NYC Civic Engagement Commission
July 17, 2024

>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  Ready to start.  I will now call to order the Civic Engagement Commission's public meeting.  Welcome to everybody.  Thank you so much to everyone who is here.  People who are members of the public as well as people who may be joining on the live stream.  Thank you so much for taking the time.  Time is a very precious resource, so we are really grateful for the attention that you are giving us.  Thanks also to the team for helping to prepare for the meeting.  We will be hearing from different key members today.  
For those who may be new, we are live streaming which is part of the Open Meeting Guidelines.  And I think everyone who came in signed the sign‑in sheet.  And if you are on, you can go to nyc.gov/civic engagement.  And when you hit the tab "get involved," you will be able to find on the left side of the page there's a place to sign up for our newsletter for CEC. 
We typically have ‑‑ we can go to the second housekeeping slide.  We typically have reserved the last 30 minutes of the meeting for public comment.  So if you might be interested to make a comment and you are here, you can sign up on the form that was circulated.  You can check off whether you would like to make a comment.  We're asking commissioners if you are here just mute your mic when you are not speaking and also online to mute your mic when you are not speaking.  And you can unmute to let us know when you would like to make a comment sings you are not in the room with us. 
If you would like to make a comment, please sign up and we will call on you in the order you signed in to do it.  And the captioning is displayed on the screen to your right or to my right to your left.  And it's also available online by going to that link that's up there.  
You can also, if you are not here in person and want to make a comment, I guess we can take your comments if you e‑mail info at civic engagement at nyc.gov or send a text.  And we will follow up with you during the comment period.  
So next slide.  Today we have a couple of things to go over.  Of course I will be going through the attendance and let me start with that, actually.  So to take attendance, Murad Awawdeh?  Eve Baron?  Holly Bonner?  Amy Breedlove?  Present.  Natalie DeVito?  Present.  Mark Diller?  Donna Veronica Gill?  Here.  Anthony Harmon?  Maxwell?  Present.  Lilliam Perez?  Anastasia?  And my name is Dr. Sarah Sayeed.  I'm one of the 15 commissioners who have been appointed to lead the Civic Engagement Commission.  I'm also the chair and executive director.  So just to go through the agenda really quick we will be talking about after we approved our minutes from the last meeting we will be talking about the Civic Engagement Commission's language access plan.  We have a little bit of a budget funding update for you, program updates where you will get to hear from the team about all the different amazing things that have been happening over the past two months since we met.  
So let's just go through approving the minutes.  So everyone should have a copy of the minutes from April.  Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes?  Would someone make a motion to approve the minutes?  Oh, maybe people are still reading.  Anyone want to make a motion?  Motion to approve.  Second.  Second.  Oh, second.  Thank you.  All in favor?  
[A chorus of ayes]
Any opposed?  Aye.  Wait.  Okay, delayed.  That was a slight delay.  Okay, so the minutes to the last meeting have been approved.  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  Sorry ‑‑ sorry, I will put you in as abstention.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Does someone online have a comment?  
>> COMMISSIONER SOMOZA:  It's Anastasia.  Can you hear me?  I will be asking because she wasn't sure if you had heard that I said I was present virtually. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you, thank you.  Yeah, I didn't hear you.  So I'm grateful that you chimed in.  Thank you. 
>> COMMISSIONER SOMOZA:  Okay, of course.  I'm here.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  Okay.  So great.  The minutes have been passed with one abstention.  Thank you.  
So next we are going to be diving into all the different updates we have, and one important item for us to look at together which commissioners will be asked to vote on after it's presented is the Commission's Language Access Plan.  This is something we are bound by the Charter and local law to present.  And I am going to ask JP W., if I said your name correctly, CEC's language access coordinator to come and present.  So you can take the mic from there and go through the slides.  
>> Audience member:  Which one?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  I think just the one at the end. 
>> Audience member:  This one?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah, that way you will be part. 
>> Audience member:  Okay.  Slides, please.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Is your mic on?  
>> Audience member:  Can you ‑‑ 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Do we need to have both mics?  
>> Audience member:  Can you hear me now?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah. 
>> Audience member:  Okay.  Advance the slides, please.  Great.  So hello, everyone, my name is JP W.  I'm the language access coordinator for the Civic Engagement Commission and as Dr. ‑side said, I am going to talk a little bit about our language access plan.  So our language access plan is something that is required under local law 30 which is one of the strongest laws in the country about language access.  So this plan guides our agency and helps us to provide language access and services to New Yorkers.  
>> It also promotes equitable services, addresses language barriers, enables agencies such as the Civic Engagement Commission to serve our culturally diverse communities in New York City and it also is important because it fosters inclusivity within our operations.  
Next slide, please.  So here is basically just the table of contents of what the plan covers.  You can see here it covers everything from our language access policy to training continuous improvement planning, goals and action planning.  So it's a pretty comprehensive document and it has a lot of different parts and components.  We can go to the next slide.  
So the CEC utilized Department of Justice 4 factor analysis to create our language access plan.  And so you can see the four factors are here.  Factor 1 is number or proportion of LEP persons in the service population.  Factor 2 is frequency which the LEP individuals interact with our agency.  3, the importance, benefit, service, information, or encounter with the LEP person.  And the final one is resources that we have available.  Each of the programs of the Civic Engagement Commission integration interpretation and translation services into planning and implementation.  And it's very important that we are able to reach all New Yorkers no matter what languages that they speak.  As a reflection of that, we allocate $100,000 over two years.  This is subject to change are but for translation and interpretation services.  And we also allocate about a million dollars a year for our voter language assistance program.  Next slide, please.  So over the next plan period from 2024 to 2026 we have a few different goals we are going to be working on. 
The first will be to develop a CEC‑wide translation style guide for all program lanes.  So this basically will ensure that when our translations are done, they are done consistently and we're using the same language across all our different program lanes.  It's really important to make sure that everything is consistent.  So our second goal is to create essentialized request for language requests.  We don't use a great portal.  It's integrated with a different office request so we want to make something that's more specialized for language services so we can capture what's needed and minimize back and forth.  With training for language access for new hires during the onboarding process so you can see how important it is to integrate language and access into the work they will be doing and see what we are already doing as a team.  The next goal excuse me oh, sorry.  Two more.  We are also going to be working on language access methodology for people's money so that we can make sure the same thing each year and improving our language access for the program.  And then the final goal for the year I mean this service plan will be to establish language access office hours.  So that's going to be a space where team members can hear about what we are doing, ask questions, ask for advice on what they are doing and integrate language access into their projects.  So it's something that we are really looking forward to.  Next slide, please.  
