we're looking to figure out how we can work together better and create the infrastructure in the system, this commission to build a ship as we try to sail it. 
	First I want to tell everybody about is the participatory budgeting, the allocation for participatory budgeting was not included in the prebudget that was released recently and we are having eternal conversations continuing the conversation we had started with the mayor's office city hall and a lot of people are just trying to figure out how we move forward with the total allocation and also thinking about the strategy for participatory budgeting. 
	And, thinking about what the charter is asking us to do and I will go into a bit more than that but we all know that for participatory budgeting is in our Band‑Aid because it was seen as a creative participatory process that enliven and revive participation, particularly among communities that are not engaged. 
	So, we're just ‑‑ we have to have a lot of conversations, both with people who have been participating and what they think about people that have not been participating and members of the public having those same conversations inside of the administration. 
	We have our second meeting of the participatory budgeting advisory committee tomorrow, actually. And we'll be talking with them about ‑‑ we started to talk about what a city‑wide participatory budgeting could look like and some of the things we're thinking about and we will be discussing with them is just, you know, there are different ways to describe what city‑wide means and we know counsel center has not been participating and the importance of going to those spaces where they have not seen a participatory budgeting at the counsel level so we are thinking how to define what city‑wide is. 
	So we're looking to offer people the opportunity to propose projects that would be beyond their counsel projects, like a city‑wide project or a borough‑wide project, a way to define what city‑wide means if we have the opportunity to propose projects in every borough for example, and possibility adding a thematic focus to try to generate solutions to critical issues that we are grappling in New York, such as resiliency and critical justice and with this, you are welcomed on your thoughts on this. 
	And, I have to also just say that I have a cough which seems to be acting up when I speak, so hopefully I will not break out into a cough during the part where I speak but if that does, just have to stop for a minute. 
	Okay, so. Also thinking about ways of including specific marginalized and underrepresented communities, thank you very much. What flavor is this by the way?  Is it yellow mint?  It has menthol which makes my cough worse.  
	So in the charter there are specific subgroups we should be thinking about and include seniors veterans and use disabilities and language and communities and so we're looking to work and we already started conversations with these agency that is work with these communities and we had started to talk about the listing tours as you recall, we haven't implemented these yet and our latest iteration of it, Eve had her class work on a proposal for us where they developed a format for us to do a listening session with youth, so that is a possible format and the other theme we have been exploring has been trying to do listening sessions with some of these specific populations so in the conversations we have been having with agencies they have been telling us, for instance, that they already have groups, you know, like advisory groups that can mean. So we have been trying to connect with those spaces, just this week, we went to the specific engagement committee of the mayor's office of people with disabilities and José is on that committee as well. So that is an existing body and getting feedback on our programs and they were very engaged both on the issue of the community boards talking about how it's hard for people with disabilities to access CB meetings for various meetings and we will go back and have more conversations about that and also about participatory budgeting. 
	And also thinking about how we work better with city agencies. Different community‑based partners to tackle the problem and also you know other thematic issues we might come up to explore. Does anybody have questions about anything I said so far on PB or comment?  
CHARLES APELIAN:  Right now the problem is that it's voluntary on each counsel member, so what has been done as far as we should be reaching out to the speaker and really as colleagues and whether to address the counsel directly as counsel members and try to make this mandatory, it's a few million dollars off of their budget to go ahead with this, as much as we come up with ideas, the counsel men doesn't implement it, that's ideas. 
SARAH SAYEED:  That is a good point, there are counsel members that are not voluntarily participating and I think that idea ‑‑ well the counsel process is a voluntary process. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Correct. 
SARAH SAYEED:  And I think that's why to bring a charter commission and the creation of the city‑engagement civic commission, people saw the CBC to create a mandatory city‑wide program because this allocation that the city would make to this program is separate from the counsel men's voluntary participation so we would have a separate allocation to work with than the counsel men to work without of discretion. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  What do you mean?  We won't. 
SARAH SAYEED:  City engagement committee. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  We will have a pot of money to give each counsel member?  
SARAH SAYEED:  No, a participatory budget in which every New York will be able to participate. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  To recommend projects towards the city budget?  
SARAH SAYEED:  Yes. So it's a parallel process that will align with the counsel's process. It will not duplicate. The ones that are not participating, if they want to participate, they might. But we are running a process of what is being done and I think the idea behind of was that not all counsel members are not doing it and nothing is mandating them to do it and there is nothing in the charter to do it. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Do we know why counsel members are not doing it?  
SARAH SAYEED:  That say question we will explore more deeply but the general understanding I have is one important reason is the staff capacity, running the PB process is a staff intensive and takes a lot of community outreach and eternal staff work, working with agencies, folks, understanding how the projects that have been voted on or continuing and also developing and refining the project idea. So staff intensive commitment is one reason. The other reason could be just philosophically maybe not as interested in PB. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  I want a clarification. 
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  Yeah, hi. So hi. Everybody. I'm sorry I can't be there. But I just wanted to say that I also ‑‑ my organization has some experience working with counsel members on PB and it is extraordinarily labor intensive and there is about our program, I think we really need to consider the capacity piece. To redo it well. The process itself is a power building process and I think it is as important as the outcome. Right?  And I think I want to make sure we sort of hold that. As an important sort of objective as well. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Could you say a bit more about it, Annetta, what you mean about the process being as important as the outcome?  
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  Yeah, so, I mean ‑‑ 
SARAH SAYEED:  You could share more of your experiences with trying to work with the process, if you like. 
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  Yeah, that is what I think. I just want to say that I was on the charter revision commission that made the recommendation. As my organization has been working with counsel members on their efforts. But one, it's incredibly labor intensive and require a commitment to truly engaging community members in this because there are ways in which there are things that need to be expedited and when especially we try to involve folks that are not typically involved and don't have access to these processes, it's hard, right?  Months of things have to be considered, such as accessibility language, etcetera, and I want to say that is just that process itself to make it possible for both do not have the experience, the opportunity, and amazing barriers to participating, that process itself is at critical of the outcome for whatever they decide on for their community because that process reminds you of what ‑‑ it's building the ground work and it's really laying the ground work for this engagement in the city. I don't know if that makes sense. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  And Annetta, I agree completely, and I was thinking in terms of process, we have a number of had issues that we need to look at and one is that each counsel member has their sort of own process for their district when employing PB. So, there is no uniformed process, which I think is ‑‑ could be potentially an issue for us. The other thing is that to the public, what is the difference between these two PB budgets?  And how do ‑‑ how am I to engage in that, I'm very confused now, is it the counsel member, is it the city?  What should I propose?  Should I go to one than the other?  Now I'm very confused and I think we need to, A as Annetta pointed out, the process is very very important, but I want to make sure that we don't do that in isolation from the conditions that exist currently and also what we might find in terms of how we might advice city counsel to make their program more robust. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Very thoughtful points. We have been doing regular checkins with the counsel‑central team that is working with PB because we definitely want to create a process that is as less ‑‑ I mean not confusing to people, right?  So if we have both week, for instance, in ideal world, they would be at the same time as who ever is doing it from counsel and if we are voting on projects, people would see an integrated ballot, so they wouldn't say this ‑‑ they could vote on projects in their counsel district but they could also vote on projects city‑wide. Right now in the counsel's process, if you are in the counsel district, you don't propose projects that are city‑wide. But you could be in a counsel district that is participating and hopefully, if all works out on our, you know, in our all of our eternal conversations, you will be able to propose a project that is also in the city or in your program. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Where does the funding come from?  Going back to the beginning?  
