Civic Engagement Meeting 1.7.21
>> Good morning, Francis, how are you?
>> Good.  Happy New Year.  Good morning.  The meeting will please come to order.  Can you all hear me okay?  Great.  
So welcome and Happy New Year, everyone.  And thank you so much for joining us.  So as usual we're going the start off with technical assistance instruction for anyone who might be new to our meeting.  
So as you know, we do have audio enabled for all Commissioners, and we ask everyone, the Commissioners, to mute yourselves to avoid background noise when you're not speaking, and if you would like to speak you're welcome to unmute yourself or use the raise‑hand icon to respond or make a comment.  
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And then for closed captioning there's some slightly different instructions.  By clicking on the ellipse dot dot dot button, next to the chat option, on your screen's menu control bar, you can click on closed captioning.  On my, I don't know if it's because I haven't updated, okay, I have two different ellipse but there's one next to chat so that's what you would enable for closed caption.  So let's go to the next screen.  I just want to make sure everyone got the materials, Commissioners did you get the materials for today's meeting via e‑mail
>> Yes.
>> Okay.  I will assume everyone has it since no one has said no.  So we're going to move to the first item which is just collecting attendance, making sure we know who is here, because I cannot see everyone and for the record, so chuck Apelian, if you can say here when I called your name., Holly Bonn ‑R, Amy, Mark Diller, Laurie Fiorito, Donna Gill.  Anthony Harmon, Josenandes.  Lil Perez.
>> I'm here.
>> Thank you.  I called Jose, I called Lilliam, Anastasia, thank you.  I'm just going to make sure that the folks who I called on earlier are indeed not here that I may have missed.  Is chuck Apelian here 1234 change my screen.  Murad Awewdeh?  Lori Fiorito, Anthony Harmon?  Jose Hernandez
>> Jose is here.  For the record for anyone for anyone who is new attending this meeting for the very first time.  My name is Sarah Sayeed and I'm one of the somewhere Commissioners who make up the civic commission.  And the next item on the agenda is approving the Minutes from our last meeting in December.  Are there any additions or corrections to the police Minutes presented?
>> No I move to adopt.
>> Okay.
>> Second,
>> Second.
>> Awesome.  And all in favor, would you please say aye.  Any opposed say nay?  Okay.  The Minutes for our December meeting are approved.  We're going to move next to the program update section and we'll be turning to a more focused conversation on the methodology amendment that we started up last time.  And since the last meeting we did have smaller meetings with many of the Commissioners to go through the amendment in more detail and take suggestions on the language.  And we did make some changes to the language modification to reflect your thinking.  So we're going to go through those, through the amendment again today and we would like to put it to vote.  Kami senior counsel from the law department will be walking us through the amendment and as part of his presentation he will try to clarify some of the questions that came up regarding the state statute that determines our interpreters access to the poll room.  The discussion of the state statute is helpful to clarify some of the things that came up in the last public meeting.  As well as I think just helpful for our understanding as reflecting on this a little bit, including for members of the public to understand how city services are, that are often impacted by federal and state laws and these are interacting with one another and so virtually every agency that is delivering services probably has different jurisdictions that are at play in terms of how New Yorkers get served and for our Poll Site program obviously the federal voting rights act state statute as well as the city charter and budget impacts the services we provide so it's important to just for Civic Engagement purposes understand those different forces at play.
for the questions related to the amendment we're going to ask you to please, for the commissioners to limit your questions to the actual language of the amendment for today and questions on legal matters if you could please bring them for later discussion with the staff.  So I'm going to turn now to Quami for your presentation, you're on.
>> Good morning Commissionerses, it's good to see all of you.  Kwame.  As Chair mentioned I'm here to give an overview of the amendments that are before you today.  And the amendments contain three changes, basic changes to the commission's Poll Site targeting methodology, first grant the Chair authority to set the hours and days of early voting services, second it would allow the Chair to exempt polling places based on health or safety concerns for the interpreters, u and third, it establishes the process by which the commission will target polling places for services at special elections.
I will discuss each of these changes in turn and then afterwards we can talk about anything I mentioned or take questions.
first the hours and days of early voting.  If you look at paragraph 11 of the amendments, that paragraph would give the Chair of the commission the authority to set the hours and days of early voting based on the needs of each language committee in consultation with the language assistance advisory committee.  Under the current methodology the commission can only serve the last two full days of early voting.  This amendment would allow different days and hours.  For example, the first weekend of early voting or exempt a day from service entirely because of a religious holiday and that is something that will have to be determined in consultation where the language assistance advisory committee.
the next change is the health and safety exemption, contained in paragraph 10 of the amendments, give the Chair of if commission the authority to exempt a polling place for service if the Chair determines that stationing an interpreter at the polling place would be detrimental to their health or safety.  This was proposed in response that arose because of the cold weather during the November election, somber pretties at other had to be stationed outside the polling place because there was no room to station them inside.  I understand some Commissioners had questions about why interpreters couldn't be stationed in the poll room and behind the guardrail where the BOE staff conduct the election.  The New York State election law sets strict standards about who may enter that space, the polling room or the gird rail, and it also sets the circumstances in which such persons may enter.
section 8 dash 104, the election law provides the applicable rule.  No person shall be admitted within the gird rail during such period except the election officers, authorized watchers, persons admitted by the inspectors to preserve order or enforce the law, voters duly admitted for the purpose of voting and children under the age of 16 accompanying their voting parents or guardians.  That concludes my quote
the Civic Engagement commission's interpreters may gain access to the polling room for the limited purpose of assisting voters with reading their ballot.  Voters have a right to request that assistance from Civic Engagement commission interpreters under section 8 dash, any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability or read or write may be given assistance by the voter choice, other than the voter's employer or agents of the employer or officers of the voter's union.  The enteral prettiers may gain access to the polling room when assisting a voter but may not be stationed in the polling room when not providing such assistance.  That is why the CEC stationses interpreters in the hallways outside the entrance to the polling room.  In the event that those hallways do not provide sufficient space to station the interpreters, they may have to be stationed outdoors near the entrance to the polling place.  This amendment would give the Chair discretion to exempt such a polling place if there's no choice and it is a cold weather month.
that concludes the second change.  Moving to the third, special election targeting, under paragraph 3 and 9 of the amendments, the amendments would provide standards for when the commission would provide services at a special election, under paragraph 3 the commission would serve a special election if one, the commission served a polling place used in that special election and the previous general election, and two, the Chair determines that there are sufficient resources to provide such services
under paragraph 9 a polling place in a special election served by the commission will be targeted under two circumstances.  One, if it was served in the prior general election, and two, if the Board of Elections designated a new polling place that was not used in the prior general election and such polling place has a concentration of citizen voting age limited English proficient voters equal to or greater than polling places that served in that prior general election.  So in other words, when the commission is comparing the list of polling places it observed in the previous general election and the list of polling places available to be served at an upcoming special election and there is polling place that appears on the special election list that did not appear on the general election list but the commission would have the authority authority to serve that newly targeted, newly designated polling place if it determines that it has a sufficient concentration of CDLEP voters based on the analysis it has done in the previous general election.  That concludes my summary.  I'm happy to take any clarifying questions
>> Not a question, just clarifying comment, the section that you described where our interpreters are for lack of space situated outside of a polling site, I just want to clarify if inside the building there is space right outside to have the main polling site where usually mostly the security or the police officer is usually in that area, is that where is normally there's a desk for interpreter right by the entrance which often times is inside the building not outside the building?
