these maintain some form of physical distancing this meeting is for council members to review and discuss important issues projects and future council meeting agenda items this meeting is a work-study session only and allows the city council to hear input from city staff no action will be taken at this meeting and there will be no opportunity to provide public comment thank you for joining our glendale city council workshop [Music] all right good afternoon welcome glendale city council workshop session of august 24 2021 the meeting is called order we do have all of our council present so we're not going to do a roll call miss bauer you've got the floor all right redistricting discussion good afternoon mayor council today we kick off the redus districting process the city charter requires that the six council districts contain a substantially equal population in each district and section 15-2 the city code requires council to redistrict once every 10 years based on the u.s decennial census census data was not released until august 12 which is substantially later than the normal march release the city must submit a council adopted plan to maricopa county by december 15 2021. because of the late release of the census data the time frame for the redistricting process has been severely compressed today we are seeking council direction on redistricting criteria i've provided the 2011 criteria that was adopted and as you'll see from the presentation it's pretty standard criteria we need direction on the number of community workshops to be held or public meetings the public mapping options and then the number of council workshops where council would like to discuss the the proposed maps so right now i'll turn it over to douglas johnson and ivy beller sikanski our national demographics corporation team for the presentation before you get started i'd ask both of you when you do speak speak into your microphone hold it up lip level and speak clearly it's uh it's difficult to hear sometimes you got the floor good sounds good thank you mayor thank you julie um as you mentioned my name is doug johnson i'm the president of national demographics corporation and very happy to be back here again uh it's been our firm's uh blessing to be able to work with the city a number of times now and we always find it interesting and fun to be out here in small trivia i actually live in glendale california so it's it always trips up my wife when i tell her i'm here and she doesn't see me at the house so good to see you all again again i'm doug johnson and this is ivy and she's going to kick us off with starting about the schedule good afternoon it's nice to see you all glad to be here the schedule as julie had mentioned is extremely compressed this cycle normally we would get our u.s census data the last day in march the 31st but because of covid this year it did get delayed five and a half months and we finally received it on august 12th just two weeks ago so in terms of our of your schedule for throughout this process in september there will be community workshops and we are looking for guidance on how many of those workshops and the purpose will be to solicit input into the map redrawing process and the and the various criterium that you're i assume you are familiar with or we will help you get familiar with in november we had envisioned potential council deliberations on november 9th and on november 23rd potentially council adoption of your of your final map and as julie had mentioned the county has requested to have the adopted map by december 15th so that they can do their final record keeping and tweaks as as is needed and we just wanted to mention that you the statutory deadline is february 2nd of 2022 but again the county had requested the maps by december 15th and now i'll turn it back over to doug of course so in terms of criteria we have different sets of criteria so some of you've been through this process before no doubt remember the federal laws uh are of course come first so we have the equal population requirement we have to be sure to comply with the federal voting rights act and its requirements at a very basic level that boils down to if there's a neighborhood that's heavily what the law calls a protected class so here we're talking latinos uh in glendale and then we can't divide up that neighborhood in a way that dilutes their voting strength so that's the key basic rule at the same time federal law says no racial gearing mandarin so race can be one consideration but it can't be what the supreme court calls the predominant consideration so that's why i talk about if there's a neighborhood that's predominantly a protected class we want to keep it together so the neighborhood is predominant as you'll see in a moment we have charts showing city block by city block ethnic percentages and can't just essentially draw the lines based on those colors because that's when race becomes predominant so that's the federal requirements they've been around a long time we're very familiar with them similarly you have arizona statutes calling for a nearly equal number of inhabitants and contiguous territory so you can't have a district that's one part of a city and then jumps over to another part of the city all the parts of the districts have to touch so that still leaves a lot of flexibility i do want to ask you a question on that so that would be accepting for where we have county islands in between exactly right okay all right i just want to clarify okay yes no um the rule is essentially no no district should be between two other districts okay but you're right a county islander or anything like that wouldn't count as a split and similarly as was mentioned the city charter has a requirement of equal population that essentially mirrors the arizona statute so that still leaves flexibility in different options and how the lines would be drawn and that's where your both the public input and then your ultimate decision come come in in balancing what the courts have called traditional registering principles this is the list of things on the right these are not statutory requirements but they are things that the courts have said are appropriate um and traditional redistricting considerations so you see the list there the big one is always