Just want to go over briefly some will past achievements that we have had.  This is not all of them, but just some highlights.  For the people's money all four phases, we had language access integrated.  We used all local law 30 languages, also Italian and Yiddish which are covered languages under the Voter Language Assistance Program.  We had interpretation.  We had translation.  All sorts of things.  It was really great.  We also provided over‑the‑phone interpretation services to community boards so they are able to dial a phone number and have access to interpretation when they are dealing with constituents.  
We also presented all about language access to the community boards.  So we talked to them about the different tools they have available in the city and the importance of reaching out to their constituents that speak different languages. 
We also in the past contracted professional translation interpretation vendor.  We work with Ericsson Translations and we also have a new over‑the‑phone interpretation vendor.  Language Line.  And our final achievements, voter language assistance program and that actually received an award recently.  So it's a great achievement.  Next slide.  
That's all for me.  Thank you so much.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  So does anyone have any questions on the language access plan?  I know there's a longer document that we shared with you.  So if you have any questions about anything in there, this is the movement to ask.  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  I have a question.  Just on the complaints, how is that handled in terms of language access?  Because 311 and e‑mail and telephones, I was just wondering how you were handling that. 
>> Audience member:  So at this point we haven't actually received any complaints on our language access.  So if it were to come through 311, you can speak to that because we never had one since I have been here.  It would come through 311 and we would address the problem.  Typically I think a lot of direct service agencies have more experience with that.  But we haven't had any complaints on our language access programs at this point.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  We do include the ways that you can register complaints. 
>> Audience member:  Yes. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  When we are providing services at poll sites, for example. 
>> Audience member:  Yes. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  We have something there.  
>> Audience member:  The document describes the different ways that you can lodge a complaint if they have issues.  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  Thank you. 
>> Audience member:  Of course.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARON:  I read through T thank you, it was very through.  
[Inaudible] just one little tiny thing.  I think we left out Russian.  
>> Audience member:  Okay.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Anybody else?  
>> COMMISSIONER WU:  Just a question. 
>> Audience member:  Sure. 
>> COMMISSIONER WU:  On the tracking languages.  The continuous planning monitor in terms of target languages and service on time.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Use your mic. 
>> COMMISSIONER WU:  My question is what f you start noticing questions not on the list and there's a global trend?  How do you continue to. 
[Inaudible] 
>> Audience member:  Well, that would dep on kind of what the trend we're seeing.  I think that that as an agency we kind of have our languages that we work with for local law 30 and language assistance.  If there was a need for additional languages, that would be something that we would discuss and that we would come up with a plan kind of aside from this to address.  And this is a document that's ‑‑ we are able to update it within whatever time we want.  If there was something we were noticing, we would make an update to the document.  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  My question is when I saw the document, the thing that stood out to me was costs for the contractors.  Because I realized that (inaudible).  So. 
>> Audience member:  I'm sorry, I couldn't hear the big word.  Yes.  So the big word is our interpretation services vendor for the voter language assistance program.  So they provide us with the interpreters for about a hundred poll sites or so for elections.  So that's where that number comes from.  And they provide a lot of interpreters.  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  And this is a $3 million cost over four years; is that correct?  
>> Audience member:  $3 million over three years. 
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  Over three years.  Yeah.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  I think we've always ‑‑ there is a negotiated acquisition process that we have to go through to hire that particular ‑‑ for that particular service.  And there is that process in play right now.  And what's been I think important for us to keep in mind in making that going through that process is that this vendor per our methodology needs to hire interpreters who are screened for their proficiency because there needs to be an objective standard for that.  
And my understanding is there are not that many people in the market for doing this kind of work to the level that we want to provide the service.  And that's part of why costs are higher.  I know that worked really hard to try to bring down costs as well with negotiating with the vendor.  So it is definitely ‑‑ and does this just to be clear, sorry, the 2.9, is that only for the Big Word or does it cover other things like operations?  
>> Audience member:  Operations. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay, so it does include things like we have to set up each site, furniture rentals, we have to, like, deliver.  And those are contracts separate from the Big Word.  It also in the past has included things like ad buys.  So it's the total.  So actually we should edit this chart to make sure that that would be another edit to the document that we're seeing language services maybe even want to add separate rows.  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Because it just seems for one vendor. 
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  It also says it's contract.  So I think it should be the amount of the signed contract, not inclusive of every cost.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  I have a quick question. 
>> Audience member:  Sure. 
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  I see in the appendix that the New York City Board of Election provides translation services in Spanish, Chinese, Cantonese and Mandarin.  I'm just curious what kind of coordination is there between CEC and the New York City Board of Election when it comes to, like, splitting the cost of resources for translation services?  I know we have more languages that we are trying to provide services in.  But yeah, how does that work the relationship with the Board of Elections and splitting the resources and costs?  
>> Audience member:  We coordinate very closely with them.  The difference between our interpretation services are that we do not duplicate any of the services that the Board of Elections is providing.  So if they are providing Cantonese and Mandarin at a location that is not something that we would be providing.  So we are not duplicating costs or anything like that.  And we coordinate very closely with them on election day as well.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Is that what you were asking about?  
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  Yeah, thank you.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Anyone else?  Anyone else?  So, so far we have one edit on page 3 which is adding the word "Russian" or the language Russian to the list.  And I would just make sure for every instance when we list the languages, let's just double‑check on making sure they are all listed.  It looks like you did.  And then we have another edit on page 12 which is related to just specifying that, yeah, I think we were just needing to be more clear on what this total dollar amount is referring to.  
And we may want to also consider making the year frames consistent because they are not consistent across the rows, because Ericsson's 22 to 24.  Language Line is 23 to 24.  The last row is 23 to 24.  Let's do it for each row the same time frame.  
So in addition to those edits, is there any other edit that we want to recommend?  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  I don't have an edit, but I'm pleased to see that the three additional languages that are not covered, especially Albanian, because I was an advocate for going upper Bronx, seeing that whole Albanian community.  So I'm really happy to see that on there because I know, yeah, on page 11.  I'm really happy to see that.  Thank you.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Oh, thank you.  Someone online who would like to speak?  Natalie?  
