EVENT: NYC Engagement Commission ‑ 
	 *****Commission Meeting Minutes***
Date: January 25, 2022 
Captioned by Rivka Woonteiler
***This text is provided in rough draft format. 
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.*** 
>> DRASHTI BRAHMBHATT:  Hello, everyone.  Great to see you all.  Happy belated new year!  We are meeting the first time for 2022.  Thank you so much for being here with us.  
I am going to call the meeting to order now.  
So we are going to go through what we usually do.  For anyone that might be new to this space, we will force usually go through directions or, you know, about the muting and unmuting, 
Francis, if you can kindly go to that page.  
For everyone's awareness, we have audio enabled for the commissioners.  
We are asking all of you to mute yourself when you are not speaking to prevent background noise.  
If you can turn your video cameras on..
The moderator will enable audio during the public comment period.  We have dedicated the last half hour too.  
We will call the participants in the order they registered for public comments prior to the meeting and then we will call on people registering during the meeting.  
The process for registers to comment is putting your name into the chat.  
Please do that by 3:00 p.m. so we have a sense of who might be interested in commenting.  
You would drop that into the chat if you didn't already sign up.  
If you are dialing in and not on video, you can text us your name and affiliation to make a public comment.  
We will call on people first to sign up before and in the order that they signed up.  
Under "more options", which, I believe is next to the chat icon, you can click on closed captioning to enable your captioning so that is the overview for technical assistance.  
Any questions right now?  
I know we have done that a bunch of times.  Hopefully all good for everyone.  Turning to attendance, I want to welcome the commissioner appointed by the Statin Island BP.  
She has deep experience with community engagement and services particularly during health and humanitarian emergencies.  
She has done work in Statin Island during the pandemic as well.  
If you can just introduce yourself and say hello to everyone.  
Thank you for welcoming me.  
I am happy to be here with you all.  
I was asked to introduce myself.  
I had all this stuff in my brain that I would share with you, and now it is all gone.  
>> It is not an unfamiliar feeling. 
>> Your introduction was lovely.  
I founded a COVID resource group in early March of 2020 in my borough, which is the least populace borough, but quite insular.  
I have collaborated with public officials and health experts and I have been a bit strict from day 1 about misinformation and disinformation; keeping that to a minimum.  
Well, I suppose in short, it has become a place ‑‑ it is unfortunately housed on Facebook, but that seems to be a way to get a lot of information quite quickly to a lot of people.  
My life before this pandemic completely escapes me.  
I have no memory of anything before this.  
 There have been times where I was up for, you know, many many nights at a time getting vaccination appointments for folks and tests and so on.  It is the nature of the crisis we are in.  
Hopefully we are moving into some level of post‑crisis life.  
Either way, it is clear to me that folks in our community need reliable and trustworthy guidance on how to do things for themselves and their neighbors and their families and their colleagues and their children.  I hope to be a bit of tool that is useful to all of you and to our communities.  
>> Thank you so much, Natalie.  
I put the bio in the chat.  
I will go through attendance now.  
I will call on you and you can indicate that you are here.  
>> (Attendance taken)
	>>So, for our first order of business, we have just to review and approve our December 14th minutes.  
Could I have please have ‑‑ hoping everyone got the minutes.  
Did anyone not get the minutes on the call?  If everyone has gotten the minutes.  It seems like you have.  
Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes that we presented?  
>> Motion to approve! 
>> Second.  
>> Okay, all in favor in approving the minutes?  
>> I. 
>> I. 
>> I. 
>> Any opposed?  
>> With everyone being in favor, we will move forward and approve the minutes for December 14th.  
Thank you so much, everyone.  
>> So, I am going to begin by introducing two new members to the Civic Engagement specialist team.  
Andy will no longer be piloting solo on outreach anymore.  
I am going to ask them to introduce themselves.  
Drashti and Semira are the outreach folks.  
I think they are both here.  
Drashti, can you introduce yourself?  
>> DRASHTI:   Good afternoon.  I was born in raised in Queens.  
I have my BA from Brown University and MBA from Columbia.  I come from the campaign world.  
Most recently campaign managed a city counsel race in eastern Queens; a part of New York City that is often forgotten and very very diverse.  We equipped a team with 700 volunteers and even during the pandemic, made 700 phone calls... 
I am here in the outreach engagement specialist with Andy and Semira.  I have been working on get out the vote activities for participatory budgeting.  
Just to wrap up, a lot of my passion for Civic Engagement efforts is personal.  My persons were undocumented for 30 years and were unable to have a say in how local government worked for them here in the city.  
I am committed to building trust between immigrant communities in the city and making sure that everyone knows that government is something that can work for them.  
With that, passing it over to my colleague, Semira if she is on the call.  
She is having technical difficulties getting logged on.  
But as soon as she is on, I will let you know 
>>DR. SAYEED:  Which candidate did you work for?  
>>DRASHTI: Her name is Jocalyn Core.  It was City Counsel District 23.
>> DR. SAYEED:  Thank you so much, Drashti.  And we are really excited about the opportunity to expand our team.  
We will tell you more about the work we have been doing with our bigger outreach team bit a later.  
Now I want to turn it over to another member of the team.  
As you all know, DemocracyNYC.  The mayor signed an executive order in December, Mayor Deblasio, to merge the democracy NYC function through the Civic Engagement division.  
Laura Wood is now part of the team.  
We are excited about that.  
Turning it over to Laura, to say more about democracy NYC.  Since this is now part of the Civic Engagement Commission.  
I thought it would be important for you to have an understanding of what we are working on.  
And now we will work together with them.  
Turning it over to Laura.  
>> LAURA  WOOD:   Thank you so much, Dr. Sayeed.  Thank you for attending today.  Pleasure to be here.  
Thank you to the commission which has been doing such great work for several years now.  
As Dr. Sayeed mentioned, I am the Chief Democracy Officer.  
I came to the city after five years in the state attorney general office.  
I am a lawyer by training.  
Before that, I worked in the New York State senate for several years.  
I was in private practice a while before that, but this has really been my dream job getting too work on voting, and trying to increase voter participation and voter turnout.  
And, also, trying to advocate for policies that better serve New York voters and make voting and elections more accessible.  
That has been a huge part of our work.  
And I thought I would give a quick overview of the work we have been doing, that we are really thrilled to have join forces with the CEC to continue.  
And then, obviously, if anyone has questions, I would be happy to answer them.  
But Democracy NYC, as you undoubtedly know, is nonpartisan initiative.  
