Welcome to the New York City Civic Engagement Commission, June 12, 2025.  
Live captions will appear here.   
>> Chair Sayeed:  We're waiting for quorum.  Okay, good morning, everyone.  
>> Audience member:  Please turn the microphone on.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Good morning, everyone.  Can you all hear me?  
>> Audience member:  Mic's on?  Can you just say something, please?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Oh, can everyone hear me okay?  
>> Audience member:  Push the button down.  You can try it now, please. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Testing.  Shall I use this mic instead?  
>> Audience member:  Yes, we can hear you now. 
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay, I don't know, something's up with this mic.  Okay.  Welcome, I am going to begin by welcoming people and we will wait for the formal start of the public meeting when we have quorum to start.  So I just want to say thank you, everybody, for being here, and thank you for those who are tuned in online.  Thanks for making the time to be here with us for this public meeting.  Also want to thank the team for being here and for also helping to prepare for this meeting.  It's such an important part of or way that we connect with members of the public to share our work.  So really grateful to everybody. 
So one of the things I like to remind people of for those who are here if it's your first time here in person, please sign into the sign‑in sheet that's outside.  And if you are online, especially if you are here for the first time, we would love for you to go to NYC.gov/civic engagement and go to the tab that's marked "get involved."  And fill out a form so that you can be signed onto our newsletter and follow along with what we are up to.  So we welcome you to join the Civic Engagement Commission. 
We have some guidelines for technology and housekeeping.  So just for awareness, we usually have the last 30 minutes of the meeting for members of the public to comment.  This is a public meeting, and not a public hearing; however, we want to make sure we are giving time for members of the public to contribute if you would like.  So anyone who is here in person can sign up during the public meeting.  They can also sign up in advance by e‑mailing us.  Those instructions for how to sign up are posted with the public meeting notice.  
And if you are here or online, you can also sign up to comment by e‑mail or text today by 12:00, 12:15 since we got started a little bit late.  And yeah, we look forward to hearing from members of the public in these settings as well.  
So we are still waiting on quorum.  And wondering if maybe just to orient ourselves a little bit we can just go around for those who might be new to introduce the people who are with us and then hopefully we will get quorum soon.  So I will starts.  My name is Dr. Sarah Sayeed.  I'm the chair and executive director of the Commission.  And I'm also an appointee of the mayor's.  Happy to be here.  So I will go to my left first.  
>> COMMISSIONER MAXWELL:  Can you hear me?  Yeah, hi, good morning, everyone.  My name is Edwin Maxwell.  I'm a commissioner for I believe going on two years at this point. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  That's right. 
>> COMMISSIONER MAXWELL:  It's gone by fast.  Any other information?  My day job, I am the director of services for the Brooklyn Public Library.  So I oversee the 60 branches locations there.  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Good morning, everyone.  I have been a Commissioner since we started.  I was appointed by the mayor.  A community activist, community member in central Harlem.  And I do a lot of work with housing and community engagement and advocacy.  Thank you.  And welcome.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARON:  Hi, everyone my name is Eve Baron.  I was appointed by the Brooklyn borough president and I have commissioned since 2018.  Pre‑COVID.  My day job urban planner and chairperson at Pratt Institute.  Welcome, everyone.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  Hey, good afternoon, everyone.  My name is Giovanni Barcenes.  I am serving as a commissioner since 2023.  I started with Edwin.  Mayoral appointee, and yeah, born and raised in Queens and my day job is working for an education nonprofit called City Year.  We recruit young adults to serve in school for a year between the ages of 28 to 24.  So very involved and passionate about raising awareness and civic engagement in schools for young people and, you know, just very grateful to be here.  And nice to meet you all.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you so much.  And we can go to the folks online.  Holly, do you want to start and then popcorn it to someone?  
>> Sure.  My name is Holly Bonner.  I'm a commissioner from Staten Island.  I have also been on the Commission since the beginning in 2019.  In my my job, I'm an interfaith minister and social worker.  And I'm currently a professor at the college of Staten Island.  Very happy to be here.  I will send it over to Lilliam.  
>> Good morning, all.  Pleasure to be here with you.  My name is Lilliam Perez and I have been a Bronx Commissioner since the beginning.  And my current position is vice president of global and community relations at Montefiore Einstein, a health system that serves the Bronx, Westchester, Orange County, and Rockland, and also college the medicine.  Pleasure to meet you .  I will hand it over to Natalie.  
>> Hi, thank you, Lilliam.  I'm Natalie DeVito.  I'm one of the Commissions at Staten Island.  I'm a borough president appointee and I'm happy to be here today.  
>> I need to toss the football to?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  I think we are good.  I think Barbara, one of our team members is on the call as well and will be speaking later in the meeting.  So we are one person short of quorum.  
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Just one person.  So I'm trying to figure out what else we can cover in this part of the conversation without necessarily ‑‑ Eve Baron can we start with the presentation?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah, I mean, the most important thing is the vote that's needed, I guess.  So I will just go ahead and start by overviewing the agenda for the meeting.  And today we are going to be voting on a resolution related to voter language assistance.  And we also have to approve the minutes from the last meeting.  So we will wait for that for quorum.  For program updates, a lot of ‑‑ it's a busy time as everybody knows.  For the Civic Engagement Commission, we are going to be serving voters during the primary with language assistance.  So we will tell you a little bit about that.  We will tell you about where we are with the people's money participatory budgeting as we are in the vote phase until towards the end of June, June 25th.  Practice.  And then we will be talking more about project implementation from the projects.  There will be updates on that and then Oscar had started us off on a presentation about the Digital Equity Team.  We will update you on that because we ran out of time last time.  We will talk about ad campaigns that we are going to be leveraging to do outreach on both our work with language communities as well as participatory budgeting.  
And then I'm hoping to involve you all in a little bit of a relational organizing activity a little bit.  If we have time, we also have a presentation from the Independent Budget Office as well.  So that's kind of an overview of what we are hoping to cover today.  What I do want to note is that last time we also started reviewing the Civic Engagement Commission values statement.  And I sent around the values statement for commissioners to look at and comment on.  We would bring it back for this meeting, and I didn't do that because I did get comments from a few of you, and would like a few more of you to comment before we kind of make it into a Commission meeting. 
So we will do that hopefully next time.  Okay.  So we can start, I think, with our program updates.  Anila, if you would like to start us off, that would be great.  
>> Anila Cobo:  Good morning, everyone.  So at the voter language services team and the CEC.  We've had a few special elections over the past several months, as you know.  So from our last public meeting to today we started special elects.  The one for Senate District 22.  We provided services over the last three days of the early voting period at 70 poll sites for a total of 14 language services.  