>> COMMISSIONER SOMOZA:  Thank you.  Thanks for seeing that, Eve.  I just wanted to say that I had some questions pending, and then when I heard this is not a static document, that sort of answered a whole bunch of my questions already.  I want to emphasize that to the public and my fellow commissioners.  As this is not a static document, there is lots of opportunity to look at these little tweaks and be confident that as this is the early ‑‑ in the first place, any little tweaks along the way it's not a static document.  We will be able too see to.  So thank you for your hard work.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  To clarify a little bit on that, we do need to submit this plan to the Mayor's Office per local law.  It will also need to be posted on our website.  So Natalie, if you have specific questions or comments that you think we should take into account before we submit it or post it, this is a good time to raise them.  
>> COMMISSIONER SOMOZA:  Got it.  Thank you.  And I don't at this time.  My fellow commissioners have raised any particular questions. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  That's great.  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  I will make a motion to approve. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you. 
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  With the two additions that we have discussed.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay, all in favor?  
[A chorus of ayes]
>> Chair Sayeed:  Any opposed?  Okay.  So we will approve the plan with the edits that were recommended.  And we will be sharing the final one with you.  All right.  So that is the business matter that we took care of. 
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  So now we are going to just going into program updates.  And what I will do is just have each team member present and then we can do the questions at the end of their segment if that works for folks.  So get the slides ready for this, thank you.  We are going to be hearing from Wendy, the senior strategy programs officer who is going to be chairing info with us about the budget, as well as with participatory budgeting and some of the racial equity work that we are doing.  So Wendy, the floor is yours. 
>> Audience member:  Thank you.  Good morning, Commissioners.  Great to see you all.  Yes, we would like to share an update on the Commissioner's budget.  So I will just wait for the slides.  As you all know, the budget was recently adopted for next fiscal year.  And I think as you are all aware, the City agencies experienced budget cuts.  Last year as of 24, we had 13.5 million total and this year we will be starting off the fiscal year with 12 million 685 thousand.  Which is a total reduction of just under a million. 
I do want to note that last year we are in the process of hiring.  We have had some vacancies and we had a number of accruals.  And we were able to cover some of the cuts that we had last year with those PS accruals.  As we hire up, we may not be able to do that to that extent.  So that has an impact on our GPS budget.  Just a bit of a footnote.  We were grateful to see a restoration.  Highlights, we did not have funding for the tree program.  We did receive $2 million.  I will just share sort of an historic budget over the years.  In 23 we had 2.4 million, two million from the racial equity office of racial equity as well as directly from the WMI.  With the budget cuts we have seen obviously their budgets are affected, that also affects the allocation we get.  Last year we were down to 1.8.  We were grateful to have $2 million this year, a slight increase.  Poll site budget was restored given the e election and participatory budgeting.  We do continue to hope to put additional requests to get our allocation but noting that some of those cuts including communication budgets outreach engagement budget that we use to invest in communities to make sure folks are participating.  So we are thinking through the best way to reallocate that funding to the budget.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Any questions on the budget piece?  Great.  Thank you.  
>> Audience member:  Okay.  Onward.  I am going to go through a couple of updates on teams for next year.  So for our process to orient us where we are in our process, we completed in idea generation in the fall.  Winter assembly process and spring voting.  Now complete.  And so now we are gearing up for two things.  We are counting the votes.  We have talk about this in a minute, but we have a lot ballots.  Our process continues to be very paper based.  A lot of work in terms of scanning, reviewing, et cetera.  We will be able to report very soon.  We are planning for this process fall, winter, spring, next year, the summer.  We have heavily relying on feedback we get from our partners and exit surveys to think through improvements we can be making and incorporating that into the design of our program for next year.  And also as soon as we get final counts and we know which projects are going to be implemented, we need to go out and work with communities and organizations and invite them to provide proposals so that we can start implementation at the same time.  Next slide.  Our voting phase May 1st to June 16th.  Funded 88 communities partners throughout the city.  That included all three library systems, two CUNY campuses and we are continuously trying to think through ways to support online engagement in addition to in person.  But our partners were leading into both of those strategies.  We had a heavy in‑person presidential particularly in all five boroughs particularly the three neighborhoods 33 equity neighborhoods.  Slight increase from last year for digital ballots.  Six thousand just under 20 percent increase.  We feel we have made some good strides there in terms of increasing access to the digital voting option.  
Our total ballots cast number we are holding until our final, final number.  But I think it's going to be a good number.  Really optimistic.  Pleased with the result and the announcement will be coming soon.  Next slide. 
As part of our outreach in addition to all the partnerships we have with our communities's organizational folks we ran flagship events.  We did that last year.  We did it again this year.  We had a whole set of assets thanks to many of you who came to our, great to see you coming out to see you at these events and I know many of you traveled far and wide to make that happen.  So thank you.  
Our Bronx event was part of the Bronx week parade.  Sunset Park in Brooklyn it was in Sunset Park, day parade and festival in Queens we celebrated with the Queens pride parade.  Staten Island family fun dates, great event that happens every year in one of the parks turnout lots of kids and families, it's really sweet.  And then this year we last year we did museum mile.  Unfortunately they had shifted the date.  So we shifted and we showed up at the Manhattan festival.  In addition to that, we also had popups Governor's Island, immigrant plaza Manhattan Union Square farmers market and powerhouse arts space in Brooklyn.  We are looking for other venues and opportunities where there's high foot traffic and get to go know other audiences other communities, it's been a real exercise for us to see how people are responding to the call to vote and what is this in all these different communities and neighborhoods. 
Next slide.  The projects to be funded.  There will be 20 borough projects (reading the slide).  Total funding this year is three and a half million.  Yes.  And just noting that that allocation as many of you have been here may recall, this is based on the total number of people below the 100 percent poverty rate.  And it's been approved by the Commissioners.  So for those of you who you new, that is how we determine percentage of the allocation that goes.  Next slide.  
Great.  And just a quick update on the process so far for their first year of city‑wide project implementation.  We have 46 projects that are either in process or have been completed.  13 borough projects and 33 neighborhood projects.  The neighborhood projects are now complete.  The borough projects will be wrapping up in the fall.  16 of those projects target young people throughout these categories, and 14 are intergenerational.  It's always interesting to see the kinds of projects and needs that people are expressing particularly when there may not be explicit funding streams to support programming such as intergenerational to be able to step in and fill that gap has been a really rewarding experience I think for us to learn and for the organizations to be talking to folks and learning about those needs as they implement.  