>> I can't speak to some of the operational details about where the tables or stationing take place, but it is my understanding that this is a rare ‑‑ it is actually, usually the case that the commission is able to find space just outside the polling room and entrance and under certain rare occasions the polling places don't have enough space in those hallways and rooms just outside the polling room.  But others at the commission perhaps could clarify that.
>> I'll just add something, I think that our priority in identifying and figuring out where our language assistants will be seated has been to make sure that they are in a place that is visible to the voters because that's our priority, right, we want to make sure that voters can find them i also that they are, that we are taking care of their health and safety, particularly in the cold.  We really have made sure to talk through every single site to identify the appropriate location inside the building.  As was mentioned previously, it's a very limited number of places where this happened, in fact it was like, two, on the first or three on the first day of early voting, and the same three on the second day.  And then none on election day.  So definitely you want to make that very clear, our priority to serve voters and make sure our interpreters are able to do their job in a way that safeguards and protects their health and rights as well.  The second thing is just that in stationing the language assistants we have to be mind 68 of ADA guidelines and make sure that when we are outside in the hallway, outside the poll room, that there is room for people to maneuver.  So that's another part that has to be negotiated with each site just to make sure that we're adhering to that law as well.  So Gagan, would you like to add anything
>> I would like to add that our interpreter is as mentioned is predominantly placed outside the poll room, right outside the door unless they're, if it falls within ADA guidelines.  If there's anyic issues with that we are placed in the next appropriate location.  Keeping in mind accessibility and visibility and we also place signs to let folks know where the interpreters are located if it's not as obvious.  If interpreters are outside they're right outside of the site so the line might be, you know, if one of the sites, the table was set up under the awning and the line was right in front of the table.  So it's like Dr. Sayeed mentioned it's predominantly about visibility and making sure the interpreters are right 0U9 side the front
>> In my experience the Board of Elections interpreters and translatedders are located usually if not outside the main entrance, because obviously if you have a language need that is the first person you want to see so they can begin to help you through the process.  So that, I was asking because it makes sense.  And if that's what they're doing and I don't know if this is an option, but almost like, it should not be reinvented.  Poll Sites should be by now in New York City very familiar and aware of what we're trying to do here.  In many many Poll Sites they do it themselves.
>> Absolutely, thank you for that comment.  Are there other additional comments in discussion that you would like to have about this?
>> Thanks.  Am I reading paragraph 3 correctly that its, it still operates to prohibit the offering of services other than under the circumstances that it describes?  In other words, if the Chair had resources and the desire to offer services at a place that did not meet the criteria of paragraph 3 this would prohibit the Chair from offering services at that location?  Am I reading that correctly?
>> It is true that in order for a special election to be served both of those criteria need to be atmosphere if Id.  So there there needs to be at least one polling lace used in that special election that was also used in the prior general election and the Chair must also have determined that there are sufficient resources.  That is true.  Under the targeting paragraph, which is paragraph 9 additional polling places can be selected other than ones that were targeted in the prior general election if they were not previously designated by the Board of Elections and that is the subparagraph a.  That would give the Chair discretion to select different sites in addition to the ones that were previously targeted.
>> I wanted to offer some ‑‑ because I know this ‑‑ Mark you had brought up before, what if we find that we could have served a Poll Site and we didn't actually serve.  And I think Murad had a similar concern about using the past locations to determine what would happen particularly when ‑‑ and other people spoke of this too.  Sort of like, people aging into citizenship and the challenges we have spoken about in different ways of having data that actually captures what's on the ground in a way that we all trust and one of the things that we are looking at doing and didn't want to put in for today but for future modification of this amendment, sorry, of this resolution, we're thinking ever ‑‑ because we've talked about how the ACS five‑year data gets updated each year.  So under 7 there is a numbers there where we are looking at molling place allotment.  And the share for each language that is determined by the ACS data.  So something we're talking about doing is including in here that we would be looking at that data annually.  Currently that's not mentioned here.  So in a future amendment of this resolution, which hopefully will happen in the near future, we would like to add that as well, just because then that let's us be in compliance with the charter, which asks us to have a neutral methodology and data, rely on ACS data for our decisions about which Poll Sites we're serving but also to stay on top of changes to that data that are coming in on an annual basis because there is an annual survey that the census bureau does.  I don't know if that helps to answer that some of the questions you Mark and Murad and Lilliam have raised.
>> Thanks for that and I certainly understand the need to distinguish between those things where we are required to provide services and the instances where it may be useful to have the discretion to provide services.  If I'm understanding the Chair correctly, the move at this point is to have an amendment that only provides for the requirement and not the discretion and that we would look to a future amendment, a future further amendment of the methodology to accommodate that discretion or that expansion of services.  If that's correct then that's, I'll muscle that as we decide how we're going to vote.  Thanks.
>> For more discussion, is there like an order in speaking?
>> Good point Murad, thanks for saying that.  I think that it makes sense actually now that you've said it, if people want to add their name to raise their hand or add their name to the chat we can call them in that order.  To this point, Murad, go for it.
>> Thank you.  I think we had discussed that that's something we were going to look into.  Correct me if I'm wrong, we were going to consider doing an amendment or waiting for the ACS and census data to be available to do that?
>> And Gagan can chime in here as well.  That's exactly right.  The ACS data, the newest five‑year data for sure, that's what I meant by saying we're waiting‑we also need to remember the CEC capacity in this area for data analysis, we actually don't have someone on the team who can crunch numbers so we need to work through intraagency partnerships to get this stuff done, so that's another thing that prevented us from adding that language today.  We're trying to work out how that's going to happen for the primary.  So yes.
>> I can volunteer my staff who would do that.  Who did the first round
>> That's right.
>> Thank you.
>> We miss Asher.
>> Yes.  Gagan, do you want to adds other add anything here
>> I was going to say that, like Sarah mentioned, we're working on our partnership for the data analysis piece and that should be more firm in the coming weeks and following that we want to create a timeline and you had brought this up in the believe conversation about the delineation of when data will be analyzed, when we will be using the newly released five‑year data.  So we want to create an amendment that clearly outlines the timeline for that analysis but that will, is something that will come in a future amendment as we firm our partnership with our, we're reaching out to mayor's office for analytics, so that's language that we'll add in the coming months.
>> Did anyone else want to ask any questions or offer thoughts for discussion?  Also I want to make sure that as we're voting everyone is clear on what this implies for our services going forward until the primary.  Which perhaps I ought to spell out if someone of the Commissioners would like to spell out.