communities of interest trying to keep neighborhoods together neighborhoods that want to be together then we want to be compact and contiguous and follow visible boundaries the compact and the follow visible easily recognizable boundaries is really for the voters when they want to go out and knock on doors you want to be easy to tell them which doors to knock on in that district so you want to try to avoid zigzagging through neighborhoods that kind of thing and try to follow major roads whenever you can respecting voters choices or sometimes referred to in court cases is continuity in office this is the idea of keep each council member in their district essentially sometimes people ask why do you do that i say well it's it's to leave the re-election decisions up to the voters if each council members in their district the voters get to decide which council members have earned re-election as opposed to the lines dictating to them oh we're going to put these two together it doesn't matter if the voters want to re-elect both you can only re-elect one so that is a very common consideration that the courts have said is is perfectly acceptable and it is traditional in all the arizona local redistrictings to do that then you a traditional criterion is planned future growth courts have said you can underpopulate a district by a little bit if you know it's going to grow more that's usually not done here in arizona because of the statute and your charter provision calling for nearly as equal a number as possible but that is something you may have a little bit of flexibility on um then other considerations minimizing voter shifted to different election years this is if a just if someone is currently in a district that's going to be up in 2022 we want to try to keep them in a 2022 district people tend to get upset if they're expecting to vote in 2022 and they get postponed to 2024. some of that is often inevitable in redistricting but we do try to minimize that on the flip side some people may be in a 2024 seat and get moved into a 2022 seat and get to vote faster but they don't usually complain people don't usually mind that as much as being postponed and similarly preserving the core of existing election districts this is the idea that the residents have organized they've worked together on elections for the last 10 years they know who else is in the district they know the issues of the district so it's traditional to try to not disrupt those relationships if it's not necessary to do so for some other goal so all the things on the right those are not in any specific order those are all different things you can you can consider and the residents can consider and then ultimately you would adopt the best map that complies with the requirements on the left and then has the best balance of the other considerations on the right so the next slide to put some numbers to things as i mentioned this data just came out august 12th and so you can see the um as you probably have heard at this point the total population for the city is 248 325. um it's about twenty thousand growth over the last decade and the growth was actually remarkably even across the city you can see some districts where there are negative numbers that means that they're short of the ideal the total of the city divided by six it doesn't mean they lost population they just didn't grow as fast as the other other districts and so you can see the smallest district currently is uh cholla up north it's about six percent short of the target population and then the largest district is actually cactus um at about four percent over and then closely followed by yucca at 3.3 percent over the target population so federally you have a range of 10 percent between the largest and smallest can is counted as balance so you're just outside that range but as we just mentioned arizona law actually is it uh calls for it nearly as equal as possible so last time around um the there was a a one percent difference between the largest and smallest when the plan was adopted so we'd be looking to get down close to that when we're balancing them out so the other consideration mentioned the other federal consideration is the voting rights act this is that map i mentioned it calls the heat map the the blues and purples are 35 of citizens of voting age that's what c vap is citizen voting age population uh latinos are 35 or less in the blues and purples and the dark blues and purples 35 to 50 in the light blues and then a majority of the citizen voting age population and the yellows light greens yellows and reds these maps can be a little misleading and just by color um out by luke you see the big pink census blocks that show 75 to 100 latino those are numbers are accurate but there's only a couple of people there that often tends to be like oh 75 of all four people are latino kind of thing so really those numbers are not going to influence the demographics of your districts or the voting power of any group really where we're focusing is um over in the where yucca ocotillo and cactus come together where you see the concentration in densely populated areas that we want to pay attention to when drawing districts the other question for you tonight in addition to the um outreach uh question that was mentioned is uh we do have some public mapping tool options that are are not required but that your discretion we can put out to the public they vary from a paper a paper map that has population numbers on it that's what we put out 10 years ago um and then people can put those little units together and and draw their districts and then add up the numbers it's kind of fun you often see their math right inside the paper as they've added up the numbers with that comes an excel sheet that can do the math for them if they're comfortable with excel that's one option kind of a basic anyone can either pick up the sheet at city hall or download it from the city website print it out and draw their districts in order to help people review the demographics such as the latino numbers they just looked at and other demographic data will provide we do put up a story map it's a really easy kind of online walk through the cities geography and demographics and an interactive review map which is it's not google maps but