Just quickly highlighting the chart that the highest category of projects continues to be mental health.  It's been a very consistent theme not surprising followed by job training, education, and food insecurity.  Next slide.  46 projects as a whole.  We have 44 CBO partners.  This summer implementing one project.  You can see a wide array of organizations both large and small who are working with us.  It's been really interesting working, we hadn't had the experience of working with some of these organizations that are much, much, larger.  And so next year we are conscious of and thinking how to integrate into the process the access to respond to these projects, given equity.  So that smaller organizations, rather, can come together and propose.  So we are really trying to think through how ensure small organizations can be part of this process at the implementation side.  
Next slide.  Implementation updates.  We are getting the final reports.  And I think we have every report in except for one and one that was partially had some issues with completion.  I think that's a really good success rate.  Summarizing impact to the community.  Our borough implementing partners will get their reports in the fall.  These reports are so far really great information.  They are very thorough.  They include an executive summary.  Objectives, methodology, key findings, analysis, interpretation of our recommendations.  
And we've reported on this in the past, but all of these organizations are participating in monitoring workshop quick and learning curriculum, being thoughtful learning along with us and I think there's a lot of learnings they are bringing to the organizations as a whole.  So we are excited to be summarizing that information and sharing that out.  
We also have an AmeriCorps member.  This is a part of the work that obviously is a heavy lift for us as a small organization to be implementing 46 projects and we had one FTE, one person that we were given to help us manage that.  So we were bringing in an AmeriCorps person over the course of the year to help us with project management but also to help us try and create more of a forum for other folks to understand the work that happening.  Many of these are really important pilot projects that could be expanded and to think about how we communicate this to other agencies to learn from this as well.  Long‑term sustainability and getting conversations going about the impact these have had in the community.  Key areas of impact on the reports and the work that happening around mental health a lot of awareness and prevention increasing resiliency, food access, decreasing food waste, one example, one of our partners ensuring that folks have meals have been serving a migrant shelterer, especially around Ramadan thinking about the community and the types of a particular cultural needs that people have related to food.  Arts and wellness, creative wellness, so really integrating the arts and other creative expressions and connecting that to well‑being.  
A lot of immigration resource access, increasing knowledge of resources and empowerment.  And financial empowerment.  A lot of organizations have been using the funding to ensure that immigrants have access to the programming.  One program expanded their culinary program in Spanish so that was held in Spanish.  So that's one example.  Next slide.  So stay tuned.  We are planning a showcase of projects that we are going to hopefully hold either still the planning stages summer early fall.  We will keep you posted.  Again we want to make sure people know all the great work that happening in the communities and all the organizations and the impact that it's had. 
And to find out more and just stay updated on the process, you can always visit our platform, participate.nyc.gov.  Great.  
Quick update on the TRIE neighborhood initiative.  Some results, organizations held a total of 112 coalition meetings.  That includes organizations bringing together the organizations in the communities to help get out the work, host engage other organizations and stakeholders in their communities. 
They allocated implied collectively a total of $280,000 in their communities towards coalition‑building.  They had 42 civic engagement workshops and a lot of ballots.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Why don't we stop here.  Sorry, and then we can take questions about that and talk about the racial equity.  
>> Audience member:  That's fine.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  So anyone have any questions on any of those?  Updates?  We have three cycles.  Cycle 1 projects being implemented.  Cycle 2 projects will be announced.  And then we will get started with cycle 3 in the fall.  
>> Audience member:  Yeah. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Some of the, because some of the projects from cycle 1 are continuing to the fall.  
>> Audience member:  As of the fall we will be working on two cycles essentially.  But that's true we are wrapping up the first cycle gearing up to run the process and gearing up to implement the 20 borough projects.  It will be a busy summer for us.  
>> Question from virtual. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yes?  
>> So this is a clarifying question.  I believe I know the answer to it.  But I also think that if the answer isn't exactly what I think it is, it bears restatement loudly and clearly.  On the key areas of impact, we have mental health, food access, arts programming, immigration resource access and financial empowerment.  The clarifying question ‑‑ this is New Yorker‑led, correct?  
>> Audience member:  That's correct. 
>> These areas of impact were chosen by New Yorkers for New Yorkers to raise their voices and said these are the things that are important to us in our communities, yes?  
>> Audience member:  That is correct.  
>> Thank you so much for making that crystal clear.  I thought so.  And I just want that amplified on high so that we can all see that New Yorkers who raise their voices said this is what matters to us and therefore that's what's being done.  Thank you so much.  
>> Audience member:  Yes, thank you for amplifying that.  I think we do our best to share all of the work we've put into that process ourselves and making sure residents have multiple opportunities and spaces every single step of this process is driven by precedents.  So this is absolutely a reflection of not only people's needs but I think the needs that people are serving in their communities and care for each other.  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  On that note I have a question about the TRIE neighborhoods.  Did we take a budget cut on TRIE initiatives?  
>> Audience member:  Last year we did.  So as I mentioned in the budget slide we started off with 2.4 million.  With all of the budget cuts we ended the year with 1.8 million and this year we are back to two million. 
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  Right.  It's still a drop and we are in cycle what with TRIE?  We are on cycle 3 overall. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  I think it's 4.  
>> Audience member:  I guess it's technically 4 and a half. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah. 
>> Audience member:  We started the TRIE initiative during COVID and it was during lockdown, it was part of the year.  And then if you recall we ran a full year and that's how we started our first may George participatory budgeting process in those neighborhoods based on COVID recovery.  So that was our first cycle and our first full year of ‑‑ and we ran the process and implemented the projects, I can't say we implemented.  Our organizations and partners implemented the projects all in one year.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  Question.  I'm super‑excited for the showcase that's coming up to see the cycle 1 projects and the CBOs that are implementing them.  I wonder for cycle 2 is it the same implementing partners?  I guess it's too soon to say because we haven't announced the winners yet.  
