Special City Council Meeting June 9, 2026

0:00:06Okay, we'll tell them we're ready to begin when you are. Okay. The June 9th Special City Council meeting is called to order at 6.16 p.m. Will the City Clerk please call the roll?

0:00:20Mayor Kinto is absent tonight. Mayor Pro Tem Saltzman? Here. Councilmember Gutzanes? Here. Councilmember Mojiyama? Here. Councilmember Weisinger? Here. We have a quorum. Okay, would everyone please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, or a moment of silence?

0:00:36I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

0:00:54Okay, the next item is item 2A, the third public hearing on transition to district-based elections, presentation of initial draft maps, and sequence of elections. Can we please have the staff report?

0:01:10Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I'm going to begin the staff report for this hearing, as I have the previous ones. I'm also going to try moving the microphone a little bit farther away from me. Hopefully everyone's still able to hear me.

0:01:21As I have been doing at the previous meetings, I just wanted to, speak a little bit about why we're here for members of the public who have perhaps only just found out about this process and are coming here for the first time.

0:01:35I will attempt to do this in an abbreviated fashion, and I have skipped slides tonight in the interest of, of moving this item to the really substantive part of it.

0:01:45For the members of the public.

0:01:48This is not a process that was initiated by the City Council or by city staff.

0:01:54The city received a letter on March 17th, alleging that the city's city council elections,

0:02:04were subject to racially polarized voting, which under the California Voting Rights Act,

0:02:11if, if substantiated, would require the City Council to, move to district elections.

0:02:18The city retained its own statistician to evaluate the elections that had occurred in the last several years, and concluded that there is some statistical basis to conclude that there may have been racially polarized voting.

0:02:34But I think it's important for everyone to understand that this is, a statistical analysis.

0:02:41Based on the preferences of different voting blocs within El Cerrito, and not, something that is legally premised on the idea that there has been active, racial discrimination in the city's voting or election system.

0:02:59Under the California Voting Rights Act, there is what the statute refers to as a safe harbor process by which, a city that has received a demand letter can significantly mitigate its damages in terms of payout to the plaintiff

0:03:18By beginning a process to transition to district elections, and then completing that process.

0:03:24Many cities across California have attempted to litigate this issue, and there are still active cases as we speak. Thus far, no city has been successful, and every city that has been unsuccessful has been legally required to pay the attorney's fees for the plaintiff

0:03:43Which has been a significant amount of money.

0:03:47The demand letter in this case, was authored… was authored on behalf of a plaintiff who is a resident of the city, but who has not identified themselves. They remain anonymous to this point.

0:03:59Which they are not required to identify themselves, but they have initiated a process for a significant change in the community without, actually making themselves known to that community.

0:04:11The City Council has held several meetings on this issue, ultimately concluded to move forward with the districting process. It did consider the possibility of moving to ranked choice voting or another voting system.

0:04:24The issues that were identified with those options are that they are not part of the Safe Harbor provision, which means they are not a guarantee against, the potential payout of significant attorney's fees to a plaintiff.

0:04:37And also, the Registrar of Voters for Contra Costa County is not currently equipped to conduct those types of elections, but is equipped to conduct district-based elections, and therefore, El Cerrito would bear significant financial costs for implementing the systems necessary to conduct those alternative forms of elections.

0:04:56Ultimately, the City Council, opted to move forward with districting. It has already held two hearings on the matter. As part of the second hearing, the City Council, concluded to move forward with five districts.

0:05:12So each council member in the future would be elected from within a district, and,

0:05:20Also initiated the process for the public to be able to submit maps.

0:05:25Thus, as you will hear from Paul Mitchell, from Redistricting Partners, the demographer the city has retained to assist it with this process of drawing maps that are legally compliant.

0:05:36The public has an opportunity to present maps, and this will be the first opportunity for the City Council to consider those maps, plus the maps that Paul and his team have drawn for consideration.

0:05:50I do not… I think those conclude my remarks, and I'm happy to take any questions for Council before we move over to Paul's presentation.

0:05:58Any questions for our city attorney?

0:06:01The moon.

0:06:02move forward with the presentation. Thank you very much.

0:06:15for having me. My name's Paul Mitchell, I'm with Redistricting Partners, and we've, been working with you on public engagement and map creation as part of this process.

0:06:28This is our third public hearing, but it's actually my fifth time here, once virtual, once in person, as doing community outreach meetings. Our last community outreach meeting, we were here and we showed the district our online mapping tool and some paper mapping tools.

0:06:43So we've gotten through this process, a lot of public engagement, and I'm gonna go through some of what we've received.

0:06:51First off, I'm going to step back and talk about some of the basic things that those who have seen this presentation again and again and again are very familiar with, but for people who are tuning in the first time, it's important to kind of go over.

0:07:04The California Voting Rights Act is not some big, expansive Voting Rights Act like the Federal Voting Rights Act. It's very specific to this idea of city councils or school boards or water districts that have those at-large election systems. Voters know them because in some elections they vote for two, in some elections they vote for three.

0:07:24And what that means is that the entire city or agency as a whole is voting on those elected officials.

0:07:30the California Voting Rights Act doesn't allow those at-large election systems if there is evidence of racially polarized voting.

0:07:37And, what it allows in terms of transition is for agencies to opt into a safe harbor provision that allows for, them to transition in an easier way

0:07:52You know, if we were doing this a decade ago, you would have had to pay for an election.

0:07:56In order to transition, and now you can transition through ordinance.

0:08:02The way that we're going to draw these lines is going to be following the Fair Maps Act criteria.

0:08:09That includes things like districts need to be relatively equal-sized.

0:08:14Relatively equal size doesn't mean exact size, like a congressional district, it means within a 10% range, and it… in fact, your redistricting is relatively mathematically somewhat easy, because you have 26,000 residents exactly based on the adjusted census data from UC Berkeley.

0:08:31So each district is, on average, going to be 5,200 people.

0:08:35And so a 10% range is… 520.

0:08:39And so no district is going to be more than 500 people more than another district, and that's the way that we're going to calculate things being equally sized.

0:08:48Districts need to be contiguous, meaning they need to be whole parts.

0:08:51There is something we might get into that's the idea of something being literally contiguous versus functionally contiguous.

0:08:58Literally contiguous means that it's a whole thing. Like, scientifically, you would say this is one whole thing.

0:09:05Functionally contiguous means, yes, geographically, like, from outer space, it looks like a whole thing, but maybe you can't get from one side to the other.