it's as easy to use as google maps where people will be able to review the draft maps and it's simply a list of draft maps and they click which ones they want to see and they can overlay two on top of each other to see where they vary so those things we just give you as part of the project because it makes the public participation process really easy for them to weigh in on the different maps the the last option is a tool called district r which we've been using with some jurisdictions and getting a lot of interest in it's a really simple to use online mapping tool so it is online so people do have to go have internet access but literally all it has in tools is a paint brush and an eraser and and then we put in all the demographic data we put in the boundaries and they can zoom in and they can essentially color in their neighborhood if they want to do that or multiple neighborhoods or they can go ahead and paint and hold a whole district map so really easy to use it does involve a little extra expense um because of the hosting fees and processing of the submitted maps but that is an option uh for you to consider they would be new uh from last time so that is our main focus tonight is uh number one to answer any questions you may have about this process and then number two to get your direction on the number of workshops and on what public mapping options you uh wish to include in the project if any so that concludes our presentation and uh happy to answer any questions or discuss any elements of this situation you want to know think we include all the mapping tools i like them all [Music] thank you mayor um yeah i would concur with councilmember malnour that we just include all the mapping tools that are available and let people participate to the degree that they feel most comfortable i've got a few questions in this uh some are they're just general redistricting questions for instance so we get you've shown us information that i guess is uh census tract or census block data based on on the demographics colored in how do those relate to precincts which most of us i think are familiar with and and when census block maybe gets moved from one district to another that's got to affect the precinct somehow how does that what's that process work out like sure so the blocks are smaller than precincts as you can tell from the map and so when this process is over that's actually the primary reason for the december 15th date uh from the county being the deadline is they will take the map that you adopt and they will alter the precinct lines to follow those lines so uh so precincts tend to change fairly regularly um and after every redistricting they do they do change so the the changes at the the uh census block level then actually drive the design you know what the eventual precinct looks like exactly yeah and and somehow that's got to be correlated with the other districts that are are happening as well at the county level and at the state level yes as i mentioned your statutory deadline is until uh early february but the county has put this deadline on december 15th because they do have to do all that work of you know the city the county supervisorial districts the if your school districts use binary elections those all go in and of course the state lines um the state legislative and congressional districts all play into that so there's a lot of things that they have to factor in when they're drawing those precinct lines definitely yeah one of the things i actually appreciated most about your presentation as you presented very much from the voter's point of view that and that's really what this process is is it's not about keeping districts intact for the sake of the office holder it's about keeping them as intact as possible for the sake of the voters that live there and having identifiable boundaries so that they can easily determine what district they live in and what its boundaries are and they don't necessarily need to get out a magnifying glass just you know hopefully unless they live on those little fringes where where population differences are accommodated then they can easily tell where they live and that they don't have freeways dividing them unnecessarily or that sort of thing so i appreciated that point of view and and i think it's very healthy along those lines you'd also mention public meetings what's typical for a city in the way of public meetings one before drafts and one after the set of drafts or no public meetings or what's typical or what might you recommend for a city our size you know it really covers the spectrum and a lot of it depends on the the dynamics that you're facing at the time so you know we're we're also working with buckeye you know you're all familiar with the huge growth of buckeye and we've done surprise for 40 years you know back when surprise was doubling in size every five years their council map would be radically redrawn every five years and so they'd do a lot of hearings because every district was going to either double in size or be cut in half in size if it's a big change we do recommend a lot of hearings in your case you know if you look at the map both the l shape of the city kind of means well if this district's giving up or losing it's happening to the district right next door it's not a question of does this district going to go north or is it going to go west or east like like in a more um square shaped district uh city so yeah i wouldn't expect a a ton of public interest in this you know it's always good to get out there and offer that opportunity which i think is what the city clerk is proposing is at least one um but yeah i don't think you'd i don't think they'll be packing the house at any of them which would be a driving and you need to do five or six right mayor mayor go ahead mayor council um what we're our proposal is ndc will prepare three map options for the public to consider so that they have something to start with to meet the requirement to have equal population in each district to start as a starting point for discussion at the community workshops in 2011 we held six community meetings one in each district and the average number of attendees per meeting was only 18. because of the short time frame and because the community meetings are open to