The primary focus is on increasing voter participation and Civic Engagement.  
Part of that is encouraging every eligible New Yorker to register and make their voice heard at the ballot box.  
We also work to address and eliminate barriers to voting through public education and certainly language access is a huge part of that outreach and policy reform.  
And, something we have been working on for a few years is our efforts to reform the city board of elections so that it can better meet the needs of New York voters.  
As Dr. Sayeed mentioned, pursuant to an executive order signed last year, we are now officially a program of the New York Civic Engagement Commission.  
I am thrilled because it means the work will continue and have a permanent home with the CEC.  
And, really, the goal of the executive order, which I think is very much in line with the new administration, is to really create coherent and unified programs that have shared goals.  
We thought it would create more efficiency and synergy in the Civic Engagement space in New York City.  
Just to give you a ‑‑ yeah, thank you.  
A little bit more background on some of what we have done in the past, which we are certainly hoping to continue.  We, along with our partners, have led student voter registration drive.  
Last year, that drive was virtual.  
The year before that, in 20, we had our last in person drive.  
It was actually the week before the city went into lockdown, the first week of March 2020.  
 We were at hundreds of public high schools throughout the city.  
 They are pre‑registered or registered approximately 30,000 young people to vote.  
That is definitely one of our proudest achievements.  
Something that we are hopefully excited to repeat this year.  
We are making plans for an in‑person student registration drive in March.  
I will talk about that later.  
Last spring we led a huge outreach campaign.  The CEC was, of course, a very key partner in that effort.  
And, it was multi‑pronged.  
It was an a huge media campaign, where we had advertisements in up to 25 different languages.  
We did direct voter outreach through texting and phone banking.  
We were fortunate to be able to do some in person‑events.  
All told, according to our media buyer, our campaign reached 90 percent of New Yorkers so that was a very exciting endeavor.  
And, I think, you know, really did help New Yorkers to understand the (inaudible term).  
We were pleased that the turn out was higher for mayoral primary in June 2021 than it had been in nearly 30 years.  We hope that trend will continue with a sustained work.  
Also, at the start of the pandemic, really worked hard to ensure that New Yorkers had accurate and timely information about voting.  
There was actually a special election in progress when the lockdown began, causing the mayor to actually cancel the special election in process.  
So there was a need to really quickly communicate with the effected voters and others.  
 We partnered with the City Campaign Finance Board to form the New York City Elections Consortium.  
Which the CEC of course is a very active member and co‑leader of as well.  
We advocated and succeeded in getting better access to absentee voting.  
As you know, there has been essentially a "COVID excuse" for absentee voting since the pandemic began.  
There is more work to do there.  
We need no‑excuse absentee voting in New York.  
We have to do more work on that.  
As I mentioned, in our other policy work, we advocated for election administration.  
We advocated for expansion of early voting.  
We are thrilled that the two most recent elections have featured more than 100 early voting sites in New York City.  
We would love to see voters allowed to go any early voting site.  
Rather than just an assigned site.  
Progress is progress.  
And, then, at the state level, we have seen critical reforms passed recently, including automatic and online voter registration.  
Two tools that will make it easier for people to get on the voter rolls, which is the first step in the process of becoming lifelong regular voters.  
>>MICHAEL NUSSBAUM:  Can I ask a question?  If I may.  I congratulate the merger, but in any merger, I just am wondering how we are going to operate in terms of WHO is going to have decision‑making authority together.  
 Is there a vertical administrative structure that is being implemented for decision making and also allocation of funds? 
Where is the role when decisions are in the process of being made that the commissioners will have involvement and participation prior to decisions being made?  
And that goes for either one of you.  
>> LAURA WOOD: Yeah, I am actually interested in Dr. Sayeed's thoughts on that.  
This is little over a month old so a lot of the details are being worked out.  
I will say that I was thrilled to hear Drashti introduce herself.  
They are going to help us bring the outreach work to life, as far as the democracy work.  While continuing the amazing work they have been doing already, on the other programs.  
 And, you know, I think we will, of course, to be under the leadership of Dr. Sayeed.  
But Dr. Sayeed, do you want to say anything about that structure?  
>> DOCTOR SAYEED:   I think that DNYC is technically now a program of the CEC, so I think we are still figuring out.  
What does this mean in terms of detail of how commissioners vote on initiatives as an example.  
Some of this, hopefully will get cleared up.  
Not only are we dealing with a new situation with new entities merging.  
We are talking with new leadership.  
We have to figure out what their preference is and concerns are.  
That is an important question that we need to know the answer to, Michael.  
So I appreciate you raising that question.   We will give you more clear answers if we have them 
>>MICHAEL:   I hope you involve us as commissioners to support you and also to help you as you go through the merging process.  From a budget point of view and policy point of view.  
>> Thank you so much.  
>>DR. SAYEED:  And you raise a question about the budget and the allocations.  
We need to also work on that; making sure that there is funding to support the work of DNYC.  
Because when we did the November plan, DNYC was not part of the CEC at the time.  
 We will need to work on that as well.  
So, really important questions.  
>> LAURA WOOD:  We welcome feedback and advice on this.  
I thought I would also preview some of the upcoming work in the next several months.  
I mentioned that the standee voter registration drive.  
I think we can go to the next slide if possible.  Thank you.  
So that student voter registration drive is part of something called Civic's Week:   A week long celebration of youth and Civic Engagement.  
It is part of the Department of Education civics for all initiative.  
As I mentioned, a huge part of that is the in person student registration drive.  
At least in the past, and we are hoping to replicated it:   We identify schools that are willing to participate and we primarily go into civics classes ‑‑ usually junior and senior year civics classes and we talk about voting.  
Often we will invite elected officials to join.  Certainly from the area, to talk about how they got involved in public service.  
And, then, we actually pass out ‑‑ you know we are old school here in New York.  
We pass out the paper voter registration forms and collect them.  
We are also working on an electronic tool, since we don't yet have fully online voter registration that we are using as well.  
We that is March 7th through the 11.  
We will share more details about our plans as they come together.  
Again, you know, assuming that things are heading in the direction that they seem to be with COVID, we do think that we can be in person.  
We are excited to hopefully have a big kick off event the first day of Civic's Week.  
We will keep you posted.  
If any of the commissioners are interested in getting involved.  
And, then, the next big thing on the horizon, of course, is the June 2022 primary.  
So we will be working to craft a proposed outreach strategy around trying to register some new voters.  
And then do some non partisan voter engagement work leading up to the primary.  
>> So, again, I am really thrilled to be here.  