0:09:14So it's contiguous in terms of, like, space, but it's not contiguous in terms of function.

0:09:20And so sometimes you'll have a redistricting where somebody draws a district, they say, this is contiguous.

0:09:25But it's on two sides of a… of a… of a freeway, or it's on two sides of a mountain range. And so, functionally, it's not really contiguous unless you, you know.

0:09:35have a helicopter to take you from one side to the other.

0:09:39We're gonna work a lot on maintaining communities of interest. This is really kind of the art form part of redistricting, and a community of interest should have three things. It should be something that you can name, like, we're the pickleball community of interest.

0:09:55It should be something that is geographically

0:09:58drawable, like, you can actually show where it is on the map, so if a group comes together and they're, science fiction nerds, they can't draw on a map. It's not like you've put them all in one part of the city, they're all over.

0:10:10And then the third thing is that it should relate to something that the Council takes action on, or has a purview over.

0:10:18So, somebody might come to the microphone and say, I went to all the school board redistricting meetings, and you haven't talked once about

0:10:25Curriculum at the high school.

0:10:28Well, that's… could be a community of interest.

0:10:31and a school district redistricting. There could be a part of town that really cares about workforce education, or agricultural education, or adult education, and it could be a community of interest in the school board redistricting, but it doesn't mean that it's automatically a community of interest here.

0:10:46So we want things, communities of interest, that relate to city governance, that are drawable, they're on a map, and that have some kind of a cohesive name.

0:10:55We also want districts that are easily understandable and follow natural boundaries.

0:11:01that's an interesting thing when we start getting into these maps, because there's some maps that I'll show you that are…

0:11:11compact shapes.

0:11:13But they might not be ones that the public looks at and says, oh, that makes sense. We really want to have the public see maps, when you're finally making a motion to adopt a final map, for the public to be able to see that and say, okay, that makes sense to me, that's what this city looks like to me, when you're breaking into five parts.

0:11:32And then we want districts to stay compact.

0:11:35Compactness in other redistrictings takes on all these mathematical formulas in California. Compactness is simply keeping nearby populations next to each other.

0:11:45If you're drawing a district, and you…

0:11:49Went from here, up the steepest street you've got, across a hillside, and then down to another urban center.

0:11:56You'd be bypassing a lot of nearby population to get that far away population, and that would mean that it's not compact.

0:12:06There are things that we, are gonna consider, like communities of interest, and things we're not gonna consider.

0:12:12The way that it's written in the law is that incumbents and candidates cannot be a community of interest.

0:12:17So if somebody walks up to this microphone and says, this is my address, I want to run for the city council, and so that's my community of interest, it's not. It's not something you can consider.

0:12:25You can't draw districts to advantage or disadvantage a political party.

0:12:29And then you have to hold a minimum set of hearings. You're actually holding two additional hearings in addition to those minimum hearings.

0:12:36And you need to do a lot of posting of these maps online, and that has been done. The city website is excellent. It has everything you need to engage by drawing a map electronically, doing a… printing out a map that you can draw on.

0:12:51Filling out a community of interest form, finding out about the hearings, seeing this presentation and all other presentations, all the PowerPoints, all that stuff is going to be up on the website.

0:13:02The online mapping tool is essentially how we got the draft maps that I'm going to show you today.

0:13:08We received, I think at the time that we were putting together the draft maps, I think it was at 27 draft maps, plus we got maps of communities of interest.

0:13:18So, like, a couple people drew what they felt were the hillside community of interest, you know? And there was a one that we drew at the request of the council, and staff, which was we drew the school attendance zones. So that could be seen as if somebody wanted to use that as a community of interest.

0:13:36So, that online mapping tool you can go on right now if you're watching this hearing, and you can draw maps. Another noteworthy thing is that

0:13:43We do have draft maps A, B, and C, which are the ones that we drew after all this discussion.

0:13:48I invite anybody to go in, open up draft map A, B, or C,

0:13:52Make whatever changes you want, and rename it, you know, Draft Map A John Smith.

0:13:58And it's the map that somebody else in the community did that derives from a draft map that we have and makes changes. If the council members

0:14:07as a part of seeing these maps, say, well, Paul, why didn't you do this or that? People online right now, while during the hearing, can be drawing that on the tool and be submitting it.

0:14:17So, there were dozens of maps drawn, and

0:14:22When we were looking at this, there were…

0:14:24Few communities of interest that came up repeatedly in the maps, kind of these patterns that we saw.

0:14:30The San Pablo corridor was a major one, and it's interesting because it is a, it is a distinct part of the city.

0:14:40And there might be questions as we go through this about, should all the districts touch that corridor?

0:14:47Because they all have an investment in it.

0:14:48Or should the corridor have more of a district of its own? And that is a debate that we have in redistricting. Largely, the state law leans towards the latter.

0:14:59To keep something that's that distinct as a community of interest.

0:15:03To one district, rather than trying to make an argument to split it into multiple, but that's part of the discussion we'll be having.

0:15:10Areas of downtown and urban density are areas where you have more tightly packed homes, although you do have tightly packed homes along the foothills, as well as in the downtown area.

0:15:20The high school… district attendance areas, Unified School, I think it is, areas.

0:15:28And then the hillside open space areas, as another community of interest.

0:15:35So we received a number of public submissions, and I'm just going to kind of go through these to show the variation that we saw in some of these maps. Like,

0:15:46here you see a map that definitely has, as we talked about these areas, the San Pablo corridor, the hillside, we can see this first one has a very hillside district, a very distinct San Pablo district.

0:16:00This one is, similar in that it has a hillside area, but the San Pablo area is essentially broken into two.

0:16:09again.

0:16:11very strong hillside in San Pablo. These are all just the public maps, we don't need to go through all of them. There is on the website, a summary of all of them, just to make sure that we know which ones meet the criteria.

0:16:22But these are all public maps, and I just like being able to click through them and show the variation.

0:16:28We get to some maps like this that are maybe not as… I… Likely to be considered.

0:16:37From the council, because while they're pretty.

0:16:40They might not really keep together communities of interest.

0:16:43Something like that.

0:16:45It's like artwork, but it might not be actually something that would be, easily understood by voters as to why I'm in this district or somebody else in another district. It wouldn't be compact.

0:16:54You have areas that are very far away with neighborhoods that are…

0:16:58Bypassing a lot of population to get there.

0:17:01And this is another one.

0:17:03In some ways, it makes logical sense, but it doesn't make redistricting sense, if you know what I mean.