On Election Day, May 20th, we provided services at 21 poll sites for a total of 24 language services.  A total of 32 voters were assisted.  We also provided services at one poll site where the Council district 51 special election took place on Staten Island.  There were no voters served for that special election at that site.  
We are now ‑‑ next slide, please ‑‑ we are now preparing, we have been preparing for a while, the special elections I just went over for the June primary.  We are going to be providing services at 26 early voting poll sites for a total of 46 language services.  Over the last three days of the early voting period.  On Election Day, we will have interpreters at 90 unique poll sites for a total of 94 language services.  So in total for this primary election, we will be providing 140 language interpretation services.  
We have been working ‑‑ next slide, please.  We have been working as we announced in the last meeting with community‑based organizations to pilot in‑language workshops that are targeting voter language assistance program communities and to educate them on ranked choice voting.  Voting rights including the right to vote in one's language, as well as CEC's voter interpretation services for the June primary. 
You will see on the screen there are a couple of pictures.  So those workshops underway.  We still have several more to take place.  Everything will conclude by June 23rdrd.  
We also are working with our outreach team, director Barbara Williams, to implement a robust outreach calendar on the ground.  So we will be working with Barbara and her team and volunteers to canvas and table a various voter language assistance program geographies, using, of course, marketing materials that we produce in all of the voter language assistance program languages.  
As part of the June primary, language content effort, we produced web pages in language.  There's one for each voter language assistance program language which, and each of those pages you will see to the right of the screen incorporates practice ballots online, in language as well as a new PSA that explains the ranked choice voting process.  And with that, I would like to thank you and if you are interested in sharing our materials with your networks or through your social media, we would be happy to share that later today. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  I think we are going to play the ranked choice voting video.  Yeah.  
[Video played] 
[Applause] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Anila, we updated the video.  What were some of the changes we made this year?  
>> Anila Cobo:  So we had our PSA we had in the past first of all usually was no longer valid because the people in the video were wearing masks because that video was put together during COVID.  Secondly, this video incorporates both ranked choice voting messaging as well as the right next to the right to vote in one's language to be how effective in combining the message that we put out.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah, thank you.  So we would love to ask the commissioners to share this video.  Just send it by e‑mail.  We will make sure you have it after the meeting.  One thing I do want to remind ourselves about is that the message about the right to vote with an interpreter's assistance is something that we have threaded throughout our messaging from the beginning.  And we have done that because that message is actually not given out too much.  We notice that there was a gap, that that message wasn't being delivered generally.  And also we are very mindful that even though we are providing the service, we cannot provide that service in every language at every poll site.  So we want to make sure that voters are empowered with the knowledge that they can, you know, just bring their own interpreter.  And that includes in the languages that we are providing services in, because we are only in the communities with the highest concentration of voters.  And there are lots of communities where the languages are spoken; however, they don't have the assistance.  So that's another, I think, value that we are adding in terms of our work is just the broader message that we hope to get out to voters.  
Okay.  Any questions for Anila?  Anyone online have any questions for Anila?  
>> I don't have a question, is it okay, Sarah?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.  Go ahead, Barbara and then Gio. 
>> I just wanted to say the outreach across all the program languages, I just wanted to take the time to thank Anila and her team for all the great work that she does.  It's very important what she does.  And to be able to assist in the work she does is truly an honor.  So thank you.  
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  This is great work.  I was just going to ask for the language workshops, do we ask the attendees at the end of the day, like, almost like a survey to see do you understand ranked choice voting now so we can say attendees that attended these workshops now have a good understanding of ranked choice voting or something like that?  
>> Anila Cobo:  We haven't developed a feedback survey for this round since it's a pilot and everything has to come together within a short time frame.  But we are asking the community‑based organizations that are conducting these workshops to report back on questions that might be lingering for workshop attendees or what they are feeling or grasp of the ranked choice voting process after the workshop.  
So we try to keep it simple.  We also provided all of the content in language, decks to community‑based organizations, so the messaging is consistent across the board for all the community‑based organizations and all the attendees of their workshops.  So we are hoping to get, also we are having a few staff members attend some of the workshops.  So we have eyes on the ground to get a sense of what's, you know, the perception out there about the ranked choice voting process and how participants of these workshops are reacting to the content. 
>> COMMISSIONER BARCENES:  Thank you. 
>> Anila Cobo:  You're welcome.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Go ahead. 
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Thank you.  And I am really happy, impressed that the message about being able to bring someone to the poll site, because being a poll worker, I understand a lot of people get turned away because we don't have language access, you know, onsite.  And they are not going to allow them, a lot of the poll workers don't allow to you bring somebody in with you.  And I have to constantly be telling people that's the law.  People can bring whomever they want. 
So to have that language is so very important because a lot of people that are at the poll sites are not even aware that someone can bring a family member or someone else to interpret for them. 
>> Anila Cobo:  Yeah, it's definitely a very important message, especially for the target communities of our program because we have people with, I mean, it's anecdotal.  We don't have hard data on this.  But the expectation is that there are people who do not have the bandwidth for engagement as someone who, you know, doesn't have the language barrier.  So it's especially important to push out the message that they have this right and making rights to language communities and we've incorporated that as well in the decks we are providing to the community‑based organizations.  
It's very important.  And I may have witnessed one or two cases myself when I voted, of people, you know, both poll workers and voters are not aware of their rights.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay, thank you, Anila.  Just stay because we will soon get into the resolution. 
>> Anila Cobo:  Okay. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Mitch, welcome.  I just want to just introduce yourself really quickly and then we will do attendance.  
>> COMMISSIONER WU:  Mitchell Wu, pronouns for the record, is it picking up?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Can you all hear?  Is the mic working okay?  
>> Audience member:  He had it on.  Push the button again.  Now talk. 
>> COMMISSIONER WU:  Testing, testing, testing.  All right.  Mitchell, pronouns he/him, commissioner.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you.  Okay.  So I will call to order officially the public meeting and take attendance since we now have quorum.  And I wanted to mention that Ishrat Jahan, who is one of our commissioners, resigned.  She was not able to continue to come to the meetings in person, so I just want to thank her for her service and also congratulate her because she now has a new job.  That was part of the reason why.  
Okay.  So attendance beginning with Murad Awawdeh, Giovanni Barcenes, present, Eve Baron, present.  Holly Bonner?  Holly?  Okay, Holly is online and hopefully she can unmute.  Amy is not here.  Natalie?  Natalie DeVito?  Yes, here, thank you.  Mark Diller?  Here.  Donna Gill?  Here.  Edwin Maxwell?  Present.  Lilliam Perez?  Here.  Thank you.  Mitchell Wu?  Present.  Holly, give you another chance.  Yeah, give her a call.  Because then ‑‑ 
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  All right.  Maybe we will just continue with the program updates.  Great!  Hello. 