And thank you so much for giving me time on the agenda.  
If anyone has questions ‑‑ any other questions, I would be happy to answer them 
>>Donna?  Question or comment?  
>>DONNA GILL:   I just want to say that this seems like an easy synergism because I always thought that we at Democracy NYC would have the same goals, but we were in silos.  
So I feel that this is a good synergistic combination for us and our work to go forward.  
Thank you.  
>> Thank you, Donna. 
>> Just a question.  I have primaries coming up in June and we have the spring programs with the Board of Education and the UFT.  
I would just hope that we engage both the union to accept this premise of going in there.  
As well as the Department of Education 
>> You mean to do in‑person voter registration?  
>> Well, I hate to age myself.  I did this in 1972 with UFT when I was a teacher.  
We registered over the summer 28,000 students.  When they got the 18‑year old vote.  
The union was very much in favor and financially supported this effort.  With the constraints on the budget from the Department of Education, I hope we would engage the union to financially support a student registration voter drive 
>> That is amazing, by the way.  
>>LAURA WOOD:  Yeah, the Department of Education does allocate a budget for Civic's Week.  
My understanding is that the cost of doing voter registration drive is relatively minimal.  
We rely mostly on our colleagues and city government to volunteer their time to come in and do the work.  
It is not like we are paying people to do it. 
But, I will certainly raise that with the DOE folks who we partner with on this.  
And I do know ‑‑ they are very very mindful about the incredible intense burden that has been placed on principals and teachers.  
We are certainly approaching them in a respectful manner as possible.  
If it turns out that we have lower interest this year, we will work with that.  
I do think that schools are turning a corner at this moment.  
I am optimistic that school also welcome us.  
>>MICHAEL NUSSBAUM:  Let's have a discussion on implementation at some point. 
>>LAURA:   Great.  That would be great.  
 I am going to put my e‑mail address in the chat.  
I welcome anyone reaching out 
>>AMY BREEDLOVE:  This is Amy Breedlove.  Thank you for the work you have done.  Nice to see you.  
So one thing about the Civic Engagement and the Civic's Week, I think it is a great opportunity to also engage students to get involved in the community boards.  
You only have to be 16 to engage in a Community Board.  
I think myself and a few fellow commissioners would like to see a change in culture in community boards.  
And to get new people on board ‑‑ especially younger people ‑‑ would be great.  
I know you have an agenda set up, I would urge to see if there is a way to include this as part of your outreach.  
>>LAURA WOOD:  Typically, what we have done is that we have a presentation that we make in these social studies classes or civic classes.  
I don't see any reason why we shouldn't insert information about community boards and how people go about applying to serve on them.  
Maybe you can even join us at some of the schools to talk about it.  
>> AMY BREEDLOVE:  I would love to.  
We also have some new borough presidents.  
It would be a great opportunity to get those new borough presidents out to talk to students.  
I would be happy to jump on board.  
>>DR. SAYEED:    I think you are raising a really really important point here.  
Which is that I think ‑‑ you know, now that we are growing our outreach team and DNYC is part of the mix.  
I think it is an opportunity for us to think about how we are packaging what our work is and all the different entry points that young people as well as others have in Civic Engagement.  
Because all of the opportunities, ideally, feed off one of another.  
And I think that is partly and how we are going be interfacing:   
Educating with the public, working with CBO partners to really present our work as a portal with different connecting points.  
And, we have to kind of develop a language around that.  
Because I think that for a really long time, Civic Engagement has been sort of happening in silo ways.  A lot of it has been focused on increasing voter turn out.  
In fact there is a model of Civic Engagement that says that is what it is.  
We know that for CEC, we have a lot things we are working on.  
Creating tools and language to talk about that is something we need to do in the next couple of months and weeks.  
I would love for folks to be part of that as well.  
How we can conceptualize it?  That is a greater example of that need I think.  
>> AMY BREEDLOVE:  To take off on that, I find that right now the city does have a campaign to get people to come forward and join their community boards and they are pushing that you only have to be sixteen.  
The thing is, too, that we have a culture once you are there, where people expect you to know X‑amount in order for you to participate.  
I think what we need to do is to really have more education as part of the experience of Civic Engagement so you don't have to know, you just have to want to participate.  
And, in that participation comes the education and engagement and knowledge.
>>DR. SAYEED:  Yeah, thank you for that, too.  
I think that, you know, we have talked ‑‑ and we will talk later in the Community Board ‑‑ when we are talking about community boards ‑‑ part of CEC's work is to provide the education to help people be better trained in serving in their boards.  
What are the skills they need.  Right?  
And, we want people who are passionate about participation.  And excited to engage.  
And you are right.  
In some ways that is almost like the first and most important thing that we want to generate enthusiasm around Civic Engagement.  
As a city and also as a country.  
I keep saying:   Democracy is a process.  
That is made by people who are participating.  
And, you know, where we are as a democracy is a reflection of all of us participating or not.  
So I think we need to, really, again, create more language to help people make the connections and get excited.  
>>JOSE:  I wanted to comment and say another avenue to engage the high school students would be to reach out to a program that I recently started to mentor at.  It is called "I‑mentor".  
A lot of these youths are first generation college students.  
So, the likelihood that their parents are civically engaged is lower.  So they will not be civically engage themselves.  So getting them more educated on that, would increase the chances that they would participate in Civic Engagement.  
And voting.  
So I‑mentor is the program.  I will put the link in the chat.  
>> Cool, Jose. 
>>ANASTASIA:  I want to chime in and say and say everything we were talking about in terms of engagement with students and outreach in general.  
Because (inaudible term) has bigger outreach team.  I am happy to be part of this effort.  
I want to make sure that we continue making all of the connections between the groups that we are reaching out to and expanding to community boards.  
I want to make sure that as we do that, we make sure that all of our messaging is accessible and I am happy to be part these meetings and e‑mail threads, offer this outreach or messaging strategies come together.  
I am happy to work with CEC staff and others who are going to part of the effort to make sure that ALL of the messaging is accessible to ALL New Yorkers, including those of us with disabilities:   To make sure that New Yorkers with disabilities can also be engaged:   Both young people and more broadly.  
>> On that same token, make sure that you engage the district 75 students.  
>> DR. SAYEED:  Anyone else have comments or questions on democracy NYC?  
 If not, we can keep going.  Laura, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing some of the background and we are excited to have you on board and partner together on this work.  
 To keep going ‑‑ and this is directly related to the Community Board stuff we were just talking about.  
As you all know.  This is also a space we are working in with the Civic Engagement Commission.  