0:17:12The draft maps that we've created,

0:17:16the first draft map, draft map A, the five and a half.

0:17:19Point, percentage population deviation, meaning the smallest district and largest district are five and a half points apart from each other.

0:17:27It's the one based on school district attendance areas, and if you're in the districter tool.

0:17:32You can actually open that map up, and in the layers section, you can click on school district attendance areas and see how this aligns and where it aligns and where it doesn't. It never aligns perfectly because we're having to meet population equality, but we did tailor it off of that.

0:17:49It does have relatively compact shapes.

0:17:52And it maintains the hillside area, although it isn't as completely maintained as in other maps.

0:18:01This is a kind of blow-up of it, and then the data table.

0:18:05I'm gonna take a little bit more time with this data table, because it's the first time we're kind of looking at it in whole, and I want to walk through what this data is.

0:18:15The first top part of the data table is the data from the 2020 Census, the… where people were sleeping.

0:18:21April 15th, 2020, total count adjusted for prison population. And when we say, how big is the district, Paul, that's where we look. This is the total population. You can see, the second line of this

0:18:35This graphic has the deviation, which means how high or low these districts are relative to the median.

0:18:43So, we're looking at 5,200 as a target population. You can see 58… 5184 plus 16 would be 5,200, and so that's how we're getting these numbers.

0:18:53The deviation is that difference from the median.

0:18:57And you can see the highest over-deviation is 3.3,

0:19:02And the lowest under-deviation is 2.2, and you add up the absolute values of those two, that's where you get 5.5.

0:19:10Now, when we look at the composition in the second table, this is the citizen voting age population. This is

0:19:15How dense are these districts in terms of

0:19:19Eligible voter population and the ethnicity of eligible voters.

0:19:23One thing that's noteworthy is that you do have a lot of…

0:19:28your ethnic population spread throughout the city, it isn't as concentrated as in other areas. There's no way to create, like, a majority-minority district of any ethnicity, because the population is relatively spread out. There are plenty of

0:19:42cities in the state that might be 20% Asian, and there's a 55%

0:19:47Asian population neighborhood in that city. That's just not the case here.

0:19:52So you can see down here that in the Latino citizen voting age population, the highest Latino citizen voting age population is 17 and a half.

0:20:00And the Asian voting age population, the highest Asian voting age population is this 28.6.

0:20:11Draft Map B is based on a public submission number 48.

0:20:17And I don't know if it's exactly the same, but it is very, very similar to District 40… to number 48.

0:20:23It has a 4% deviation, whereas the one in 48 had a 9.9% deviation. So there was a little bit of work done to make some small adjustments there.

0:20:36It has compact shapes. You can see that it doesn't have that San Pablo district that's long and not as compact. These districts are more compact.

0:20:45And this is something for the community more than for me, but to me, these seem like they could be easily understood, that you're going from one district to another, and where these lines of demarcation are.

0:20:57This is a bigger picture of the map.

0:21:01Online, by the way, if you go to the City Council website, you can click on a… on a… what's essentially like a Google Map version. It's a web-based map so that you can go in, you can search for an address, you can zoom in to individual streets to see where the boundaries are.

0:21:14Now, with this map, you can see these deviations at the top.

0:21:19minus 2.5… And a 1.5, so that's where we get the 4% deviation.

0:21:26And you can see down here, the highest percent Latino is, again, 17.4, and the highest percentage Asian citizen voting age population is this kind of tie between Districts 1 and 4, 27.2.

0:21:41The third draft, draft map C, is not exactly similar to any of the individual submissions, but kind of tries to blend some of the individual submissions together, to create a map that creates the Hillside District better than we have in

0:21:58The draft map A, I think.

0:22:03And, the San Pablo area.

0:22:07And tries to create compact shapes, tries to follow major streets, tries to create districts like that purple district that's more boxy and square. So it's, it's an attempt to draw a different version to consider.

0:22:31In terms of total population deviation, you can see this, plus 2.1 over here.

0:22:38There's a little overpopulated and minus 3.4.

0:22:41In terms of Latino citizen voting age population, we have a 20.1% in district number 5. In terms of Asian citizen voting age population, we have this District 1 in 28.7.

0:22:55This is where we are today. Tonight is the third public hearing. This is the first opportunity for you and the public to see the maps.

0:23:02I think the most important part of this process will be what follows my presentation, when the community comes up to respond to the maps.

0:23:09I would love it if the community came up and said, this map is awful, that map's great, my map's better. Any of that kind of input is really valuable. What I hope is that our maps show a range of different possibilities, and that you can also know that you can go into this treasure of all the other public maps

0:23:27Pluck any one of those out, and if you say, hey, Paul.

0:23:30we want map number 36 to be map D, and we want map 37 to be map E, and we're gonna get rid of map B,

0:23:39We can handle that, and we can get all those other maps presentable for the next hearing.

0:23:45If you say we like Map37, what I'll probably do is I'll create a… we'll either name it MapD, or I'll create a Map37 modified.

0:23:55Because I'm going to have to go into almost any of these publicly drawn maps and just clean them up a little bit. Census blocks that were missed, things like that. But when I do that, I don't want to suggest that my map is exactly their map. I won't number it the same, I'll just call it

0:24:08you know, I'll reference what map it was from. So, with that, I'm happy to take any questions, or just sit down and wait for the public discussion.

0:24:15Thank you. Are there any questions from the Council? We'll go to comments later.

0:24:20Go ahead. I have one question. You mentioned maps that were… you described them as art.

0:24:26If the city, hypothetically, were to adopt one of those, would that…

0:24:30Open us up to another lawsuit.

0:24:32If you adopted a map that the, we're in a situation where there are attorneys that have submitted a letter, and you're

0:24:40doing this… with… Not… they don't oversee it, but they are definitely aware of and watching this.

0:24:49If, as an example, you drew a map that they found did not meet the criteria of the Fair Maps Act, or did not comply with the goals of the California Voting Rights Act, they could

0:25:01take it to a court. And we have had instances where council members sought to do some things in the final adoption of a map that were

0:25:11Not consistent with the goals of the CBRA, and we had a court implement a map that was drawn by the attorney.

0:25:19So, that is the… that is the recourse, potentially, but we can probably get some attorney to say it better.

0:25:25the way I would say it is, the adoption of the maps is basically, the final step in the completion of the Safe Harbor process. Safe Harbor process. If the maps selected do not meet the technical

0:25:41qual… requirements of the CVRA, then the city is subject to an argument that it has not actually cured the alleged racially polarized voting that initiated the complaint in the first place.

