>> SPEAKER: Good morning.
>> SPEAKER: Good morning.
>> SPEAKER: Good morning.
>> SPEAKER: Hi.
>> SPEAKER: We need three more commissioners.
>> SPEAKER: Yeah.
>> SPEAKER: Just one more.
>> SPEAKER: I would be happy to bring coffee and doughnuts at the next public meeting when we are face to face for an inducement.
>> SPEAKER: Hopefully we can get together.  I also still have everyone's I.D.s as well.
>> SPEAKER: I will like to ask a question, the I.D.s say ‑‑ and not Civil Engagement Commission.
>> SPEAKER: Good question.  We have an MLU where they are responsible for, I guess, administrating CEC and supporting with a bunch of different things.
>> SPEAKER: Payroll comes through them?
>> SPEAKER: Yeah.  Our staff I.D. cards also say do it on it.
>> SPEAKER: That would be like sanitation guys looking at police I.D.s.  How do we fix that?  Somebody asked me what do I do for do it, I have no idea what to say accept I know how to open up a computer.
>> SPEAKER: We will look into that a little bit more.  About how the I.D.s are generated.  I don't know.
>> SPEAKER: We are still waiting.  Right Francis?
>> FRANCIS: We are waiting for one more.
>> SPEAKER: I notice it does say CEC on the bottom.  I think they misspelled civic, though.  Civic engagement should say Civil Engagement Commission.
Who else?  Amy.
We have quorum.
>> SPEAKER: Good morning, everybody.  I'm going to call the meeting to order.  Just for anyone who is knew, we will go through the technical assistance slide again.
Essentially what we do for this meeting, it's a public meeting, we generally mute all participants upon entry.  And enable audio during the public comment period of the hearing and we ask people in notifying the public about the meeting, we ask people to sign up for making public comment in advance.  And Francis, has anyone signed up?
>> FRANCIS: No.
>> SARAH: Usually during the comment period, we typically call on people in order that they are registered and we allow people to register during the meeting.
Let's see.  Okay.  Call participants in order they registered.  You're asked to sign up during the meeting, you may use the chat and/or texting option to sign up.  Please, if you're using the chat, drop your name into the chat and let us know you would like to offer comment and then for people who are on the phone, you can text your name and affiliation to the number listed, (646)763‑2189 to offer public comment.  And during the last half hour, we will enable the audio and call on people in the order that we received your registering for comment.  First, we will call on the people who put their names into chat and then call on the text list of people after that.  Since our meeting is from now until 1:00 p.m., if you want to offer comment, please sign up by 12:00 p.m.  I am going to move into attendance.  Call your name, and if you're here, just say here.  And otherwise, we will keep going.
Chuck may be running a little bit late.  I'm not sure if he is here yet. 
 [ CALLING ROLL ]
>> SARAH: All right.  My name is Sara Sayeed.  I'm the chair and executive director, welcome.  Our first order of business is to review and approve minutes from the last meeting.  Did everyone get the minutes?
>> SPEAKER: Yes.
>> SARAH: Any additions or corrections to the minutes?  Okay.
>> SPEAKER: Motion to approve.
>> SPEAKER: Second.
>> SARAH: All in favor of approving the minutes from January?  The minutes are approved.  Thank you very much for that.
We didn't meet for two months so we will give you updates on what we have been up to so you're aware of how we have been out there investing in community and civic engagement.
Our first update is related to civics week, which just passed.  I will turn it over to Laura to take us through the civics week update.
>> LAURA: Thank you so much.  I'm looking forward to the next in‑person meeting, hopefully soon.  As I think we had shared previously, the week of March 7 was our annual civics week, which the Department of Education leads as part of its civics for all curriculum, which is a year-round project.  But civics week is a special celebration in all public schools throughout the city, elementary through high school, where schools and students come together to do a variety of things.  A few highlights from this past year which was special because it was the first time we are back in person for civics week since before the pandemic.  The last civics week in person was March 3, 2020, so we were in person.  We were a week away from entering lockdown and two weeks from the schools being closed.  Last year was virtual so it was great to be back seeing students and teachers and staff in person.  Some of the things we did included a student voter registration drive in high schools.  This is something that was led by the mayor's public engagement unit with our support.  PEU staff and CEC staff were in 2200 high schools in sever borough and reregistered and preregistered high school students.  People who are eligible can preregister at 16 or 17.  And when they turn 18, they are automatically added so this is a great way to engage people even before they are 18, get them registered and talk about the importance of voting.  We don't have our final numbers yet but based on our last report, we have more than 13,000 high school students registered as part of that drive during civic weeks.  There were visits from elected officials, both major political parties.  We had our kickoff, I think in that picture, in the PowerPoint, Grover Cleveland high school in queens and we had ‑‑ they were just absolutely wonderful hosts and one of the highlights of that was that we partnered with NYC speaks, the new initiative from the mayor's office that's been conducting ‑‑ they conducted the city-wide survey earlier this year and now they are going into the next phase of community conversations.  We had community conversation with NYC speaks at Grover Cleveland high school addressing issues of criminal justice system, housing, and mental health.  Those were some of the issues that had risen to the top of being important to young people.
It was a great week and happy to answer questions, and already excited for next year civics week.
>> SARAH: Thank you.  Do the commissioners have any questions?  Or feedback on this segment?
>> SPEAKER: I'll jump in.  Just that having been a presenter at one of the preCOVID civics week presentations, it's a terrific effort.  I'm glad we are keeping it alive and glad it's in person and keep us in mind for next year.  It's something that I recommend to my colleagues and would love to be a part of myself.  Thanks.
>> SARAH: That's so great you brought that up.  Thank you so much.
Were you there as ‑‑ in your capacity as a community board chair?
>> SPEAKER: I think I was there as ‑‑ there was no formal ‑‑
>> SARAH: Okay.  Okay.
>> SPEAKER: I was there as a local community trouble maker and a former PTA president.  That's how I got invited to the dance.
>> SARAH: That's wonderful.
>> SPEAKER: There was a broad group of folks from the community board, communication education council.
>> SARAH: We will make sure we invite commissioners to be part of that going forward.
>> SPEAKER: I have a comment and a question.  Great to see you.  Congratulations.  This is amazing.  I think that we need to do a lot more to engage folks the minute they are eligible and it's great to know you're getting them before they become eligible.  Great work.