We thought we could share with you about what is coming up in the Community Board space.  
We are talking with an organization called Public Agenda.  
I am not sure if people have heard about public agenda.  
They are a non partisan research and public engagement organization.  
They do trainings around engagement... strengthening democracy and expanding avenues of participation for ALL people.  
We are hoping to work with them and trying to provide some training, capacity building, in the space of four‑Community Board members to improve resident participation in community boards.  
And they are going to be talking about different ways of doing community engagement.  
You know, they will be talking about sort of standard methods of community engagement; which include, you know, just our public meeting as an example.  
Most of these meetings, important public meetings are important as a way to increase transparency.  
At the same time, we don't necessarily have break outs or small group discussions during this format.  
And, you know, we have public hearings.  
Which are different.  
That is an opportunity for people to speak up and talk in more detail about their perspective on different issues.  
In CEC commission public meeting, we have created a half hour window.  We tried to do a hybrid.  
A half hour window for people to speak up if they wanted to.  
Conventional meetings are more sort of where government is doing its business with a public as an audience.  
They distinguished that what they call "thick and thin engagement" 
Thick engagement is more deliberative.  
A community planning meeting is an example of that.  
You have break out discussions of your experience with a neighborhood or rezoning.  
Presenting people with different policy options.  
 State engagement could be something like doing a quick survey as an example.  
So, public agenda wanted to share different modes of engagement with community boards so that they can sort of round out their portfolio and ways to bring residents into community boards meetings.  
We are looking to start those trainings in late February.  We will be doing them in a model that we discussed before.  
You talked about the Community Board application process and ways to encourage young people to join community boards.  
So on here we have the deadlines that are coming up for each borough.  
And, Statin Island is open all year.  The most immediate deadline is Queens, February 16th.  
I thought we can spend a bit of time.  If you want to offer suggestions for how we can promote.  
I know that overall there has been a push to get people to apply.  
You talked about connecting with borough presidents.  
We are going to be working to set up meetings to connect with those offices.  
And you know, as we have a group of folks that are appointees from the borough presidents.  
I wanted to see if anyone had thoughts on how to promote youth applications in addition to what we discussed.  
Making sure that idea is integrated into the youth‑outreach specific week.  
How you might yourself want to get involved in that.  

>>MICHAEL NUSSBAUM:  I apologize, I have to sign off.  I have to take my daughter to the doctor.  I will reach out again.  I believe strongly in reaching out to get more people to become a Community Board member.  Who is not a member of a political club.  
I always believed in (inaudible term) for Community Board members.  I have always advocated for that to be able to keep the genes up to date, so, to speak,, within the Community Board.  
I apologize, 
>> Twice you admitted your age.  
>> There are young grandfathers too.  I am still under 80.  Thank you.  
>> Good luck.  Have fun.  
>>NAN:  My name is Nan.  Has anybody connected with ‑‑ what is it ‑‑ Generation Citizens?  An organization that ‑‑ 
>>DR SAYEED:   Yes, thank you so much.  
Thank you so much for that idea.  
And, we can definitely come back and talk to you more about the common period about that.  
 We actually met with Generation Citizen.  It was a while ago.  
Great idea.  Let's go back to that during the comment period.  
If you can just send us or put your name in the chat or text us so we can remember to call on you and talk more with you about that.  
For this part, do any of the commissioners want to offer any suggestions for how to CEC could promote and how you, yourself, might want to get involved in promoting the applications?  
>>AMY BREEDLOVE:  Sara, I am happy to get involved.  My issue, though, that I know people who have gotten on the community boards and then do not stay because the on boarding process for the community boards ‑‑ and I know Mark and a few others are on community boards, so I don't want it to be a blanket statement.  
Getting people to apply and getting them on the board is one thing.  
But then there has to be a system in which three on‑boarded, brought into the culture and part of the team.  
That is not happening across the Community Board.  
So I just want to bring that up.  
I don't want it to look like we are doing our job by getting people to apply, if, once they get on, they cannot do anything.  
>> MARK DILLER:  Thank you for that Nan for the reference for my former colleague on Community Board 7. 
There is a two‑prong aspect to this. 
We have to make sure what a community board is and is not. It is great that people understand who we are, but they do not understand what we are all about. We lose people because they have a sense we have all the information and want to make a difference. 
In terms of attracting people, the other CEC, the Community Education Counsel, should be part of our outreach because they are our best conduit for the 16 and 17‑year olds that we want to attract.  
My board was the first to endorse the idea of lowering the age of service.  
I think Food Banks are an interesting ‑‑ an interesting source of outreach.  
Because folks who are involved in consuming ‑‑ who are in that kind of need, need to be reflected and represented on our boards with respect to things how we comment on the budget and where money goes.  
I heard references to political clubs.  
I know that is a traditional source.  
I don't think you have to worry too much about that.  
And, then, precincts.  
Almost everyone has a Community Counsel, which has elected members and somehow or other they figure out who gets to vote for the leaders of it.  
But it can vary from week‑to‑week and month to month.  
So the precinct Community Counsel and the separate thing under the NCO; the Neighborhood Coalition Officers, they run the "build a block" meeting, which they do, I think, quarterly.  
Depending on controversial aspects of the life in that precinct can be, they get interesting turnout.  
And they get folks that you don't see elsewhere.  
And, then, finally, I would suggest that apart from CEC, the pre‑K and 3‑K facilities ‑‑ it is great to catch parents when they are still very much learning their way in navigating city services and the Department of Education.  
It is great to catch them at that point as opposed to middle school when they are kind of already exhausted from the process.  
As a former PTA president, I speak from experience.  I will shut up there.  
Those are ideas you might want to think about 
>> DR. SAYEED: Thank you, Mark.  
>> Chuck?  
>> CHUCK APELIAN:  It is an interesting dynamic on the Community Board.  
I find that those that want to be involved get their teeth into it and are.  And, those ‑‑ some of the people that ‑‑ I have seed this before, they want the "pin".. we don't give it out.  
They want the honoree of being on the Community Board.  
You will be surprised of how much people brag about that among their neighbors.  They love that recognition.  
We have had in the past people come on the board and they realize it is not for them.  It is not for everybody.  
I am on other boards also and I don't have the same passion that I might have for my Community Board that I have on some of the other boards just because of the dynamics of the subject matter, the frequency of meetings et cetera.  
I have had some people come on the board and they are terrific and then, all of a sudden, they will say:   What happened to so and so?  They didn't reapply this year.  