>> Would you spell it out.
>> Yes of course.  What we're seeing and this is just because we are faced with a situation and why we needed to do this actually, is that we're faced with a situation in which we have multiple special elections coming up.  Our methodology does not give us a clear process for how we choose which specials to serve in when there are many of them given resource constraints which are very real.  And there is something in the current methodology without the amendments that talks about how we wouldn't or limits our ability to serve early voting for specials.  But other than that, doesn't offer more clarity.  So what we're trying to do here is to say that we're going to look at where we served in the general to determine whether a particular Poll Site is serviced in a special and also if we have resources.  And according to if we pass this resolution today, or this amended resolution today, it will mean that we will not serve any of the council specials and our next date of service will be the Primary.  So that is sort of laying on the table what we're agreeing to do.  Kwame and Gagan, please correct me and Commissioners if you have questions, let me know.
>> I would defer to Gagan or the others who have the numbers.
>> That's correct, the only thing I would add is there are resources that would be utilized for the special committee, utilized for the upcoming primary, however amount that is.
>> I can explain that.  So the allocations of polling places under the current methodology are entirely based on available resource, if there are more resources available more would be targeted.
>> Our decision to serve 102 Poll Sites in the general election was based on resources because we were trying to think about the entire fiscal year and what we would like to do for the general and primary and whether we have anything left for the specials.  We tried to make it sort of like an even think, 102 for the general, we would like to do at least the same for the primary and whatever was left we thought we could allocate to a special.  What's left is not really that much.  And we have like six specials to choose in.  So right now the few Poll Sites that could have or would have been served will be added.  It's not really that much.  The bigger point to make here is that in the upcoming elections, ranked‑choice voting and it's a really critical election year, and we are going to be at the polls for the primary.  And I think there's a bunch of work that needs to be done in advance of that to educate New Yorkers, so we are going to, even though we wouldn't serve in a special, we'll make sure, and it's our priority to get involved in the ranked‑choice voting education at the Commission.  
And we will obviously be working with the Board of Elections to update our own interpreter trainings, making sure that we're providing plain language messaging and translations and also exploring and talking to democracy NYC and the campaign finance board about how we get out there with the messaging and partnerships about working on a training with community boards.  Again in partnership with our other agencies so the other, some of the other things that we'll be working on, working with language access advisory members to give them train‑the‑trainer training, so that they can be out and train others.  
And then continuing to help do outreach even for the upcoming specials, making sure that language communities that we would be serving are going to be reached.  So we're not going to stop being active in this space.  We're going to continue to find a way to connect with voters, even before they show up to the poll room.  And I want to say, we welcome your ideas and thoughts on how we can do that.  If you have opportunities for the city to be connected to help out with that we can do that as well.  Love to hear that from folks.
>> Madam Chair?
>> Sorry, Annetta was in the queue and then chuck, glad you're here.  Okay.
>> Hello, everybody.  Thank you for sharing your intention to support the upcoming specials, from my perspective, those are all incredibly important races in communities where there are significant language needs.  So thank you for that.  That assurance.  I would like to give some thought to how we can be supportive or how I can be supportive but I don't have any thoughts right now.  Thank you.
>> Thank you Annetta.  Chuck?
>> Just for clarity, the last thing we've been saying, so based upon us approving the amendments today and the fact that you're saying that the specials will not be served, it's not due to the amendments or the methodology or the approvals, it's strictly a budgetary issue and that's why the specials are not going to be served?
>> No.  It's both.  Resources for the specials were already constrained.  Given constrained resources we would have to choose which special to choose from and our methodology doesn't give us a clear path for how to make those decisions and choices in the event of multiple specials.  One of the constraints we have is that we're working with city wide data.  The specials coming up with council level specials.  The other issue is that the methodology doesn't give us a clear way to like identify the actual Poll Sites that will be served in those local specials because it's city‑wide data.  So the amendment today if we applied what we are proposing today, actually let me step back.  The current version of the amendment, we had already agreed that for early voting we would only serve poll sites that are for city‑wide elected offices where everyone across the City is voting for those offices.  
According to that, the current methodology resolution, CEC would not serve in early voting in working in council district ‑‑ that's without any changes that we're approving or not approving today.  So when we look at our actual services for the general election, we had two poll sites and Gagan, please step in here, but we had a very limited number of poll sites across the entire City and across any of the districts where we served early.  
But since we had agreed that we would only do City wide elected offices we would not serve early voting.  The changes to the resolution today related to specials or election day services.  If we apply the rule that you needs to look at general elections to serve in the specials, we did not serve any poll sites in any of the council districts where there are special elections on election day in the general election.  
Gagan, if I messed anything up or if you want to restate to be more clear, please step in here.
>> Can I ‑‑ just to put it another way, under the current methodology the Commission would not have the authority to serve a council special election during early voting ‑‑ I guess there's a train going by.  
Under the current methodology unamended, the Commission would not have the authority to serve early voting for the council special election.  So what the Chair is saying that in the previous general when the Commission targeted polling places for services because the Commission targeted polling places on a city‑wide level, not on a district by district level, there were polling places targeted in these council districts.  However, they were other live voting places only.  Because they were early voting places they cannot be served during the specials.  Does that make sense?  That is one of the key points.
>> I don't understand why we're delineating an early site versus a primary day site as far as an area being served.
>> Can you rephrase your question, Chuck, I'm sorry, I'm not following. 
>> The reason we're not targeting these in the specials because they were only used in the general election for early voting and not for election day, why is that being segregated?
>> Because the early voting sites on election day are, we had to pick different sites, they not all the same.  So our methodology we went with about 25 early voting sites and had more on election day.
>> I think I just understood, an early voting site may not be a typical poll site because they're located elsewhere.
>> Exactly.
>> They serve far larger geographies.  There are far fewer early voting sites relative to election day sites.
>> In South Brooklyn there are two that served three different communities.  Sunset Park has one, and that's shared with half of Bay Ridge, and then Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge and parts of Bensonhurst, while you're polling site may be a block or two away from you the early voting sites are incredibly far from where you would normally vote.
>> Sorry, cut you off.  Can you repeat what you said, Murad?
>> There's a lot less early voting sites.
>> Yeah, that, the small number of sites also allowed us to serve more than one language at these sites as well because it covers a bigger geography, so more language communities.
>> Back to my original question.  It's not just a matter of budget, it's just that we don't have any data for the previous General to be able to serve the Specials.
>> Correct.  Under the concerned methodology we do not have, we did not serve polling places that can be served at a council special election in the previous general election.
>> Thank you.
>> Other questions?
>> I just wanted to ask, it's Amy Breedlove, did we get any data in terms of the usage of early polling sites versus the general election on the standard day, sorry, I'm struggling with the language a little bit.  But on November 6th as opposed to the early voting sites.  I understand Murad, the reason we went with early voting it allows opportunities in schedule for people to be able to go and vote and not be confined to the one day.  I know in our polling sites, people really accessed early voting and we had very few in our regular polling sites on November 6th.  So I was wondering if we have any of that data and if that then can be used in terms of the methodology to see how we deploy resources to the early voting sites?