all residents not just those in a specific district we would suggest that the workshops be combined and perhaps reduce the number to three and then we would uh have we would advertise you know on social media on the website we'd also broadcast them through facebook live people watching online could submit questions and comments we'd also take comments online people could look at the maps submit maps of their own so it'd be a real interactive process but we find we found that um i think with the water rate meeting that they held they got more online participation than actual people showing up for the meeting so that's really what we would encourage um but if council is okay with three meetings that's what we would we would hold those in september then at the workshop on october 12th we would compile the input that we've got from the public we'd provide the three um map options at that point for council to consider and then at the november i believe november 2nd meeting um overnight november 9th meeting at that point you got council could really hash out the three maps or change the maps or at that point we'd have a really robust council discussion and then hopefully you could come to some sort of direction for staff with the final map and adopted on november 23rd we do have a meeting on december 14th the day before the the meeting that we could you know continue the discussion if needs be or hold a special workshop or whatever you know is necessary for council to come to a decision but that's kind of our our plan right now um realizing that it's you know flexible thank you and then um the last question i have at the moment um relates to is as you had discussed the uh the minority racial makeup of the various districts and there's been a number of significant changes in redistricting law i guess over the last 10 years and um just from your point of view um given you know shelby and section 5 pre-clearance and all of that is retrogression still an issue or is it a non-issue at this point or um what what's the what would we be looking forward to and knowing that we need to be working within going forward here yeah so i don't invite mr gruber to jump in if he has any concerns about anything i say here but um but historically the section 5 and the retrogression avoidance was a huge focus of every effort as you mentioned section 5 no longer applies to any jurisdiction so what what we face now is section 2 which has always been around and covers the whole country and it really dictates that if it's possible to draw a district or if it's possible to draw two districts where a protected class would be able to effectively elect their preferred candidates then you in most situations need to draw that district or two districts if you can so we're not so focused on avoiding rich aggression anymore although as a specific legal question but still as a principle we are aiming to avoid that um and to at least and keep the same voting strength that those groups have now and perhaps enhance it if uh if circumstances and neighborhoods uh dictate that so you're right we don't have to go through the section 5 pre-clearance process anymore but the the principles of voting rights act and section two of the voting rights act remain firmly in place and and we certainly uh intend to make sure we don't get in trouble on that side either oh i concur thank you thank you mayor clark thank you mayor i'm going to go back to the beginning and talk about data and you can go on a lot of websites to this day and you can find out that the july 1st 2019 census estimate was for the population of glendale was 252 381. so my first question would be if you know the answer what criteria does the census bureau use to arrive at its estimate yeah so they use a variety data they collect all the birth and death records from every community in the country and they also work with every county and city to collect all the housing construction and housing demolition records each year and then they use all that data and i think they may get some data from the irs as well i don't know if they get tax filers who have reported a change of address but sometimes they use that sometimes they don't so they use all that data to compile an estimate the burst and deaths are obviously individuals the household numbers they're guessing at how many people are involved in each household that's built or demolished and that's how they come up with their estimates they also do a what's called the american community survey every year uh if you've gotten it you'll remember it's like a 30 page uh pamphlet asking about all kinds of stuff um but they do that every year they i think they survey one in 15 or so households in the country every year so that data and they ask people have you moved recently so that data also factors in but it's all that compilation that goes into their annual estimates as opposed to the decennial census which is the door-to-door knocking okay they're the based on the information you gave us for the 20 20 20 census their final number is 248 325 which is over 4 000 less than their estimate um so it goes back to what was the percentage i heard in the 60 percent range of responsiveness of citizens in in glendale is that about accurate somewhere in the 60 range i don't actually know what the self-response rate was i heard it was 62 percent um city clerk might know but i do not know okay i heard it was roughly 62 percent that means that 38 of our population wasn't even counted oh it's a common confusion definitely but so that means 68 or whatever or 62 whatever the percentage was were the people who when they got a mailer saying or an email this time around saying please go on and report how many people are in your households they did that the 38 are then counted by the door-to-door follow-up so they they do go door-to-door and and get estimates for every household um so they do get counted it's just the two phases one is self-reported the other is in the door-to-door follow-up well what i find is totally incredible if anybody knows about the growth that's occurred in the yucca district it's exploded and yet between the 2010 census and the 2020 census theoretically glenn yucky lost 300 people can you explain to me how that would have occurred between the 2010 