Have you really been able to penetrate all the high schools or is that a plan?  I know it's a lot of work but I would like equal access everywhere.  If the answer is no, can we try to do that through PTA meetings, civic engagement classes?
>> SPEAKER: That's a great question.  What DOE does is they reach out to the leadership of every high school to ask ‑‑ to make sure principals and leadership know civic week is happening, they do registration drives, I would love to see more people from the city going into schools.  We were only able to be in 22 schools this year, which was a little bit lower than the number in 2020.  I think we are ‑‑ the schools are still emerging from dealing with the pandemic so there was some hesitancy to really just fully widen the program this year.
But I think given how successful it was, hopefully we can expand next year and partner with other city agencies to encourage people to volunteer.  I would love for commissioners to volunteer if you're interested and try to make arrangements to be in more schools and be more mindful about which schools we are going to because it was a little bit ‑‑ my understanding is was it a little bit of a self‑selection system where a call went out and schools volunteered.  But to your point, we should be more proactive and saying which schools really would benefit the most from this type of partnership.
Yeah.
>> SPEAKER: Usually the ones that need it the most stay quiet because they are doing other challenging things.  Maybe we look at the data of where communities ‑‑ communities that have the lower civic engagement and participation and maybe ‑‑ communities like the upper east side and upper west side may not need it the most but because of how active the community and parents are, they may be the first ones raising their hands, leaving other communities that need it but may not have the time to e‑mail on time without the opportunity to engage.
>> SPEAKER: I agree.  I'm hoping we can do more of that and be more proactive for next ‑‑
>> SPEAKER: Can I jump in ‑‑
[ Talking at the same time ]
>> SPEAKER: Student voter registration day, started as a pilot initiative many years ago which the NYC was co‑leading with the city council and took it over and our goal was to get the set to have this implemented across every single high school.  That was the goal.  I'm happy the city is moving towards that.  I think the lessons learned, the schools need targeted outreach.  The way we did it, we partnered with community‑based organizations who we prepared with materials, we gave them everything they needed to present, a deck, and making the deck as culturally relevant as possible to young people.  And for those who didn't have ‑‑ don't have status at the time, we included other methods of how they could be civically engaged, community boards, CECs, whatever it is.  I'm wondering if the program changed, if not, it would be great to see it.
The second piece is, I think the city should pick up the partnerships with community‑based organizations because they have connections with the local schools and they are working with the schools anyways so it is a great way to continue their partnership and give the city additional capacity to be in every school on that day.
>> SPEAKER: Yes.  I 100 percent agree.  Thank you so much for sharing that history.
I know in the past, as you said, there have been partnerships with CBOs and this year there were groups ‑‑ nongovernment groups that went into schools but it wasn't coordinated.  I believe the league of women voters were in some schools but this is a huge resource that we need to tap into.
My understanding was that because of the COVID policies, including the vaccination requirement to enter school buildings, DOE did not want us to partner with external groups this year.  I'm hopeful that will change going forward and we can really spend the early weeks of the winter recruiting a wide volunteer base and really engage with schools early on, and it always happens very shortly after that February mid‑winter break and so there is just ‑‑ I think this past year was a really successful week, but there were a lot of lessons learned.  To your point about the curriculum, I'm happy to share that with the commissioners who are interested.  And we always try to include other examples of ways students can be civically engaged besides voting but we welcome any and all suggestions for what to add.
In 2020, there was a lot of emphasis on the census.  This year there was a lot about Participatory Budgeting but I would love everyone's thoughts on what else should be included and how to make these lessons relevant to students.
>> SARAH: Thank you so much.  Anyone else?
>> SPEAKER: Was that a request to how to make it relevant to students.
>> SPEAKER: I don't know if I defer on whether we want to do that now.  Maybe since the next civics week is a ways away, we could have a meeting specifically on that but defer to the group.
>> SPEAKER: I'm happy to speak to you offline on that.  The one I took part in was at a middle school, I think it was very successful.  Hyperlocal is the headline.  Grad to talk to you about whatever I can do.
>> SPEAKER: That is great.  I think what we could do is share the curriculum and figure out a time to meet with whoever is interested to talk more about it.  That will be a great conversation to have.
Just to keep us on time with getting through the items.  The next focus is on the Participatory Budgeting update so maybe we can go to that.  Wendy has to leave at noon for another meeting.  Wendy Trull, senior adviser will go through the updates on PB and where we are with that.
>> WENDY: Thank you.  Good afternoon.  Appreciate the opportunity to brief you on the status of the process we are running this year and our thoughts for planning for the year ahead.
Just in terms of wrapping up the voting phase, the voting period ended in February.  We had 33 ballots and we translated them into a variety of languages, including those listed here.  We made sure to reach out to all the organizations working in their communities to capture additional languages apart from those we automatically translate.
We worked with the community‑based organizations to run over 19 vote events, city agencies, including the public engagement unit, all five boroughs, had over 100 volunteers.  Including the staff from the organizations running the process.  As well as city folks.  We got just under 30,000 votes.  We think that's is good because we were in the midst of a second COVID surge.  Extremely cold weather.  Being out there in 12 degrees weather was challenging.  Keep our flyers on the tables when the wind with blows.
We managed to have a lot of efforts despite the challenges and a lot of young people involved, residents involved.  The voting breakdown, the highest votes received from the Bronx, queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island.  Focused on hunger, we had three projects addressing hunger, 14 addressing mental health, 6 for gun violence and 10 that are youth program specific.  We have over 30 projects folks are in the process of implementing.  The expectation is the projects will be implemented by the end of the year.  We are looking forward to reporting back on the results of the projects.  We had a couple organizations team up and share a ballot and join forces to implement a project further.
That's where we are.  Again, just as a reminder, we have been presenting on this regularly, but this is the $1.3 million process focused on the neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID.  If you are interested in seeing the specific projects when you get the deck, you will see the full list of all the projects and the organizations on our platform.
>> SARAH: Chuck?
>> SPEAKER: What specifically were they asking on the mental health projects?  That's a big area and a lot of different ideas.
>> WENDY: The topic was broad and so folks had the opportunity to develop projects they thought were specific to their communities and the organizations were tasked with working with residence and members to design those projects.  You can see the projects on the ballot itself and the project that won.
>> SPEAKER: An example, what were the ideas of what they wanted to do to help with mental health.