>> The data are available.  I think we wouldn't ever stop serving on election day.  I think that when we're talking election, it generally focuses on election day and early voting is a relatively new addition for New York City.  But we want to make sure we're out there for early voting, as well.  So I'm not sure if that's answering your question but we can get you the data, but I'm not sure we could use that data entirely to shift the way we're offering services bauds those patterns can change from year to year.  A lot of the data that we would look at for the general is going to be conditioned by the fact that it's COVID, as well as, the pandemic as well as a presidential year.  So we may see very high numbers for early voting that we might note see in a future one.
>> We're speaking to the complexity of one election versus another and given the context of that election.  Trying to build a methodology that would service the most people is what we're trying to do and I just wanted to bring up this one point.
>> You look like you want to say something, Murad.  If I can read faces on the Webex call. 
>> I think we're ‑‑ we have to make she's like little patches to these fixes but we really have to have a bigger conversation about funding and resources.  And I know that's a separate conversation, has nothing to do with what we're talking about now but it really is, you know, I don't want this commission to be undermined because of a lack of funding and I feel like we could be doing so much more but I'm also aware of resource restrictions but I don't think that we should have any resource restrictions when it comes to making our democracy more accessible.
>> I don't think they're separate things.  I think we all can see that so many of city services, I'm sure with even what you're doing at the coalition, it's just a very difficult time we're in and trying to figure out how we prioritize and who figures that out.  I think that's a larger Civic Engagement question as well and of course the CEC's programs, all of our programs are constrained in terms of what we can do with the public.  The other piece of it and we could talk more about this later as well, is like, you know, and maybe even have smaller conversations about this but are there opportunities for us to explore private funding to explore some of our work.  
We can also think about ways that we advocate for Civic Engagement broadly speaking from a policy or even a legal advocacy perspective for a variety of things.  Like I said before, Federal, State and City laws govern and impact how cities, the city serves New Yorkers.  So we could be thinking more about that and maybe having smaller discussions absolutely that could be future work and planning ahead.  I think we've done phenomenal work this year.  I'm really proud of everything this staff has done, even in youth demonstration project that's exciting to people and getting, laying a foundation for when that process will actually be built but I think you're right to raise the budget concerns and they determine everything we're doing so.  It's an important conversation.
>> Anyone else want to say anything about the amendment?  Sorry.
>> Can we call a question?
>> Yes, of course.  Donna, did you have a question? 
>> I'm saying, can we call a question if we're going to vote on it?
>> If no one has any additional comments for discussion or discussion about this, it would be good to move towards a vote. I know Mark you were thinking about what we discussed a little while ago, do you want to add anything here?
>> I'll take that as a recognition to speak.  So thank you.  Yeah, I still think that we should expand the discretions, I appreciate what you've said about not having sufficient resources to meet all the special elections that are coming forward now and there's no criteria to choose monk them.  I think we should work towards that in future but I'm prepared to support the amendment as its been explained and in doing so, a quick thank you to Kwame for his explanation today and at the small group meeting, last week, it was very helpful and I appreciate it.  Thanks.
>> You're welcome, I was happy to do it.
>> Should we put a motion on the floor?  I move to adopt the amendments as.ed.
>> Second.
>> All in favor, you could say a other aye.  Any opposed?
>> Thank you, any opposed, would you say nay?  Okay, hearing none opposed, the amendment to the methodology is hereby approved.  Thank you very much everyone for that.  Okay.
Next on the agenda, stuff we didn't get to last time.  We have community board training opportunities to and to give you an update on where we are with that.  So Andy, are you on the call.
>> Yeah, I'm on.
>> You want to share what we've been doing.
>> Good morning Commissioners, staff, happy new year, many blessings.  Just a quick run down, just want to update the body prior to the last time I updated the group was right after we completed the parliamentary workshop series back in October.  Since then we developed a really nice partnership with the office of administrative trial and hearing where they conducted two workshops on conflict resolution which was held back in November and the second was held back in December, early December.  We had a total of 117 community members attend those workshops.  It was an overall success.  Most of the booed members who attended were district managers and Chairs thought that the information that was shared by the facilitators they found to be extremely helpful and really looking at how to deal with conflict and manage con flick with their community board meetings.  So that's another series that we're looking to relaunch hopefully by early or mid spring.
For the new year we really want to focus on some of the first workshops really centered on land use.  We developed a number of partnerships with a number of groups that we're looking to do some trainings on land use.  From the needs assessment that we held back in ‑‑ the needs assessment report that we held back in the summer time, one of the biggest requests from district was that there be a basic understanding of land use.  So understanding from a manufacturing to residential and understanding FAR7 and how AMI is also conducted, or rather AMI is negotiated between the city.  So simple jargon is something that we're looking to have basic 101 on land use training.
The other piece that many district managers shared with us was a basic understanding of community land trust.  So we're looking to have a community land trust workshop hopefully some time around maybe, we're looking to see some time maybe around mid February to have those workshops ready.  We're very excited about those two partnerships that we have and really looking to get these workshops off and running in the next couple weeks for the community boards.
In terms of the parliamentary rules and procedures, we're having ongoing discussions with the parliamentary of New York, we have a number of workshops that we're discussing to have for the springtime as well.  So we have some really exciting good content coming down the pipeline for community boards and I will keep Commissioners abreast on those developments.  Any questions?
>> It's Jose, I want to thank you Andy and Sarah for helping me connect with my community board during the pandemic, I know you helped me reach out in October.  Unfortunately, I have not be able to attend any of their meetings, they have a sensitivity issue as far as accessibility.  They send a PDF that is a copy of a copy e that doesn't have any accessibility information in it.  They send out a string of 30 characters, I'm having technical difficulties with my camera, but I'm a person with physical disability with mobility issues and typing 30 characters is hard for ‑‑ going onto the training ‑‑
>> I can reach out to Cedric and find out if there's any way that we can help out with there Zoom meeting information.  It could be that, I know at that particular office they have an older group of staff members there, so they might not be the most tech savvy but I can reach out to Cedric and see if we can work on improving.
>> Since you mentioned the community board workshops maybe this is something that should be added within the 2021 workshop series, as far as sensitivity and accessibilities workshop.
>> That's a great idea.
>> We've also been sharing with them because they have guideline accessibility, we have shared and MLPV goes to the community boards an does if trainings and we can check on that and see how we can improve that.  So that is really great feedback.  Thank you Jose.
>> Thank you.
>> Andy, I'm just wondering, have you spoken to department of city planning in the Brooklyn office?
>> No, not particularly if Brooklyn office but we have by weekly check in with the department of city planning.  We have shared some of the concerns regarding their workshops and actually DCP is in the process of curating some of their workshops and improving.  So it is something that s we've heard from district managers as well.  So there is a unit within DCP that is looking to do their own zoning or introductory zoning workshops to community boards.