SARAH SAYEED:  It's a mayor's program. It's a mayor's allocation. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Is there a dollar amount for that?  
SARAH SAYEED:  That is what I said that is not in the prebudget. But hopefully we get it in the budget. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  That is the problem, then. 
EVE BARON:  To Annetta's point, there is the process and if we just restrict the process to the counsel members who currently do participatory budgeting, then they are going to be the ones that are driving, you know, the borough wide or the city‑wide initiatives that would leave out, you know, any constitch went that is in a nonparticipating district out of the creation empowerment aspects. 
SARAH SAYEED:  So we would need to make efforts to reach the communities that are in ‑‑ well all communities, specifically the ones that are not currently doing it to give them the opportunity to participate. 
EVE BARON:  And I really think that building on what is already happening is crucial because it is such an intensive effort, I heard from counsel members that it takes, you know, a full year of one dedicated staff to run the process. You know, so we couldn't certainly duplicate that. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  So point of clarity, we are talking about 2 points of party. One for very local city counsel district that is are probably, only, in my experience, it's a million dollars ‑‑ 
SARAH SAYEED:  Yes. Some are doing more. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Some are allocated to one project and some to many other smaller ones and it would be great to know the city‑wide amount, because to me, it seems like a lot of work to go for a very small pot of money and for some of these organizations that are not so big, do not have such a huge budget, it will be a lot of work to do. To put proposals to together and for us to do a city‑wide big program and utilize our staff to do all that work and to fight another million dollars to a project that ‑‑ I just want to think this through a little bit more when we get the amount to see if it's even worth putting all of the energy and effort towards something that maybe we should just ‑‑ I don't know. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  One clarification, could I just understand is that is this bucket of money that we have is only for city‑wide initiatives?  
SARAH SAYEED:  No, we have to define. The charter asked us to do city‑wide participatory budget, we have to define what that means. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  But that means city‑wide participation but it doesn't mean that it has to be city‑wide because I'll agree that most of these organizations do not do city‑wide programming. So it's not scaleable, so I, you know, then I'm wondering, wait minute, is this the agencies of the city of New York that we're deciding on their budget, some, you know, outside line to their budget and how does that work?  
CHARLES APELIAN:  To your point, I'm sorry. 
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  Sorry, could I weigh in. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Yeah, please. 
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  So I feel like, I feel like there is so much lack of information and clarity in this conversation, I wonder if it does make sense for us to, maybe, create a subcommittee of commissioners who would work with you, Sarah, on your team, helping to answer some of these questions and define things more clearly and do a little bit more presentation for the entire commission on what specifically is our requirement?  
SARAH SAYEED:  Yep, happy to do that, we can definitely do that, today's meeting is really going to be dedicated to the poll site program, we should definitely and your role, by the way, as commissioners, will be to review and approve the plan that will be complemented and we're required to be ready to implement the program by July 1st. So at some point between now and then, we have to have more conversations about, you know, the PB mandate and what it entails. I think the main ‑‑ 
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  I mean ‑‑ I'm sorry. We're going to implement a city‑wide program by July 1st, we're sort of already behind schedule. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Yes, that's absolutely right. So we're in a lot of eternal conversations, that is what the mandate tells us that we need to do and I think that the intent behind it, and Annetta, you could tell us most accurately since you are part of the process, the intent of giving us the mandate that was really PB is not city‑wide right now and we are called as a commission to address that gap, how we address that gap is something that we will need to work out which between now and July 1st, and we also think that July 1st, once we start to do the program, really the first year is going to be a lot of opportunity to learn from our experience, right?  So it's almost like a pilot of a city‑wide initiative, different from the counsel level processes already happening and some folks, you know, have been doing it for awhile but I would argue that even within counsel districts that are participating, there are still a lot of people that don't participate in their counsel member's process and I think what we do will only add to amplify this as an opportunity for inclusion. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  It will be different from scale to what is done locally. One of my counsel members does it and I am involved in what they are doing and you are correct in what you say. What happens is that the youth groups come out for this. The schools, the sports clubs, people of that kind of nature and they will say, let's upgrade the electrical system and put air‑conditioning in the school and fix this field, thing of that nature where they can rally a body of people, not just the neighborhood, a group of people with a common interest that will come out for that kind of thing and it's difficult to scale that borough wide and scale city‑wide because there would be such a diverse outlook on what people have to do and that will be a challenge we have to look at. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Yep. And I can reach out to you all on e‑mail and see who is in interested, if you would like to do a separate. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  And the budget you are talking about, that will make a difference, we're talking about $5 million budget city‑wide, it's moot. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  And also capital, Murad is not here, is it capital or programming and that is very different. 
SARAH SAYEED:  We have been asking for some combination of both to not leave it exclusively to capital. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  If I'm not mistaken, they do that both now. They'll do an upgrade to the electrical system for the school because they can't do air conditioning because the electrical is 50 years old. That would be a capital improvement. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  I think it's all capital. 
SARAH SAYEED:  All counsel members do capital processes. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Except a small nonprofit puts it in, it would pay a rent for a small nonprofit, that is one of the things you could put in but it can't go towards the programming, staffing or servicing and getting someone in to run a program, especially on that night. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  You're correct. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Okay, I will keep this moving. So, we will continue to ‑‑ 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  We'll create a committee to do a followup on that. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Yes, a followup on you all that. The next area I want to provide an update on is the community boards, I don't know if folks saw, I sent around an e‑mail that shared articles where the commission was cited. So I think there is an increasing interest out there now, and just, you know, improving representation at community boards and helping them connect better with the communities in which they are located. 
	We have been talking with every ‑‑ we're trying to reach every borough president's office to discuss the trainings that they are providing to community boards, we have talked to everyone except Queens, we're rescheduling that one. And we did a convening of Queens's community board and did a convening of Bronx's community boards and had a group of chairs with and we're starting to do one‑on‑ones and I mentioned we had a conversation with people with barriers on disabilities and joining the community boards and a survey on the board, and building that number and we're starting to get out there to community board district sort of cabinet meetings and as I said doing a lot of one‑on‑ones. Some of the community boards we have met with so far, Manhattan 2, 3, 12, 11, 7, 1. With Queens, we met with one, community board 4, and Brooklyn 3, we will continue to go out there and try to put CEC on the radar. 
	And then ‑‑ mmm‑hmm?  
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Could you highlight the top issue that they're bringing up in your meeting with their concerns?  
SARAH SAYEED:  I think it is's a little soon to tell. We have been trying to get their input on the areas we have been asked to help with. Land use. And technical assistance. And I think it's too soon to tell, I think a lot of, you know, it has been interesting, we talked, also, a little bit about recruitment and I don't know, it's hard to say a general pattern. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  I would like to jump in and a number of commissioners serve on the community board and forgive me for saying this but one thing I know from my community board is that it's a closed community, a closed club, some of these community boards and it was cited on the article and people tried to get in and they were kind of shut out or bullied out and while you talk to the community boards, it's great but I heard a lot of eternal talking to the community boards, there is a lot of self interest in these community boards and so if we want to change what is occurring there, I think we need to get some input from outside of the community boards to talk about recruitment, because while there might be complaints inside that they are not getting recruits, I'm also hearing that people come forward, get on and resign because there's a hazing that happens. 
SARAH SAYEED:  So by outside, you mean the public?  