>> WENDY: It's a variety of things.  Again, I think when people surfaced issues about mental health, they were broad ranging.
>> SARAH: I dropped a link into the chat that tells you the winning projects, mental health stressors, associated with gun violence, health fair, mental health fair, coping with isolation, depression for youth.  Wellness month.  Different ideas people came up with.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you for this.  This is great.  Great to see the participation of Bronx and Queens in this.  Wondering, this is get out the vote specifically for the PB initiative.  Is that correct?
>> WENDY: Correct.
>> SPEAKER: I'm wondering, is there a way to combine efforts, this is a great time to sign up in Laura's project, getting voters signed up to vote in the elections in New York City, and they seem to be engaged, if they are voting in this.  I think it's an opportunity.
We talked previously about you only have to be 16 to serve on the community boards.  Also, getting that information out.  I think it's a great idea to be a little less siloed and try and do some of the initiatives that work together, try to get the synergies out there when we can.
>> SPEAKER: Great point.
>> SPEAKER: Individual council members are in a hurried process for PB.  They took office in January and voting takes place now‑ish, first week in April.  I'm hoping whatever lessons are learned in the communities that were a part of this initiative will be shared with the council members in the districts who are trying to get a turn out for a second wave of PB, assuming they are participating and a lot of them are.
>> SPEAKER: Absolutely.  I think we did brief you earlier, but we are hosting the city council participatory Budgeting on our platform so we can work together to identify issues.  But I appreciate elevating that conversation as well for what all the things that need to happen that occur outline.  We would be happy to share what we learned in that setting.  They are convening regularly, the folks who are participating, the city council staffers.  There are 14 city council districts running PB and one that won't be participating in a voting phase but use of platform to generate ideas.
>> SARAH: Are there any other questions?  I'm not able to see everyone on my screen.  Feel free to speak up if you have a question.
Okay.  I think you can keep moving.
>> WENDY: Thank you.  We are also using this particular experience and process as an opportunity to gain ‑‑ elevate awareness about Participatory Budgeting, what it is.  Excited to have 33 neighborhoods engaged in the process, organizes who know about it, resident who heard about it.  We got press hits.  And then there is an article about some of the city council members who are continuing to implement PB even though many aren't and they are considering working with city council central to continue the supports they have hopefully in the next year.
Good to see PB is alive and well and operating at the city council level and in the 33 neighborhoods.
As part of building awareness, we are working on a storytelling project, trying to think of ways of getting people excited about it, telling the story.  What it feels like through organizations to be working in this way with residents.  We are working with our youth fellows that we have on board with us, supporting Participatory Budgeting and the civic engagement and create mini documentaries that profile the process and the experience of the organizations running it and their residence in their communities to build awareness, the youth that are helping to take the lead and conducted interviews with the organizations and our residents will be working with the organizations and our youth to produce a final project, they could be on our site, shared around.  It's different to hear from people, you can put something on the website but having something visual, hearing stories, having folks talk about it, I think is very powerful.  And I wanted to share a couple snippets of the content that will be woven into the project of what we are hearing from organizations and what their experience has been in response to the question.
We are hearing they want more youth training on democracy, they want to grow, more funds.  For PBs to be taught in high schools.  We are looking to make the connections with the Department of Education.  A call for it to be available to all communities and responses to the impact it had on the community, folks are talking about it allowed them to do what they are doing, particularly one project related to hunger, feeling like they were able to address something specific in a way they had not been able to, the creativity of it.  It's ignited the idea there is a way for communities to participate in city initiatives, improving the quality in the neighborhood and the way people are feeling they are able to engage with residence, to have that at a deeper level, involving residents at ground level and what they are building towards.
Again, I think this is inspiring.  Helps keep our heads in it in our challenging moments.  I'll share this quote with you from one of our organizations implementing Participatory Budgeting in queens.  [ Reading from screen ]
You will see a fuller set of these themes and conversations and feedback in the final product, which we are working to have ready before we move towards next year.
And then moving towards city wide PB, which is exciting.  As we shared, we have money to run a city-wide Participatory Budgeting process.  We have about $5 million to implement projects city wide.  Starting in July, we will be running city wide and we will be able to fulfill our charter mandate and involve all New Yorkers.  We want to ‑‑ based on what we have done, we don't want to lose that lens where we have an equity based focused and concentrating in neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID.  A time line of what the preplanning work that is involved and how it will run next year.
I'm excited and our team is as well to have a full year to run the process as opposed to what we have done over the past two years.  It's been very challenging.  We have done it but it allows us to step back.  Bring in stakeholders, do engagement and be mindful about all the lessons learned.
This next month and the following, we will be having a series of conversations with our stakeholders, which I could talk about in a minute, we will take that feedback, revising our plans so our goal is to get a full plan in front of all of you by July.  And then beginning next fiscal year we will have our generation fees take place at the end of the summer and early fall.  We will create the ballots by November.  We will work on ensuring we have organizations to implement the projects, preparing the ballot and translating them.  We need a time to do that so we can make sure we have the quality translations and we are anticipating a long vote period.  We learned that getting the word out is important.  Sometimes takes a little bit of time and we want to allow for that to ensure there is as much participation as possible.  That's a high-level overview of the time line.
From now until next year.
Next steps and planning.  The stakeholder engagement process that we are focused on over the next two months, we are working with NYC speaks in the next phase, which is facilitating conversations with communities.  We are using that as an opportunity to have conversations about what people would like to see happen in the Participatory Budgeting space next year.  There are questions we have devised that are related to specifically to PB that will be folded into the civic engagement module.  Folks will be picking up that conversation and we will ensure we have high priority demographics represented, have conversations with seniors, people with disabilities, veterans and those involved in the justice system.  We will have a youth session and invite in other youth, April 2.  And then a special invitation from city hall, if you would like to host a community conversation in your community, you are encouraged and welcome to do so.  There is an e‑mail if you're interested in doing that.
I don't think that's necessarily something that is open generally but understanding this is an important group to civic engagement and the work we are doing, that's an invitation open to all of you to host a conversation.
We are going to convene our first intergovernmental working group.  This is really important because sometimes the challenge has to do with the way the city operates.  We are pulling that group together.  There is nothing like getting people in a room to brainstorm and think of the opportunities and the work.  So that will take place next Monday.  And we will be working through key decision points we appreciate their input on.  Outreach strategy, and then we will reconvene our Participatory Budgeting advisory group in April for awareness.  We are recruiting new members.  We had fall off and we needed to make sure we had certain demographics represented so we are working to get folks on board who can join us and offer that perspective.