0:25:57Any other Council questions before we open the public hearing? Oh, go ahead, Councilmember Motayama. Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. I have a…

0:26:06Question about the maps on the website. They have kind of a cutoff date of June 2nd. Is there… is that kind of the limit to the number of maps you're gonna… we're gonna accept on the website, or how does that work?

0:26:20So, the way that the law is written.

0:26:24You, should be reviewing maps that have been public for 7 days.

0:26:29What they don't want is create a scenario where, you know, you go to a coffee shop with your uncle, and he draws some maps, and you come in, you're like, voila, I have this perfect map.

0:26:37So, in order to make sure that the public has full awareness of what maps you're going to be looking at, that they're more prepared than you are, potentially, we want to make sure that the maps that we're discussing here are the ones that have been public for 7 days.

0:26:49If there's a map that,

0:26:52Somebody comes up and talks about, or that is posted that's more recent than 7 days, we'll be able to review that at the next hearing.

0:26:59I don't like to consider ever that we're having, you know, these deadlines in accepting public submissions. We can accept public submissions throughout the entire process. It's just that if somebody's submitting something, they should be cognizant of that requirement that you can't pass a map that hasn't been public 7 days.

0:27:15So if they want to come up two days before the final hearing with a new map, they are asking you to

0:27:21Extend and have another hearing to adopt it, because they… you could not adopt it if it was not public 7 days.

0:27:27Thank you.

0:27:29Okay, seeing no more council questions, the public hearing is now open. Now is the time for members of the public who wish to provide public comments on this item.

0:27:40Requests to speak can be submitted to the City Clerk by completing a speaker card using the raise hand feature on Zoom, or dialing star 9 if joining by phone.

0:27:50In-person requests will be taken first. Please remember to identify yourself and your City of Residence at the beginning of your comments. City Clerk, please proceed.

0:28:01Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. We currently have 4 requests to speak, so I'll start in person with Neil Tsutsui, followed by Michael Cohen.

0:28:15Good evening! My name is Neil Tsitsui, I live here in El Cerrito. I've lived here for 18 years, and my wife's family has actually lived here for 4 generations, so we have some deep roots in El Cerrito.

0:28:26First I want to thank you all for, taking on this big task on such a short timeline, and thank, also, redistricting partners for,

0:28:35putting together some great tools. It was a lot of fun to play around with the maps, and I did exactly as you described. I started with, some of… with the maps A, B, and C, and, tweaked them a little bit to sort of adjust for things that I thought were important communities of interest that had been overlooked. And so.

0:28:52I first want to just start and mention some of those communities of interest and potential improvements to those A, B, and C maps that, that I was hoping to see in a final map.

0:29:01The first is, on Map A, I noted that, There are,

0:29:07Oh, that this map fragments the rental communities in apartment complexes along the San Pablo corridor, into three different districts, actually. So I would like to see that community unified in a final map.

0:29:20In Map B, it's even worse in that respect. It has 4 different districts that the renters are split among, and the San Pablo corridor.

0:29:26And also, I wanted to note that that splits the Kensington Hilltop Elementary School Zone into three different districts, which is, something that was noted on Community of Interest Form Number 7. There was somebody who wanted to keep that school zone together.

0:29:40And then map number C splits the northern Mira Vista Elementary School zone sort of evenly between two different districts, and so, doesn't allow that parent community to be unified within one.

0:29:51And then, like Map A, it also splits the San Pablo Avenue renters into three different districts.

0:29:57And so,

0:29:59I had, like I said, lots of fun playing around with the map, and I generated Map 109, which falls into this category that we were just discussing. It came in after the June 2nd, cutoff, but hopefully that can be made public on the city webpage soon, and, will be public for 7 days before the next hearing.

0:30:18There are lots of great things about this map. Maybe I'm a little biased because I made the map, but one thing is that it has a population deviation of only 1.53, so much lower than draft maps A, B, and C, a very even population distribution across these maps.

0:30:33It has district boundaries that roughly map elementary school boundaries, but also trying to keep in place some of these other communities of interest that have been mentioned by a variety of forms that were submitted online.

0:30:48The west of I-80 community was mentioned on Form Number 3 as a community of interest, and that's now unified in this, map number 109 in District 2.

0:30:58The Albany and Kensington boundary issues were raised by a commenter online, and those are… those boundaries are now limited to two districts, number 4 and 5 in MAP 109.

0:31:13And then there is representation of the far northern population of El Cerrito in District 1 in Map 109, as mentioned by somebody on Form Number 8. So thank you so much for taking this on, and I look forward to seeing how this process plays out. Thank you for your comments.

0:31:28Our next speaker is Michael Cohen, followed by Richard Brooks.

0:31:38Hi, I'm Michael Cohen, an El Cerrito resident.

0:31:42I don't have a question on the maps. It's on process. Maybe somebody will answer this during this hearing.

0:31:48After the districts are chosen, how will it be decided which three districts get to vote?

0:31:56On their representative in 2028.

0:32:04Our next speaker is Richard Brooks, followed by Betsy Basher.

0:32:16Hello, my name is Richard Brooks. I haven't done a lot of public speaking, so give me a minute to maybe get a little settled.

0:32:21If I could talk to the camera room in the back, I'm gonna speak to this camera. I don't want to disrespect you all, but… Can you stay by the mic, though? Yeah, I'll stay right by here, perfect.

0:32:34So, while I have your attention, I would hope that if you have a phone in your pocket right now, please consider pulling it out.

0:32:41And doing a Google search for El Cerrito districts. At the top of the page, you will have two links to find our districting website that everyone here is talking about.

0:32:53I have a little bit of extra time, so I'd like to give you all just a minute, or not, I'm sorry, not a minute, a few seconds, just to take your time to pull out your phone and get that ready in your hands, so maybe you hear what I'm talking about.

0:33:06I'll go with the

0:33:14On that site, you can find a section called Communities of Interest. It's a very short form, there are only 4 sections, and it does not ask you to write too much. And I think if you enjoy a little bit of writing, it's actually kind of fun to write.

0:33:30I'd also say that on that site, you should take a look at the maps. They are underneath the community of interest section.

0:33:39I am doing this to encourage higher civic engagement here. My primary audience is the folks at home, and especially those of you in the audience today. I think you are the more engaged people able to attend here in person.

0:33:52If anyone needs help, completing this form.

0:33:57I'm gonna be available at the end. I enjoy helping people out with online forms. I know that's weird, but I used to help my grandparents doing that.