census and the 2020 census um we're looking back the city court thinks we dug up our records from 10 years ago and it had the yucca being at about 37 700 actually that was that was the number after redistricting trying to make population equal right but the actual number for yucca in the information provided by the city clerk yucca had 43 063 right and in your current figures it's down 42 748 that shows a loss of approximately 300 people how can that possibly be anybody who has been in the yucca district who has seen the explosion of growth over the 10 years would automatically say that that number can't be right right yeah no i see what you mean now most most of that change the the map you have where this is the 43 000 that was in the old the 2005 district lines and so the most of that loss what looks like a loss is actually people that moved into ocotillo district yeah i lost a square mile approximately a square mile from 59th to 67th in the 2010. and i lost the population in that square mile yes if if i could um i don't i don't know as though arguing about what what yucca had and what it has is going to make any difference that's the numbers we have to go by i know they're the numbers we have to go by but i am suspect of the numbers that we have been given and it's not his fault it's the federal government spot because they can't seem to do anything right but i don't believe the numbers to begin with i don't think the numbers are accurate i know we have to use them but when you start with faulty data it's it's hard to follow through and establish a good work product yeah i'm not disagreeing with you but he can't change what we got i understand that but i have every right to express my concern certainly with the data that is being used that i think the data is inaccurate and it does not serve us well now moving on in terms of the redistricting criteria the item most important to me is one two three bullet point five districts known to be areas of higher than average population growth in the two to five years following redistricting based upon development projects that have received final plot approval from the city may be under populated i would hope that you would under populate yucca district to the greatest extent possible because we already know that there are projects for example stonehaven will have 1365 homes out of there probably a couple of hundred have been built to date which means over the next 10 years stonehaven will be completed there are apartments complexes that are coming in and around westgate and also along 99th avenue and up in the desert river project that have not been built they i don't even believe they've been planted yet unfortunately but they're going to increase the population of the yucca district tremendously um because apart these are apartment unit complexes of 300 units each at 2.3 persons per unit those numbers grow very quickly so i would hope that as we go through this exercise you accommodate as much future growth in the yucca district as you possibly can thank you councilmember clark's point i need to understand are we are we required by law to come up with with the redistricting based on the census or what we believe that the numbers actually are because i understand exactly what she's saying but again if we guess at it then what's he used to do in the census right yeah and as you might imagine this is not a glendale specific oh i know it's statewide yeah i know that um so we are writing this a lot and you are required to use the census numbers so that is the data we have to use okay good thank you mayor so um i i just want to make sure so looking we have we were given the basically the districts were the last redistricting divided the districts up into around just under 38 000 per district is that where we ended up so that would show literally though that cactus has grown a lot but also yucca has grown by over 5 000 people it does show growth it doesn't show that it's lost because we're basically i've never done this before so i just want to make sure i understand it worst our starting point is whatever the redistricting was in after the 2010 census that's our starting point not where we were before the 2010 census is that right correct okay so um a couple of questions the september community workshops we're on what is today august 24th so we're literally right at the front door of september do you have potential dates already or locations or i mean that's this is going to have to happen really really quickly well we're looking at the week of um september 20th i believe um to give us time to advertise and time to compile everything for the october 12th council meeting or workshop okay so mayor if i could so the idea would be basically to combine like maybe north central and sort of southwest part of the city and spread the meetings out across the city exactly okay um the is do you take into so we wouldn't have an opportunity sorry mayor could i continue thank you can we so we won't have an opportunity to see the three proposed maps until the october 12th workshop is that or will we see the material obviously there's going to be material presented to residents at these three workshops but there's no will will we get that and we know what's going out to residents or i don't know how we're going to know that before the october 12th workshop yeah so i believe the goal and correct me to speak but i believe the goal is to get input on how the changes should be made and then to use that input to draft the proposed revised maps um i don't think we wanted to draft maps before that did we i think that's the first stage is getting that input on what changes would make sense and then we draft the maps you'd get them in your agenda packets or or whenever they'd be posted ahead of the workshop okay you wouldn't be surprised all right so i i'd like to be clear so are you asking that each council members submit what they feel needs to happen in their their boundaries uh if they do it separately that's fine but if we do it with a quorum then we need to have a public meeting which is basically right back to what you're already doing yeah i'm prepared to be to get community feedback at those september workshops and then to come in and get your feedback at that workshop okay so you're