Thanks to some of you I reached out to for your help.
We are going to be having follow up meetings and work group.  We are focused on particular issue areas related to outreach and evaluation.  We are prepared to present to you in July and last thing, there has been a lot of interest in lowering the age, the minimum age for participation in voting is 16.  We think there is a value of lowing that to 11.  I think that is a great age to get people to start thinking about civic engagement and what it means and to have voice and agency.  We are working ‑‑ looking to work with the schools and the students to create this pipeline of leadership and it would be great if those youth were able to participate in our process in their own communities beyond their schools and the city council process has lowered their voting age as well to 11 so it would be great to offer that as well.  We had this conversation with our partners who had experience engaging and they agree it's a good age.  We have to go through the process so I think more to come on the time line for that.
I will learn it back over to Francis.  But any questions on what I just ‑‑
>> SARAH: There was a question in the chat about the level of response.  Donna, can you clarify what you were asking?
>> SPEAKER: Thank you.  This was amazing.  The reason I asked the level of response, I know with surveys, it's usually not a big response to surveys in general.
I was just wondering about the amount of people in the different areas, just statistically‑wise, that responded and if you thought that was a good response data and that's the first question.
The second part of this question, I'm very interested in this and interested in trying to ‑‑ I am happy to see you're engaging a lot of the communities that don't ordinarily get involved, the communities with different abilities.  Things like that.  That's very good.  I'm interested in that meeting on the 28.  Thank you.
>> WENDY: Great.  We can share the details with you.  There are a lot of opportunities to be involved.  I would be thrilled to involve all of you.
I can send a schedule of the convenings and the topics.
The other thing I think is fun is thinking about how we will plug city agencies with the Participatory Budgeting advisory community.  We are practicing what we preach.  We are bringing folks together in the city and communities and deliberate the process of PB from the early stages where we are thinking about the impact, design, outreach, we need to bring in communities early on if we want to see a good participation rate.
The survey, we did issue a survey very early on as part of the process to help understand what some of the issue areas were, and we got, I believe, over 10,000 responses back.  Which I think wasn't too shabby considering people feel over surveyed.  But I think we weren't trying to rely on just that survey and followed up what we were hearing and tasking the organizations to have conversations with residents to get what was surfacing in those surveys and again, I don't know if you're referring to the participation rates in the vote.
Considering it was our first year running a process of that size and having new partners, we feel good about the result, considering the majority of the participation was on paper.  90 percent.  Being able to interface with communities and individuals in the middle of a COVID surge and the holidays and temperatures that were ‑‑ conditions that weren't great, overall, we are pleased.  We learned a lot and we want to think about those lessons learned as we move forward and that is why we need to partner with so many organizations and demographics to make sure we get it right next year and have as much participation as possible.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you.
>> SPEAKER: Anyone else have a question on the PB process?  I think we said we would share with commissioners any opportunities to join the meetings.
>> WENDY: Yes.
>> SPEAKER: Now we are turning to what's happening with changing the rule.
>> SPEAKER: Just a quick overview of the city administrative procedure act.  Because the age range for PB, we will need to go through the rule making process.  The first step is to draft the rule but because we have you as commissioners, we will need to present the rule to you in order to proceed.  Our time line, we will cover later.  May to propose the rule to you.  Shortly after that, publish the rule on our website and begin the public comment period which lasts 30 days.  After the 30 days of receiving comment, we will host the public hearing.  Have an opportunity to revise if needed.  Once we revise based on the feedback we received from that public hearing, we will publish the final rules and send that to the speaker and it takes another 30 days for that rule to become final.  We are hoping to start that off and finish it early in the summer so we are ready for the city wide PB implementation.
Just also as a reminder, we will also be revising the Poll Site Language Assistance Program ‑‑ methodology.  We have two major revisions here.  We have two time lines that we are working with.  We hope to present the updates to the methodology and the changes to the PB on May 24 and see an adjustment period to see ‑‑ our hope is to have the public hearing for PB in June and methodology in July.
It will be a very busy summer for us.
>> SPEAKER: Given one of the natural constituencies for lower the voting age is the students themselves and I would want to hear from that.  Holding the public hearing in the summer creates obstacles to that.  Is there any way to accelerate or slow down the process so it takes place during the regular school term, for example, the DOE could be our partner and/or their parents.  I'm afraid a July public hearing will be lost on the constituency from whom I would most want to hear.
>> SPEAKER: I think we could take that back and talk with our DOE colleagues and see how to proceed on that.  That's a good flag.
I wanted to ask the commissioners on this, maybe take a few minutes to discuss, were there specific questions or topics within the age question that you want to hear about, what kind of considerations would you want us to make sure we covered in a public comment period.  We think this is a great way to get aligned with several processes that are happening and welcome participation from younger people.  I don't know people have wanted to give you the chance to say if you had any thoughts about how we can ‑‑ what pros and cons we might want to think about as we deliberate on this.
>> SPEAKER: I would be interested in what DOE's idea ‑‑ ideally there would be curriculum around this, guidance just as with adult voters, you can't guarantee the voters will follow the guidance but it should be available to them.  I think it's an important step and a good step and would be interested in supporting this.  The Department of Education is not responsive in a way we would like to initiatives from students and the community.  This is an alternative approach that could support schools in a way the schools themselves get interested in.
Hearing from the students themselves, what they are views on projects would be and having them have stake in deciding on them would be an exciting prospect.  I would hope we would hear from them directly in any process having to do with changing the age and in voting on it.
As somebody who staffed the table of PB voting where there were projects in a city council district and had to turn away students younger than 16, it's not what we want for their view of a future in civic engagement.  Thanks.
>> SARAH: Thank you.  Anyone else have a comment, where.
>> SPEAKER: I want to ‑‑ it is a comment.  A question as well.
Trying to understand engaging those 11 through 16.  And that we are using methods that we use normally for populations that we deal with.  We have discussed in the past using theater or different methods of engagement.  I want to put forward as an idea that if we are looking at engaging 11 through 16 year olds, I think it's a great opportunity to use different methods, theater or acting out or more creative engagement as opposed to just words and signs and pamphlets.