0:34:05I would encourage those of you that are also here in person to spread the word.

0:34:09on Twitter, Blue Sky, in person.

0:34:13Next door threads, but especially with your own neighbors and your local community.

0:34:18We have over 20… well, yeah, as I said, 26,000 people, and we have had barely 10 communities of interest submitted.

0:34:27And then if I get the last little plug here, if it comes to maps, I would like to propose that

0:34:32In my own biased opinion, that we consider 4 districts for the flats.

0:34:37And I like…

0:34:39maps, and if I had to choose a little lesser biased decision, I was still okay with the three districts for the flats.

0:34:46Because I believe those folks should have, a little bit more power.

0:34:50Thank you for your time.

0:34:52Thank you.

0:34:53Thank you. Our next speaker is Bitsy Basher.

0:35:01Hello, thank you to, Neil and all the other people who have looked so closely at the maps and tried to improve them.

0:35:11I just had 3 questions,

0:35:16I came in a little late, I hope you didn't say the answer already. I didn't understand what was the Hillside District.

0:35:23Are we talking about the hillside natural area, or are we talking about Something being on the hills.

0:35:30And is that to be considered a single district? I heard an interesting suggestion.

0:35:37It may not be as good as what's been mentioned before, but someone asked me, why not use the garbage collection zones? Because they are going to be equivalent, and they will be contiguous.

0:35:51And, a third question is.

0:35:54It was stated that there will not be any gerrymandering for incumbents.

0:36:00And, that was a very interesting process for Prop 50.

0:36:04Some people did get gerrymandered out of their district, so I'm just curious to know, with the new districts, each representative will have to live in the district that is drawn, and some may overlap with other current council members.

0:36:20So I don't know how this is, handled by the consultant, if they have any information on where the, current city council members live, or,

0:36:29How do we make sure that there is not incumbent gerrymandering? Thanks.

0:36:34Thank you. Our next speaker is Grant Ricketts.

0:36:45Hi, Grant Ricketts, I've lived in El Cerrito for a number of years, just getting caught up with this process, but it strikes me it's moving along in a direction I'm surprised,

0:36:55you know, how quickly… I know in my background with tech companies, we used to have these patent attorneys that used to go after frivolous patent lawsuits, and we called them patent trolls. And we'd fight back against them and send them back. And it seems to me a collection of cities could fight back against something like this, going after these voting rights trolls, who are essentially trying to cash in on a quick paycheck.

0:37:14By harassing cities, so that's just food for thought. I thought I heard, which I hadn't seen online, that there has been an individual that's, helped bring this information, this motion forward to the city, unnamed, and, I guess my question is.

0:37:30Who has been harmed and why? And if it's going to bring so much effort on part of the city to address it, then can we have the identity of the individual who's bringing this?

0:37:39I think that's fair to know. We have to identify ourselves when we speak up in public.

0:37:44So I think I'd bring that up.

0:37:46I was surprised how quickly a city like El Cerrito would actually,

0:37:52concede to a, I guess, a Trump-oriented voting rights troll, demand. I think the city should fight back, maybe organize with other cities to… to

0:38:03File litigation against these attorneys and have them burden the cost of defending themselves.

0:38:08Leaving it at that, and to the current issue at hand.

0:38:11My one comment was on map A, B, and C. It seems to be a San Pablo corridor.

0:38:18should be maybe split in two, as opposed to one contiguous district. That would probably provide too much concentration into one, community of interest, if you will, so I think that's a concentration that should be selected. I thought B, represented a more logical,

0:38:34connection of districts for the City of El Cerrito.

0:38:37So, I'll leave my comments at that, but I would like to have a response at some point about who's brought their claim, and why, and what they've been wronged by, and how we might address that. Thank you.

0:38:48Thank you. Our next speaker is Rebecca Kenney.

0:38:56Hi, my name is Rebecca Kenney. I live in that weird little bit of El Cerrito that's the southern section that is west of San Pablo. So every draft map that I have seen here and every map that I've tried to draw ends up with me in some

0:39:10weird configuration where it's, like, either I'm connected to Kensington, or I'm connected to the far north of the city, so… but that's, you know…

0:39:19This going to be a thing for all of us?

0:39:23my biggest concern is that, it seems like since this process has had to happen so incredibly fast, which I know is out of the control of the Council, a lot of people just simply haven't heard about this, and so a lot of people in our city don't even know that this is happening, and so this is going to spring up and surprise people.

0:39:42people before the 2028 election, and they're going to go, wait, what is this about districts? Or they might not even realize. I've been doing a lot of canvassing for the primary, and I've run into people who just sort of

0:39:53just sort of are like, oh, well, I'm gonna vote based on, like, what signs I've seen around, and so there are a lot of people who are like, I'm going to vote based on, like, what mailers I've gotten, and so there are a lot of people who just simply

0:40:05have not been hearing about what's been happening politically around them, and so I hope that the Council can do everything it can to communicate to people

0:40:14If not before the end of the process, since that's very, very soon, at least, like.

0:40:19Well before the 2028 election, so that people are aware that this change has happened, and understand what has happened and why, and also

0:40:27possibly know more so that they can pitch in in the future, and if something like this happens in the future, hopefully do more aggressive outreach beyond just, like, a handful of community events, although I know it was a short time frame, so there was not as much that could be done. Thank you.

0:40:43Thank you. And just one final call, if there's any virtual requests to speak, now would be the time to raise your hand.

0:40:54Mayor, that concludes our request to speak.

0:40:56Okay, do I have a motion to close the public hearing? I'll move.

0:41:01Second.

0:41:03We have a motion and a second,

0:41:07Do we need to call, or just… All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed?

0:41:12Any abstentions? Motion carries with Mayor Kinto absent.

0:41:16Okay, I know normally we don't, you know, do a back and forth with the public, but considering there still is a lot of questions about this, I'm hoping, one of you two can answer some of the questions that have come up, specifically about, you know, the gerrymandering issue, the…

0:41:33Do we have to do this, or can we fight it? The why is there a short timeline? The… how do we decide the sequencing? All those questions that came up, any that you could answer, I think would be great before we go into Council discussion.

0:41:46Well, I'll start with the two, the gerrymandering and the sequencing, and then…

0:41:52So, first off, I don't know where any of you live. I don't know anybody's address. So, and I don't want to know anybody's address. I make that a rule when we do redistricting, that I don't know where council members or elected officials live, because I don't want to be in a position where I'm having to

0:42:06you know, refute whether or not I drew a district to advantage or disadvantage a council member.