>> Audience member:  Yeah, we don't know the projects that are winning.  We are drafting the RFP or the solicitation.  And once we know what projects will be implemented will be recruiting, our hope is we want as many folks to apply for sure.  It's open.  It's competitive.  We are trying to be again as inclusive as we can and invite smaller organizations to come together to propose jointly.  And so you know, I don't want to get to the end now, but we would love all of your help and we do have some asks.  Getting the word out as far and wide as you can.  The subject matter expertise. 
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  When does that get released, the RFP?  
>> Audience member:  We are looking to issue that as close to the beginning of August as we can.  Obviously we have to wait until we know the results and then the other layer is just looking at the geographic distribution of where the projects will be implemented to ensure that the folks in those neighborhoods selected those projects.  So we are doing a bit of a mapping there and just waiting looking at the actual results to make those determinations, but the expectation will be that all of the organizations we're implementing are working with our TRIE communities because that is where we had a lot of concentrated engagement and to make sure they are part of the planning and implementation.  So just noting as well that that would be a part of the process and an expectation of these partners.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Anyone online have any ear questions?  
>> COMMISSIONER MAXWELL:  I have one quick question.  I know that you are still on the paper ballot.  Any projected time line for when you think that will be complete?  
>> Audience member:  Today. 
[Laughter] 
>> Audience member:  This week. 
>> Audience member:  We are probably hours away. 
>> Audience member:  We are so close to being able to announce.  We are hoping to have them in hand today.  But very soon.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARON:  Quick curiosity question.  Were there more paper ballots or online ballots?  
>> Audience member:  Yes, we are still heavily driven by paper ballots.  
>> COMMISSIONER MAXWELL:  Just remind us how many were submitted last year paper ballots?  
>> Audience member:  The total number was about 110 at the borough process, a hundred thousand.  We can get back to you with the precise number.  We can give you the breakdown.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  110 and then 90 or something at the neighborhood level, right?  
>> Audience member:  Because we were running two ballot processes last year.  So, yeah, we are comparing the results of our borough process with the results of the borough process last year and we didn't have those numbers to share with you all.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  One last question.  
>> Audience member:  Sure. 
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  How are you working these key areas of impact I think are very important and telling as the other Commissioner said as well.  How are you working with other City agencies that kind of oversee these areas of impact at the Mayor's Office of community mental health?  I think that's the name, Mayor's Office of food policy, DCLA, department of cultural affairs, office of financial empowerment within the consumer protection, how are you working with these agencies to tell them this is what the people of New York City are really focused on and this is what we need to, you know, apply more funding for programs and services?  Just curious what does that interagency work look like?  
>> Audience member:  That's an excellent question.  Over the past year we have been reaching out and offering briefings to share.  We had a briefing with food policy, Office of Mental Health, Mayor's Office of mental health.  
>> Audience member:  Yeah. 
>> Audience member:  I'm trying to think of the other agencies, and we want to do a lot more of that.  So as I mentioned, the impetus for bringing on AmeriCorps volunteer was not just to support the work that was needed but to help us focus on creating those relationships.  It's just a whole work stream I think, frankly and it's a really important one and also subject matter experts we're not necessarily ‑‑ various backgrounds purely subject matter experts in the projects we are implementing.  We also have been inviting them to read proposals with us.  I think if we can try to engage them with us in the process we are looking at ways to fold them in and to show value in their participation in creative ways beyond briefing what the projects are.  For example, coming to our borough subcommittee meetings and sharing with folks when these projects are being deliberated on the ballot, what are they seeing, what needs are they hearing from residents?  I think there's sort of a bit of a laundry list honestly of ways we want to focus on on strengthening that relationship.  Excited to have an energetic AmeriCorps member be here to help formalize that work stream. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Just to add to what Wendy said, I think I said in the last meeting with deputy mayors, all of the engagement offices which include CAU, PEU, NYC service and CEC.  So we held meetings with most of the deputy mayors and we briefed them about projects that are relevant to their scopes.  And we also asked each of them to do a briefing to agencies that report to them.  So we will be following up at the deputy mayor level as well as at the agency level.  Yeah.  Anyone else?  Questions?  So we will be sharing with you the list of selected projects and we're looking to hold an event to make an announcement about it so we will let you know when that is so you can participate in it.  
Yeah.  Okay.  So if we don't have any other questions, do you want to do the next slide?  
>> Audience member:  Sure.  Happy to.  Next slide.  Next slide.  Great.  So just a quick overview.  The Mayor's Office for equity and racial justice is tasked with starting the first ever city‑wide racial equity planning process to address racial equities as part of this process they are working across the city with all City agencies to cycles, track progress and make improvements to eliminate racial disparities and promote fairness for all residents.  So we are working on that plan actively.  And working closely with their support to agencies to develop a plan, you know, obviously this is really critical to the work we do and core to our values.  Spending time thinking through a thoughtful plan is in progress.  Our time line we were trained and advised of what the planning process will be this spring.  The summer until September, the drafts will be reviewed, and city‑wide plan will be prepared and then in October, they are going to be issuing the preliminary city‑wide racial equity plan for reviewing. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Related to this, we did have a staff transition for everyone.  Josh who was the director of participatory budgeting actually went on to the Mayor's Office of racial equity to set up I forget what her new title is, but she will be overseeing a lot of this planning work.  We will be inviting her to come and present to us at the next meeting.  So you can get a dive into that once these plans have been published as well.  
Any questions on that?  And of course we will be sharing the plan with you, too.  We're just getting started on that.  On the subject of racial justice and equity and inclusion, I wanted to also mention that there's actually a local law that's being considered by City Council right now that I just learned about a few days ago which actually also mentions the Civic Engagement Commission.  And that is a law that is going to formalize and establish truth in appealing and reconciliation process for New York City to establish facts about slavery and it's legacy in New York City to protect and acknowledge affected communities throughout and after the process and to recommend changes to repair harm and prevent reoccurrence. 
And there's supposed to be a public participatory planning process with public engagement beginning as early as July of 2025 to help design the process.  And this planning process is supposed to go on for about two years and then actually implementing the truth and reconciliation process is supposed to happen latest by 2028, so some time in between then. 
And as I mentioned, the CEC as well as the Commissioner on human rights, office of community media and state committee on reparations are named in the bill as offices to collaborate with the Commissioner on racial equity, core.  You heard from Linda who is the executive director on that.  To work with core.  Core is primarily responsible for this process, but we are charged with helping with the public engagement piece.  I believe this local law will be voted on as early as tomorrow.  As I said, I just learned about it.  So I think this has been developing for a while, but I wasn't aware.  