looking for community first and then the council afterwards okay just want to be clear go ahead thanks mayor so what kind of information and data is going to be presented to the residents so that they understand enough to be able to provide input at these meetings yeah so the focus would be the slide that showed the existing map and the which districts are over and under populated so for example um enjoy is under so it needs to add people so the question would be you know here's the border between troy and and suhario which areas would make sense to uh go into the northern district to add the populations needed and then to move south you know so it's kind of a domino effect yeah so sahara needs to lose people to uh joya soharo itself is short so it then needs to make up the population it needs plus the population is given just to uh enjoy a so barrel would then have to give population and so on so really the focus would be along those borders if a district needs to add population what neighborhoods make sense to add to it if a district needs to lose population which uh districts would make sense to to lose to to the neighboring district so mayor if i could continue so uh honestly though i mean because of of the way the shape of our city and the boundaries the existing boundaries at least to me who's completely inexperienced here but it looks relatively simple because there's only i mean you can only go south all the way down to where you get to the yucca you know ocotillo you're literally very limited and and options of and and also the to me at least it looks relatively simple because the cities that are short are on the top so that pushes down to where you know does that does that am i misunderstanding this or is it as these types of things go is it a little bit more of a simple thing because the way i mean if the most populated areas were to the kind of the most the most populated areas are contiguous basically and so as you move the population move the boundaries down it's going to make those districts smaller or lower their population not smaller well it's going to make the district smaller too yeah right correct to the degree we're just talking about what happened ten years ago you know the moving of the one square mile moved six thousand people from from yucca to ocotillo and none of the districts need to pick up 6 000 people so we're not looking to move a whole square mile kind of thing so yeah more which piece of the of the boundary makes the most sense because it's unlikely that the whole boundary would just move moves out the uniformly that in almost every case that's probably going to be too many people okay it'll move for example joya will move south either on the west side on the middle or on the east side of the border between two districts which one makes the most sense right okay thank you mr obama thank you mayor um so what part of this process addresses um a district having a higher efficacy voter base so for the ocotillo district we the numbers of voters is one thing but the voters that come out is another so how do we address that that's the first question i've got a second question how so how does this process take care of that sure so when the city first went to district elections obviously that was a big step up for the lower turnout areas and it sounds a little counter-intuitive but as you're just mentioning empower an area that's relatively lower turnout you put lower turnout voters together in one district to some degree that's what happens in okatia now so when we're redrawing the lines what we want to be careful of is not to flood that flood those relatively lower turnout areas with a neighborhood that's really high turnout because if you put a neighborhood in that you know where turnout's twice as high well you're really going to dilute their voter strength in the of the existing voters so if there are neighboring areas that have similar demographics and similar turnout patterns then those would be the areas that we prefer to put in if it makes sense from a neighborhood perspective rather than something radically different your explanation is counterintuitive to to my question because what you just said you don't want to dilute it but that's actually helping the district to get more active voters in the district so you didn't answer that you didn't address the question you're just really counter-intuitive to it um so then the second question is the ocotillo district has a lot of land area that's industrial no voters whatsoever so how does this process address that so we have a lot of spaces where just no no voters at all uh let's just take downtown is one of them we have a it's a great downtown obvious but the voter base there is very low because not all business owners live in the district so how does that ever get addressed so the district isn't going to grow obviously too much so our voter base is going to remain the same based on your first answer and then my question the second one yeah so one of the challenges is as you mentioned it yeah it's almost perfectly balanced as is um the challenge is that it's the only district that borders yucca so it will have to move west to pick up that population from yucca so it will have to move even though it doesn't need to on its own numbers so we will have to look at what areas come in and go out the the downtown and the other industrial areas question actually somewhat relates to your first question as well you know it is a common consideration to look at should each district have its own kind of economic center you know its own kind of area that brings economic activity jobs things like that into the district so industrial downtown areas can factor in in that way if we want to be sure that there there is some economic set center to each district you don't have to it's not required but you can consider that they also provide you know from purely a number side flexibility because if they move from one district to another there's no impact on the population numbers so if you wanted to move a neighborhood you could connect it to a district that you wanted to move by adding in a zero population bridge i think it's not recommended it's not something we'd advocate for but it could be useful for achieving another goal yeah so you bring up