>> Okay, because I know the Brooklyn office does a really good workshop.  They have had some good participation in the past but it's also dropped off.  If we are going to engage in land uses issues on this commission as part of Civic Engagement to look to the L.A. county zoning and planning department, who does a lot of outreach to community members, so it's not just the community ‑‑ who need to be aware of the land use issues but the general public are often shut down in these meetings because they do not speak the language and it's hard for them to engage in the conversation because of that.  So if we're looking to do this, I would suggest that we also look at expanding all of the workshops that we're doing into a more public form, as well.
>> Absolutely, it's a very good point.
>> Thanks, I actually ‑‑ the first point I wanted to make was that it would be great to sort of draw from and I assume we are drawing from all of the sources of training.  Andy was just speaking about DCP in Brooklyn, in Manhattan it's borough's office, land 101 and 201, which is terrific in terms of contents and presentation.  So I guess my question, if there's a question in this, is to try to bring all these different things together and not to make it mandatory but rather offer some resources so you can pick the one that works best for you.
I wanted to pick up on Amy's point, which is brilliant.  That learning the language of land use and ‑‑ especially how what most normal humans would assume would be the case in terms of review or no review buildings is having this resource be available to folks who are next door neighbors whether or not they're on a community board is a really important focus and I thank Amy for that and would like to work on making sure that's part of what we do going forward.  So thanks for that.
>> That's a very good point.  One of the partnerships that we have so far that potentially will be delivering on community land trust, they do a lot of work with community residents throughout the city so we could piggyback with them and see how we could incorporate different groups to understand the importance of community land trust.  Community land trust is really starting to pick up in the City of New York.  My belief is 15 community land trusts are developing throw the city.  In terms of our advanced land use piece that we want to share with community board members, if this is something they would ever want to do in the nature it's available for them.
>> If I could follow up on that, the community land trust is a complicated effort, but it is at the heart of the most recent attempt to stabilize NYCHA.  So making sure that that is presented to NYCHA residents in a way that is sensitive to their ability to understand would be incredibly important, again picking up on Amy's point, there is a language and just like any other area with specialty, there are acronyms and abbreviations that people speak in that even turn into verbs and assume understanding when folks are surprised to learn, for example, that a 700‑foot tall building can go up without any discretionary approvals and the implications for NYCHA are particularly concerning to me.
>> That's really helpful feedback to expand our audience to members of the public for this work.  Annetta has been involved and a lot later Andy with FIA on the land trust piece, because they are working in the space and I noticed that Eve also put her name into the chat.
>> Hi.  Thanks for that piece, Andy, and I agree with Mark and Amy about the broader need for the public to understand land use terminology, zoning.  But aside from basic information about land use and zoning there's also a need for people to understand how to participate in decision situation making about land use changes, whether that's the uniform land use procedure or environmental review or Board of Appeals there's a few different ways to engage with that, has there been any thinking about training for that piece of it?
>> No.  We haven't really thought it out.  It's something for us to really flesh out and it could be a conversation starter also with the department of city planning especially when some of these public hearings are held and some of the BSA hearings are held usually during the day so that makes it harder for public participation to go into some of those hearings but it's something that we should discuss further.  If you have ideas or ‑‑ I'm all ears you can definitely reach out to me and we can discuss further.
>> I'm happy to do that, yeah, because I think presenting information about land use is very important, but it's important for people to know it's not static.  It's dynamic.  A lot of it proceeds without any public input and there are opportunities.
>> Thank you, Annetta.
>> I just wanted to chime in and say I really appreciate this conversation and I echo Eve's point, as well.  I think we are see communities in which we work, so many decisions happen all the time without community might bees awareness.  So there is is an emerging theme here around broader community education and I wanted to offer an echo of Sarah's point about work on land use and I would be happy to connect with you and share what we've been doing and how we could potentially collaborate.
>> Absolutely.
>> Amy mentioned a smaller working group around land use and trust, so she asked to be put on the list to participate in that.  If there's anyone else who would like to participate in these conversations.  Mark, Donna ‑‑ this is for land use, mark, Donna, Amy, Eve, and anyone else.
>> I would, as well.
>> Awesome.  I'll reach out to schedule another conversation with you all.  All right.  Anything else on the community board stuff?  If not we can go to the next item.  Andy, would you like to add anything here?
>> No.  Thank you for the opportunity.  Looking forward to working with the group and getting some ideas out there.  The next thing is the values framework.  Last time or actually the conversation on values started when we first met.  I remember even in the first I think maybe first second meeting we started identifying foundational values for civic engagement work and that civic trust and we were talking about building civic trust and the nature of public discourse today and how fragmented it is.  And that we need to find ways to have more respectful and restorative discussions on policy priorities and this conversation is so critical even right now as we're sitting here and everything that's happened in the last 24 hours in Washington, D.C., just being able to create a civic engagement that is ‑‑ that facilitates building bridges across divides and respectful conversation and sometimes what the breaking down the conversation is a profound disagreement on values an priorities.  What is the most urgent commitment that we all share as a community?  
This comes up in various public policy debates including health‑care coverage for example, is that, do we all agree that it's, everyone has a right to health‑care or is health‑care a privilege or an individual's responsibility to get health‑care.  And people often explicitly avid discussing values because of the potential for conflict because of values they hold dearly.  As a commission and the team and the staff builder it was important to create a values framework for our work.  And we also through this process want a model, a deliverative process where we discuss and share our personal values explicitly among ourselves.  
And the participatory budgeting advisory committee, a similar process we had shared with you before.  We have gone through several months of professional development training, we shared with you before.  For instance, when we did a training with the center for conflict resolution and C change corrective on grounded program design, I'm not sure if representative changes of C changes D change is on the call, but we started to talk about our values there and what are our personal values and how do these values show up in our roles at work and how do we take these personal values and turn them into our shared values?  
And going through that process we identified and narrowed down some core values that we would like to ground our work in and also not just grounding our work but hold ourselves accountable to the values.  If you could go to the next slide, those values and you got the slide, but the values include dignity, imaginative ways of working, dynamic learning, collaboration, accessibility and justice, manifesting community power, accountability and transparency.  And each of these values has a sentence that is accompanying its to define how we're using these terms and what we mean when we say those words.
>> What we did with this so far is shared these values with the language access committee and we gathered their feedback to get a reaction to these values whether they resonate and how they felt about committing to them, to partnering with us and so far most of the people who have filled this out have said these values resonate for them and they said yes.  That they would like to commit.  We also ask which values felt essential and relevant for them and whether they would edit the language describing the values.
We sent you an e‑mail that had a link to a survey for you to fill out similar questions and we want to encourage you to do that and ask you to do that actually by Monday so we can look at the results that everyone has or the feedback everyone has provided to see if we need to further develop the language in any way and I want to thank Yazmany who is our artist in residence.  