So we will be talking more to figure out what should our role be, how can we support that process.  So I just wanted to make you aware of it as well.  There's another bill, sorry, just one, it's that one bill Number 279.  I forget, do you recall the number of the bill?  
>> Audience member:  242. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  And there's another 279 which focuses on core's responsibility to do a study on the impacts of slavery and its legacies and proposing measures to address it.  So those two bills will be voted on tomorrow.  Sorry, go ahead.  There are a couple of sponsors.  I think a lead sponsor was Hudson; is that right?  
>> Audience member:  Yeah. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  So thank you, Wendy. 
>> Audience member:  Thank you all for your time. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay, next we are going to hear from Anila who is our director of poll site language assistance.  And she will be sharing updates about our services in the primaries.  
>> Audience member:  Hi, everyone.  Good afternoon.  My name is Anila and I'm director of poll site language services. 
>> Is it on?  Can't hear you.  
>> Audience member:  Can you hear me?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Maybe you want to turn on the other one, too.  
>> Audience member:  So I will be sharing a few updates regarding voter language services in past two primaries.  Presidential primary as well as the June primaries.  So for the April presidential primary, we were able to deliver services at 110 poll sites for a total of 144 language services.  100 percent of services were delivered as planned which is a measure of access for our program.  
For the June primary, we delivered services at 90 poll sites, 15 of these were early voting poll sites, 75 were election poll sites.  And the total of language services provided was 113.  Again, we are able to deliver 100 percent of services as planned with support from our vendor Big Word.  
In terms of utilization, utilization has been low for both primaries.  And we believe the general voter turnout for the April presidential primary, we assisted 221 voters while for the June primary we assisted 146 voters.  
Now, the polling check process is not final, but we believe these numbers are pretty much accurate almost final.  
So the interesting thing for these two primaries in terms of utilization was that we had zero voter assistance for Korean speakers in the primaries and we don't really see patterns.  I mean, utilization does vary from one election to the next.  
In terms of outreach that we conducted for the last two elections, we did rely on the language assistance advisory committee members, as well as attempted to reach elected, partner City agencies and community organizations that worked with voter language assistance communities.  
We were not able to spend a lot in terms of ads.  We only spent about four thousand for the June primary in hypertargeted ads on Facebook.  And with that amount of money, we reached over a hundred thousand people.  
We also utilized CEC social media to organically spread awareness of the services as well as New Yorkers' right to vote in their language by bringing an interpreter with them to the poll site, or which could be either a family member or a friend.  
And we did utilize print and digital information material in all of the voter language assistance programming languages to spread awareness.  Our language advisory committee has been meeting regularly on a monthly basis.  They did conduct outreach on behalf of the CEC for the April and June primaries.  Last month one of the members represented the Korean speaking community presented research on the Korean speaking community in New York City which is very valuable because it helps us at the CEC as the voter language assistance program to better understand the communities we serve in the Korean community and how to reach them and spread awareness.  
They did help a lot with budgeting process, voting phase.  They did vet translations of the materials.  They vetted the flow of the online voting process in all of the local law 30 languages plus Yiddish and Italian in partnership with CEC ten members as well as MOYA staff.  And the members were ‑‑ to help with collecting ballots for the budget process or connecting us to organizations that would collect PD ballots.  
That's pretty much it.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Do you want me to do the participatory budgeting?  
>> Audience member:  Oh, I thought that slide was moved.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yes.  
[Laughter] 
>> Audience member:  Okay.  So in terms of language access for participatory budgeting, the voting phase, we did ‑‑ not just the voting phase, I'm sorry, over the last three years, four months, we did provide interpretation for Spanish speaking participants at the May 11th voting phase kickoff event.  And we in a previous phase, the borough assembly committee meetings, we provided translation services for members as needed.  We did translate paper ballots into the local law 30 languages plus Yiddish and Italian in keeping with other program languages, the program that we run at the CEC.  And we did the same for the online voting prompt.  So it was consistent across the board and we were able to provide services as needed.  

>> Chair Sayeed:  Anyone have any questions on the services or any comments?  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  Thank you for this.  There's always a number of things we can discuss.  But one thing that struck me, I just wanted to know if the visual on page 29 is something that we used at the Commission.  You have the right to vote in your language.  
>> Audience member:  The logo?  
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  No, slide 29 has a visual you have the right to vote. 
>> Audience member:  I believe, yes, it's an illustration.  It's one of our prompt cards that we use. 
>> COMMISSIONER BREEDLOVE:  If I could just put forward that I think we should put multiple people on our visuals, because when you are promoting to me this is promoting a heteronormative vision.  And so it's a man and a woman.  So anyway, I think any time we can promote more diversity, it's better.  So to have three or four people as opposed to just one man, only female.  
>> Audience member:  We will consider this feedback.  I just wanted to point out the avatars on this material vary from language to language and they were based off the PSA that was developed about two years ago, but we will certainly review. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you for that feedback.  
>> Audience member:  Thank you.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Anyone else?  
>> COMMISSIONER AWAWDEH:  So thank you, can you hear me?  Okay.  Can you hear me?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yes. 
>> COMMISSIONER AWAWDEH:  Perfect.  I think, thank you for your work in moving this forward.  This has been a long time in the making.  So it's amazing to see year after year the uptick in supports that people are getting when they are trying to vote.  
I'm wondering if because the presidential primary was a dud.  There really wasn't a primary.  So is there a scaling up of language services that is being planned for the upcoming November election?  
>> Audience member:  So we're definitely planning to go over the standard of services which is 25 unique poll sites for early voting and 75 for election day as the average.  We're definitely planning to go about that, but depends on resources we have available and we are going to do our best.  
I'm thinking that we will be definitely scaling up election day poll sites because with early voting we see very low utilization.  And it makes more sense to scale up for election day rather than early voting and even maybe scale back for other voting from average from the 25 unique poll sites to maybe 20 and then scale up eight or 85 unique poll sites for election day.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah.  In the two primaries just noting that we had 110 unique poll sites in April.  144 services.  And then it went down.  And this was really‑driven by the cuts.  And so we started 90 unique poll sites in June and we did reduce the early voting services, just to try to compensate. 