>> SARAH: Thank you.  That's an important point.  I think it probably applies across the ages.  I think we need to think about how we are infusing this process with creativity and joy.  I think especially it will be important to think about that for younger people as well.  That's helpful.  Thank you.
>> WENDY: I love that idea.  I love hearing about what students are doing currently and how students are using as an opportunity to practice so many skills and build skills, some skill gets into graphic design, some people like the voting station.  I think the pot is $2,000.  Kids being excited to go to the principal.  I think there is a lot of enthusiasm from the age group and we have to be mindful of our strategies of how we will reach the young people.  I think there is an opportunity to finally make that solid connection with civics for all and think about how the curriculum occurs in the school and how we bring it to the communities.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you.  Mark brought up the DOE and the limitations.  Teachers are overwhelmed with what they have to do in the classroom.  If there is a way to use lunchtime, recess, as a place to engage, I think it would be beneficial.  When they have a DJ come in for lunchtime, it makes a big difference with the engagement of the children and joy.  These are some ideas I wanted to put forward.
>> WENDY: Thank you.
>> SARAH: Anyone else, thoughts about the public hearing on the age for participation?
Okay.  We will circle back about the date.  Possibilities of making it earlier.  I don't think we could do it later because I think we want to start the process in the summer.  We will circle back with everybody.
I don't see anyone's hands.
>> SPEAKER: One thought about the last note.  I understand the need to move this forward and not to delay it.  While it wouldn't qualify as the public hearing that would be required under the administrative procedures act, would it be possible to hold a prehearing during the term of the school year so that we could hear from students even though it wouldn't qualify as the public hearing, just some way in which we can engage students, create the student within the limitations about busy teachers.
>> SARAH: Yeah.  That's a good idea.  We will go back to our DOE colleagues and explore a little bit more.  There might be opportunities here to go back to the point about involving CBOs so we will get a better read on timing and so how to address it to involve more participation.
>> SPEAKER: We did have similar round tables for the methodology.  They were not part of the public hearing but it was an opportunity to hear from community members on the methodology and challenges to voting.  I think there's room for that as well.
>> SPEAKER: Thanks for that reminder.  Really great point.
>> SARAH: I wanted to say, again, if you would like to make comment in the public comment period, we just passed the noon time.  We can give you a few moments if you would like to say anything if you are a member of the public in the last half hour of the meeting.  Drop your name toot the chat or text.
We could go to the next slide.
>> JULIE: I wanted to give you an update on the special election that happened in district 60 on February 15.  It was our first time that we served as a special election.  The poll site would have to be an existing one that we served previously.  For this site, we did service six voters and we did have two new questions that we added to the interpretation log book.  The interpreters would ask voters and one is the first-time voter and two, how did the voter learn about the interpretation services.  It was a pilot but we are hoping to add these questions to the primary and the general election going forward as part of what the interpreters can ask the voters and trying to get more information on who we are servicing.
None of the voters were first time voters.  In terms of how they learned about the services, majority ‑‑ all of them actually, saw a sign near the poll site or the BOE asked us for assistance.  We had one voter who the BOE asked for assistance.
Another new thing about this program, for the first time, we were able to have our outreach team go out and try to do some outreach prior to the special election on the ground.  We connected with local community leaders, we met with our member Maria who works on Russian ‑‑ with Russian communities to give us insight and so we had a day of postering at the local library, senior centers, supermarkets and the pharmacy and connected with the elected officials as well as postered and connected with the residential buildings around the poll site.
This was the flyers that we had available and used to poster.  It was translated into Russian and we circulated on our social media as well.
Next slide.
>> SARAH: The last side, I want to commend the team for thinking through the outreach plan in this special election.  I think it gave us a foundation to build on for the rest of the outreach.  We told you last time, our outreach team is growing.  We are trying to think about ways that we build out outreach strategy and I think this was a great test, piloting opportunity for us to start building that outreach strategy for poll site going forward into the June primary.  Thank you to the team for all the great work.
>> SPEAKER: I did a hand clap during that.  I want to second that.  And to say, this is all ‑‑ it builds on itself.  While six voters were serviced in a small election group, the outreach helps build for the next one and the next one.  Thank you for that.
>> JULIE: Thank you.  That's part of the plan as we are going to continue to be at a lot of the poll sites moving forward.  The relationships that we build, we can continue to build upon in the upcoming elections.
I'm going to talk about the language assistance advisory committee.  We had our kickoff event on February 17 where we had a couple of speakers.  We had a council member, the executive director of the office of community ethic media.  Through that meeting, it was a chance for all the language assistance advisory ‑‑ Language Assistance Advisory Committee members to discuss our upcoming plans moving forward.  And just a couple days ago we had our March monthly meeting.  That was focused on data.  We started off the meeting with a presentation.  We are planning to start each presentation off with a member, introducing their community, the language community they represent and the strategies they used.  Coming off of the special election, they present on the Russian communities and the strategies that we used.  And then we went into looking at the utilization of the poll site data.  For the last three elections, presenting it to our members so they could have a better understanding of the poll sites we service as well as what the utilization numbers were looking for those and building off of that, we took a look at our poll site methodology, how we choose our poll sites.
We are going to be having a look at our methodology and preparing some revisions, looking into it and having a public ‑‑ presenting it to the commissioners and having a public hearing on it.  We wanted to make sure the members had a chance to look at the methodology as well and started brainstorming on questions they had and thinks we should consider as we look through the methodology for the upcoming months.
In terms of what what's coming up, we have in April and May we are hoping to work with them in April to plan with our outreach them that we have, outreach staff to think through the community engagement planning processes, any upcoming events they may want to invite us to or opportunities for us to let folks know about the poll sites that are in that district.
In May, hoping to be out on the ground to execute some of the planning of the outreach events and strategies and media goals that we have for that month.
In June, we will be executing the entire poll site program in that month.
Those are the upcoming plans for the LAAC.
Any questions?
>> SARAH: I don't see anyone's hands.  I think we are good on this.
Thank you, Julie.
Community boards.
>> SPEAKER: Good afternoon.  An update on workshops with the community boards.  As was mentioned in January, we started a partnership with public agenda, similar to us in that they also dedicated to strengthening democracy and increasing civic participation.  We held our first workshop on last week Monday in the Bronx and last night in Manhattan.