0:42:11So, on the sequencing, it's in the city's report the staff report.

0:42:19What we do in these redistrictings is, in order to make it clear that we're going to have to have a sequencing process, we start off saying that the odd-numbered districts

0:42:31will come up in the next… the first election these are used in, in 2028.

0:42:37And then the even-numbered districts would be in the 2030 elections. So when there's 3 districts up, we use the odd numbers. When there's 2 districts up, we use the even numbers.

0:42:47What's gonna happen is…

0:42:50That we're gonna use this as a proposed sequencing number just to keep all 27 maps

0:42:55To keep the process kind of sane, so we're not going through every map and trying to come up with a different sequencing number for all of them.

0:43:01But… when we actually adopt a map, let's say you adopt map F,

0:43:07We adopt Map F, we adopt that without any awareness of where any of the council members live, we're not doing it for the purposes of where people are living.

0:43:15Once you have come to agreement that that's the map you're going to adopt, then we will.

0:43:20open up, everybody sees everybody's cards, we all know where everybody lives then, and you start to discuss, like, I live in district number 4, I'm the only one that lives in district number 4, my seat is up in 2030, so I want it to be even.

0:43:32And somebody else is, well, you know, we're all… you figure out what makes most sense.

0:43:37Now, there are circumstances in which two council members, or three council members, or four, or all of you, would be drawn into a single district.

0:43:46And at that point, it becomes a decision of the Council as to how you can get a majority vote for one of the sequencing options.

0:43:53Because what can happen is that if… if Holly and I are in… drawn into the district… into a district.

0:44:02And Holly's up in 2030, and I'm up in 2028.

0:44:08Well, if we make the districts odd.

0:44:10I'm happy, because I'm up in 2028, and that's my election year, and Holly would have to run for my… for election in 2028, even though her term goes all the 2030.

0:44:23If we moved it to 2030, then I would be sad.

0:44:27we would have a district that I… my term expires in 2028, and it's not up for re-election until 2030.

0:44:35And I would have to sit off the council for 2 years until… and then run in 2030 for my seat again.

0:44:41And so there's that process of figuring that out.

0:44:45One thing to note is no matter how you number the districts, nobody's going to lose a seat.

0:44:49Because the numbering was changed. Everybody's gonna fulfill the term that they were elected to.

0:44:56In 2028, you're gonna elect 3 people to council under the new district lines.

0:45:00And for 2029 and 2030, you're going to have a hybrid election system.

0:45:05Where you'll have 3 council members who are elected in districts, and 2 council members who are elected at large.

0:45:10And then in 2030, the remaining two will be elected in districts, and from there on, all the council members are elected in districts. So it is a process where you're electing… you're going to the system.

0:45:21Where you're going to be implementing this process over the course of two election cycles, and you will get to choose which number districts, or which districts come up in which election cycles. And we'll just literally just change the numbers.

0:45:35Just one more question on that. The vote on the… which map we decide and the sequencing, is that all in one meeting? It would be all… usually it's done as two ordinances in one meeting. Okay.

0:45:47I have seen other options where they'll have two ordinances prepared.

0:45:51One for one sequencing option, one for the other sequencing option, and you just choose which one you want to adopt. Something like that.

0:45:57Do you have another ques? Go ahead.

0:46:00In your experience, have you…

0:46:02Done these sorts of maps with a city that has chosen not to have sequencing?

0:46:07And the reason I ask, I can anticipate a little bit of confusion. Right now, we all go vote the same day for everybody, but if I… if I vote this year, and my neighbor down the street, whoever votes in two years, you know, there's a little bit of confusion about who's voting when. And I just wonder… I wonder about

0:46:24you know.

0:46:26whether it's a good idea. I don't think there are any cities in California where they have all their elections

0:46:33And then four years later, they have another election, if that's what you're saying. Like, everybody would be up in 2028, and then the remainder would be… then you'd have your next election in 2032, and everybody's under a four-year cycle. I don't think any cities or local municipalities in California do that, so that might not be something that's allowed in the

0:46:49And the election law, it might be something you have to look up. Oddly, New York City does it once a decade.

0:46:55The year, before the redistricting every decade, or the year after the redistricting every decade, they have all the seats up.

0:47:02So, if you're running for City Council in New York in 2030, you'd be running for a two-year term, because all the terms expire in 2032.

0:47:11I mean, to that point, it seems like every 10 years, we're gonna have sort of this…

0:47:16Issue about where people live, and what…

0:47:18Every 10 years, you're gonna have a redistricting.

0:47:21And the way the state law used to work.

0:47:25is that you could look at your population and say, oh, we're still under 10% deviation, and literally send a letter to the county registrar saying we're going to keep our lines. Can't do that anymore. You literally have to have the five hearings, you have to go through the whole process, you have to start by looking at communities of interest.

0:47:40The existing lines cannot be a community of interest.

0:47:43So, you might end up with something really similar to the existing lines, but you can't say.

0:47:48well, I want this plane because it's existing lines. It's not part of the… criteria.

0:47:53So, but conceivably, every 10 years, someone is shut… someone's term could be limited to 2 years.

0:48:01Every, yeah, every redistricting cycle, you could have a situation where you're nesting council members together, and where somebody

0:48:10Okay. How's that happened?

0:48:13And then, Sky, would you address the other issues? And I know some of it's repetitive of what you said earlier, but some people came in, I think it's important for everybody to have the same understanding. Absolutely, and some of it will be a little bit repetitive, but some of it is, points that were in earlier versions of my intro that I cut out for tonight.

0:48:31Part of the safe harbor, process that we've, talked about, says that, the Council must approve a map within 90 days of adopting its resolution of intention to move to district elections.

0:48:46That can be extended with the agreement of the plaintiff, the potential plaintiff who, has made the demand to the city to change the district elections.

0:48:59But it requires agreement on their part.

0:49:02We talked with the attorney representing the resident who, sent the demand letter, and his client was unwilling to grant any extensions.

0:49:12We pointed out how many other issues were occurring this summer, including the June election.

0:49:19We pointed out that this would, cause confusion for people, because we would be talking about council elections right before council elections, started.

0:49:30the attorney basically said that his client was indifferent to all of those things, and would only agree to, would not agree to any extensions. And so, as a risk… as part of the risk mitigation

0:49:44calculus that the Council, considered. Council decided to move forward and stay within the 90-day time frame, to avoid a potential, filing of a lawsuit solely on a failure to complete the process within

0:49:59the, Safe Harbor timeline, even though Council had committed to changing to districts by the adoption of the resolution of Intention.