>> Audience member:  Yeah, also we were able to cover three elections with the same amount of money.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah, good point.  
>> Audience member:  Spend on two elections. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yes, thank you.  This is what I was saying.  Been really good at negotiating and figuring things out.  In the past also, the Big Word, they haven't necessarily charged us for primaries if there's an election in play.  Yeah.  
>> COMMISSIONER AWAWDEH:  I would just I know for PB there's, like, a slight restoration, but not a real one based on funding from 2023 after the cut this past year for language access was there a similar cut and a similar restoration or a full restoration?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  I think the cut that we made, we actually didn't ‑‑ we tried to keep the cuts less for poll site.  So they did fully restore the poll site cuts.  So it's for PB that has not been fully restored.  
>> COMMISSIONER AWAWDEH:  Increased or fully restored?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  No, it has definitely not increased.  Yeah.  So we will have to work to get back up to a $5 million process for sure.  For poll site we did at one point since CEC started we were actually given some additional funds.  But that was a one‑time allocation that was made.  It might have been 2020.  But for the presidential primary.  But that was just a one‑time thing.  So we have to figure that piece of it out.  Were you going to say something?  
>> Audience member:  No, I was thinking 2022. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah, maybe.  Yeah, I don't remember the year unfortunately.  Any other questions on this piece?  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  I have a question.  Advertisements outreach and the ads, the information about being able to bring family member or someone to the poll site, that was something that we were very interested in having out there because that wasn't something that people that needed language access had no idea that that was available to them because Board of Elections does not say that.  So I'm really happy to see that we did in fact do some of this, but I feel like we need to do a little bit more.  And the kiosks, the free advertising kiosks. 
>> Audience member:  Link NYC. 
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Yes, I think that may be able to, we could utilize that to help us and it's free.  I think. 
>> Audience member:  Sure.  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Because I know a lot of people read that as they are walking down the street.  Because a lot of people even when I tell and I work with Board of Elections and I work elections every year.  When I tell people we can bring a family member or you can bring, they don't feel comfortable doing that because the site does not, you know, is not engaging in that.  So I think that information needs to be out there a little bit more.  
>> Audience member:  So that message that people have the right to bring an interpreter with them to the poll site is part and parcel of our messaging campaign and our informational campaigns and the collateral.  So all of our materials and messaging, it has both of those messages that you have the right to bring an interpreter and then for these languages you may be able if you are voting one of these select poll sites, you maybe able to use CEC interpreters if it happens to be a language that we provide at a poll site.  
And again, NYC Link ‑‑ I'm sorry, Link NYC is a great tool and we are planning to utilize that as well as Taxi TV which are both free services.  But yeah, we don't have money, we cannot do a lot in terms of placing ads on media.  And it's very particular way a lot of communities that the language assistance program actually print media is kind of expensive and we haven't had the chance or the resources to contribute, I mean, utilize in place a lot of recently in the last election.  We try to bring more effort into e‑mail blasts and reaching out to communities organizations even ones that we don't have relationship with to let them know about this program and share our digital toolkit.  We ask to get out the right to an interpreter as well as CEC services and we also try to do that through our voter education forums.  In fact we did one with the Haitian community back in April.  Chief democracy officer Kathleen Daniels and they engaged and spoke about these rights and more to Haitian speakers in Brooklyn.  
>> COMMISSIONER AWAWDEH:  The city also poll purposes and MTA and other ads, so reach out to Mayor's Office media they will be able to help ‑‑ I think also print ads media and office of I think media should be able to support on that.  
>> Audience member:  We will reach out.  I'm not aware of any free ‑‑ 
>> COMMISSIONER AWAWDEH:  It's not free. 
>> Audience member:  It's quite expensive, in fact.  
>> Audience member:  The city pays for it.  And then it's just other agencies.  
>> Audience member:  Bus shelters. 
>> Audience member:  Yeah, bus shelters, buses, subways. 
>> Audience member:  We will look into that.  Printing the posters is quite expensive.  So it's something we have to consider.  And also the other challenge with the program is that we don't know if poll sites where we are going to be providing services until four or five weeks out.  So kind of doesn't make sense.  We cannot lead people to the election center nyc.gov or put these posters up because there's really no information yet as to where we will be.  But we are thinking about some more evergreen informational materials that we can try to circulate and put out there year round, not just elections. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  And coming up we will have a primary in June for which we need to do more voting education as well.  Okay.  Just in the interest of time, I am going to ‑‑ thank you so much.  Benjamin is going to talk about community boards.  And I also wanted to also say Anila has been filling in quite heavily for communications.  We had ‑‑ so we are waiting to start with another communications director, but Anila has been doing a fantastic job helping us with a lot of different pieces for comms.  And Benjamin recently received a promotion to senior advisor who will be doing a lot of work in the space continuing with community boards and also responsible work in participatory budgeting program as well.  So congratulations, Benjamin and thank you.  Anila.  I will give you the mic. 
>> Audience member:  If we could go to the community board slide.  It's been a good year with community boards, robust training series.  Overall increased the numbers.  We will report on those a little bit later.  We got to know a lot of the boards.  A lot of people come back over and over to our trainings which is good.  They found it useful.  Am we identified ten boards a little while ago that had not sent any board members to us.  
And we tried to go out and present to those using the outreach team to get them to show up.  We will see if that's been working out.  Today I just want to report on some of the survey results after selected workshops.  A little overwhelmed with surveys, but after selected workshops, we send a survey to ask what they thought about it.  You will see here we sent out 12 surveys.  529 people received them.  119 responses.  So a good showing, I think, to get some feedback.  
Next slide.  We started off asking a few questions rank them on a 1 to 5 scale.  I found the content informative and relevant.  Beneficial to my work on community board.  You see the diagram Oscar our CTO gave about the average response was above 4.  So above agree between agree and strongly agree on those three questions which is great.  
I remember we got a couple you have 1's once for strongly disagreed and I called or e‑mailed and you gave us a 1.  You strongly disagreed with this question about being relevant.  And they just said oh, I'm sorry, I read it backwards.  I meant to be a 5. 