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  We had a mirage for a minute, a quorum and then not sure, and now I think we are good.  Mark Diller okay.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Mark Diller.  Attendance. 
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  Just so you know, if there's a quorum when you start the meeting and nobody says the words I suspect there's no quorum, then there's still a quorum. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Really?  Mark Diller yeah, there's a motion for the sense of the absence of a quorum is what it's called.  And anybody who says that in any ‑‑ has me to deal with later. 
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  Well, thank you for that piece of education.  It's called the motion of what?  
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  Sense of the absence of a quorum.  Words you never want anyone to speak in your presence. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  Good.  All right.  Well, we can proceed with the business that we have today, the first being that we need to approve the minutes from April.  So you all have the minutes from the last meeting.  Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes that we presented to you?  And also, commissioners, if you are participating virtually, can you unmute your mics so we can hear your vote.  Can someone make a motion to approve the minutes?  
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  So moved.  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Second.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  All in favor?  
(A chorus of ayes.) 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Any opposed?  Any opposed?  Are there any abstentions?  Okay, so the motion to approve the minutes passes with I guess eight votes.  Yeah.  Okay.  So the next item on the agenda is reviewing the updates to the language assistance methodology.  So as you all know, this methodology was publicly vetted and we had a public hearing.  And part of what we need to do is that the methodology relies on census data to describe the proportions of language communities that are eligible for our services across the city.  And we look at every language and we look at the citizens of voting age who are limited English proficient according to census data.  And these percents are derived from the five‑year data set that include the American survey every five years. 
So what we have been using to date is the American community survey data five‑year compilation of 2017 to 2021.  And there's a new five‑year data compiled and ready for our use.  So we used this data, 2019 to 2023, to determine where we were providing services ‑‑ we would be providing services for the primary.  So you are being asked to review the numbers and vote on this update to the resolution.  So overall on the handout that you have that's at the top of your pile that you have for the meeting today, essentially the changes to this resolution are one at the top where the scope just says that we are updating this resolution today.  And then for the column for number 7 in the methodology, every program‑eligible languages that a new population number as well as a new percent shared next to it.  Typically we have been rounding to one percentage point when we show this data.  But typically when we pick the poll site we round up to a whole number.  
So you can look across for each of the populations and you will be able to see what the changes have been like where there has been growth, where there's been a decline in the population.  And we don't always know why the numbers go down for each and every language. 
But in general, most of the languages have gone up; a few have gone down.  And then ‑‑ 
>> Do you want to say more?  
>> Anila Cobo:  So the language with the most significant change here is Russian is losing two percent points.  Also, three other languages, French, Italian, and Polish, are losing, like, half percentage point to 0.8.  And then there are four languages that are gaining, Yiddish is gaining one and a half almost one and a half percentage point.  And Arabic is gaining half a percentage point.  Same for Bengali and Chinese ‑‑ I'm sorry, Chinese gains over one percentage point, while Haitian, Korean, and Urdu remain roughly the same as the past data set.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you, Anila.  The other edit is in the footnote which tells you which five‑year data set we are using, and finally, amended data at the end of the document changes as well.  So does anyone have any questions or comments on this update to the methodology procedures?  Anyone online have any questions or comments?  Mark Diller so if I'm reading this correctly, the list of languages we would serve doesn't change, just the percentage?  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Correct, that's correct.  Anila, did you want to comment on any language ‑‑ 
>> Anila Cobo:  No, no changes.  Just we are updating the data set that we worked with.  And we are actually going to implement the allocation based on the new data set starting from the June primary. 
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  No comments, I move to approve. 
>> COMMISSIONER WU:  Second. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  All in favor?  
(A chorus of ayes.) 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Any opposed?  Okay.  So we have unanimously approved the updates to the methodology, thank you, commissioners.  
Okay, we can now move into continue to go share some of the great updates from the team.  We're moving into participatory budgeting updates as the next segment.  And I wanted to just do a quick overview.  You will be able to see ‑‑ let me know when the ballots are up.  It's up?  Okay, great.  I wanted to just share with everyone when you go online to vote or when you are in the field to vote on the projects, you typically get handed your borough ballot.  So you don't see necessarily see what's going on in the other boroughs.  So I just want to make sure that I put that into this presentation today.  And every borough you will see that the amounts that are allocated to each project are different.  As a reminder, this amount was determined through our looking at the poverty level for each borough and population size.  Sofer borough is allocated a different amount of the full pot.  
So for the Bronx, there's $200,000 per project and there will be five projects funded.  And you see here that there's such a variety of great projects that people have proposed as well as selected in the second phase of the ballot creation.  And there's projects for a variety of populations that CEC is charged with working with.  
So the Bronx ballot has ten projects, and then we can go to Brooklyn.  Brooklyn has a lot of youth projects, 235,000 per project.  The top five will be funded in Brooklyn.  Manhattan ‑‑ oh.  Move ahead to Manhattan, 165,000 per project.  And the top four projects will be funded here.  And then for Queens, 195,000 per project, and five projects will be funded.  And then for Staten Island, it is 190,000 for one project.  We also want to share some photos with you that show our partners at work. 
As you all know, we are working with a lot of community‑based organizations to help us to outreach for the people's money.  So they are hard at work collecting votes.  And you see that we are also giving out some merch, CEC merch, bags and pens and bottles so those are all out there.  And I brought along some comp cards to give to each of you so you can share with people as you are out there in the world. 
Next slide.  This year we are working with the Sunnies again, the huge yellow civic engagement as well as the Sunny inflatable.  And we've been out at borough flagship events, thanks for coming out to have the Queens one, Mitch.  It was really great to see you there.  We've done all five boroughs to date with flagships where our teams largely staff those events and then, of course, our partners are continuing to work.  So those are some great photos of people out doing work in the field.  
And then next slide.  Just to give you a little bit of an insight as to where we are with the vote collection, this is the picture since Monday.  There are other things, it's not a complete picture because we just had on Tuesday we did an event and we collected more votes and the partners are in the field.  But as of Monday we had 23,255 votes to date.  We will have another drop‑off from our organization partners as the ballots, paper ballots, we will scan them.  So these number also change.  Just wanted to give you a sense of where things are.  
And if you have any borough affinity for your borough, promote it. 
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  In your borough as well.  And I will talk a little bit more about how we can work together to promote a little bit later.  Next slide.  In addition to working with all the great community‑based organizations, we have ballot boxes that look like what you see in the picture.  It's a little box with, like, a top part, what do you call the little ‑‑ slit.  That's right.  Where people can drop their ballots.  And these ballot boxes have been placed in public libraries across the city.  