The numbers were disappointing despite the amount of outreach we did.  I want to give a shout out to my colleagues for assisting and cold calling, e‑mails, attending district service cabinet meetings.  I also announced the workshops.  In the Bronx we had 27 participants.  Last night we had a total of 32 in Manhattan.  The initial discussions that I had with many of the DMs and chairs in the Bronx, the consistent response I got is that community board members are zoomed out.  They are just tapped out.  There is a big appetite to going to in‑person meetings and that's information is vital for us as we start to think about the future workshops.
Since community boards will go back to in‑person meetings in April, hopefully the workshops will be in person as well.  We started conversations on land use workshops and they will start their in‑person workshops in the summer.  We started additional conversations with them to see if we could bring some of those workshops to the Bronx and Manhattan.
There is a big appetite for in‑person meetings.
The other piece we need to consider is more than likely there will be a hybrid model.  I don't think virtual workshops are a thing of the past.  I think moving forward, maybe having discussions with our vendors and partners, instead of having a two‑hour workshop, maybe having a prerecorded workshop, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, and that's something we can share or we can share with the community board offices or have it on our city share website where members can log in and see the workshops.  Myself and the team, we will do some outreach this week for Queens, next week, Monday, and for Brooklyn and Staten Island.  Go back and do cold calls.  Get the word out, get folks to join the workshops.
It was really neat about these particular workshops, public agenda updated some of their slides to really help community boards now that more than likely they will go back to in‑person community board meetings, to reimagine how they reengage with their constituents.  Thoughtful ideas about how to create a safe space with all COVID‑19 protocols in place.  Good useful tips.  That's a major emphasis I will emphasize to take into consideration.
Public agenda is going to open up seats for Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island for community board members that were not able to attend.  They will open up seats for those two boroughs so we could get maximum participation as possible.
That's my update.  Any questions?  Concerns?  Ideas?
>> SPEAKER: It's Mark.  I don't think I saw a flyer for this and I'm on community board 7 in Manhattan.  I'm not sure where that lies.
I have a couple of thoughts.  One is that even if I had seen the flier, last night was a critical meeting with respect to Riverside Park that forms the western district of my district.
I don't know the extent to which the borough president are part of this outreach, Manhattan's president ‑‑ the last president ran 17 separate trainings for community board members, most were fantastic and well attended.  I don't know that ‑‑ I accept without having heard it before your note that folks are done with Zoom.  The demographic of my board, there is a lot of trepidation about returning to being in person.
As you know, there are serious limitations on what government can and can't do in terms of COVID protocols and protections in an in‑person meeting.  We can't, for example, ask you if you are vaccinated, let alone deny you access.  We also can't require you to wear a mask, even though that didn't seem like a HIPPA thing.
One thought about a future thing, in Manhattan, the fourth and fifth weeks of the month are easier because the meetings tend to be on the first Tuesday or first Thursday, whatever.  The last week of the month for most of the boards in Manhattan as I understand it, might have a better chance.
If this was in partnership with the borough president, it might get more traction and be viewed in the way that you want it to be.
Anyway, the last point about prerecorded, I think the ideas of ‑‑ one of the things the Manhattan borough president did was to limit it to an hour, like a lunchtime thing, you can take an hour at lunch and not have to go two or three hours to something.  I think that is a good idea.  Your 45-minute program sounds like it's on the money there.  Prerecorded would be harder to get folks because they will say we will do it but that may get lost in the shuffle.
I hope that's in some way useful.
>> ANDY: Absolutely.  We definitely did reach out to the borough president's office to help us with amplifying the community board flier ‑‑ the flier.  I know there is a new folks at Manhattan PB, so I did touch base with the new community board direct er, she is aware of the flier.  We were able to make those in roads.  I'm going to start getting ‑‑ as soon as this meeting is over, I'm going to reach out to Manhattan district managers to get their take on the workshop and what are their thoughts and see how we can learn from this and see how we can make this the most practical way moving forward.
>> SPEAKER: I wanted to jump in here, this is Donna.  I'm in the same area or same consensus with mark.  I had no idea this was happening.
I think this is the second time.
I don't know if the fault is with the DM or just outreach or whatever.  I feel if we get on board with the board president's office and ‑‑ because some of the training is the same.  It's an overlay of something that already happened.  Things like that.
The notification and letting us know it's happening is the thing.  Most of our meetings is the first three weeks of the month.  The last week of the month, we usually just have an executive meeting.  That last week is usually empty for other things.  Last night I had a committee meeting so I couldn't join.
These things may be something for you to think about when you're making these schedules.  Thank you.
>> ANDY: Absolutely.  The flier was created late January and we started e‑mailing all the DMs in January, early February.  I know for community board 7 in Manhattan, the DM is leaving, she connected me with the acting district manager.
[ Talking at the same time ]
>> SARAH: I want to keep us moving on time.  We need to make sure, Francis, when you send the e‑mail to commissioners, attach the flier so they could circulate it to board members they know.
People can still sign up even if they are from the Bronx and Manhattan, they can still sign up for Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.  I encourage the commissioners, if you are able to make those dates and you want to see what the trainings are about, if you're a community board member, if you are not, it's a great way to learn more about what public agendas is working on with our board members.
Let's add the flier so that you could help us promote it with board members you may know.
I think going forward, whenever we have training, let's make sure the commissioners know so they could help us reinforce the outreach.
I think we have one more slide before we open up for comment.  We wanted to share we have been meeting with the borough presidents.  So much of our work dove tails with what they are doing, we have met with borough presidents Reynoso and Gibson and we have meetings coming up with Mark Levine and ‑‑ to be scheduled.  Basically, what we are talking about in the meetings and this applies to ‑‑ I'm sure all the commissioners who are borough president appointees know this ‑‑ the terms that you were ‑‑ you had for serving expiring soon, we are trying to make everyone aware.  I think everyone is aware by this point, since everyone is new, they need to think about how they are appointing officials to serve on the CEC commission.
I encourage you, if you are not in touch with your borough presidents, to please do that.  That's one thing we are talking with them about.
From the program point of view, talking with them about the variety of things we are doing including community board trainings and they will help us do outreach to members for the trainings.  And looking at ‑‑ we talked about city wide Participatory Budgeting, how they might like to be involved in that as well as our intention to work with all different entities in city wide PB, including community‑based organizations and communed boards.