They had family issues....  They have other priorities.  Work takes over.  
So, you know, it is part of a process.  
Going back to now getting new blood.  
New blood is always terrific.  
I am a big big fan of youth.  I have been involved with youth programs all my life.  Whether counselor at camp, coaching basketball, things of that nature.  
Youth is the future.  
In the same token, there has to be the balance of the desire that they may have and the aptitude they have to part of the program.  
No different than a 40 or 30‑year old or 50‑year old.  
It is a delicate process.  
I am finding out now, however, that there seems to be a widespread of let's make change for the sake of change.  
And the change of dynamics is not always good.  
I had an architect on my board replaced last year.  
He was 5 years on the board.  Wealth of knowledge.  Very articulate.  
And without getting into the details of it all, it became frustrating.  
Because two other people were on the board and the community suffered because there was a drop off.  
I guess I am trying to say is that it is not a simple formula.  
You constantly have to look for new people.  
You have to look for people who have a passion for their community.  
And, you have to make assessments based on what they have done or how they appear in their interviews and whether or not you think they are going to be good going forward.  
Also you have to continue to look at who you have.  
We had a situation, believe it or not, years ago where one of the counsel members wanted to meet every community member before the participation.  
I found that some of the board members were indignant.  
I have been on the board ten years, why do I have to see this person?  
I thought:   Are you nuts?  You were just brought into the fold to say that you have had a private meeting with a counsel member and you are saying you don't want to go!
  At the same time, you are saying:   I want him to reappoint me.  And he is saying, I don't know the person.  I have a job to do.  
I think it is incumbent on the interaction.  It is incumbent on an entire look to see how we continue to replace board members and how we bring them in.  
We want to have an ethnic mix.  We want to have a geographic mix.  We talked about this before.  Any Community Board ‑‑ I don't care if it is Manhattan where block by block it is a different ideology.  
You got have to that kind of representation for the differences and the professionalism.  And you need architects and attorneys and engineers, you need people that are articulate and can part of the process.  
Because, as Mark said, we mostly advisory.  
We don't make any final decisions.  However, with the articulation and coordination with the elected, different community boards can make themselves more viable in the end and have an ear that the elections would listen to:   Where it might be the counsel member or the Borough President or the BSA.  
Those of the kind of things that will make a difference going forward.  
So, I am all about change, but I am just saying that we have to be judicious.  
If we have a good pool, then it should be a great opportunity to figure it all‑out.  
Who is going to be helpful going forward and how we can make it better?  
	>>NATALIE  DEVITO:   One of the things that I discovered or endeavored to do in my outreach for just some COVID safety in my very challenging borough, was that I ‑‑ because I was not part of an organization, I was not leading an organization and I was not interested in joining an organization, or rather a forming one.  
My approach in order to reach the maximum number of people so that they can be ambassadors for good information, was a bit ‑‑ it was daunting.  
And, what I found was that ‑‑ you know, once upon a time, for publicly available information, people could just open a newspaper.  
Whatever the main newspaper for the town or the city was for the day, you would find the bulk of what you needed to know.  
And we know that went by the wayside to television.  
Which, then, gave way to the internet.  
Which, then, now, we got 17 different social immediate apps that people engage in.  
There are still folks that believe in meetings and some folks that only communicate in chat groups.  
Personally, I was determined to get the maximum number of people who would then reach the maximum number of people.  
So I joined about a hundred different types of clubs.  Whether they were faith‑based clubs or cultural clubs.  
I did some outreach too.  We have a pocket of ‑‑ we have a couple of pockets of communities here in Statin Island where we got chinese speaking folks, both dialects.  
We got pockets of Korean communities.  
I found folks who communicate with a lot of chinese folks.  And I Watsapped with them and asked them to be ambassadors within their own circles,  several different mosques where I knew the leadership was very good at reaching many members of their respective mosques.  
We would love to efficiently get our messages out with one platform.  
Let's do a texting blast combined with school promotions.  
And my own experience is that we have to meet people where they are.  
And where people are right now is sort of everywhere.  
And, so, it becomes incumbent upon us to look at the mosaic of avenues that we got to reach folks.  
We don't just need to reach folks who already want to participate in democracy.  
We need to reach folks who don't know that they want to participate in democracy yet.  
So, that could be, perhaps ‑‑ I mean we are talking about the youth.  That is wonderful.  
When we start young on their education about Civic Engagement, we are building a lifetime of interest and engagement.  
But we got some huge populations of recent retirees, for example, who have the experience.  They have been around the block.  They know what eras they lived through and what worked and didn't work for them.  And now they have time available to put their passions into some public service.  
Senior Centers are at times open and not opened depending on COVID situations.  
But we can look at the youth.  We also need to look at folks that got ‑‑ maybe they are empty nesters recently.  They can bring experience and wisdom and they already have networks of community that they have built over a lifetime. None of us can join a hundred clubs like I did.  
I think that on a collective basis, the marketing needs to be multi‑pronged.  
My experience also, in reaching Notify NYC for a texting service was not ideal.  
I tried to get some messaging out through the city for some important stuff and I was told that it would take weeks before we would get messages approved through the texting service.  
So, if we have the right to be innovative.  We need to explore it.  
I cannot imagine that anything we do is going to be an emergency of the type of the disaster rescue.  But I will say that it is interconnected.  
And folks do tend to be more engaged when they feel the urgency of a moment.  
So, a recent hurricane got a lot more folks engaged and aware of what kind of services are available to their friends, family and community and relatives.  
I am not saying that we exploit the opportunity when we got people in front of us for an emergency, but we should have long‑term planning materials available.  
So that whenever we touch a community member, we have another opportunity to let them know that:   
Today you may be here for some urgent purpose, and you have the opportunity to be apart of long‑term planning for your community.  
So here is a handout.  
Here is the plane language.  
What can a Community Board do?  
What is Civic Engagement Commission do?  
What can't we do?
  What can YOU do, personally?  
Maybe the key word take away of that is finding all the willing ambassadors in various age groups and religions and education levels.  
I love the idea.  
I just heard 3K and pre‑K parents.  
I love the approach of getting new parents into the trajectory of getting engaged.  
One of our colleagues mentioned reaching out to the disabled community.  
The beauty of the disabled community is that we DO have many advocacy groups.  We do stay in touch with each other.  And we do look at upcoming legislation that will effect us in the long and short term.  
Multiple pools.  I wish it was as simple as going to the daily news.  It is not anymore.  We got to explore all the channels we got.  