There are 24 in Queens, 25 in Brooklyn, 46 across Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island.  And then there are additional partner sites that are hosting these ballot boxes, organizations.  Organizations can opt in to host these ballot boxes.  
Next slide.  We like to work with schools.  We have been working with the New York City Public Schools Civics for All office to reach and connect with the schools that are civics for all schools that are doing participatory budgeting.  And we have enlisted some of those schools to to participate in this vote, as well as our partners on the ground, the organizations we are working with are also working with schools.  There are several ways we are making inroads for schools.  And we have 128 partnerships in total with schools.  We are looking forward to having students also participate through the school system.  
Next I'm going to turn to Barbara Williams who is going to update us on community facilitators and ambassadors.  
>> Barbara Williams:  Thank you so much.  My name is Barbara Williams.  I have the privilege of being the director of outreach and volunteer programs at the CEC.  Since I spoke to you we have had the fortune of growing our team by one person, and that is Justin who is actually in the audience today.  Justin, wave your hand.  
[Applause] 
>> He is the borough coordinator for Brooklyn.  And he's going to work with me on the language piece or Anila, so I just wanted to make sure everyone knew who he was.  But I also wanted to come talk to you about the two programs that the outreach team is working on.  The community facilities piece and the other one being the ambassador piece.  
So the community facilitator piece is actually something new.  And so with the community facilitator piece, the community facilitators, we have 11 community facilitators.  And they are trusted messengers that we gather.  It's a citywide program.  And what they do, they host civic 101 workshops and get people to cast their votes for PB.  And this is done virtually or in person.  And they are scheduled to 27 engagements as you see in total.  They completed a total of 15 so far, and they have 12 coming.  And the various types of engagements you see goes from schools to working with the older adult centers, a total of 27.  And these are some of the harder‑to‑reach populations.  
Next slide.  As for the PB ambassador, this is a reimagined program.  Catherine Gall who is Brooklyn ‑‑ I'm sorry, Manhattan cooperator, and she focuses on the Asian population in some other areas as well.  She and I, we started this program a couple of years ago, but now it is citywide.  And this is where we take trusted messengers and we get them to focus on hard‑to‑reach areas within their communities.  
And so originally we had the goal of having volunteers recruiting these numbers as you see within the boroughs.  But unfortunately, due to volunteer falloff or availability, we have had to shift how we are able to work with the volunteers.  
Our goal recently was to have 32 volunteers City‑wide.  And we had managed to deal with 25 volunteers to do the work.  Next slide.  
So as to date, you will see these are the numbers for the ballots collected in the boroughs.  We still have Bronx pending because they are capturing, and what they do is they upload the information in a digital tracker and let us know what they think they are submitting, what the people have voted on.  And so every Friday they will submit to us.  But Bronx is still pending.  Thank you.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thanks, Barbara.  Okay, those are some of the things that are in play right now as far as gathering votes and the different ways we are going about collecting votes.  Of course in addition to all of these in‑person methods which is largely what I spoke with you about, the online voting option is always available for people.  And we want to make sure that we are getting that out as well.  So we can share a little bit more with you about how you can help us with that.  
Next, we have the updates on project implementation.  So if you could come up and just talk us through some of the slides there.  
>> Is this on?  Hi, everybody, we are sitting in for Lexi today who you usually hear from on project implementation updates.  My name is Lauren Handley.  Impact assessment consultant.  
>> My name is Akwasi Agyeman, consultant for implementation.  
>> Lauren Handley:  Okay, great.  We can go ahead to the next slide.  Next one, please.  Okay.  So here are some outputs.  This is information and metrics that we gathered from monthly reporting submitted by our implementing partners.  This gives a bit of a snapshot of where we are at with implementing projects currently.  We've served about 5,415 unique individuals.  There's been about 364 workshops held.  Through the workshops, 3,233 people were participants.  We have had about 60 events through our implementing partners, serving 1624 people.  And people who have received resources, food, service referrals, all types of services, about 1,660.  And then the total number of people who received one‑on‑one consultations counseling, career advising, that sort of one‑on‑one attention through these projects, 724 people.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thanks.  
>> Lauren Handley:  Yeah, next slide, please.  Here is just some photos of some of the projects in Queens.  We have the Connection Resource Center.  In Manhattan, Self‑defense Education for Women.  In Brooklyn, Errands for Older Adults and People with Disabilities.  In the Bronx we have youth enrichment program with the arts.  In Manhattan, The Mothers Matter project.  And in Brooklyn, language and Job Recertification for Immigrants. 
These photos were also submitted through the monthly reporting.  And now I will turn it over to Akwasi who will share more.  
>> Akwasi Agyeman:  Thank you, Lauren.  And so to highlight some of the project stories in the monthly reporting, our CBO provides testimonials on the impacts on the participants.  On this slide we have two projects taking place in Harlem by Mark.  They are in charge of voters matter where they are providing critical resources and services to new mothers.  And one participant said thanks for the support for the mothers matter project.  I was able to avoid eviction and stay in my home.  They helped me navigate the resources available and without them, I don't know where I would be.  That was really touching to hear that, you know, the impact that the participants are facing are as immediate as someone being prevented from eviction.  
And there are more long‑term supports receiving, just to see that variety has been great.  Another quote from the project that's taking place in Queens, I believe this is being conducted by common point.  And they are doing the healthy means project.  One participant said I used to think healthy food was too expensive and complicated.  But now I know how to prep meals for the week with just a few ingredients.  My kids even ask for the veggie stir‑fry now. 
[Laughter] 
>> Akwasi Agyeman:  This is also great to hear because, one, the education that the project is providing and how that's switching habits, nutrition and eating habits of the participants immediately has been great to see as well.  This is also reflective of a similar project that happening in Bronx where the Institute for Family Health, they are working on slashing Bronx hunger and providing access to more nutritional meals.  Next slide. 
Here, we have two more testimonials.  One from a project that's taking place in Brooklyn.  This is being conducted by Kings Bay Y.  They are in charge of the errands for older adults project, project volunteer said supporting the older population in our community means so much because it feels like I'm not only helping others, but also honoring my own family.  This was particularly great to see because not only is this project meant to provide physical support to the elderly and fellows with disabilities who may experience difficulty caring out their day‑to‑day activities.  The goal was to build the intergenerational connection as well as strengthen the community overall.  I feel this quote was very reflective of that. 
And in northern Manhattan, specifically Inwood and Washington Heights, another partner there conducted self‑defense education classes for women 18 and above.  Here we have a quote which pretty much exemplifies a participant using what they learned in the workshop in realtime to prevent themselves from a potentially dangerous situation.  This person says, I applied what I learned when someone I didn't know started asking me questions about how long I have had lived in the enabled.  I remember what the facilitator said about the shortening of the interaction and using the broken record method.  There has been a rise in gender and hate‑based violence.  And so these workshops really provide young women with the skills sets to, you know, address these situations and protect themselves whenever they come up.  