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Yeah. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Nonmembers. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  And I would also say seek some of these people that are on and resign quickly on within a certain people and start to ask them why. Some may be for personal reasons but you also might find, especially in land use, I know there is a certain language within land use and so the CBs tend to not bring on newbies because they don't speak that language and it's a coon fusing process and knowledge is used as a way to exclude and they exclude community members on this. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  So I went to both counsel members on the district and you can count on one hand and you don't need five fingers the new people that applied and due Friday. And the outreach is put out there with the borough president and e‑mails have gone out and we have empty seats, we might potentially have an empty on the board, the point is that if there is such a clamor, it's not following through and we found also, a lot of times and I won't completely disregard of what you are saying, the potential may be there, a lot of people have a lot of an impression of what they think a board is. You join a nonprofit or a school board, whatever it may be and they get there and remember it is a volunteer spot and a lot of work and a lot of people go through for the honorary and the amount of work they have to do verse that is not a balance of their own lives and a lot of people sometimes hang around to try to get through it and those that are a little bit more quick to the chase will quick after a year or two. I have had just recently one or two people leave after a year and I asked them, you are suppose to come to the meetings, oh?  Really, honestly, and a lot of active people, a terrific lady, involved in the school system and school board and didn't realize she had to go to monthly meetings and dropped out. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Do they get briefings?  
SARAH SAYEED:  I think that is what we are trying to talk with people about as we're, you know, what kind of trainings and orientations are you getting, you know. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Well the borough president and the city plan information do outreach and twice a year. 
SARAH SAYEED:  One second, let Charles finish. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  In Queens, they have training through the director community boards and following the procedure and the chart and city policy and budget and those are the important thing and city planning does annually a 2‑day session, and it's a one‑on‑1 to get to the nomenclature that people don't know and then we do a two on one to get more in depth, it is a very technical process and a lot of people don't get it, some do. And it's a difficult one to get on a once a month type of volunteer basis, if your mindset goes to that, that is terrific, if your mindset doesn't, it becomes overwhelming and frustrating, however, that is where leadership comes on the community boards to provide conversation and explanation in simple terms or someone raises their hand and they don't understand this and at the end you can make a recommendation and don't know where you can go, you follow your recommendation because that was the purpose of the committee to come up with a solution and you can always vote against the committee also but it was a guide post that we provide and it is a very nontechnical nonpaying job that becomes luminous where you have to meet once a month and possibility two or three times for different committees and at the end, they have other things in life, not for me and that is okay, we understand that, not every organization is for every person, you know the person on the school board may not be on the community board, they may not be on the advisory board, everybody has what excites them and where their passion is and how they want to volunteer and but the borough president does have outreach and they do have the city department of planning in Queens does have two annual meetings to make out the community board members and open to everybody, not just the newbies and all the way down to the chair and the person walking down and that gives you an interflow of dialogue. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Annetta, did you have a comment?  
ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:  I am involved in my community and I have a mailing list and I think that Queens is failing between constituents in terms of outreach, I appreciate the comments on what a challenge role just like me but we have not passed the first step which is getting the word out to your every day person who is not involved who should be involved, that specific opportunity and let them decide, right?  But I think we are far from achieving that first objective. That this opportunity is made available to underrepresented people on the board. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  That is interesting. How do you think the best route reach can be done that is different from what is being done now because I agree with you, I am extrememly active both in Manhattan and the Bronx and I am on the mail list but they're not really expanding outside of the inner circle individuals like my self. Do we have dollars?  Do we have dollars to like publicize in local newspapers and public access TV?  Is there a major effort really happening in the borough president's office to get the non‑politicized individuals to be involved, because it is not a very attractive party to be apart of, to walk in with a bunch of clicks and I know it's terrible but why would I want to serve a board where you control the number of votes to get things through, there are communities that are almost like planned to be left out, all the way from any communities with language access issues and communities that want to bring in new businesses, you should witness some of the stuff that goes on and I particularly, I cited a derivative community board, community board 8 where there are articles historically being written about racial issues not allowing certain new communities not participating and a lot of it has been charged to politics and I'm not saying that all of these issues cannot be fixed, all I'm saying is that we have to begin to clear some of the issues eternally first and also hold our feet to the fire, what are they really doing to e‑mail to reach outside and they are comfortable in their circle, every weekend, every month. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  The borough presses appoints and the counsel member recommend and it is in that sense but I think the basic outreach has to come from them, unless we have another mechanism and I'm open to that but it's very difficult and we made an announcement to the community board, if you have new members, we'll make the announcement but that doesn't mean people come forward. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Are we talk ugh to the same people that apply every year, I know friends of mine that have been serving in the community board for over 30 years, it's shameful. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Excuse me?  Excuse me?  
LILLIAM PEREZ:  I think it's terrible. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  No, it's not. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  I'm not saying if you want to serve, serve because you have a set of new experience but what are we doing with communities that pay taxes and opening businesses and etcetera, I don't see a change of faces when I visit these community boards. 
SARAH SAYEED:  So what we are charged in doing as a commission is to improve the connection between community boards and communities, right?  And it is by providing primarily additional resources to what CBs have, so for instance, and also what I think we are really charged in doing is increasing the public civic boardly and if there is language diversity within a community, the community could make a language community, a resource we could be providing to help think through better online communication and these are all things ‑‑ we're trying right now to get an understanding on the lay of the land to see what community boards are doing and what resources they already have and because we want to add value and not duplicate things that are already done. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  I think we really need a change management specialist because you are talking about changing culture and that is much more than just, you know, giving money for resources. It really is ‑‑ this is a cultural shift and I think, you know, both Chuck and William speak of it in another. And I also pointed out, I think you have a culture within these CBs and if there is going to be change, you need a specialist who understands how to look at a culture, and see where you want to take it, and how to move you to where you want to go. I don't think it's simply putting resources in, I really don't, I think it's like throwing ‑‑ I think it's throwing money out the window, quite frankly. 
EVE BARON:  I want to make a point on that, too. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Sorry, Eve is talking. 
EVE BARON:  I think it's not worth adding to the community boards until we have a good indication that there is a willingness to be more representative and I think to get that ‑‑ to get to that end point, we have to leverage inside and outside. And, you know, I think that, you know, the kind of public service announcement aspect to notify people that community boards are open for membership has been lacking and I am not pointing a finger to any borough or mayor, it has been historic, there is not a sufficient process to open up participation and I also think that if we are engaged in something like that, as the engagement commission, then, there really needs to be a better job, like getting people to understand why it matters to our daily lives, you know?  And there are really important decisions that are being made in community boards that impact people's ability to stay in their neighborhoods. And, you know, we really need to help get impacted people into the boards and not to say that we throw out the baby with the bath water, I think, you know, the points that you made about the expertise on land use, you know, we need that expertise, you know, because they are complex issues but we need to balance it with ‑‑ 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  We also need those that are effective of those decisions that the particular community is making. The outreach moms and students, when you make a land use recommendation/resolution to vote on a project, those effected should have a seat at the table. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  What is sad is that when the borough president had the open land use committee meetings with trainees, less than 20 percent of the board members were there and those in the meetings said they need more training and those that cried for the training did not show. Those in the process do not take advantage of it. 
SARAH SAYEED:  We have to look at different formats to make this more accessible, it's 11:47 and I will shift us again to get into the poll site stuff. A quick overview, we have been continuing to meet with the mayor's office of operations and the mayor's office and network affairs to talk about logistics to transition to CBC, we have a special election coming up in March in Queens for the president. And the president in primary for April 28th, the state primary, June 23rd, and we are responsible for fully running the November 3rd elections and over the next couple of months, we gradually transition to CBC. 