[Laughter] 
>> Audience member:  Well, I said I'm glad I contacted you.  So let's go to the next slide.  Then we ask for a lot of comments back.  You can see here out of the 113 comments received, I liked our interns did all this work for me.  But we got a ton of comments there and my interpretation of positive comments 51 percent were positive.  Talking about it, we have a great conflict resolution a million times better other training programs, disability eth kit and awareness this training cause immediate to think differently about how I share information with others.  One person said conflict resolution had nothing to do with them, their work in the board and upon further discussion we found out that they were looking more for deescalation techniques.  What to do when someone's yelling at me, how do I deal with that?  This is a workshop conflict between two people.  Long‑term thing.  But so we are going to work on that again.  Bring that back and working on deescalation.  
Next slide.  Of course there were negative comments.  Disability etiquette, I didn't understand it.  Most of it was too complicated.  Parliamentary procedure, the presenter was what knowledgeable but not as strong as I would have liked.  We found for that workshop, the presenters while incredibly well versed in Roberts rules, regardless I what I prep them with, they didn't really relate that directly to how a community board works.  We switched vendors.  So while they were useful, but actually consulted with Mark Diller, our commissioner.  What we are going it do this year is have the vendor come back but present to a select group of community board members and chairs and make sure the wording, they say president in Roberts rules is chair.  They may have used the wrong terminology and not understand how bylaws work.  Selected board members so they can really make it sound much more along there how community boards work. 
Next slide.  And then, of course, lots of little technical things that happened along the way that people commented on.  There was somebody who thought the announcement came too close to the actual event.  Sometimes we just planned they come up last minute.  We tried to give as much notice as possible.  Something about how the answers were questions should be answered in the order received.  A good note just to keep people understanding how we're running the meeting.  Some people have a problem with Zoom.  I think we've used Zoom we are going to continue to use that as the most reliable, most universal and also just easiest to track people who register for the meeting.  
So that's sort of a little rundown of the comments we got.  People want to make sure they get the presentations as soon as they can afterwards.  Next slide.  This was probably the most diverse answer, but ultimately I think was useful.  We did ask people what they would like to have training on in the future.  There was a wide range, 113 responses, probably 111 topics.  
[Laughter] 
>> Audience member:  But I think if we looked at them and grouped them, certainly these main things, housing is always a big issue.  Meeting decorum getting back to to parliamentary procedure.  Data interpretation, equity data up there, open data source.  We might go back to those and how the budget the city, I don't think we can answer how CB should budget, but we can certainly talk about the city budget.  So we are going to probably do some training on that.  We are in the process of developing the series of trainings for the fall and following spring.  Want to get them of course more to continue to try to get them involved in the PB process.  It's always a bit of a hard just to get them because they are doing their budget analysis and their needs statements while we are doing ours.  We had a couple that were actually partners with us this year who will continue to try.  And that's it.  I think it was a good year.  We are beginning to build some trust.  We are working with the working groups on term limits how to prepare for that.  We cosponsored a meeting.  They had a month ago or so to talk about that with board members from earned the city, Gale Brewer, a couple of other guests.  Did a report on things to look for in the coming months and we will continue to work with them to make sure the trainings are available if necessary and that boards are prepared for the kind of turnover that we are expecting certainly to start to fall into place.  That's it.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you.  Any questions, comments?  
>> Audience member:  Thank you. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you so much.  Next slide.  So just to give an update on what's our look ahead, what's coming, we mentioned to you we will be announcing this election progress let you know when that event is so you can join us.  We are right now in deep planning mode for getting geared up to do next year's PB cycle, idea generation and also planning for the TRIE neighborhood initiative.  We're also preparing RFIs for those selected projects for implementation. 
We are hoping to announce the RFI around the same time that we are announcing the selected project for PB as well as for TRIE.  So we will be asking, well first I should say thank you for the help and support that you all provided with the past participatory budgeting cycle.  It was really great as Wendy mentioned, you came out to events.  You helped us promote.  We worked a lot closely with the public library as well on digital engagement.  
So thank you for all the support you provided.  We will continue to, you know, look to engage you as we're moving forward into the year.  So definitely we will be sharing the RFI announcement with you so you can circulate to community‑based organization partners. 
We will also send out a poll if you would like to be part of the evaluation of the applications.  You know, we welcome that as well.  And then, of course, attending the announcement event and then there will be other ways that we are hoping to actually develop opportunities for people to lead the facilitation of idea generation workshops and also visit projects in the field.  So there will be ways for folks to stay more involved with the Commission.  
So that is the last slide that we have.  And now I am going to ask if we have anyone who wanted to make a comment who is in the room.  And Abby, if you receive any texts or e‑mails related to anyone wanting to comment.  
>> Audience member:  No. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  No?  Okay.  And where is the ‑‑ anyone have the sign‑in sheet?  No?  
>> If there's no public comment, I do have a general question. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Great.  I was going to ask if the Commissioners wanted to share any reflections or questions.  So Natalie, go for it.  
>> COMMISSIONER SOMOZA:  All right.  Is it safe to say that the public does not have questions or comments first?  I can wait. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yes, we just checked and no one had indicated that they would like to comment.  
>> COMMISSIONER SOMOZA:  Oh, okay.  So an issue that is so much tangentially related to our work going forward, had a question.  The Charter review Commission is currently in progress.  And as far as I can observe, I don't see yet any changes to expect to the work that we do.  The work we do, you know, that point a lot.  I'm asking the general question not necessarily to be answered, but for the Commission to keep its eye out on any proposed changes on the Carter Review Commission or to at least consider if some changes were to be proposed or implemented, how that might keep it on our radar how that might influence our approaches going forward. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thanks for that, Natalie.  Anyone else?  Commissioners?  Okay, Abby, do we have the next meeting will be in September?  
>> Audience member:  Yes. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Do we have a date for that?  
>> Audience member:  We do. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Oh, amazing.  
>> Audience member:  September 18th, Wednesday, September 18th. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  And is it the same ‑‑ 
>> Audience member:  The same time. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  11:00 to 1:00?  
>> Audience member:  Yeah. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  So our next meeting for the one here for members of the public who might be watching, September 18th from 11:00 to 1:00.  We will regather.  So thank you for everyone who attended today.  So I think we can end the meeting.  So can I hear a motion to adjourn the meeting?  
>> Motion to adjourn.  Second.  All in favor?  
[A chorus of ayes]
>> Chair Sayeed:  Anyone opposed?  The meeting has been adjourned.  Thank you so much.  
>> COMMISSIONER SOMOZA:  Thank you.