>> Lauren Handley:  Next we have a video, actually, about our project management workshops, taken off by the CEC to support our implementing projects.  I believe we all heard from Professor Mark Johnson before at one of these meetings who came and spoke about that work.  This video captures reflections from the participants.  
[Video played] 
>> Akwasi Agyeman:  Yeah, so we are really glad to have ‑‑ next slide ‑‑ to have that video come together, one, to better highlight the work that's actually being done in the capacity‑building workshops in a real way; and two, to use it as a tractor for new potential once they realize this is the work we are engaging with with CBOs.  As you may know, working with the city not many agencies provide this level of capacity‑building with partners.  We just felt it was really important to highlight.  
And fortunately we just graduated our second cohort last month.  And so we had a ceremony at the New School which is where the workshops were held.  And in the picture you can see ourselves including all of the partners that we've been working with over the past several months.  And just some reflections that we received in terms of the value added they received from the workshops, one implementation partner said the workshops have positively impacted my project giving me the tools to properly pivot where necessary, a lot of data collected head with this particular thing. 
Another partner said they in the workshops were helpful helping us feel supported and helping us build a project from start to finish, giving us a better understanding of how to evaluate and measure the impact of any work that we do. 
These quotes were definitely affirming because these workshops do set out to build capacity, help partners improve their outcomes as well as strengthening the stability of the projects.  To have been a part of that.  
>> Lauren Handley:  It was a really great experience and the partners completed a graduate program in in the course of one year.  So the ceremony was to honor that and that closes out our piece on project implementation. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you very much. 
[Applause] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Oscar Romero is next with the digital equity team presentation.  I don't remember where you left off last time.  So you can pick up where you left off, I guess.  Sorry.  
>> Oscar Romero:  Sounds good, sounds good.  Let's see.  So I think it's best for everybody that I start, I think this time we have plenty of time and we can cover the content. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  Are you going to start at the very beginning?  
>> Oscar Romero:  Yes, just for clarity. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  I think it's better not to because we still have stuff left to get through.  If you wouldn't mind just summarize it if that's okay.  
>> Oscar Romero:  Okay.  Okay.  So I will be brief, then.  Hello, everybody.  My name is Oscar Romero, chief information officer of the Civic Engagement Commission.  I would like to introduce my team.  
[Reading the slide] 
>> Oscar Romero:  So in the next slide, please, just to give you a sense of the parts of the program that we work with.  We touched every one of the program in the commission by doing impact assessment, creating partnerships, managing technology vendors, managing content.  We managed the external communications and provided technical assistance.  And then as you are very well aware, there's a number of regulations and laws that require us to follow security practices to create racial justice plans, to follow privacy practices that we oversee and implement across the Commission, not only are the ways this looks for the work that we do. 
So just to frame, the next slide, please, the challenge that we still to do is to design an infrastructure for us to be able to achieve goals.  In short, to be able to power the participatory budgeting program and make it possible, make the scale we operate on functional and cost‑effective.  
Next, please.  Now, the challenge is not only a matter of ‑‑ next slide, please.  Yeah.  It's not only a matter of achieving the goals, it's also achieving the goals in places where there's large digital inequality and systemic discrimination that limit the ways.  Next slide, please.  The challenge there, is that there are communication barriers that exist in those neighborhoods that ‑‑ next ‑‑ follow a logic that reflects a history of segregation, the segregation of the city around redlining that translated in groups being limited in resources that they could have and their communities having less communities and available services along the lines of class, race, and ethnicity, and also in terms of their presentation. 
So that in the context of the digital divide, next slide, please, translates in three different dimensions.  On one we think about the telecommunications infrastructure, where cables go, where is the infrastructure people have, what are the quality of the connections people have?  You wouldn't be surprised to know that in the South Bronx there's very limited numbers of technology vendors that provide higher prices for lower services than what you get in Manhattan.  How does that have an impact of course on the number of the services and the quality and affordability?  
And then on the infrastructure, having an infrastructure you can afford to pay for infrastructure.  You have to have hardware and software.  You have to have devices and there's another world of quality of devices.  The same thing you can do with a brand new computer you can do with an old phone.  The devices are not designed to last.  They are designed for you to consume them practice.  So they are programmed to be obsolete relatively quickly which again limits the ability of people to keep up even if they do get access to some of them all of that, assuming you have some basic knowledge about digital literacy, around how to use these devices, the market will tell you how to buy things.  But they will not teach you how to learn from the challenges that you have in your community, how to find new opportunities, how to discern disinformation from facts. 
So next slide, please.  The thing I was able to cover with you last time, next that I'm not going to cover this time is the context of this inequality in New York City, highlights, I will just go through, you see the map, that is the map according to the census data from 2020 about the access across the city.  You will see it aligns closely with the three neighborhoods, basically also mirroring in terms of program.  On the other side you will see a chart with a discrepancy between boroughs.  You wouldn't be surprised to know that the numbers of households without broad band are higher in the Bronx and lowest in Manhattan. 
If you keep going in this presentation, you can see more information about the different forms in which this inequality happens across the different types of connectivity people have and the devices.  There's important exceptions in Brooklyn, for example, for religious beliefs, some people choose not to be connected, not to have broad band access or computers at home. 
But that being said, all I'm trying to say here is to design a detailed infrastructure, next slide, please, next, next, and next, there you go. .  So to design a digital infrastructure that what is going to keep these things in mind, we couldn't just go with a play of let's design something that is mobile first, that is online, most of the participatory budgeting programs across the world focus on online engagement.  
Right.  So what our strategy instead was to enable community‑based organizations that were doing in‑person outreach and to mirror, to have digital ballots, yes, that were accessible in different languages, mobile first assuming people were going to use their phones, but to have paper ballots.  That was going to be supported by the nonprofits and to this day continue to be the lion's share of our collection.  
So the challenge becomes one of reading and counting ballots and of data assessment.  So one of the things I wanted to do I wanted just to take a moment to reflect, isn't this slide that I'm presenting to you, and it has to do with what are the perspectives of the technology design?  Most of the conversation you will ever hear about innovation is focused on efficiency and profit because that's the context of what technology was designed for in many cases.  
And the challenge is that also in the context of government, there's this notion that things can be neutral.  And if I can show you something that is nothing is neutral in the context of the city.  We were trying to change the framework from a city that services people, right, and assumes that these different services are technical in nature and thus they do not address inequality, to instead one that focuses on reduces poverty and inequality by recognizing those discrepancies.  