	As far as the language access advisory committee, we had our first meeting and shared our knowledge and we are trying to encourage the members of the community and CBC and people to come out and speak in the public hearing and we should think about that and how to do that more as a commission as well which I think media outlets to publicize the methodology and to get more public input and also have translated the executive summary of the proposed methodology of all of the languages that we will be providing and hoping to provide services in. 
	So, I want to ask you your thoughts about that and we will do the presentation and have a conversation about it but it would be great to get your input on how we can do better outreach to get people more engaged in the public hearing because it is our first public hearing. So it would be nice to have a civic engagement commission, people civically engaged in this program and really quickly, I'm going to send, we have also been talking eternally creating some kind of online portal for civic engagement and I don't know if I mentioned it before but hoping to launch a digital innovation conversation that would allow people to compete on ways to create this kind of platform. And then, in early April, I'm going to be participating and hopefully with others if anybody wants to join this workshop, let me know, at Columbia at the school of international public affairs as well as a program called the world's public program, it will bring a workshop of govern and philanthropy and a way to engage civic engagement and I will send you a link on that as well. 
	So next step, I want to turn to the poll site methodology because we said we would spend a bunch of time talking about that and today we have various members of the administration that have been working hard on the poll site language assistance highlight, with us today, we have peter Logo, who is with the department of city planning and colleagues you saw from the mayor's office and we'll fair Sabrina from the deputy of executive resource, and also, here with us is Asher Ross, data director of mayor's community affairs unit and as I mentioned last time, both Sabrina and Asher are with the data analysis and we're going to take you through a PowerPoint that provides an overview, just talking more slowly about the methodology that we were able to do last time and inviting your questions and feedback, is Carol Garca here yet?  Okay. This will, if, she doesn't come, we'll probably have a little more time it talk about the methodology. 
	Before we go to that, since we now have a quorum, we can vote. So the minutes should be in front of you. And if you recall, last time we spent a bunch of time talking about two amendments that related to our ability to publish the methodology, so amendment one delegated responsibility and authorize to the chair to publish methodology and also the gratified past recruitment to the advisory board to amendment and delegate the responsibility of the chair and commission to recruit members to the advisory board, so both of those were not passed last time and I wanted to ask are there any additions or corrections to the minutes presented?  
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Just one question, we had voted on amendment one to give you the authority to publish the methodology to meet a deadline, was that deadline met?  
SARAH SAYEED:  Yes, it was. Thank you. Yes. 
MARK DILLER:  Move to adapt. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Second. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Okay, all in favor?  
	(All in favor) 
	Any oppose?  Okay, the minutes are approved. Thank you, everyone. So we will start with the presentation of this PowerPoint which you have in front of you. 
	So we will be taking you through the proposed methodology of poll site assistance and as you all know the public hearing is on February 18th and we're presenting you this with this deeper look into methodologies as an opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback that we will continue to take while the public comment period is open which is until March 1st. 
	And, as you know the charter says that subject to appropriation. We are to inconsultation with the department of city planning, the mayor's office of immigrant affairs establish a program to provide language interpretation throughout New York City poll sites to facilitate participation by limited English proficient individuals and also if possible, we are to consult the New York City board of elections in implementing this program. 
	So I will turn it over to Gagan that will take us through a few of the slides in the beginning and then that will also speak and I will take some of the slides as well. 
GAGEN:  Hi, folks, my name is Gagan, New York City engagement commission and we covered a proposed summary of the engage. And the New York City charter includes various factors that New York CEC shall consider in developing a methodology, including but not limited to community survey and when we talk about data, language spoken and age and citizenship status and the American community survey is a census survey that is conducted on a yearly basis that collects economic information. And the community will consider location poll sites and information related to voter turn out and any other information as deemed appropriate by the commission which may include the results of surname analysis of registered voters. 
	The New York City charter also specifies the identifying the language of the commission to consider providing services. Which includes prioritizing the designated New York City languages that are spoken by 85 percent of New Yorkers with limited English proficient and that comes from 2015 American community survey 1 year estimate and those languages are Spanish, Chinese, which includes Mandarin and Cantonese, Russian, Haitian creole, Polish, and French. If the number of limited English proficient limited user is greater than the number of people speaking the lowest rank designated city people and at least one poll site is likely to have a limited amount of speakers of that additional language. 
	And the commission may not duplicate and provide services in languages that are served under the voting act in the county where the board of elections provides services and that provides services in Spanish and Chinese, New York county, Manhattan. Provides coverage of Spanish and Chinese, and in Queens county, they provide coverage of Spanish and Korean, and in the Bronx, provide coverage of Spanish, and in Richmond county, Spanish. The commission may not duplicate those services. 
	And the data sets that the commission is using or used for the proposed methodology that was published on January 1st, 2020, is the American community survey, 2015 survey, and a 5‑year estimates, the only track estimates we have and the final methodology to be published April 1st, 2020, will use the most recent data when the proposed methodology was published. 
	And last time we talked about carrying data sets to see ‑‑ I will invite my colleague Sabrina to talk us through the slide and some of the data sets raised in the last meeting. 
SABRINA:  Hi, everyone, we briefly discussed the methodology in the last meeting, there were questions why we use the census data and we want to take time to talk about why we went with that and also detail to address the other two data sets. And for our purposes, we are looking for a data set that provides information about US citizen New Yorker, age 18 and over with limited English proficient and where they reside and the goal is what is the language needs of voters in New York City so we can then best determine how to target our services for the poll site interpretation project. And so I will go through each, the first one is the US census American community survey, which is a national survey that the US census bureau administers every year to about 3.5 million households and the largest done every year and it's designed to provide reliable estimates in some areas and around small populations covering over 35 topics, including US citizenship, age, limited English proficiency and language spoken at home and among others and very quickly they define limited English proficient if you speak a language other than English at home and you answer this survey and you speak English less than very well, and basically, and the American community survey makes this data available at the individual response level and that is able to service the foundation for our methodology because it provides the data points we need which is age, proficiency and status. 
	And the next data set that we are going to use is a voter polls from the previous election and that is a list of every single register person in New York City and the surname will use an individual's last name to determine the likelihood that that individual belongs to a certain ethnic group and that serves as a proxy for language spoken and that does not provide information on who is registered to vote. And the goal is with the surname analysis to help define our estimates of need around every poll site. So those two data sets is the foundations for our methodology and two other data sets that folks have mentioned from the commission last time and maybe talk through why we are not using them. The first was the department education‑parent survey, a survey done every year to New York City parents that have a student enrolled in any public school from the 6th to the 12th grade and basically while that survey asks information about language preference it doesn't provide us any other data point that is useful here in terms of citizenship status and limited to English proficient and the universe have a select parents of students enrolled in the students from public school and it is not represented of the entire need of city. And the last data set is the card holder data, that is administration data of every single New Yorker with an IDC card which is any New Yorker, age 10 and up that have an IDC card. And while that has language preference, it does not provide us with information on the citizenship status and registered to vote and English proficient and those with the cards that are not entirely representative of New York City where the census data is truly weighted to be represented of the entire city. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Pause for questions, are there questions or comments on anything that has been presented so far?  
CHARLES APELIAN:  I want to confirm, column one, column three, column four. All gets sorted through column two?  