And we want to think about ways that we can develop visually appealing material and creative content around these values and integrate them into our social media website platforms and really it's moving towards thinking about what is a Civic Engagement Commission's identity, own our brand identity, and want to do that ahead of, as part of our new year initiatives and setting the stage for some of the work and the public artist in residency program as well as our community Engagement that we'll be doing.  
We will re‑send out the survey after the meeting.  And remind you all about completing the poll.  Does anyone want to say anything about the values?  There's no other slide after this on the values, is there, Francis?
>> No, this is it.
>> Okay, thank you.  The graphic is terrific, Eve said, yeah, it's beautiful.
>> I love the graphic and I was looking at it prior to the meeting and I'm trying to understand the use of colons on imaginative way of working and accessibility and justice.
>> It's me Yazmany, who built that graphic.  It's a little bit of a typo.  In the original where they set up that visual they had it connected.
>> Great.  They just need to come out like the others.  Then I was wondering about listening because we all the work with the public and with each other and everyone talks about, I have an opinion.  And it's about being heard and I think one of the skills that we all really need to practice is listening.  So any way, I don't want to add to the hive at the moment that you have but I just want to put that out there, I feel listening and the ability to listen is an important skill and that might not be a value.  So as I'm talking I'm talk myself out of it.
>> I think what you're saying is important and it might be worthwhile as you're completing the survey to look at the sentences that we put together to define some of these values and see if that can be integrated because listening and listening well and listening deeply and with respect is implied in some of these values and it can be pulled out further as we're defining what we mean.  These terms can mean different things to different people, so we want to make sure we have shared language that defines how we ass a CEC are using these terms.
>> This is Leslie.  I just wanted to affirm, Amy, what you were sharing in the statements for dignity as a team.  We had come up, that we would celebrate the inherent worth of all human beings by creating processes that center relationship buildings, intentional listening and care.  To your point, listening not to respond but listening not to respond but listening to hold and thinking about how we gather the intentionality, the ways that we make sure that there's inherent accessibility and thinking about how we invite people into spaces with us is one of the things we're thinking about as a team for a number of our public facing initiatives for this year.  
So I wanted to let you know that's certainly at the center and would love to hear other areas where you have thoughts about feedback.  We definitely want to make sure that it's ‑‑ we're anchoring the work in ways that resonate and feel like a living document for all of our stakeholders.
>> Thanks so much for that, Leslie.  And I also want to take a moment to highlight and acknowledge all the work that Leslie has done.  Not just with the values, importantly with the values, but staff development overall.  A lot of the training work we've done has been shepherded by Leslie.  So thank you so much for really spending so much time and thought and care in all of this work.
Mark had something to say.
>> Leslie said it better than I could have.  So that's fine.  Thanks.
>> Okay.  What is ‑‑ what we'd like you to ask you to do is the initial Survey feedback is requested by Monday.  So we'll resend that to you and we will take the feedback from you and the other committees and see if we need to further tweak this.  We'll share it out with you again and then try to move forward towards some of the establishment of a visual identity so we can be ready for public sharing.
Next on, oh, Holly, your hand is up, sorry I didn't see that.
>> I just wanted to piggyback off what Leslie was saying.  I think the term you were looking for is active listening.  That is something that social workers and chaplains alike use quite often.  It's a combination of talking and listening skills with a foe cuts on empathy for your fellow human being or the person that you're speaking to at that time.  I think that's the term that you were looking for assed you were describing the important of listening.
>> Thank you so much for that, Holly.  Change management.  There's good chat going on.  Would anyone else like to make a comment on the values at this point?  Lori.
>> Donna.  With Amy and Leslie's point about listening, I think having it in the description is fine but I think we also need to have, one of the bullets say listening, because dignity though it entails and in the sentence it says listening, actively, it doesn't really give an actual visual of listening because a lot of people feel that you're not really listening to them.  We're talking at them or to them but we don't really listen to them and I think that have listening as one of the, one of our goals shows that we are going into the community, getting information from communities and actively doing the work based on what the communities have said to us.  So I feel like listening ‑‑ Amy talked herself out of it but I feel like listening should be a bullet in there so that people know that we are hearing you.  We are listening to what you have to say.  Because part of what we are charged to do is help the community activate and be more civically engaged.  How do you engage someone without listening to what they have to say. 
 >> PROFESSOR:  That's a beautiful point.  One other way to think about it is some of these are two things like accessibility and justice, and accountability and transparency, so we can think about whether either adding a unique tile that says listening or possibly interpreter grating it into, I was thinking for example, listening and dynamic learning, for example.
>> The collaboration so that people really feel like their voices are being heard versus them making noise.  The times we live in now, a lot of people are demonstrating different energies and they don't usually become something that is productive in society because they often feel voice‑less and their voices go no where.  I think one way that we can respect people's participation is making sure they understand that they're going to become collaborators in change.
>> Thank you.  I have to say to my fellow Commissioners, I feel very heard and listened to on this point.  I think that adding active listening as Holly pointed out as its own hive piece is something to consider consider and it can go next to dynamic learning and visually you almost have an ear shaped pier which talks more about listening than speaking.
>> That was one more note.  I appreciate, Amy, what you said, I go back to Leslie's point about it being iterative and changing with us, to that I wonder, one of the things I really believe in that I thought about this identifying development within our agency, gosh, what is the projects that we invite our communities to be like, hey, is this the right word, how is it that we do that in community?  In my mind I am like, we're listening, how do we in the future, these are things that are changing and transforming and continuously aligned and it is something that we can invite others to participate in and build and change.
>> I don't know.  I guess through community forums and hearings, that's the only format that I see this body organized.
>> We can explore other opportunities particularly now in our virtual environment and Yazmany will talk more about what we're planning for the coming months.  I wanted to ask a question for Yazmany really.  When you were doing this graphic were you paying attention to the sheet.
>>Ty often pull from nature to work and envision things.  So honey bees is like a little bit about the way I think about work streams and there's so much more that we have in our democracy that goes far beyond what we're focusing on right now and it's important to make space for it to expand or minds to transform.
>> Well, I think it was Amy who said it almost looks like an ear.  You could have arranged it more like, like you could have put these words somewhere else.  I was just wondering if we could maybe thinking about that too, what is the shape that shows up.
>> Yes, absolutely.  Very intentional, but I'm really excited about hearing other ways of how we inform these elements.
>> I love the honeycomb.  It's just that the honeycomb itself may be arranged into a shape.  I think that's what Amy was saying, it looks almost like an ear, which I didn't see.  That's just something to think about.
Close up of DNA.  Reminiscent of DNA, that's what Mark said.  Yeah, that too.  If we are at time for public comment.
>> Did anyone sign up?
>> No, but we would like to open the floor now.  I think if, as people might be contemplating whether they would like to offer public comment, we can also use this last few minutes that are left of this meeting to just have Yazmany go through very quickly about the proposed project that he's working on because we.to do that last time as well and I was not paying good attention to the time.  So if you would like to make comment please raise your hand or text if you're on the phone.  In the meantime as we're waiting for you to let us know that you would like to make a comment.  Yazmany, could you please go through your proposed project quickly.