an interesting um comment i spoke with our city attorney who's not here today and i brought up to him what you just mentioned was some of those areas that i mentioned like the light industrial areas yes you're representing those light industrial businesses but shouldn't those areas be a an area where the representation comes from the entire day is not just the one counts member therefore the district can be brought in more then you get more voter turnout so it sounds like you can do that but it would have to be the council uh wish to do so and how often has that ever happened in in your experience it it varies um nevada has an interesting rule which is um if there's a redevelopment district the funds generated by the redevelopment district have to be spent in the council district where the redevelopment district is so as you might imagine that leads to redistricting wars you know that's a lot of finances for a council member to challenge their district so that's kind of an extreme case where really the economic centers are the focus of redistricting um most jurisdictions it varies um in jurisdictions where council members are very parochial you know they really defer to the other council members on any decision that's based in their district then there tends to be a lot of attention on who has the port you know who has the who gets the pieces that generate the revenue and that generate you know the activity in other jurisdictions where it's more collegial where everyone you know kind of well i represent this district but we're all really here for the city as a whole and people are more involved and there's more give and take and less difference to whose district is this they should decide then it's less of a concern so it really varies in depending on the the priorities of each council so it's completely up to you yeah thank you thank you mayor so i just want to back up to the the conversation about low frequency voters so what you're saying is that you it's to the detriment literally of an existing district to take a district that has historically low voter turnout and then move it or add a higher voter turnout boundaries in there because they can literally flip the district that's what that's what literally just about every argument about redistricting that's ever happened is about isn't it yes it you can move some areas in as long as they don't overwhelm the the kind of protected class voters in that area so the small changes are not going to be a detriment it's only when you kind of flip the voting behavior of the district as a whole that it becomes detrimental in the eyes of the voting rights act so mayor uh when you're looking at this you're looking at not just then um population and you're also looking at voter frequency is that part of what goes into the formula to figure out how to move the boundaries to a degree it's a bigger picture than that we're looking at a whole socio-economic profile of the different neighborhoods so you know whether renters homeowners you know citizenship levels all those kinds of factors all play into it but i'd like to clarify it the voting is not part of the formula you can't redistrict because people vote or people don't vote it's by population and then by groups of people correct in the voting rights act analysis the federal analysis of compliance uh turnout levels can be a factor um so it i've never seen never um and we would want to kind of be conscious of where there are really high turnout neighborhoods um and be careful not to overwhelm a relatively lower turnout voting rights act sensitive district with the with those high turnout voters that would then impact the voting rights act compliance so it's not something that is a high priority it's not something that we're like checking the numbers as we run it it's more knowing that which neighborhoods are we looking at along the border and deciding which ones would make the best match um if we have to move one in which one is the best match to move in so somewhere in the process so you would at least look at our the canvas of recent votes and see like where are the high advocacy where the low advocacy i mean the whole idea is that you don't take a district and basically turn off their microphone where they don't have a voice anymore right right okay and and i think looking you know we haven't done a detailed study at this point in the process but i think looking at the general take of your districts moving 300 people into one seat and out of another isn't gonna swing you know the entire makeup of the other district okay thank you i i just would have one request or one comment um i think it might be beneficial for those council members who choose to do so to have a meeting with you um or a representative from your your entity to discuss further and to if they've got any boundary suggestions in mind suggest them at that time do you so if at all possible dependent upon which council members would like to i would like to for one schedule meetings with us individually we can certainly take that direction and work with city staff on how we want to proceed on that thank you that would be appreciated any other comments any other questions mayor and council um so with regard to the redistricting criteria do you want to keep the same criteria as we used 10 years ago mayor as far as i'm concerned yes as long as they're mindful of the future growth in the yucca district yes everybody has a copy there right yes so is there a consensus on keeping the same yeah okay right and then a consensus on the mapping tools we'll use all three types of tools seems to be yes yes and then mirror the number of community workshops is three sufficient yeah just for clarity would that be like one before draft maps and then two after or there would be three um meetings before three meetings throughout the city in the month of september to get public input for the map you know the district boundaries and we would bring that information back to council with three proposed maps okay so that's three before draft before drafting occurs and then after the draft maps are available and publicized would we have any more community meetings we need to yeah get input on what people think of the drafts exactly well mayor council we had discussed um creating three