And I wanted to take a moment just to reflect on the context of the work in communities.  We are experiencing right now outside of our city and everywhere in the country a moment of criminalization for immigrant communities in the context of politics that promote hate and division. 
In many ways, we see the consequences of political institutions that not only were not designed to represent people, but that were designed to discriminate and segregate communities and this infrastructure is an example of that.  Whether it was redlining, whether it was gerrymandering, whether it was infrastructure broad band.  And I think the work we do at the Commission, the ethos of why we exist is government can be better.  That our communities can be served better that, we can show that we can be responsive to community needs and actually try to represent people on a regular basis through participatory processes. 
So just wanted to end, the reason we need to function resources to show it can be done.  If we can do this with less than $500,000 for budget for technology, then the larger government agencies in the city can also do this and that's it.  Next slide, I would not spend a lot of time on this notion of inclusive innovation.  Go to the next one.  But the idea here, next, please, was just to tell you that the process has to be core values, the process of technology innovations, usually is just this notion you have an idea, you implement the idea and success, your idea is working. 
Cultural practices that may not happen.  You cannot just go out and implement whatever you want without consequences.  We are against the culture where in the city the design of the services has been mostly outsourced.  Right.  So next slide, please.  What we are proposing is a framework where we think about what are the changes that we can do to those government structures in a way that we intentionally creating processes that are centering people?  
So that was the logic that went behind the decision‑making which vendors and tools to use.  Next, please, next.  One more time.  
[Laughter] 
>> Oscar Romero:  Keep going.  See, this is my spirit of trying to pass quickly.  Next slide, please.  So I will leave you with this.  One of the ways that we decided to approach our technology with our vendors is in the focus on these values, thinking technology for equity.  When we decided to talk to people and create tools we were going to talk about community needs, we didn't want to collect data so a company could then sell you something based on that. 
We are trying to build something for the future, create infrastructure that the city will own versus a vendor.  So when our money is spent, we will just invest in the project somebody can just raise the price for inflation and then suddenly we cannot afford to use it. 
And then finally want to be aware that we're responsive to change.  So let's go to the next slide.  The work we have been doing.  Next.  So we did an analysis of the different tools we can use for city engagement.  We audited the tools we are using, whether they were accessible.  We received feedback from City Council, we did an analysis and we developed a roadmap to basically align our vendors, we have three vendors.  And create a plan that was not just to increase the cost, but create infrastructure and capacity of the commission.  Two things.  One migrate infrastructure to city‑owned infrastructure, and two develop technical capacity that now we have.  Next slide, please.  
So what were the problems we found out?  Next.  One is that we were vendor locked.  If we continue to work with the same vendor we have full dependency.  Second there were prompts that we needed to do that to be able to achieve this to integrate offline and online solutions.  And actually change in New York City we needed to be able to respond to those things.  So next slide, please.  
So the tool that we use, the next, please, is a tool called Decidim.  Largest open source platform for participatory budging in the world.  It was designed in Barcelona.  It's a source everybody can use the code and then whatever it builds, other cities can leverage.  You have to have the technical talent to be able to do that, but you can.  It is supposed to be constructive framework for ourselves as governments, public square data versus extractive framework that tries to get the data and transform the people that use the tools and products. 
It's values‑driven in the sense it's promoting city‑owned infrastructure that cities can improve versus privately owned infrastructures that can be sold.  
Next.  So what the tool does, it allows, next, please, it allows you to submit ideas online.  It allows residents to connect with one another by creating accounts.  It is placed projects and provides a ‑‑ there's different versions, different features of this that we use more than others.  I will not go over that in detail right now.  But the point to this to share is that  this is one stop for all the content around participatory budgeting process.  Next slide.  Alternatives.  Most of the other tools that we found they charge per account privately owned.  So that means that the money you want to have uses, the more you want to pay.  They charge a monthly fee for admin people.  They also charge by the people that you reach.  So the more successful you are in running a process, the more you have to pay, the more unsustainable your process becomes which is one of the many examples of how not everything the government does is for profit and money‑making.  Cannot work under the logic. 
And then they also have subscription models that can charge different levels for different features they have access to.  So none of this happens with the city.  Next one.  No; it's not free.  We have to pay for the people to implement and we have to maintain it.  Next.  
[Laughter] 
>> Oscar Romero:  So how much did we spent?  Next slide, please.  What I want to show you here is when we initially took this job, we moved from a contract that was around $8,000 based on $120,000.  That increases to, yeah, went into three hundred and $95,000 with the attempt to try to get everything together and rely on the vendors.  It didn't become that expensive just as a natural consequence.  But what it was trend was that the prices were going to continue to increase to a point that suddenly we are not able to maintain the infrastructure. 
So instead, we, go to the next one, what we tried to do was a process of diversifying the vendors that we were getting the contracts from.  So we moved from having all of our money being spent on this contract without politics to then building capacity consultant design work and eventually full‑time lines to be working on technology development technology design and data science. 
So that basically those lines support way more than this one tool in the context of the Civic Engagement Commission.  I will show you the beginning.  The effects of this funding go to every single program versus just one particular detail.  Next.  
So now I just want to tell you a little bit about some of the work that has changed.  Go to the next slide, please.  Quick examples and I am going to be trying to be explaining to you the projects one by one on a more regular basis so we don't have to talk to you all this fast. 
But next, so quick changes.  Right.  The one that was costing $180,000, that is a tool that we started with.  So we were able to do all this research I described and transform that into a platform that reflected something that people were actually going to be using which then led to us having a significantly larger amount of votes moving from 800 votes to 40,000 detailed votes.  Next.  
Next slide, please.  We were also able to reduce the amount of time that it would take to be an account.  It used to be 30 minutes when people were struggling to create accounts and bouncing from system to system, to something you can do in less than five minutes.  And as of right now, if you go to vote, you can do it without creating an account.  Then we created other types of improvements to showcase the projects.  Feedback loops.  Very initial stages.  Now we are in the process of transforming to a better system.  
All the different initiatives we did, we tried to create a culture where we basically were looking at how people experience data services as fullest in complete connection with the ‑‑ so we could identify what were the places where there were gaps or where people were struggling the most.  And mapped how they were thinking about it which led us to, for example, people were feeling frustration that allows us to prove that part of the process.  
We also did partnerships with tech to take a look at the data.  At this point we have about 12,000 individual inputs from New Yorkers on a variety of issues.  We could take that data and we were able to improve how we collected to have it by ZIP code.  I can tell you by ZIP code, for example, one of the things young people young Latino men in Washington Heights care about more than others.  I can also tell you there's so much information people will tell you problems, for example, we have the highest murder rate in the city.  People will tell you solutions, put cameras in the streets.  Bring more police officers.  Hire more sanitation workers. 