>> Yes, thank you so much.
>> One second, sorry.  Holly made a comment on the design of the values piece.
>> Thank you.  Background color is too dark.  Yes, we will definitely, someone who is legally blind it's difficult to differentiate the colors.  Thank you so much.
>> Thank you so much.  I appreciate that as well.
>> Moving to Yazmany's piece.
>> Thank you so much Francis.
>> Hi everybody.  Thank you so much.  Developing over the past five months now.  I found at the very beginning of my work with the agency there's three things, critical, the first thing is people don't know we exist.  I keep thinking about the notion that our people are our resource and it's incredibly important that we actually tell the story of who we are.  When I show up to show the work of the agency I realize we didn't have a storytelling tradition, so for me it's a critical aspect to think about the colorings and the way we present our story, invite people to join us.  Eventually I learned a lot along the way but as part of my learning had to do with language gets in the way of our work, participatory budgeting and when you get them to attend in New York City it's money and it gets complicated.  Our work needs to create a vocabulary that feels available and accessible to people, across all of the things we do.  The people's commission.  We're the only agency that deal with the trust in our democracy, and I think that's huge and important.  Trying to build a project that would stick within the parameter of the time I've been with the agency, I thought what about a mobile unit.  The yellow school bus, that is says mobile community center that allows us to meet people where they are, literally.  In my mind we can use this mobile unit to respond to the things that are with our youth, one of the things I have come up with, is that you have identified mental health as one of the most critical aspect of what they're dealing with right now, support mental health awareness, education, resources and the notion of creating dealing with the vaccine and as we're dealing with now, transforming that allows us to meet and go places.  I also think it's important to name that the Commission of Civic Engagement in the City of New York included in the notion that we should have the listening tour and the listening tour still has not happened.  Something that is on wheels that brings resources, information, activity, culture, to places that have been hurt by COVID is a way of saying here we are and we're here to partner with you, we're in the process of glowing, identifying who we are as an agency and connecting with the community.  
The bus could do the work of connecting the communities to each other.  And on the next slide, what I learned along the way was the City of New York doesn't control the yellow buses.  They're all privately contracted.  We manage the correction buses, transform and the way about how we transform resources towards the needs of our people.  I'm super excited, I've been having tops of meetings with cultural institution, with arts organizations, to me the bus can be a vehicle to activate the imagination and think about resilience and collect stories.  I think it's a playful joyful way of showing up to the communities we're.to be serving.  Right now we're trying to think where exactly is it going to come from, can it come from within the city, what is the quickest way to get these things to exist.  I'm really interested in making the bus transformation beautiful, in my mind I'm like, how does this activate community boards, support language access, all of the everything we've been talking about manifest and tangible in this moving unit on four wheels.  I look fortunate to hopefully getting your support and how to bring this to life.  We're in a critical point where we're hoping to have a pilot program this summer that lasts for five weeks that each borough is for a week each.  This is related to my thinking about borough halls where we identify those, their borough's values, how those borough halls can be concerts, how we invite people to participate in democracy in a way they're not used to to reinvent how they feel within the communities and customs, etcetera.  Thank you for listening.
>> Just two seconds.  I understand the city does not own the yellow school buses but in our community those correction buses are a bad thing.  So you might think maybe the school buses is not owned by the city but definitely the correctional buses would not be viewed as something good in black and brown communities where we have the highest rate of mass incarceration.
>> Can I Z you a question, in my mind I'm hoping to transform the bus, where it's painted and has a garden, my hope is to have the traps formation of the bus be the beauty and joy aspect of that work is important to me.  That's part of what I get excited about.  One of these buses transforming into a pink bus or rainbow bus, different ways of thinking about how something becomes something else, how is that interesting and compelling.
>> I actually like the idea because as we move from mass incarceration to a hopeful community, showing that the only thing we really control in this city, in this government is in incarceration in terms of transportation, showing and I think it's going to stake more work than putting plants on it, but showing a pathed from incarceration to a hopeful future by Civically engaging individuals to come up with solution to this social problem and it's so complicated but if we are a vehicle that can bring people to a safe space to talk about these issues and propose real reforms, recommendations, through policies that will help us drive the bus to the right place, I like the idea we're moving the damn bus.  But if that bus is staying what it is, I'm totally against it like my colleague just explained.  We are not to promote anything that is wrong or bad but I am for calling out what is wrong and bad and doing something about it.  So if that's the path you're moving towards I'm 100% in support.
>> I just wanted to chime in and Donna has been one of the folks who have continued fore mind us about the importance of having justice involved communities in young people in civic engagement.  And one of the ways if we can transform a department of corrections bus that will symbolize that kind of Engagement, just to independent great civic engagement and connect the dottle A. we are actually in conversation with Manhattan justice opportunities which is an organization that deals with alternatives to incarceration and integrating is Civic Engagement into the alternative planning that their clients go through.  So we're working with them on that.  So it does sort of connect a little bit in those ways.  We can keep talking about this.  We actually don't know if it's practically feasible right now to do that particular type of bus and transform it.  Donna your feedback is very helpful.
>> Thank you Donna.
>> I had the same reaction to the visual of if corrections bus and even talking about using a corrections bus may be one way Lilliam's point is a decommissioned bus.  You're not taking a corrections bus, you're taking something that used to be used.  Especially as we're on the road to closing Rikers.  Decommissioning these buses is something that MOKJ can look at as a way to build trust in with the communities.
>> I know that Yazmany, and I believe Francis and Leslie also have been part of the conversations on this.  I don't know if you want to add anything more here. 
>> This is Donna again.  If we use the buses, our message would have to be very clear.  in language that people understand.  Because like I said, we don't want to confuse people and we don't want to alienate our communities either, so the message would have to be spelled out in some kind of verbiage with the graphic.  Because if we're thinking ‑‑ I totally understand, Yazmany, and I totally agree with the transformation of this thing into something beautiful and useful and needed.  But if it's just a picture it does not convey the message that people can understand and first reaction is going to be, I believe, I don't know, but my first reaction was very against this and your message was totally lost to me.  So I think maybe we need to get a message out there and then show the visual which would help it move in that direction.
>> Yeah, Donna, a couple things I think will help your understanding, a couple critical things that we're really hoping that we're going to invite people to participate in the transformation of the bus, so it's a co‑creation with the communities and that involves the youth that I've been working with for the past five years, and inviting people to participate to participatory budgeting that we're developing but I'm also interested in sharing with the city the bus is coming and to ask people to invite us to meet them where they are.  So campaign, creation of the artist with the public engagement, we are making this reality together, where should we go, what park, what street, what festivals, what events, if the bus has WiFi and all of the languages of the City.  Ways that are dynamic and interesting and ways to participate when the bus shows up.  I had a really great conversation that is interested in bringing theatrical performances in the summer to communities that need it, and how do we bring people together to this manifestation.
>> Thank you. 