For Poll Site Language Assistance Program, we informed them about the similarity of lang ‑‑ variety of languages we are working on and voter engagement.  Started to talk about what they like to see in that space.  And also, told them about the Participatory Budgeting processes that we were running in the past year ‑‑ years with the youth as well as in the TRIE neighborhoods.
We are looking to build stronger partnerships and collaborations with borough presidents and looking forward to completing the meetings.
We met with borough president Richards in the past, that's why you don't see queens here coming up.  We are trying to stay in touch with the borough presidents on a variety of things we are working on.
I hope I answered your question about the Queens meeting.
Any questions or comments on the meetings?
>> SPEAKER: Just one quick question, did I understand it correctly, you have to have a city account to log into in order to view the tape-recorded meetings?
>> SPEAKER: You do.  But there is a mechanism that we can work with ‑‑ do it where board members can log on through a back-end site or link.  We had those initial discussions and there is a way to ‑‑ for board members to have access to the site.
All community board offices have it directly on their desktop, but that's a feature we would have to work on creating a back end.
>> SPEAKER: Just to put out there again for the commission, we talked about this before, I think it is important for us to start to think about how we reach out to the public and start to make workshops available for the public and how they might become educated in dealing with the process of the community board pes and their elected officials as well.
We talked about land use issues in particular.  The language, the vocabulary, the concepts are quite difficult to comprehend and speak that language.
Putting out there again, if we could think about public workshops.  I know Los Angeles does this so it's not uncommon for others to do this.
>> SARAH: If you could share any information you have, just if you could e‑mail me about the L.A. trainings.
I'm seeing Mark put a note in the chat saying the trainings that are available to board members are also available to the public.  Especially those contemplating applying for appointment.  That's something we can keep in mind for our CB member trainings as well.
We have been talking about how we can do more public education workshops with civic engagement.  Developing a civic's 101 deck that we could share in different spaces.  I did a presentation.  We are all New York fellowship, that was great to share a variety of civic communities and provide an overview of how city government works.  We will hope to build that out a little bit more.  Working on the curriculum for students and Participatory Budgeting, it's all interwoven.  Thanks for that feedback.
Now since it's 12:30 p.m. I will turn it over to the community for public comment.  I think we had one person who signed up so far.  I would like to call on Clemens.  Are you still here?
>> SPEAKER: I'm just trying to get my camera going.
Good afternoon.  My organization, we are a research center that is dedicated to treating public ‑‑ we don't take our public ‑‑ we don't take ‑‑ we feel they are objects and like any other object, they have properties and the properties can be studied.  That means we study public census.
Our goal is to improve the way public discourse is done within civil society.  We think if different issues only include certain kinds of census, we think civil society can get better.  Oftentimes an issue isn't talked about appropriately and that leads to confusion.  We developed a number of tools that people can use to test the census for properties and we are talking to different parties and we are trying to encourage them to adopt the attitude, every attitude, you can test that for properties.  Accountability, consistency, culture consistency, culture relevance.  Accountability.  Stuff like that.  You can judge a sentence depending on the properties it has.  If the public has this attitude, then it will be easy to tell whether somebody is speaking responsibly.
Complicated.  There is logic involved, focus on language.  But we want to encourage you to think in this area, in your civic engagement, think about trying to encourage the public to think about public language in this manner.  Getting people to think, all right, you're saying something to me, your sentence has properties, what kinds of properties does your sentence has, is your sentence consistent, stuff like that.  We think if people have this attitude, a lot of the senses in our discourse that make civil existence miserable for people, realize they don't have good properties.
I'm going to put my contact information in the chat.  I'm hoping maybe I can talk to you outside of this and I do a presentation on the work we are doing and thanks for listening to what I have to say.
>> SARAH: Yep.  That's fascinating.  I would love to learn more.  You said your organization is called ‑‑
>> SPEAKER: I'm going to put it in the chat right now.
>> SARAH: Okay.
>> SPEAKER: Also, I didn't mention it but we have a tool that we have been developing that people can use to check the properties their sentence has, a language game.  A logic, essentially.  It's a rigorous process to generate census about civil society.  They have to pass specific rules.  They have to demonstrate they have all kinds of properties, and anybody can use it.  Ensure a sentence has basic.  We are hoping your commission thinks less data, less science and more formality.  You're not going to convince anybody using data, think more about my sentence demonstrates these things.  You should take my sentence seriously, because my sentence ‑‑ you could hold me accountable and I'm being honest.
Hopefully it's something you take into consideration.  Looking forward to working with you throughout the year.
>> SARAH: Thank you.  Thank you so much for being here and sharing this information.  I will be looking at it and trying to learn more and happy to talk with you more.
I don't know if anyone else in the commission had heard about this before.  Sounds fascinating.
Anyone else have any questions or comments?
>> SPEAKER: Just one thing, I noticed the commission often sends out e‑mails on Friday evening.  I don't know why exactly you're choosing to do that, but just from what I know in sending out communications to community members and larger groups, Friday night is not a great time.  That e‑mail is often not seen when it comes in and not picked up on Monday or on the weekend.
I would like to put out there maybe to look at Tuesday morning or different timing, whatever analytics you have would point to Friday evening is not a great time.
>> SARAH: Thank you.
That's helpful feedback.
Anyone else?  Feel free to speak because I cannot see whether you are raising your hand or not.
Between now, our next ‑‑ to go through the schedule.  Our next public meeting is scheduled for May 24.  PI think what we need to do is figure out internally whether we are going to move the public hearing a little bit earlier on on.  We will talk with about that and get back to you.
Between now and then, we would love to get your help on just perhaps getting more people to sign up for the March 28 training for community boards and April 4, Brooklyn, Staten Island, anyone borough could attend.  We will share the flier with you.  Be in touch.
Am I leaving anything out?  Anyone have anything else they wanted to discuss?  Any commissioners?
>> SPEAKER: One of the things ‑‑ I know it's not under our per view, the election districts changed.  We talked about the districting federal and state that has changed.  Our EDs have changed.  I think this is going to be an issue at the polls.  For those who don't know their ED, it's not an issue, they will just inquire.  For years it's been the same so you will have voters who think they know what table to go to, and it's not going to be there.  Their name is not going to be there.
I wanted to point this out to the commission.  If there is a way we could help through different language assistance, and also to follow up with the BOE and the board for campaign finance also what they are planning on doing.  I think there needs to be some outreach around this issue.