SABRINA:  I'm not sure. What do you mean sorted by?  
CHARLES APELIAN:  You have your census and your group and other people part of the department of education parents and you have your IDC and then you have your master list. 
SABRINA:  This is a broader sense and in those, we take a look of those that are registered to vote and these two are not part of the methodology and this is suppose to address some of the methods. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  So you take the census list and you sort them through the actual voters?  
SABRINA:  So the census data will provide us who is eligible to vote. And then, and it's not like these two can be directly linked, right?  The census are anonymous and we don't know who answered this survey exactly and this is administration data who voted and we have anyone that appears on the registration form and after we use this data to get the concentration of poll sites with the broadest needs and we do a similar vote to do a survey analysis to say these are the poll sites with this data set where the greatest number of language groups and communities are residing and you check those against each other. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  That is my point, once that is done, how are the last two columns used?  
SABRINA:  The last two columns are not used, I wanted to just walk you through it because folks asked why they are not used. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  So the first two are used. Okay. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  I have one question on looking at surnames, I understand what you are doing and it makes me a little uncomfortable knowing that people are being separated out by a surname. I don't know how the universe of the government looks at these things, but it hits me as a little bit like woah, what is going on there and the ACLU and how this information is used and also, we live in a world where people marry other people and take other names. And so we're missing those people and we're also, there are, I guess, names where you can clearly say they are from this region, but we don't know that with a lot of other names. It makes me slightly uncomfortable and I just wanted to say that. 
SABRINA:  I will note that the survey analysis is used in the New York City board of elections is that anything coupled with the census data, they make other estimates more accurate because particularly if you look at the census data that there is a certain oncleave of language data. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  And voter activation network, when you desegregating and trying to target and you send out language appropriate material, it does not always the best but does provide that option. My question is about the ACS data and how it doesn't really encapsulate the diverse communities we have in New York City and looking at other ways, potentially, to look at LEP data as the prime focus on how we want to do language access within the city and the voting population. So I know that the ACS data is what are you using as your prime data source, is there a different way we can do it to ensure we're catching as many folks as possible?  
PETER LOGO:  Hi, I'm Peter Logo, the board of election methodology. So today is the most representative data available, okay?  And it's available at really geographies, there is nothing that comes close to it, it is considered the gold standard in terms of service. In terms of ethnic groups, I will find the ACS nowhere else because the sample synthesize is so robust, the problem with the ACS data gives us the stuff we need. It gives us the citizen and their age and tells us they speak a language other than English at home and tells us whether they are English proficient or not. What it does not have is whether or not this person is registered to vote and the data is accurate with samples and gone on the field and this is across the nation, the data are pretty good at a small area, especially when they are grouped to poll sites and now we want to confirm, and we have the CDLED population but we don't note if they are registered and we do a surname analysis to make sure that there are Chinese voters present in these areas and the confidentially of the points you raised, this only tells us that there are only 50 Chinese voters in this area, period, nothing. And we have a substantial numbers of Chinese voters and a substantial number of CDEL poll voters and it's one data set that reinforces the other. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Can you drill down on some of the numbers because you said 3.5 million households, nationally, that is 10 percent of the entire population, right?  
PETER LOGO:  3 percent of all households and the 5‑year has 1.25 million households, it is a pretty robust sample. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  So when you go back to the voter data that is with the assumption of who is registered to vote?  And you are doing that to the population that can be registered?  
PETER LOGO:  So from what I understand is that this poll site analysis is meant to help voters. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  You're looking at voters in their current form, you are looking at a snapshot in time to have 2 million voters registered today and not thinking of the potential of the others that are coming down the road, maybe younger folks and maybe people that become new Americans and I know that is harder to estimate but it's also another consideration. 
PETER LOGO:  I hear that and I think the methodology is what we're discussing today but the analysis itself required by law is that it's updated annually, and to the extent that is captured and it should be in the voter role and the census data and that emerges on the new analysis when we update every year. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  But new registerants can be put into the data. If someone doesn't register, they will be left out. And new recycled new registered can be included in this mix. 
SARAH SAYEED:  And just as a reminder, we have to revise this methodology by 2022, so every 5 years after that, this will allow us to address some of the changing numbers. 
EVE BARON:  Can I make a slight recommendation, too, in companionship with this methodology that we actually do a good job of publicizing that there is increased language access because I think, I know, to your point, you know, I think our mission is to capture ‑‑ to get more people to vote, not exclusively vote but to participate through voting and the more that people understand that there are additional languages that will help them connect to what is on the ballot, the more that we'll have better data the next year, the next time. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  And I think even when we had good outreach around language access, there are times where people thought because it said language access, it included their language and it didn't and that also served as confusion point in the process. But I'm going back to a couple of two election cycles ago, people that come to the poll site with their own translator like a friend or family member, they were turned away, now we do a poll site language access program, I want to make sure we are being expansive as possible in this first run so that we can build it to be even better than the next go around. 
SARAH SAYEED:  What do you mean...?  
MURAD AWAWDEH:  To make sure we are not limiting it ‑‑ I know we have to do a hundred poll sites or something?  
SARAH SAYEED:  A hypothetical number. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  So ideally 200 and be able to push forward in a way where every vote counts and every election and we see that happen time and again. But making sure that we're being as expansive right now with the data as possible, because I don't know why we want them by ourselves implementing language access. 
SARAH SAYEED:  I think the point you are making about both of you said it about making sure people know their rights. One to bring their own interpreters because I think it's hard to imagine a universe in which every person that had a language barrier that served in New York City at the poll site and I think we're always going to have a scenario of finite resources and a finite amount of people served and anybody that is not served should know their right to bring somebody to help them out. So I think we just need to do extra strategies around that. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  One is knowing and another is enforcing it at the poll, you know you are right and you bring someone and then you are turned which is not legally allowable so it's enforcement as well as outreach. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Yeah, the poll sites, I think we talked about this before, poll site employees need better training, I, my self, have witnessed people asking for ID and pulled away, they tried on me and I pulled my rights, it's a culture change, a lot of this, poll site workers have been politically assigned to work for decades and it reminds that communities have changed and have rights to bring a translator and also to just say their name and address. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Could I get clarification, board of election, am I allowed to bring a personal translator to the poll site to vote or I have to bring someone from ‑‑ 
PETER LOGO:  I'm the Department of City Planning. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  You are allowed. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  As long as the person is not a union ‑‑ 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Or a campaign worker. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  If you are a city employee at the poll site, you are not suppose to allow anybody electionearring, but if you know someone to be working a poll site there and you have agreed to let this person come in and help you, that is okay, as long as someone is not witnessing the election‑earring in this poll site. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Thank you. 
MARK DILLER:  So the one thing I wanted to add to this because I want to loop back to the surname issue and I don't want to do it in the wrong question, so my name is Diller so someone with my surname started to talk to me in German, went back to my family's heritage and we are not that German at all and I would be concerned if that were used in an excluding capacity to remove a potential resource but I would not be concerned if it were one more factor that budget the inclusion of a language access and so I guess the question I would ask is, has any dry run been done on a data sample to see what the affect of the surname coding would have on the selection of languages and does it simply change the order or ranking of one language verses 12 of what we were giving or does it result in the dropping of Urdu and picking up of whatever they are. 
PETER LOGO:  The CDLEP numbers actually drive the analysis that is the primary driver. What the surname analysis does is give the board election data. And are there enough people to vote and it's not so much the surname analysis but the data. 