>> Donna, I really want to thank you for sharing that point about how even seeing the visual of the bus might not allow people to process what's coming right after the visual.  That's like a trigger, could be a trigger for communities and I think we've been also talking about if we're talking about joy and just a lot of civic engagement has been ‑‑ we need to have a restorative civic engagement and pay attention to people's hearts and how we create space where we're not, where we're building trust and not giving people another thing that is going to breakdown trust.  So just paying attention to emotions and people's reactions is very critical even for art as you know.  We've talked about this Yazmany.  So thank you for that important feedback, Donna.
>> Thank you.
>> And Eve is pointing out, make it an emissions free vehicle.
>> This is the hope and we're hoping to recycle something so we can get model recycling towards the future.  But there's challenges.  The reality of acquiring the bus internally means that we have to think through what vehicles are available.  Right now we have not confirmed that anything is available in the City and the procurement process would be at least a year‑and‑a‑half.  So one of the things I've been learning is as we build trust towards our democracy, I keep thinking about asking for help is a lack of trust in and of itself, if you all know people who have access to vehicles or resources let me know, we're in the space of activating it.
>> Has anyone texted you for comment?  I don't see anything in the chat so far.
>> No, they have not.
>> Okay.
>> Chairperson, I would like to go back to talking about one of the issues in terms of providing translation at some of the poll sites and one of issues being that we can't get into the building.  It would be a dual use for a bus or vehicle to Eve's point if it was emissions free, to provide a space for translators in such a location, this would be the mobile out door unit.
>> Interesting idea.  Thank you.  Would anyone like to add any other thoughts about Yazmany's idea and what we're trying to build out in the coming months?  I will take that as no further comment.  
Anyone that would like to have any additional discussion on community boards or poll site, anything else? 
>> It's Donna.  It's not related to anything that we've actually spoken of before but it is related to poll sites and voting and the fact that rank‑choice voting is coming to New York, which has come because it started January 1st 2021.  Are we going to be doing anything regarding the education of rank choice voting because I believe that that is confusing to some and it is coming and it's a civic engagement.  As a Civic Engagement Commission we should be thinking about how we're going to get that or how is that education being disseminated to the general public.  That's my only question.
>> I think ‑‑ thank you for raising that and I think what you're is ‑‑ it's going to be really critical for us as a Commission to get involved in that work.  And we've already been having a series of intra‑agency conversations around what that work will look like for the City.  And one of the concerns that I think we as city partners share, is what is the reach of these educational initiatives that will be taking place and we're looking to work with BOE, obviously, on making sure that our own interpreter training is going to reflect the changes to rank‑choice voting.  In addition to to talking to CFB to connect with a variety of city partners you can spread information about trainings and encourage folks to sign up for that.  Also public education media campaigns that will reach communities and we've specifically, react not ‑‑ we were asked by the Queens Borough President to put ‑‑ to help connect the training resources to that space.  So we will definitely play a role in that way of connecting the dots and people come to us with training requests and making sure those requests are filled.  
And in addition to that, we will be insuring and helping to insure that the materials that are created for rank‑choice voting are translated in the languages, beyond voting rights language.  We will make sure they have will translated materials in those languages, but not the ones that we're serving in addition to those and we'll make sure those translations happen.  And we're trying to see how it can happen is that, the census actually put down a really beautiful civic infrastructure, a very diverse civic infrastructure to make sure people filled out the census forms.  
So how do we tap into that or some of the rank‑choice voting work.  I've been talking to colleagues at the center in democracy for several months. We're hoping the private philanthropy sector will kick in and it's going to be necessary, Donna, as you said to reach a variety of people.  Also, if you hear of needs and opportunities and you think there's a space for CEC to get involved or even just to help connector people to training resources we can do that and welcome you to keep reaching out to us.  There is a train‑the‑trainer, so if people are interested in getting trained to do trainings, there's that option as well.
>> Sarah, just wondering should this commission host a public forum where folks can get a real presentation and questions answered about rank voting?
>> Yes.  The campaign finance board is actually hosting trainings right now.  There's opportunity to sign up.  We can share those, the dates with you, what we know so far from the website.  So develop the educational material and content.  So we would be working with them to help deliver the information.  I've also encouraged the staff, all of our team to go through the training ourselves because we need to learn it ourselves.
>> I think Mark would like to speak.
>> Yeah.  I think you've already covered it.  The point that I was going to introduce is that the first, we shouldn't overlook the first step of our participation and rank choice voting being, that because it is so confusing even to people who are deeply into the political processes that having our translators be part of the term rank choice voting is going, fluent in rank choice voting but ‑‑
>> Asked a question about what we'll be doing to help educate the community and I think as I mentioned we are working with the Queens Borough President leading up to the specials that are happening in Queens.  Yesterday, we talked with Brick Media to talk about community events so we would partner with agencies on events to promote greater awareness about rank choice voting.  Another space where CEC is going to be active is with the racial equity inclusion task force.  There will be work happening in the impact the areas that have been impacted by COVID, like with the highest rates and least access to testing and these are also areas in which we will be trying to make sure that rank choice voting education is happening.  
Daniel, thanks for putting information about the campaign finance board into the chat.  We'll make sure you have that in the e‑mail afterwards as well.
>> Rank vote NYC also has training and they have training for people who want to be trainers and they will also come out to organizations and train.  As a matter of fact, my community board had a training last night at our general board meeting.
>> That's great.
>> So that information is there, as well.  So as much information as we can get.  The campaign finance board's training, which is happening, which I attended, well, tomorrow.  No, later on tonight at 5:30 is the training.  Finance board.  So I think all this is really good and the information ‑‑ and actually, District 24, which is the one in Queens is the first test case with the BOI and campaign finance board.'s so they're going to be sending out information to Queens, as well, to the people in District 24.  So they will have the idea of what is going on and how it's going to work.  After that they're going to assess how it went and if they need to improve anything or to do more training.  So that was just a point.
>> Annetta, did you want to say something? 
>> I just want to say, I worry that the training community boards, especially for this upcoming election will not reach some of the hardest to reach folks.  I wonder if you're aware of any plans to work with religious institutions to provide training? 
>> That's a really good point.  We will continue to build that into the conversations that we're having.  They going to be have a very important partner.  So thanks for suggesting that.  I think we are almost at time.  So please continue to keep your suggestions coming and be in touch with us, as you see needs emerging.  
Before closing this meeting, I just wanted to acknowledge that I think the work of the Commission is going to be very very critical in the year ahead and I think the past 24 hours really underscored that for me.  The importance of our work together to fortify and regain the public's trust in government is going to be central to the vibrancy of our democracy locally and nationally, and even internationally.  So I want to thank you again for your service to the commission and I'm really excited about continuing to build on this work in the year ahead.  So with that I would like to hear a motion to adjourn the meeting.
>> So moved.
>> Thank you.  Motion to adjourn has been seconded and all in favor say Aye.
>> Any opposed say nay.  
Okay.  Thank you.  Be safe.