With all of that said, because this is a multi pronged approach that I believe is required, a collaborative conversation, probably, cannot be distilled down to a simple meeting, but if anybody will start to ponder the type of platforms for collaboration, so when there is an opportunity for some brainstorming or some ideas in a neighborhood or a borough, they can be sort of planted out there so that folks can, you know ‑‑ we are dropping them into a brainstorming pool.  
And another organized meeting or another organized collaborative session, we can look at the totality of the brainstorming and see what kind of priorities we want to explore.  Thank you for listening.  

>> Thank you so much.  I am not able to see ‑‑ does anyone else have their hand raised right now?  Francis, can you tell?  
>>ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:   Sorry.  I guess I am losing track of what we are trying to address in this conversation.  
I want to say that I appreciate all the comments that have been made.  I want to point out that I think Amy's point is still very valid and I don't know that we have actually addressed that.  
Sara, I wanted to ask you about ‑‑ any kind of evaluation process that may be in place to measure the functioning and success of community boards.  
So, I forget.  
What is currently in place?  
I think it would be worth us ‑‑ well I would like to be reminded of what is currently in place.  
If there is not something effective in place, I think there ought to be focus on that 
>> Are you talking about resident perspective on Community Board engagement?  
>> Whether it is resident ‑‑ but some sort of objectively verifiable measure of how community boards are functioning and serving the community.  
I served on the Civic Engagement Commission, that led to the changes of the Community Board 
>> The charter revision?  Yeah yeah.  
>>ANNETTA. .  I forget.  I remember that this was an important issue that came up again and again.  
But, really I just want to underscore the point that Amy made.  
And I don't think that the discussion, thus far, has really kind of addressed that point.  And I think it is outstanding for the commission to consider 
>> DR. SAYEED:  I think that is really important.  I want to thank everybody who has spoken so far because all the points that you have made right now are very relevant to CEC as we build out our infrastructure and think about the ways we are doing outreach.  
I feel like a lot of things that were put on the table are thens that our outreach team and communication strategist need to think about how we need to connect to communities.  
The other big piece is what sustains engagement?  
What is the quality of engagement?  
When people come in the door, what is their experience like?  
Do they feel like coming back?  
Do they gain something from that?  Do they feel heard?  
And I think the question of evaluation is really critical.  
We need to figure out how we are going to evaluate our impact.  
I am not aware ‑‑ beyond the Community Board sort of reporting responsibility to talk about sort of the annual report that they have to submit to talk about their demographic composition ‑‑ I am not aware of any systematic report that goes in about the quality of the engagement.  
I welcome anyone that is a board member to say more about that.  
And I think that we can really ‑‑ we can plan something.  You know?  In this space.  As a commission.  
To look at this further.  
So, you know, welcome to continue the conversation.  I don't know if anyone else has information.  
>> CHUCK APELIAN:  The only objective right now is attendance.  
Participation and attendance.  
After that, it becomes passionate.  
Who is to say ‑‑ the whole purpose of a Community Board is to have a vigorous dialogue.  Who is to say that if an item comes before the board as a discussion ‑‑ sometimes we have strong opinions on both sides.  
At the end of the day, if you voted yes for something or no for something, that doesn't make it right or wrong.  
But, if you are trying to get objective answer on that then, all of a sudden, you are taking away the freedom of expression.  
People are going to say I was on the wrong side of the issue.  
One thing that people are going to say that community boards are is a free and vibrant dialogue.  At the end of the day, board members themselves and the public come in and have that discussion.  
And, it is up to them to make a decision.  
And the decision is decision.  
There is no right or wrong on the decision.  
I have been on both sides of the issue and there is no right or wrong.  
We have said that many times.  
To try to say that this Community Board is saying things right or wrong, the only thing is:   Are you having a meeting, are you having full dialogue?  
Is anything been in secret?  
If a member is on the board and he is missing 8 or 10 meetings.  Unless there is a death in the family or something unusual ‑‑ that person should not be on there anymore.  
But to say, "Chuck, you voted yes or no on an issue."  
That takes away the freedom of expression.  It will be different to take away anything else other than subjectivity.  
>> ANNETTA SEECHARRAN:   If I may, I want to, again, emphasize that I think this is a big and important issue and I think it would be worthwhile looking at what models might be out there that we can learn from.  
I think that the point was raised and I think anyone who is even remotely sort of engaged in community work, cannot say that community boards are high functioning across the city.  
There are many many issues.  
And there are many issues of inclusion.  
And I think that the point that Amy was making is that ‑‑ it is easy to focus on inclusion.  
Whether it is young people or immigrants or whatever the measure might be.  
But when they are there:   Are they able to effectively engage and participate.  
If not, what are we doing to support their full engagement and participation?  
Recognizing that many boards are held and the power is held ‑‑ you know long entrenched ‑‑ histories and relationships.  
And, so on.  
So, I am simply raising the question about how are community boards measured.  
I would like to know.  So perhaps we can dedicate a future meeting to this issue.  
And it would be helpful to bring in other perspectives of what are other ways in which community boards are measured?  
Just for our sort of reflection and dialogue.  I think that would be incredibly useful 
>> DR. SAYEED:  Thank you for that.  Let's definitely continue this conversation in a future meeting.  
We will look into the question you raise about evaluation and qualitative and quantitative ways to measure that.  We have about 15 minutes left before we return to public comment.  
I am not sure if anybody else signed up for a comment.  In addition to Nan who put her name in the chat.  Anyone else?  
 So, we will keep going with the next part of the presentation.  Which is about updating you on the Participatory Budgeting process that is currently under way.  
I will call on Wendy and Drashti and Lesley to take us to the next few slides that are about the participatory budgeting process 
>>WENDY TRULL:  Thank you Sara.  I am Wendy.  Senior Advisor with the Engagement Commission.  I want to give a quick overview with the process that we have been partnering to implement in the neighborhoods hit hardest by COVID.  
Just for a refresher, and for the benefit of Natali that just joined us.  
We began the process of implementing PB earlier in the summer.  
We started with the community‑needs assessment.  
That was one of the core deliverables of the Tree Coalition Project.  
We started an online conversation with the neighborhood coalition leaders as well as the organizations they brought in with them.  
Which is a requirement of the work.  
So, that was an opportunity for there to be an open dialogue for folks to talk across neighborhoods about what the priorities are and the needs emerging in thinking about COVID recovery.  
After we that ‑‑ after we assembled what floated to the top and what floated to the surface in that conversation, we began to implement a survey in each community that enabled residents to prioritize ‑‑ of the list of priorities, what was emerging as most resonant in their community.  