MARK DILLER:  But to the extent that you are using the surname coded, it's there for a reason and it has a potential effect, I don't want to go crazy about the potential if the net effect is to tell us things we already know and reinforce conclusions we already know but I would be interested in surnames alone and the inclusion in the overall data analysis bumped the language off of our list that would otherwise be apart of it based on that one factor alone. Doesn't like it but I'm asking for confirmation that this is where it's going. 
PETER LOGO:  To go into the methodology is. But the reason that won't bump languages is because the surnames are not used to select the language but target the population and it was designated by the city languages and the census data. 
MARK DILLER:  It's the same question, whether a poll site is on a list for Polish. If my friend's name appears to be a Polish name, and there are finite resources, does that, by itself, add or subtract a language availability at that poll site. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Mark, to answer your question, we have not done a dry run of this, we do not know what it looks like and when the BOE does it, it is confirming with the data is showing and I imagine ‑‑ I don't know if it has ever knocked a poll site off the list?  I don't know. 
PETER LOGO:  This is a known unknown. There are a number of issues, actually, but yeah. This is the world we face. 
MARK DILLER:  So I would be much more comfortable with a process that uses surname as a double check to raise questions that can be then answered by different analysis than ones that could give surnames by themselves the power to include or exclude the language availability because to go back to the discussion of mission which is really good to refocus on. The mission is to promote more participation and this is in effect, trying this language ability is trying to accomplish two goals, one is to facilitate participation by those that know this exist and make sure they are access to the poll and the other is that by virtue, more participation in the community of people that are feeling empowered that they will bring others to register and voted and this is a nontrivial point about making sure that everything we do is aimed at that inclusion as opposed to a potential exclusion. 
PETER LOGO:  This speaks to using the issue of multiple sources of data, the poll sites is an initial selection, the next thing you do is go and take a look to see if these services were used and so you can get some corroborating efforts and you talk to community groups and not 1 piece dominates the decision making process. 
SARAH SAYEED:  We'll take one more question and move to the next slide. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  To the point, I raised this before, fully by label, I do not need translation services and how we're capturing, and we are also going into 2nd and 3rd generation of immigrant booming and those folks do not need it and are we wasting our money in the wrong place and I have never been asked, my last name is Perez to check anywhere and I don't know if they assume by me not asking for the services that I don't need it so how do we capture that?  
PETER LOGO:  So that is captured in the American community survey, okay?  So the survey asks what language do you speak at home, if it's English or Spanish that is one thing but if they say Spanish, how well do you speak English, if you speak English very well, we do not include it, we include you if only you were English proficient. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Okay, get it. You are definitely 100 percent on the using, the ACS analysis, is there any way or desire to capture this since we are sitting there most of the times to capture those voters to engage with those voter that is are coming in and getting the services, not so much the ones that want to go about and because they speak English or the ones that do require the additional assistance, do we check off the ex poll site, 500 people did require Russian translation, are we doing that at all?  
MOYA:  Hi, I'm with Moya, the pilot program, it tracks the number of voters served and our understanding of the OBE for their process but our understanding is that they are also tracking service utilization so the voters using their interpretation services. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  I'm interested in comparing the analysis with this proposal with that list to see if it makes sense to serve the communities that need it the most because I'm talking about use the resources where it's most needed and the Bronx is the largest Latina populated borough and we put a bunch of translators there and there is a grow in African community and they are newer and they need more the services and I would like to see the usage verses data of the surname, base data whatever to see instead of putting a bunch of translators in the Bronx, could we specifically go after the ones we need the most. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  I don't know if the Moya program would actually be a good test to compare to but I think they had an amazing project and ended up happening is that they got sued by the board of election for not wanting an insider and I don't want us to compare those programs, I think that even Moya's initial methodology, they were going after some of the hardest ‑‑ heaviest language barrier poll sites, right?  But then it excluded others. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Not every poll site translator was doing this?  It was a pilot. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  It was a pilot done at a number of different poll sites. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Not all of them. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  Not all of them. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  So what I'm suggesting wouldn't work. Okay. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Let's go to the next slide. I want to mention again, comparing Spanish to another language, it would not work with the CEC because we are not allowed to provide interpreters in any language or any location that the BOE is working so in our program. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  To that point, can we get a list of the BOE servicing sites. 
MOYA:  Absolutely. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  So we can just not even concentrate ‑‑ 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  You want more of a drill down. 
SARAH SAYEED:  We do know that they are required to provide Spanish city‑wide and in the document that we distributed last time that is the proposed methodology, and read through these there are certain parts of the city where they are serving other languages and Moya, do we have a list of actual poll sites where the interpreters are located?  
MOYA:  Also to note on the administer data piece, the CEC will include data points after 3 cycles to compare. 
SARAH SAYEED:  So the first step of this methodology was to begin with as a charter tells us the designated city‑wide and as I just mentioned Spanish is a designated language and so many people that speak Spanish in this city but we are not including in our analogy because BOE is required, again, to serve Spanish. Other languages that are served by the BOE such as Korean, Chinese, Urdu, Bengali, they are included in the locations that are already in need of it. We don't want to duplicate. And the charter specified if we should look to see any languages that are greater in number of limited English proficient speakers than the designated city‑wide languages, you could imagine that the data changed and the population change, maybe people are speaking a language and it's higher than the lowest ‑‑ so we are allowed to include those languages. So the table here tells you the language and whether they are designated city‑wide language or not and as you see, all of them are except for Yiddish and we're including Yiddish because it's the frequency of people that speak Yiddish is greater than the lowest designated city‑wide language. 
	So the number here, there is a total number of English proficient New Yorkers that are shown on the right side of the column and you might look at Korean and say why is that number so low, it's a reminder because it's excluding the people that are being served in the boroughs that are operating. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  So that would seclude Queens?  
SARAH SAYEED:  Yes. That is Step 1. So what are the eligible languages, what do their numbers look like?  How many people speak these languages across the city. Step 2 is determine the number of people that are citizen voting age. So the first table is limited English proficient, no matter your age, now we want to narrow down on the citizen age population who is limited English proficient for each language. 
	So this table tells you and you will see a smaller group of people speaking each language. Citizen voting age is 18 and above and we talked about limited English proficient, anybody that doesn't speak English very well and speaks another language. 
	Anybody have any questions on this slide?  Good?  Okay. Table ‑‑ Step 3 here is now that we know how many citizen voting age people there are that are limited English proficient in these languages that are program eligible, we want to know how many poll sites we want to serve for each of these languages, this goes back to the question of, you know, limit ‑‑ one, limited resources and there are many different ways that we can conceptualize this. You could, for example, if we didn't have the requirement to serve this designated city‑wide languages, you could pick the most frequently spoken language that is not served by the NRA and serve those poll sites. What we try to do in proposing this approach is to try, one, we want it to be consistent with the city's methodology ‑‑ sorry the designated city‑wide languages, there are 10 languages that are spoken frequently and we want it to be consistent with what they are doing, providing translations in those languages and provide as many languages as possible. 
	And this methodology is really focusing on bringing those things together, consistency, and proportionality approach and it's looking at how ‑‑ what proportion of the total of number of people would be eligible, so hypothetically 42 percent of the total number of voting age limited English proficiency speaking people and if we had resources that allowed us to provide interpretation at one hundred sites, we would take 42 of those sites and give them Russian interpretation at those sites. 
	So every language is allotted a proportion that is reflected on how it is in a greater whole. Does anyone have any questions on this or comments on how we're approaching this?  