Sometimes people will tell you concerns.  Some of those concerns might be informed by fears.  People will say I'm worried immigrants are going to take my jobs.  People would say I'm informed by research.  Well, we are going to do rezoning of an enabled.  Going to create four thousand luxury units.  Why should I believe you?  
So there's different types of concerns regardless of where they sit on political spectrum, they are pieces of information that tell you how people are thinking about issues.  Being able to analyze that and process that and bring that back to New Yorkers is one of the ways we are working on. 
Next, please.  As you saw the partnership with the new school nonprofits attend to analysis partnerships to do research okay we are going to be assessing what trust democracy how do we increase civic trust.  Define it. 
Also we partnered folks like a behavioral science consultancy NYC opportunity to identify okay how do we act, react to the feedback from young people where they say cool but they are boring, they take too long.  So we did a lot of research with them to then find opportunities to improve that and we have missing results.  I can present them another time. 
Next please.  So in terms of technical capacity, dashboard identify behavioral opportunities to change the program and create programs across all program lengths.  And then finally, this research this work we are doing, next slide, please, because open source platform is part of a community.  Currently the government of Brazil, president's office of Brazil used as inspiration to create that has more than one and a half million people in the platform.  It's the main tool the government uses for participatory processes.  Leads me to the point I was trying to reflect with you at the beginning. 
The work of the Commission what we do we are limited by the resources that we have and the constraints of New York City government when it comes to maintaining infrastructure.  But the impact of showing that it can be done is way larger the funding that we have and the allocation of the budget.  I think the context of the example of Brazil is an example of how a Commission like ours can lead in the world and the technical improvements we do can change how others do what they do and then come back to us. 
Now thanks to the investments they are doing, they have an entire team of 40 people working on data platform and because we are part of open source community we can bring those investments back to the work of the Civic Engagement Commission.  So that's my report to you.  Happy to answer any questions you have.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you, Oscar.  I think we have a couple more slides in here, but I'm guessing we can just ‑‑ 
>> Oscar Romero:  Yeah, yeah, the rest of the slides were after the thank you, they were just notes. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay, great.  Well, since we are kind of running tight on time, we do have Jorwell, if you want to come up and share some of the information on the media plan that we have for this month, that would be great.  
Thank you, Oscar.  
[Applause] 
>> Jorwell Perez:  Good afternoon.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Yeah, go for it. 
>> Jorwell Perez:  Next slide, please.  So media plan for ranked choice voting and the people's money campaign we are currently running.  I will go over the expense and budget allocation within the two highest platforms for both campaigns, media plan as you can see a portion of the budget nine percent was used for the main special election.  Then we used 39 percent for digital ranked choice voting digital meaning social media advertising, so that's on Facebook and Instagram.  Print ad media 29 percent and that's media outlets.  Radio was 22 percent and rank to vote very small amount, our voting platform that's a practice tool used to practice what ranked choice voting looks like.  Residents to be able to practice what ranked choice voting ballot looks like.  One example we have in Korean ballot which is your favorite Korean food.  Folks can rank their favorite Korean food.  That's an example of how you use ranked choice voting. 
Media spend for this campaign $76,473.  If you go to the next slide, you can see for the two platforms we use the most which are print media and radio, because of the large population of Russian language voters that we support, there are about ‑‑ 
[Inaudible].  For Haitian, two thousand, Yiddish, three thousand, polish, six one, Arabic, two thousand, Urdu, four thousand, Chinese, 
[Reading the slide].  
This essentially is considered with both some of these prices are higher based on the cost within these outlets.  On the right you can see the radio spend.  We spent a large percentage of that in Russian radios because there's those proven evidence to show use these outlets higher.  So we spend a little over $12,000 on Russian radio advertising, three thousand 4 hundred on Haitian Creole.  1400 radio for Polish.  Total allocation 17,000 
So now our PD media plan, due to restrictions with free advertising placements, we actually increase our spend this year for ads subway and MTA advertising.  So we spent a hundred thousand dollars there which is about 68 percent of our budget.  20,000 in digital which is specifically social media, 19,000 150 which is digital media, media outlets digital outlets and platforms.  Print media, 18,000 50 for us to be able to create our own QR codes for able to personal and track how our QR codes are getting scanned and being able to increase our capacity to have personalized QR codes depending on what media platforms we are using.  
If the go to the next slide, you can the division.  A hundred thousand dollars total, 63 thousand interior cars, specifically train cars and theover head and we use the screens to allow for consistent advertising that way if folks take the train you constantly see ‑‑ 
Same thing with the subway specific train stations thorough the city.  We prioritize our two neighborhoods for this, but some are outside the three neighborhoods.  It's about $36,000 out of home.  And then on the left you can see the Facebook and Instagram kind of separation.  Large percentage this division was based on our digital voting metrics from last year and capacity we want to fulfill.  Large portion of our digital votes last year came from Spanish and Chinese communities.  That's why it comes to 32 perspective respectively of our advertising 
We also launched this year social media competition your voice your vote.  This is a video competition allowing community members to create a video hoping that this allows national traffic to our website and ballot also to keep increase civic awareness of this process.  
We're letting folks know they can submit a video to be entered into a raffle to get a gift card to leverage community voices and their own networks and getting involved with the people's monies holding that further buildings trust and connection with the CEC.  Happy to answer any questions.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Thank you, Jorwell.  So I am going to skip ahead and come back to the relational organizing at the end because I think the team from IBO wants to be able to leave a little early for a poll they have.  So if you would come up.  That would be great.  Please introduce yourselves. 
>> Thank you so much for letting us speak.  Hi, everyone.  We're from the New York City budget office and we are basically just here to introduce the agency and let you know about some new public‑facing resources that we have.  
My name is Xianrui.  I'm the community engagement specialists.  
My name is Hannah.  Community engagement specialist.  I was a teacher.  So I'm doing a lot of work‑centered around youth and we are here to tell you about some of the opportunities to work with you all and get the work out about our budget‑related work.  Next slide.  
>> What is IBO?  I know a lot of people are not very familiar with us.  Independent budget office is a City agency.  But we are nonpartisan and independent in the sense that we do not report to any elected officials.  Our primary function is to provide data‑driven fiscal and policy insights into how New York City is governed and the services they provide.  Three charter mandated reports published in alignment with the mayoral budget plans.   Primary budget November plan.  
Aside from that we also publish the reports we have analysts who cover topics from housing, education, environment, basically anything to do with the city.  We are voting on it, likely.  So other than that, oh, next slide, please.  