From the organizations that work with residents.  
They worked with their coalition members.  
We vetted the proposals and then from there created the ballots:   Both electronically, on paper ‑‑ to the point of trying to think about all the way that is we have to meet people and where people are.  All the different ways that we can reach out and get participation rates up.  
We have been implementing the voting period.  
We have launched December 6th.  
We have extended the deadline, twice, actually.  
So we are at the tail end of the voting period.  We will close on January 31st, which is Monday.  
We will be announcing the beginner project on February 9th.  Beginning implementation there after.  All the projects have to be implemented at the end of the fiscal year in order to use the funds.
>> Thank you so much, Wendy.  Just to add a bit about the "get out the vote" initiative. 
We completed 15 events across New York City, working hand in hand with the neighborhood coalition groups with volunteers for the mayor's public engagement unit.  We invited counsel members to each of the events.  
And we successfully collected and I might add ‑‑ in the freezing cold, 2437 ballots.  
We still have four more events coming up this weekend in Parkchester Morris height and Cue Gardens.  
You can see the geographics spread of the events we had.  
We tried to focus on some of the organizations that were most struggling with getting out the vote.  
And, it was a really an exciting moment in which we could really meet all the T&Cs face‑to‑face and get out the word.  
We are hoping that the total ballot can reach up to 3000 with the events coming up 

>> WENDY:  I will actually turn it over to Lesley.  
To talk through our earned medium strategy.  
>> LESLIE:   Our media outreach was both earned and some organic outreach on social media and then we did some paid ads.  
So the first round was essentially the creation of 
We had cards, fliers, social media graphics, and banners and websites for e‑mail.  
That was done predominately in house with our artist in resident and our team.  
And working with the T&C for initial feedback for how they would like to see themselves represented.  
We used real people and sort of little vignette scenarios that reflected some of the ideas that were generated for the proposals.  
The second round we worked with an NWBE to help us craft two 30 second radio spots that ran in English, Spanish, can toe niece, polish, Russian and Urdu.  

In terms of canvassing needs.  
We also ran paid ads on Instagram and Facebook.  Those were cute little gyfs, matching the actual proposal.  So people understood what they were voting on.  
Those also ran in different languages... and we had a smaller subset that were live streamed audio ads on social media.  You can see the performance tracking numbers.  
Which is a good run for the time we had them up.  
We had bus shelters working with DOT and then working with NYC on the Link NYC Kiosk in the 3 neighborhoods.  
If there are any questions, I am happy to take them.  
>> I want to add one thing that I forgot to mention.  We send ballot boxes to about 16 public libraries throughout the city for folks to be able to fill out paper ballots as well.  We can provide more updates on how well that worked later on.  
>> DR. SAYEED:  Thank you so much, team.  We have a couple of minutes left before we open to public comment.  Does anyone have questions or feedback on the participatory budgeting work?  
>> DONNA GILL:  So, Sara, I came back in the middle of this.  Because I didn't really have enough information about it.  
But I got the e‑mails and I sent it out to my network and the complaint that I was having ‑‑ so I want to thank Wendy, for improving the link.  The complaint that I had was that a lot of people ‑‑ in Central Harlem ‑‑ didn't fill it out because they had to register.  
Even though I said you can call or you can get paper ballots and things like that.  So, that was a bit challenging.  
Also, I see the notices in the Bronx, but I have not seen any in Central Harlem.  Maybe I have not been looking.  Because when I sent the information to them, it was the first time that anyone actually heard anything about it.  
And I came back to this country on the 17th so that was well in the voting deadline.  
So, I don't know how much, you know, my sending out the information was able to get people to vote.  
But I felt like there was not enough outreach in my tree neighborhood.  
So, I am going to send a new link out.  
Which makes it a lot easier.  
I did try both links and it is a lot easier to do.  
I thanked the team for realizing that and getting that out.  
I hope that we get more participation based on that.  
Thank you!  
>> DR. SAYEED:  Thank you so much.  We are going to re‑send you the link after this to make sure you have it in a language you can use as well.  
>> MARK:   I am interpreting this as the PB aspect that we have been talking about, which is in the 33 neighborhoods that were poorly served and so forth.  
I want to double check because my new community ‑‑ city counsel member, is implementing PB on her own, but it appears as though the projects that are being proposed by community members are going through our CEC website.  
Are we providing both functionalities and is it only stored centrally with us?  
Or also somewhere with the counsel member and her server or what‑have‑you?  
>> Great question.  Wendy?  
>> WENDY:  That is a great question.  There actually was another website where they were collecting ideas.  
I think it was centrally ‑‑ maybe managed by the speakers office centrally.  
Because central office is not providing support for the process, my understanding is that the site will be taken down.  We did have city counsel members approach us and ask if they can host their process on our site.  
And we were happy to do so.  
So the process that they are running is their own process.  They may have other ways of gathering input.  
Some folks may choose to do paper ballot and canvassing and other ‑‑ however they so choose.  
But we are hosting the idea generation and whatever functionality that they would like to advocate and utilize our platform for.  
It is a separate area and they are administering it.  
I think in our minds, we are happy to support direct democracy initiatives and other participatory processes when possible.  
In terms of the other ways in which city counsel members want to advocate their process it will be up to them.  
I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah.  The hope is that we have a central participatory processes in the city that can be hosted on our site.  
In addition to not having the support from the speaker's office, is that our platform does provide for end‑to‑end ‑‑ from idea generation to voting.  
The city counsel prior to that had separate platforms and systems 
>> MARK:  That is helpful.  I think you are on to something with the central location of it on our site.  
In particular, with the one proposal that I am aware of.  Which has to do with installation of security members in Riverside Park.  It is long enough that it spans a couple of counsel member districts.  I believe all counsel members are doing PB on their own.  I would hate to see only one portion of a unified park to be served to an exclusion of others.  
One would hope that would be an easy way to take what is being proposed for counsel district 6 and have somebody propose it for counsel district 7 as well.  
And have the work move with the proposal.  
>> Thank you for that.  
In addition to having the meeting related to community boards, we are going to do more in depth conversation with participatory budgeting.  
We have to come up with an implementation plan.  We will talk about that as well.  
I will do a time check here.  
I know we were supposed to do public comment from 3:30 onwards.  Francis, did anyone else sign up?  
>> No.  Just Nan. 
>> We have not finished the slide. 
>> I was going to ask to make sure that Nan is okay with us finishing out two slides of the presentation because we did not finish.  Would you be okay with that?  And we will come to your comment right after that?  