0:50:08There is… the way that this process goes, it is very difficult for cities to combine effort to defend against one of these lawsuits.

0:50:19The way that the attorneys, work is that they don't tend to have a significant number of cases going simultaneously.

0:50:29And so, as a result, it makes it very challenging for cities to… because, so, as a result.

0:50:35Only a small number of cities are going through this process at one time, and so it becomes challenging to combine efforts to defend and also

0:50:44The cases themselves are fact-based, and so it would be very difficult for two cities with very different factual situations to combine their efforts to defend against this.

0:50:57I think there might have been one other issue, but I'm potentially forgetting it that came up in questions about these things, and if one of the council members recalls, I'd be happy to address it.

0:51:09Oh, yes. There is no requirement. There's no requirement that they identify themselves. They can remain anonymous, and in most cases, they do. If the city had,

0:51:22and the city council had said they were not going to do it, and forced the lawsuit to be filed, then somebody would have to have their name, placed on the papers as the plaintiff. They cannot be anonymous in that regard.

0:51:35But that would have potentially increased the cost to the city, because at that point, the complaint has to be filed, and the law firm then starts incurring real costs that the city would very likely have to reimburse them for.

0:51:54You know, we're… we're not…

0:51:56maybe we can talk offline after, but I just don't want a big back and forth during the hearing. We can make sure that your questions get answered, and people should continue to submit questions to the City throughout this process, or come to the hearings, because we do want to make sure everything is answered.

0:52:13So I'll go to Council comments now. Does anybody want to start? Councilmember Weisinger.

0:52:19And my comment is very quick, and I want to thank you, Neil, for what you raised, because you raised the exact concern that I had.

0:52:26And that it seems that the map breaks up San Pablo according to where they cross over into 80, which for individuals who don't really know the city, that probably kind of makes sense. You cross it over at Tedding.

0:52:40you cross it over at Potrero, but Neil is correct, that does actually disempower the, renter's community. So if there was any one change that I would like to see to the map that we eventually land on, I want to make sure that's a very, very

0:52:55Powerful community, a community that's probably gonna have a lot of our, low-income

0:53:02our BIPOC community on the other side of the freeway, that Petrero side that actually does have a lot of our long-time

0:53:11POC communities in that area. So, I think that splitting that up, it probably doesn't necessarily rise all the way to the level of a community of interest, but I think if you were to actually look at it closer, you would find that it definitely does. So I want to thank you, Neil, because that was really my only comment about the three maps.

0:53:30We can,

0:53:32Provide for the city a map of data on where renters live, so that we can, use that to draw a community of interest in the districting tool, and then show an overlay in the district or tool of where the district or tool… where the districts split or keep that together.

0:53:52Have you looked at that so far?

0:53:54I have looked at it, and I… and when the comment was made, I thought it was a perfect comment to… to reconsider how that community of interest is affected by the…

0:54:03By the maps. I was looking… we looked more at the density, but I think the housing type is also very important. Yeah, and I mean, to be clear, there are renters throughout the city, including in the hills and all over. Obviously, there's more density of renters in some places, but it's not like all the single-family homes are occupied by people… by the owners, so…

0:54:22just… I think until we see that data, we don't really know.

0:54:26Yeah, we can probably map the multifamily, housing.

0:54:34Other comments? Councilmember Motuyama? Thank you.

0:54:39I know that there was the number of different communities of interest, and some of them seemed very hard to map, like seniors.

0:54:48And new homeowners, on that list. And… but if you can map all the renters, can you then map all the new homeowners? Are there clusters of seniors in any of the districts?

0:55:01That we should be aware of? We can definitely look and see if there's anything, where we map people's age and overlay it to see if there is something there that really pops.

0:55:14With… we do have data on homeowner versus renter. There's two different data sources. One would be, we have access to the U.S. Census data that looks at the…

0:55:26percentage renter, but oftentimes, it'll be done at a big census tract level, and it kind of muddies the story a little bit. We also have voter data, where we have the voters appended to the county assessor file.

0:55:40And the county assessor file shows whether that's a renter or homeowner, it shows the housing type, whether it's multifamily or a single-family home. And so we can use that as another way to supplement that, and kind of provide that, before the next chairing, something that can be put up on the website.

0:55:58Thank you.

0:56:00Do you have anything, Councilmember Katzanas?

0:56:03Thank you, this has all been really helpful, and the thing that this process has shown me the most is…

0:56:10this doesn't make any sense, because, I mean, if I think about, like, my own communities of interest, they're really throughout the city. I mean, I… my community of interest is like parents of young children, because I have a young child, and so that's who we hang out with and who we help each other out with today. You know, there's no aftercare this week, so our friend on the totally opposite side of the city was helping out with my kids. So, I don't know, it's… it's very arbitrary in a small city like this.

0:56:35actually all depend on each other. It's not just, like, the person living next door.

0:56:40So that is what it is. We still are in this process.

0:56:43I think looking at the rental data will make a lot of sense. The other thing I wanted to look more closely at, and I think you'll need some assistance from our city staff, and maybe you've already had these discussions.

0:56:56But we have some housing, not, like, one single-family home, but multi-family housing that's already gone in since the last census numbers.

0:57:05and other housing under construction, or imminently under construction. And I think it would be important… I know that's not something we can consider, we still need the deviation under the current numbers.

0:57:16But I want to be careful, so for example, and I'm just looking at the numbers in Plan A, if you look at, districts 1 and 3 on here, which just happen to be where most of the housing, multi-family housing has been built, or is being built right now.

0:57:32Those have, in this plan, the highest, you know, some of the highest numbers of population. So that means we're going to have to make a really big change come 2032.

0:57:44That might be what it is, but we know where the housing has gone and where it's going, so should we consider that? And we still need to stay within the deviation, but should we make those districts a little bit smaller at the outset, so we have fewer changes and less disruption coming in 2032?

0:58:03What I would suggest is that that kind of forward thinking about potential new housing can be kind of the very, very, very last, like, criteria. It's not one of the listed criteria, but it could be something that you get… it's like a tiebreaker kind of situation. The challenge is this, that

0:58:20We as human beings can be really bad at judging

0:58:25numbers sometimes like this, because it's the visible that we place a lot of priority on. So, like, in the city of Davis, they had this agricultural area that they annexed, and they were putting housing in it, and they said, we're going to have so much housing there, we need to make sure that we adjust the district lines when we do it. That was when we did their initial conversion to districts.