>> SARAH: Yeah.  We are going through council level redistricting as well.  That will impact ‑‑ all the council members will be up for reelection next year because of the council redistricting.  Perhaps we could have a presentation on redistricting and including at the council level the next meeting.
>> SPEAKER: This is going to be confusing to our voters, our community members.  It's a lot of shifting right now.  People just feel overwhelmed with what's happening and don't understand it.  Any help we could provide would be great.
>> SARAH: Thank you.
Donna, education?
>> SPEAKER: To Amy's point.  We need to educate all of our constituents and the whole of New York City about this.  A lot of people don't know it has happened and a lot of people are confused and it's going to be chaotic.  I don't know if BOE is planning on distributing information about that or when they mail the cards to the voters, if that information is going to be on the card.  I think some kind of public education on that would be helpful and it's a good way for us to get recognized and to be engaged in civic engagement.
>> SARAH: Does anyone else have the team or call know anything about education that might be happening around redistricting?
>> SPEAKER: Thank you for chiming in as well.  I think the other thing is, we learned anything from rank choice voting, the BOE is too late in the game with their education and fliering, way too late.  If there is anything we could do to lead this process, to lead educating, I think it would be great for the civic engagement commission to do that.  It would show we are concerned about these issues and not waiting for other agencies.
>> SPEAKER: In full agreement.  It's not just that your ED may change, your polling place may change.  With redistricting, they are likely to ‑‑ depending on where the lines are drawn, it is creating confusion.  We are in the middle of petitioning right now for federal and state offices and voters that are willing to stop are confused and these are hard‑core people who don't miss an election.  When the city council lines get redrawn, it may be more so, more confusing.  We have a dual mission to make sure the people who are used to voting know where to go and to encourage those who aren't used to voting become those folks.
This process threatens both populations differently.  I agree, this ought to be something we try to be a leader on.  I think we should be the leader.
>> SARAH: Is New York immigration coalition active in this space?  Educating people about redistricting?
>> SPEAKER: I think he dropped off.
>> SARAH: Okay.  Thank you for raising this.  We will also try to find out what's happening in this space and I think Laura had to go to another meeting so ‑‑
>> SPEAKER: Before we end, can you find out what city hall wants to do in terms of reorganizing and restructuring the board of elections?  If there is any reform in terms of not just registering people to vote but managing an election properly, somebody has to take the lead and I would hope it would be city hall, if not some people within the council.  I think that is the first step in rehauling the voting participatory process, fixing the board of elections.  I know it involves Albany, the state legislator, and if we are going to try to impact the greater voter participation and lower the frustration level at the polls which lowers voter participation, it has to begin with blowing up the board of elections.  I would like to know what the city position is going to be on that.
>> SARAH: Thank you for that.  We will try to follow up and ask more about that.  I'm not sure.  We haven't gotten indication about that question yet.
We can ask.  We are working with board of elections on trying to make sure we are coordinated in our operations for language assistance to work with them closely on that.  There is a lot that we have to do to imp prove in that area and also just ‑‑ I think work together to better serve voters for sure.
>> SPEAKER: I understand the partnership need on the part of the CEC but I also understand the need for us to be a leader to speak out and try to suggest a conversation should begin about making it more responsive.
>>> Agreed.
Thank you for bringing that up.  That's helpful.
We have 10 minutes left.
>> SPEAKER: Would it be out of line to ask the senator to present to the commission about the hearings that we held last summer and the findings that they came up with and the recommendations they are making and also what they have yet to solve for that is on their radar that needs ‑‑ that isn't an issue?
>> SARAH: That's ‑‑ a problem.  We have invited people to present.  I don't see an issue with that but we can ask about it and say that's an interest of the commissioners to learn more about the legislation.
>> SPEAKER: I know those hearings were eye opening for many of the senators and many of the people in the room.  It would be good for this commission to know what poll workers, general population and voters, what concerns are out there.   
>> SPEAKER: Having results of a hearing would be more effective.  I agree.  I'm not sure I want to wade into the deep waters of trying to propose the fix to this because we have work to do in terms of the success of the outreach and I would hate to get mired in a political conversation.
Simple education is mission appropriate to us.
>> SARAH: Thanks for that.  I think we agree.  There is so much work to do for sure.  Thinking about what our charter mandated duties is a place I begin.  For me, there is a huge ‑‑ the big challenge is just where we are in democracy as a process and see how we make inroads.  That problem is very big and thorny and the mission that we have been given to increase civic trust is a big mandate.  That's why I go to what is the charter telling me to do so I could be in legal compliance with what New Yorkers said they wanted the commission to do.
I think all these questions that are being raised here are about what keeps people participating.  What are the ways in which the systems and processes aren't working and how do we continue to improve that.  They are interrelated questions and we will follow up on the questions you raised here and try to get answers.
Appreciate the feedback that people provide in these conversations.
Francis, do you want to say something ‑‑ the team had a conversation with CFB about redistricting education.
>> FRANCIS: Laura hopped off but we did have a conversation last week with a campaign finance board to try to coordinate on public education, specifically on voter engagement, the primary election, our focus how we can reach voters but we left off with a conversation on how we can also touch on redistricting.  Thinking through classes, workshops.  We will share more details in the coming weeks on how that will turn out our joint partnership.
>> SARAH: Thank you so much for that.
For the redistricting and the council redistricting and the new council members running again, I think it will be the second round in 2023 so there will be a lot happening that we need to be ‑‑ in addition to if the ‑‑ will go into effect soon.
I agree with that.  A lot happening in the voting space.
>> SPEAKER: Are there going to be minutes to this meeting that includes the contact information from the people who presented?  I have their contact but I wanted to know.  Are there minutes for this meeting?
>> SARAH: We post the videos publicly.  It's also live streamed right now.  You will have access to that and you can also be in touch with us.  You provided your contact information in the chat.
>> SPEAKER: I did.  I can click the video.  Thank you.
>> FRANCIS: We should have the transcript posted in the next 24, 48 hours.  Everything will be up there, including the presentation.
>> SARAH: Thank you so much.  If there is no other additional issues, or comments, we can adjourn.  Do I hear a motion to adjourn the meeting?
>> SPEAKER: So moved.
>> SPEAKER: Second.
>> SPEAKER: P second.
>> SARAH: The motion to adjourn has been seconded.  All in favor?
>> SPEAKER: The motion passes.  I'm calling this meeting to adjourn.  See you next time.