>> Sure. 
>> Thank you so much.  
>> So, on the next slide that we have, we are going to be talking about the language assistance. 
>>JULIE:   I am Julie, advisor for poll site and voter participation.  I want to give you an update with the language assistance advisory committee.  Currently we are in the middle of finalizing membership.  
We had our applications open until January 7th.  
We received 57 applications.  
We are still looking for polish and Italian members, if you all have any recommendations.  As you all know we try to represent all 12 city‑wide languages.  
We are still looking for applicants that speak polish and Italian and can help advise on reaching those voters.  
If you have any recommendations, please feel free to reach out to me or Francis about this.  
We are trying to finalize a cohort in the next week or so.  
So time is a bit of the essence here.  
And, then, in terms of upcoming plans, we will have the (inaudible term) launch in February 17th at 6:30 virtually.  
A bit of an overview over the next 6 months, as we prepare for the June primary, we will work with each of the members to come up with community engagement plans on making sure that we promote the poll sites and work with them to co‑lead outreach.  So that is what is coming down the pipeline in the next 6 months.  
And, then, the next slide.  Some of the upcoming deadlines. (From the slide)
As you probably are aware the early voting dates have been release and so are on this slide.  
We did not have the resources to serve all of them.  
So the method that we came up with is to assess the assembly district poll sites and see if they have been served in our general.  
And if there was an overlap in the sites, that we could consider serving that particular assembly district at this poll site.  
In the particular languages that we served in.  
That was one thing that we had agreed to in the last resolution.  
And Julie, if can you drop that link in the chat.  So folks can have it as a refresher.  
We talked about whether we will serve voting early during specials.  
Assessing if there is an overlap with early voting sites to what we served to special election early voting sites.  
The second criteria if it was for a ‑‑ sorry.  We would cover early voting for a statewide and citywide positions.  
And, early voting for presidential.  
So, for specials, since it is geographically bound, we are not covering early voting.  
So going through this methodology, looking at the poll sites and the assembly districts, we realized that we did not have any poll sites in 72, in the past.  But we did service Russian in assembly district 60 in Brooklyn.  We will be providing Russian services in the special election there.  
I wanted you to be aware that we took the methodology we agreed to and made a decision about servicing the specials here.  
>> So, I think that is pretty much it.  
I want to stop there and give Nan the floor to talk more about what she was saying before about community boards.  
I noticed that you are from Difta.  It would be great to get your thoughts on what we discussed today, involving more seniors in Civic Engagement as well.  
>> If you are open to talk about that. 
>> NAN: Hello, everyone.  My name is Nan.  
I am the Director of Special Initiatives at the Department of For the Aging.  
And my prior gig was working with the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President.  
We had  Denora ‑‑ I hope I am saying her last name right.  
It was a while since we had her as a panelist.  
She spoke about Civic Engagement of the youth.  And they were committed to trying to get youth more involved with community boards and other organizations.  
So, of course, when you were talking about it, I had to bring up that organization because I know that was ‑‑ but I believe that one of the commissioners, if not one of the staff, was well aware of generation citizens.  So, I am actually preaching to the choir.  
I think somebody said that they worked with them and loved working with them.  
I was not too sure who that was.  
But definitely they are resource to use.  
As far as community boards are concerned, having worked with them, and also having been a Community Board member myself a long while ago, everything that was said early ‑‑ as a matter of fact I was praising and clapping on the sidelines.  
In regards to one of the commissioners ‑‑ everything that he said was in my personal opinion accurate and that by having elected officials and Community Board ‑‑ and Brooklyn Borough President Office and their staff having conversations with community boards in regards to their needs, that is a missing part that I feel needs to be enhanced more as well as looking at what a community board needs. 
One of the one of things that was a questions on the application in the past is if they are active on committee or they  attend a community board meeting? It says whether the person is truly engaged. That is something that is very key that I am aware of. Speaking to what Chuck had to say.  
There were so many other areas in which to comment on.
 That is with regards to what I am doing here for the Department of the Aging. The unit I am working with is about volunteerism. 
We have the program, and the purpose is to connect volunteers to support not only older adults, intergenerational connections and financial abuse, we also have young people join to support our clientele. 
So whether it would be pantries or resource fairs.   
 I put to CEC, I believe that is the acronym, to consider working with us for the future.  
>>DR. SAYEED:   Thank you.  Thank you so much that was ‑‑ we will definitely stay in touch with you. We hope we can see some of that happening as well.  
I would love to stay in touch with you, thank you so much.  
>> Thank you, I will follow up with Sara.  
Anyone else in the last couple of minutes that we have left?  Does anyone have any comments or questions?  
Remaining about anything else that we discussed so far.  
>>DR. SAYEED:  So, if there or there is no item for discussion, we are 15 out to the end of the meeting.  I don't know if folks want to make a motion to adjourn the meeting and we can leave a bit early. 
>>NAN:  I know I had my time ‑‑ but, there is something on the slide, where you did the break down.  I think it was the last slide that you did in regards to the EB‑process.  
You showed the break down of how the outreach was done, and after each break down, like for bus shelters and link NYC and so forth.  You listed in bold:   Impressions.  
Can you define that?  
>> LESLIE:   I mean, they mean different things by the different media for the social media.  
It is kind of like how often those things are showing up in people's feed.  If you are looking at direct performance, it is going to be that plus how many times people click on the actual ad which leads them to the action.  In this case, the action is driving everyone to participate NYC.gov site.  The number that they use for the link Kiosk come through there.  
So we get those number in a general sense of expectation of viewership of those particular advertisements.  
>> Thank you so very much.  
>> Just a quick question, will this slide presentation be available following this meeting?  
>> Yes, we usually e‑mail it out to the commissioners after the meeting.  
Yeah.  
>> Well, in that case, motion to adjourn.  
>> Anyone want to second?  
>> Second. 
>> The motion to adjourn has been seconded.  Any discussion?  
>> I have a question let's vote.  
>> All in favor?  
>> I. 
>> I. 
>> I. 
>> I. 
>> I. 
>> Anyone opposed?  
>> No opposition.  But Nan is asking if the e‑mail can be provided outside of commissioners.  Or perhaps she can have the presentation herself.  
>> We can share that.  
And so, hearing no opposition, I will call the meeting to adjourn.  Give you back 10 minutes of your time.  And, we look forward to seeing you in February.  Be in touch right after this meeting to continue to work together on the different processes underway.  Thank you everybody.  
>> Thank you, nice to see everyone.  
>> Thank you.