MARK DILLER:  I understand where we are so far, does the analysis then go on to help identify ‑‑ so 42 percent under your hypothetical?  42 percent of your language access would be in the Russian access, how do we determine the poll sites since we can't determine 100 percent. 
SARAH SAYEED:  That's the next step. Okay. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Well, let's move. 
SARAH SAYEED:  All right, moving right along. 
	Step 4, choose a specific poll site to provide services for each program language. So this gets into using the voter registration data and the BOE data, we need to know where the poll sites are located. So far we have been looking at, you know, who is speaking what language. So we want to determine the citizen voting age and limited concentrations in the area surrounding all of the poll sites in the city, we want to know what languages are being spoken in these poll site areas. We are going to, then, rank order, the poll sites from the highest to the lowest concentration for each language. 
	So for Russian, we would go from the highest to the lowest and you will see some graph pictures of this in a little bit and then we look at that list from the highest to lowest concentration and choose poll sites with the highest concentration down, moving down that list until we get to the proportional allotment. So when we get to 42 sites, we'll stop for Russian. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  But what if number 40 or even 48 through 32 have like 4 people?  
SARAH SAYEED:  Excellent point, that is step D, if there are fewer concentrations than allocated for a given language, we would consider allocating those translation resources to a different language. So it allows for that flexibility to see what is happening on the ground. But in principle, again, trying to serve as many languages as possible proportional for the need of that language and we would aim to provide interpretation services in at least one poll site in every language. 
MARK DILLER:  It's important because it could well be that the Russian speakers and the French speakers are confused ‑‑ 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  I like visuals. 
SARAH SAYEED:  So next for the visuals, we do have visuals. Is there a way to make this picture bigger?  I don't know if there is a way to project it bigger. 
MOYA:  I think the next slide is a poster. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Oh, yes. Do you want the span view or the close up view for this?  
ASHER ROSS:  That's great. Hi, I'm Asher Ross. I'm with the mayor's community affairs unit and I did this analysis, I want to explain in a bit more detail, this step for that Sarah has been describing, she talked about one of the steps is to take the track level data and use it to determine the concentration of the population in the area of each poll site in the city and I think a visual can help you understand how that was done and we mentioned the most grandular data on the LCS data is the 5‑year data by census track. And the data in the Russian population is tracked and the amount of that data it looks like this and it shows the outline of the city not being clear but you can see Brighton Beach down there and etcetera, etcetera. 
	What we then do is that there is a complex technical process to estimate the track data at the poll site track data. 
SARAH SAYEED:  You can show this on a close up. 
ASHER ROSS:  Here you can see clearer with this ACS track data, a way to map distribution to map Russian data. And where you vote, is not where you are tracked but on voter distribution and we need to overlap this data with the poll site area boundaries and when you do that, basically, these blue polygons are the poll site area boundaries and what ‑‑ this is to zoom in. What this shows you is if we have done the city‑wide global analysis and shown that Russian LEP is 42 percent of the total languages served, LEP population, 42 percent, in this hypothetical analysis, translating poll sites, that means 42 Russian poll sites, if you rank order the poll sites and take the top 42, it would be these poll sites, plus the ones shown up in Queens Garden and you can see how in the analysis, we ended up with the selection of poll sites that does align with the concentrations that this census track data lets us map. 
	So, yeah, this would be the targeted poll sites and if someone of these made it in number 41 or 42 on the list, pretending that maybe this one just made it in the list but it turns out there are only 50 Russian LEP but in some other place ‑‑ that allows us flexibility in part D of Step 4 to drop that poll site if it doesn't meet a certain threshold and then sort of take that away from the 42 and give that one to another language that represent but does meet a threshold. 
	So if anyone has questions for me about this process. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  So ‑‑ 
SARAH SAYEED:  Before you ask, could I see if Carol Garca here in from the herald media institute here?  Okay, great, because we had you down for public comment and I want to make sure that we include you. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  I want to be clear at the end that we are using language proficient, LED of voting age but not registered voters. 
ASHER ROSS:  That's correct. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  I still have a problem with that because I think we are overshooting and not focusing on the data of who shows up at the poll site. 
ASHER ROSS:  We're trying to cope the best we can with two data sets missing key here. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Why don't you cross with the voters that are registered?  
ASHER ROSS:  To get from tracks to the poll site area, we'll allocate and I think there is a document that shows the more detailed methodology, we'll allocate the LEP track number to the poll sites based on the voter surname data, the steps that we took to get to this data. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Because that is an indicator of the language that you speak once we include that type of analysis. 
ASHER ROSS:  To Sabrina's point, you can't cross these 2 points because the census data is anonymous. And it doesn't ‑‑ it's anonymous and doesn't tell us the language. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Is that Brighton Beach that shows up with several poll sites, very red, do we know from the board of elections that we have higher voter concentration, at least in that area to understand that we are cross‑checking data on some level?  
ASHER ROSS:  Yeah, absolutely, I mean, we can use that surname data to be another check and as other people have suggested, we can hopefully use more surveying of the translation services that are used on the election day are to enhance this analysis but I think you would end up with this similar result that we would need to see how that plays out and get the data from the election day data. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  There is no perfect data set to go to and the ACS data is not perfect and I never received one. Williams never received one and even folks that do receive it and feel an obligation to submit the survey back may not fill it themselves and that information may not be accurate and I think for me, the LEP data is more important and trying to figure out how we structure this program because it's going to give us a truer need than others. For instance, I occasionally do voter protection efforts during elections, the last two elections that happened, I can tell you that people that show up to vote in Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach were Russian voters and some of them had translators and some were confused and it was a very interesting experience but I do think that when I see this map, I see the area and where the darkest red is where the biggest issues were. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Is there a way to work with BOE to budget the data as far as I don't know on a new registration, do they ask if you need assistance in a new language?  Would that be tremendously helpful for the existing voter role and I need help in such and such language. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  I think that may require some either executive policy change or a registration change. I'm not sure to change the form. Any changes to the form will require either executive policy change coming from the top or legislative change. It might be that this body should be recommended to better serve the constituents that we are trying to serve. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Right now, we are looking at automatic registration, and so, yeah. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  You are basically saying to someone, do you need help. And that would help us help them. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Do we know thinking about this, Moya, rather BOE asks or could potentially be interested in asking a question about whether or not people need interpretation services on voter registration forms?  Any comment on that?  
ASHER ROSS:  No, I mean I think it's something to ask BOE. Yeah. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  Having worked with them, I do not think they would be interested and to be frank, the city, specifically, Moya, the mayor's office of that translated into 15 or 16 languages on their own, they wouldn't do it and I am giving you guys an example and I don't know, I think there is a lot of laws that constrict what they can do and they try to do as little as possible and expansive as possible in the work they do and I wouldn't be too optimistic that BOE is waiting for us to give them a recommendation on making voting easier because they definitely don't do anything. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  We can go back to earlier conversations about the community board and it's split eveningly half of each party, half democrats and half republicans and a body with culture history and there we are, again. 
SARAH SAYEED:  I think we want to remember and before I turn it over to Carol, I'll ask her to do ‑‑ tell us more about herself and her group. We are trying to add value to what's happening, we are trying to address gaps that are, you know, that exist from, you know, various initiative that is people have been trying to reach communities more and just want to say, again, I am truly honored and humbled to be with you all trying to stand this thing up and very exciting and hopefully, we will have measurable outcomes that we can point to where we actually made a difference and I am a great believer in putting drops in a bucket and I think drops in a bucket matter, we would love to see a huge impact but I think I would be very grateful to see small and substantial ones as well in the programs we work in and we try to pay attention to the evaluation in how we track this work and know that we made a difference in which we hope to do. 