0:58:43Three years later, I'm back there drawing districts with the new census data. It was South Davis that grew more than North Davis, because there was greater density. But as humans, we drive through and we see the apartment buildings, or we see whatever, we can't tell

0:58:56that in this part of town, instead of, you know, 2.1 people per household, it's 2.2 people per household, and the density is graded at different population. So.

0:59:05We end up, when we do that, favoring the population growth that we can see.

0:59:10And so sometimes, even if you try to do that, you're not necessarily gonna get it right, so sometimes it's, you know, it's…

0:59:17Unless it's really dramatic. Yeah, I mean, I think the difference here is a lot of that housing's already been built, or is being built now, so it's not like, maybe it will get built in the next few years, like, it's already here. Like, the Mayfair development, those units are already there, most of them are occupied. The 70 units that are being built right now at

0:59:36Plaza Bart.

0:59:37their affordable housing, they'll get occupied immediately. We know that, and we know about how many people they'll hold. So, I think it would just be worth talking to our staff and figuring out, again, not trying to make them the lowest, but making sure they're not, you know, have the most… the highest deviation going up, because we're going to be then in a situation… Again, we have so few people in each district that these numbers actually do make a difference. A bigger city.

1:00:02probably wouldn't make the same differences here. You can, in the community of interest tool, anybody from the public can go in, they can put a point of interest, there's a little

1:00:11Click or put a little dot there, and then they could name that by the name of the housing unit, maybe the approximate house, the number of residents that approximately the city thinks is going to be moving in there, so that when you look at a map, you could overlay that and see

1:00:23oh, we've put these three units in the same district versus we've spread these out among multiple districts. I guess I'm asking somebody in the public to do that, because, of course, they've asked council members not to submit maps, which I think is the right thing to do. But that's why I think maybe talking to our staff would be good if nobody from the public goes ahead and does that, because we have that information.

1:00:46Any other comments? And I don't know, we have here that we could have a motion for direction, but I don't know that we had specific enough direction to have a motion. Go ahead. I have a question. I did not know, and I have not done it, but I did not know that we were not to set maps ourselves.

1:01:00I didn't remember that.

1:01:02That… not supposed to draw maps yourselves. The…

1:01:07The general rule would be that if council members were to draw maps, they wouldn't draw maps until after this hearing, because not supposed to put pen to paper until after the public has had an opportunity to see the maps.

1:01:18And if you do end up drawing maps that you clearly designate that you drew the map, versus drawing a map and making it seem like it's anonymous, because you do allow anonymous submission of maps.

1:01:30And, it can be confusing or create

1:01:36you know, concern if a council member or staff members are drawing maps and not making it clear that that's who they are when they're doing them. Because on the tool, you can't put your name, and you can put comments. It's a voluntary thing, but you can do that.

1:01:50Would it be best practice not to do that?

1:01:53It could be… it could go both ways. In some ways, if a council member wanted to play with the tool just to see how it works, so that they can inform the public about how easy it is, that's great, but I think it would probably be best for council members, not themselves, to draw maps. If you… there is something you really want to see drawn at the next hearing, we can bring up the mapping tool, and I can draw it.

1:02:13We can communicate directly, and you can say, why don't you move this here and that there, and we can do it all in a public hearing. That way, it's all out in the public. Yeah, that's what I was going to add, is that this is the opportunity for the Council to provide input on the maps. I think that it'd be…

1:02:27more transparent for the public if Council did that during the hearing, so that they would actually see the Council's comments in real time, and the direction given, and what that looks like.

1:02:36as Paul said, there's nothing that legally prohibits it, we just ask that you do identify yourself if you do… if you do submit a map, into the… through the portal. Okay, thank you.

1:02:48Other comments, Councilmember Montyama? Yeah. So, I think that there's so many maps that are very similar, with very minor

1:02:57differences? I mean, are we at some point, supposed to go through every single one of these maps and say a little bit of this and a little of that, or are we supposed to sort of hew to the A, B, and C and see if people

1:03:11modify those. I mean, how… this is kind of a very detailed process, and we only have two more meetings for us. So, kind of, how do you see us moving forward to select a map?

1:03:25Well, so first off, the input that we received from the Council about maybe looking again at the renter apartment density and seeing if there's something that can be done to modify A, B, or C, we might, just from that discussion, create a modified version of one of these maps that we've done, A, B, or C.

1:03:43Also, as you're hearing from the public, you already had one member of the public come up and name a map that they think is better than one of our draft maps. That's great. At this hearing, or at the next hearing, if people are doing that, then that's very valuable.

1:03:57if you were to look at these maps and say, you know, I really like draft map 70,

1:04:03like, I want to really dive into that. We could dive into that. But we could also,

1:04:11you know.

1:04:12come back at the next hearing and make that one of the maps that I give a more formal presentation on.

1:04:18All these are valuable ways to give input. There's no, like, absolutely 100%, you have to do it this one particular way. Well, that's the input. How do we decide?

1:04:27Well, what's gonna happen is this.

1:04:29Well, the way I like to think of it is you're expanding your number of maps, and then you're contracting down to one that you can adopt.

1:04:36The goal would be to, take in these maps, take in this public comment. Already, we've got potentially one modification of maps that we'll work on.

1:04:46And at the next hearing, we'll look at the maps that have been considered, and you'll start to narrow it down. Try to narrow it down to one or two maps that you really want to consider and move to the final hearing.

1:04:58Great, thank you.

1:05:00And I just add, as Paul mentioned in answer to another question, he can bring up the mapping tool live as part of… as part of Council's deliberations and show what it looks like to move lines. And so, if we… once Council has sort of moved through a process of

1:05:15narrowing from all of the maps, maybe to one map as the base for decision, and then looking at what some minor modifications of the lines would look like. We can go step-by-step through the process that way. Thank you.

1:05:28Are you hoping to hear from us tonight, like, what map we're leaning towards? I don't know that anybody is, but is that the hope, or you feel okay with the feedback you've gotten to kind of move forward? I think we're okay with the feedback we've gotten. Sometimes…

1:05:43the community starts to organize around one particular map, and they'll come up, and everybody likes map B, or something like that.

1:05:49But other times, we just get input like we received tonight. And I think that that's probably sufficient.

1:05:56Great. Any other further comments or questions?

1:06:01Okay, if not, it doesn't look like we need a motion to provide direction, and that was our only item, so we're now gonna adjourn the meeting at 722.