Sorry, kind of jumped ahead a little.  Like I said, we have our three charter minute reports which you can read on our website.  IBO dot NYC.gov.  And you can see the examples there.  And some examples of reports that we have published recently changes to New York City's employee staffing levels, explanation of fair student funding, a look into the capacity and utilization of pre‑K seats across districts, and police overtime trends between 10‑year and overtime hours worked.  
So that's just a kind of sampling of a few reports that we published recently.  Hannah is going to take over for the next slide.  
>>Ism going to go over this one pretty quickly as well.  Another area we work in we provide testimonies as City Council specifically.  Recently a lot of those testimonies have been focuses on something everyone is worried about, the federal cuts and how New York City can mitigate those.  And then the biggest part of what we are going to talk about today is our presentations in general resources which are on the next slide.  
We've developed three kind of ‑‑ sorry.  We've developed three budget workshops that are kind of targeted to different audiences.  And it's a way I think we can work with CEC since your mission is aligned with budget transparency.  The first one is just targeted to people that are community Board really any community advocacy group.  And has to do with budget 101 workshops that really teach you about the budget process and time line as well as how they can engage themselves in that budget process.  
>> The second one is directed towards youth which is something that I have been working with.  We have been partnering with high schools around New York City to actually go into classrooms and have students learn about the budget process.  They do a fun budget module they have engaged in.  They play City Council members which is fun to watch.  This summer if there are any opportunities to work with CEC or other organizations to bring into high schoolers or college students. 
Lastly we also have a New York City school funding workshop.  This is mostly directlied towards parents or people who are guardians of children.  We have pamphlets that go into more in depth descriptions of all these presentations and how you can request them and just get in touch with us.  So we will leave those flyers outside as well.  That's it.  Do you have any questions?  
>> To add one more thing, we do tailor some of our workshops.  Hannah went to transportation alternatives.  Obviously they care about transportation.  So we did a little bit more of a deep dive into the DOT budget and helped them understand how to navigate it.  I know everyone here is involved in lots of different types of work.  If you have a group that wants to learn about a specific part of the budget, we will do our best to accommodate.  
>> Chair Sayeed:  Question?  
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  I have been including your training updates in the e‑blast for the community board that I worked for.  But it looks like you've come to the end of the cycle.  Is there another cycle starting or renewing, especially for the budget 101 workshops?  
>> Yeah, Xianrui just hosted a couple of them.  But we also want to make it available to people upon request.  If your community board is interested in a certain presentation or a Brooklyn Public Library is interested in summer programming, you can always request we bring it to you.  It doesn't have to be on a certain date.  It can be around your schedule. 
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  Thank you.  What I was going for was we are trying to not just get our community board members who I like to think have some level of savvy in a small corner of budget, but the community itself because folks come to the community board and say we should be funding this and we should be funding that.  
And first of all, the finite nature of funding is itself a part of what your training provides.  And then the need to if you fund this, then you have to cut someplace else.  
>> Yeah. 
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  So that part you are offering is really important and we are trying to move that out to the community, not just the board members.  So if there are ‑‑ and the best way to do that is to promote programs which we have.  But I notice there's a series of them and we seem to be at the end.  So is there another one coming or how does that work?  
>> We don't have a set calendar at the moment but we are developing one.  If you do see a need, I know CEC does rank monthly ‑‑ maybe it wasn't CEC.  But to answer your question, not yet.  But I would like to do that and I'm thinking bimonthly or maybe every quarter so people can plan ahead. 
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  Yeah, that would be great.  Thanks. 
>> Thank you.  
>> I also just realized ‑‑ 
[Laughter] 
>> True. 
>> No, I think I was at your board meeting. 
>> Oh, okay, great. 
>> I have your card somewhere. 
>> Which is good because I don't have it with me.  I came down here from another meeting. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  Thank you so much.  
[Applause] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  We're getting towards the end, but there are a few more things that I want to just talk through very quickly which is how can commissioners help with participatory budgeting get out the vote?  We will share the ranked choice voting video with you.  But I don't want to make you admit anything to which you would not admit publicly.  I just put a scan here QR code on the screen so that you can vote if you haven't already voted.  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  I did, on Tuesday. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Amazing.  The first thing you can do if you are a commissioner of the CEC is to vote in the people's money.  Okay.  And then step number two, go to the next slide, making sure that you are connecting with your family, friends, and colleagues and encouraging them to vote.  This is very important.  This section is called relational organizing because relational organizing, connecting to your old relationships and your networks is a really important way that we can organize and educate people.  Research has shown that actually people are much more likely to listen to people they know than, like, some random person coming to them and telling them to vote. 
So you all have networks.  You all have public presentation.  You all have family members, right.  So encouraging them to vote is very, very important.  So I ask you to do this with at least five people, but ideally more.  And I give you language for a text so you can put in your phone and text five people and you can text me and let me know you did it. 
[Laughter] 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Okay.  I am going to be looking out for those texts.  The next slide.  Additional things you can do.  We will send you the social media toolkit.  Please put out the graphics on your social media handles.  If you have organizations that can help promote this, that would be awesome.  Give them the communications social media toolkit.  That would be great.  We do have a social media day of action coming up on June 18th.  And we would love for you to participate in that.  We will send you information on that.  And we ask that when you are posting on the day, just to tag us so that we know that you are out there on our behalf, on our collective behalf. 
And then if you really want to help, you can host a virtual vote party with your friends.  You can do a Zoom call and just call people together, tell them a little bit about the Civic Engagement Commission, and you can flash that QR code that I had on the screen and get them to vote.  
You can do this with ten people, 20 people.  Just, it's a way for you to bring friends together and tell them a little bit more about your role with the Commission as well, for those who may not already know, tell them about what the Commission does and encourage them to participate.  Just some ideas for you.  Definitely will be looking out for those texts from all the commissioners.  Don't forget. 
>> And with that, does anyone have any questions or any comments?  Yes, I do actually have, if you could bring them up, we can give them out.  That's another thing that I didn't put on there, but I will give each of you sheriff these comp cards and you can take them and encourage people to vote online as well.  That's a really important thing that we want to try to shift towards.  Oscar talked a lot about the digital divide and why we really do get a lot of paper ballots.  
And in a city like New York we really need, we see the potential for people to participate online.  So we would love your support with that as well.  So any questions, comments?  Promises that you will make that you will text people?  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Yes, I already did. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Amazing.  Okay, great.  So do I hear a motion?  We can actually end, like, eight minutes early.  Despite starting late which is great.  Can I hear a motion?  
>> COMMISSIONER GILL:  Motion to adjourn. 
>> COMMISSIONER DILLER:  Second. 
>> Chair Sayeed:  All in favor?  
(A chorus of ayes.) 
>> Chair Sayeed:  Any opposed?  Okay, we are unanimously agreed to end the meeting.  Thank you so much everyone for being with us.  
[Applause]