	So we want to work with you, this is a crucial point that I want to make before I turn to the next public comment. We need to work together to make sure that we have people showing up to the public hearing who are offering testimony on this methodology who care to come and listen to the testimony, so I'm going to be reaching out to you individually and as a group to help with that. So please look out for our e‑mail and please be responsive, we don't have that much time between now and February 18th this is our first public hearing, we want to make sure that we have a public to interact with at the public hearing, so thank you, everyone. Carol, would you like to come up and share some of your, are you going to be speaking with us?  
CAROL:  No, this is my first time attending this meeting and I learned about civic engagement commission through borough of Manhattan president Gary's office and I have a nonprofit called Harlem Media Institute. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Yeah, you can come up to the mic and tell us about your nonprofit. 
CAROL:  Can you hear me from here?  Thank you. The website for my nonprofit is www(dot)Harlemmediainstitute.org and it is a research think tank, intergenerational cultural think tank, it's a nonprofit, and the premises mission is to address the gentrification media technology developments that are posing a disadvantage to residents in Harlem. And so ‑‑ it's community based driven as well as a research think tank so when I learned about this commission, I thought, oh, I want to know what is going on and so, I'm here today to just be an observer and find out how I can become involved with the commission and participate and take the information and knowledge that I'm learning back to Harlem and use it to support my nonprofit. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Thank you. Any questions for?  
CAROL:  Thank you for acknowledging me, I appreciate that. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Any questions for Carol?  
DONNA GILL:  I have one. You know how I always have questions. Sorry I was late, I was in another meeting. Carol, your organization is a great organization, I don't know much about it, but my question to you is the technology desert that is Harlem right now all the people that are moving with gentrification on all of that, do you see that it will remain that way or do we need to work on it to change it because I'm from Harlem, full disclosure, and so we're trying to work with that. So my question is, are you working with other groups in the area and is it Central or East Harlem?  Because there is a difference, even culturally and Harlem is not just Harlem as one body. You understand the question?  
CAROL:  Yes, I do, and that is a great question, thank you for asking. There is a technical technology desert in Harlem and I do know about silicon Harlem and Harlem media is new and I'm getting it know the different organizations like nonprofit and church leaders and other folks in the community who are doing things to bring people together in Harlem because we know there is a divide there. 
	So Harlem Media's mission is to cover all of Harlem from the South to the North, to the East, to the West, because we are all one. And any information that you can provide for me and I would love to speak you post this meeting and I would be very thankful to require from you and yes, we're all working together and that's the question that I'm trying to understand myself as Harlem Media is getting off of the ground and meeting different leaders of this businesses and organizations and how are we going to close that gap?  
DONNA GILL:  And, you as well, right?  Because you're in ‑‑ Mark, you are in the Harlem‑ish area, upper West side. 
MARK DILLER:  I'm more Harlem‑ish, community school district board 3 is part of a Harlem district, if you want to be involved in the school district, have you to embrace the entirety of the school district and the one I was involved with that folks that might make yourself known is the link between resisting gentrification and education may be a little tend to wait but the 6 schools in Central Harlem that are in district 3 are chronically under‑enrolled and a frequent target for coalition with all other kinds of schools. That is a whole other kind of conversation. And Harlem residents in that area in particular tend not to, more than half of them tend to send their children to schools elsewhere and the connection I see is that using your community schools and reinforcing them is a way to maintain the integrity of the legacy community. Interestingly enough, when they tried to Wattly middle school, the community did find gel around that effort or resistance to that, I should say. So there is something called the Harlem school's summit, I believe it is he around May 16th and I believe it's at P. S. 76, around 122nd street, it's something you may want to put on your calendar, yep, May 16th at 76, the lead presenter will be my brother's keeper and these are organizations that might have the affinity for the message I understand you are conveying. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Thank you so much, we have just a few minutes left and I want to take you quickly through the milestones we need to hit in the next few months. We touched on publishing the methodology that went out January 1st. We did translate the executive summary into the 10 languages and will be circulating those as well ask trying to get them printed at different media outlets, the public comment is now open between January 1st and March 1st, for the people that you know, even if they don't show up to the hearing, they can post and send us comments and please encourage people to write. This is an opportunity to talk about the poll site methodology and it is a chance for communities to talk about their language needs so if we think about it broadly, there is a lot of people that would like to tell the city about the language barriers they are facing, particularly on election day and respond to the proposed methodology and there are different ways to get people to pay attention to what we are doing. And after March 1st, we have a revision period to the proposed method willing ‑‑ sorry, we need to post the final April 1st on 2020, what is not noted here but very important, we as the commission need to vote on the final methodology that will be posted on April 1st. So sometime in late March, we will need to come together and vote on that before it gets posted, we will start working on taking on public input, we have not received a public comment yet, and part of it is that we need to get out there and share this with people and get more people to engage with it but we can revise the methodology from now until whenever we're ready to present to you but I want to flag to you that the March meeting will be critical and the February meeting is your public meeting, February 18th. I don't know if we have set the date for March but I know a poll went out. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  March is very busy, can I ‑‑ for me. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Is the public meeting going to be going through the slides?  
SARAH SAYEED:  Most of it will be dedicated to hearing from the people that are there but we are going to provide a quick overview, just so people know. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Yes, sitting through this for the general public would be excruciating. It's just too much to take in. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  Oh, for a hearing, yeah. I was thinking of the presentation we were going to give. If we want to listen what they have to say, we should somehow give them a summary prior to coming almost. 
SARAH SAYEED:  We're assuming that the people that will come would have read this. 
MURAD AWAWDEH:  I think it's a 3‑hour meeting, we can do a 10 ‑‑ 10‑minute. Yeah. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Okay. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  It's not about the population but we know that meetings ‑‑ this is a lot to take in on a level that is very complicated. So I just, I know with my own community, I'm out of here. So, yeah. 
SARAH SAYEED:  I think that is a tough part of all of this, we're trying to use data that is sound and have neutral criteria and try to create a framework for how we do this and then make it accessible to every day New Yorkers, even to ourselves, because once you start to talk about data, it's something that ‑‑ 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  I think the thing is that the public will say, what about me?  Am I represented here?  So I think it's important to have whoever is in the room with the data to be able to say yes, you are represented and here is how or New York City you are not and we need to understand why, I think that is the critical point of this. 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  So we can be prepared to answer this and those that don't speak our language to be apart of this analysis. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  And translation services will be provided at this meeting. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Yes, we are providing translation services. 
AMY BREEDLOVE:  Just making sure. 
SARAH SAYEED:  I think that is also an opportunity again to let people know of their rights, if their language is not included in this, they have their right to bring their own interpretation. I will call the meeting to an end, do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  You have a quorum ‑‑ 
LILLIAM PEREZ:  We already voted. 
CHARLES APELIAN:  Oh, I'm sorry, I apologize, never mind. 
SARAH SAYEED:  We did vote on the minutes. Would anyone like to make a motion to end?  
MURAD AWAWDEH:  I make a motion to end. 
SARAH SAYEED:  Motion has been seconded, all in favor?  
	(All in favor) 
	Any opposed?  Okay, meeting adjourned, thank you, everyone.

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