draft maps to take to the community so that they'd have a starting point so we could do that yeah that's the other approaches we could do our draft maps before the september hearings and and uh i think so the community would have something to work with okay mayor um i support uh councilmember clark's request on meeting with the consultant i wasn't on the council in 2010 but i came to many of the meetings and was involved in the redistricting and i'm very confident that that's what occurred the consultant met with these council members so i would support that i think it's very important that we do that but that we do it before your draft it comes out to entire council so we we should have that one-on-one with the consultant before the draft so you can listen to all of our input and then they'll drop the drafts then we can take a look and then go to the public and then come back yes sir okay that was my earlier question thank you mayor that was my earlier question too i had asked if we're going to have an opportunity to see the in from the met the three maps that were just discussed that were being proposed to be presented at these public meetings so are we going to see those before the public meetings at least just even an email i mean i don't know that it's really you know necessary that i meet with you but i would like to see the content of the public meeting before the meeting so we know what's out there because we're probably going to hear from constituents so of course yeah so i mean i'd i'd like to know what what they're being presented with thank you yes uh i agree with councilman on meeting with each of the council members i think that's important and also i think having i guess it's a question when when will the maps the simple online community mapping tool be available when's the soonest it could be available we have to work with the the server folks on that so it's all dependent on how busy they are date one day to another so sometimes they turn around in 36 hours sometimes it takes a week and a half so okay next week's fine thanks okay so well yeah thank you mayor um back to the meeting schedule the public meetings it seems like to me like it would be a good practice to have an opportunity for our residents to have input before any drafts are drawn so that there's no no working against any anything and then take that information create the drafts and then get feedback from the public on it i know that's the model the state uses as they conduct public hearings around the state to get input and then they draft maps and then they go back or they have the option of going back to more public hearings it seems to me like it would be useful i mean as we said earlier this is a voter driven process and that we out the consultant ought at least hear from voters what they would like to see happen and then move forward from there yeah mayor councilman if i may typically that is kind of a multi-stage phase the challenges is going back to the earlier presentation is that the census has put us in such a box normally we have six to eight months for this process so given the timing when this data has come out i think we're kind of you you've seen the timeline in here it's pretty tight to make a decision so i i think you kind of have to just do the first wave and then obviously the public can participate in your council deliberations as well but we could do it either way with the first round of meetings with draft maps or without mayor yeah hold on were you done for the moment okay um i think everybody needs to really seriously keep in mind about the timeline we can't end up having six meetings we just can't so i'm going to ask everybody today to figure out you know how many meetings and and what meetings i don't have a problem going to the public first as long as then when it doesn't come to us and then go back to the public or come to us and then go to the public but let's not keep going back and forth or we're never going to get this done ever so somebody come up with uh with a suggestion that we can accomplish both and still have this adoption by november 23rd mayor okay you were next good thank you in my mind i see the consultant meeting with those council members that wish to participate on an individual basis followed by the consultant drafting of three maps to present to the public because i think we will generate more comment if the public has something to react to if they see that their neighborhood is staying in the troya district and not moving this wow you may never hear from them but if a neighborhood is being moved into another district they may feel compelled to comment if you wait until you get their comment and then the draft maps as the mayor suggested that's too long of a process we don't have that kind of time so i would prefer that there are draft maps to present to the public and let them react to those and then come to council in a workshop and and you will have the feedback from the public on those three draft maps it makes far more sense thank you mayor and i would agree uh mostly with that as well the thing i guess i would be concerned about would be or are not not really concerned it's more of a fact you've stated these aren't major changes that would that we can accommodate and we could come up with several scenarios pretty easily that would accommodate these changes that we're needing if this were a major redistricting i could see going having meetings before meetings after but this isn't really a major redistricting based on the numbers that you said are not that significant in moving from one district to another so i think having the maps prepared ahead of time would would be beneficial for the community see here are some possibilities of how your your com your neighborhood would uh be affected uh if with these different again i'm looking at the map there's only a certain way you could there's only a few ways you can draw and so i think three maps will probably accommodate almost all of those ways yes thank you mayor thank you mayor and i too can support that schedule and here's why our citizens are just like us we're not completely i'm not trying to defend anybody but we're not experts at redistricting so for you to bring a map that's already detailed it allows them to look at an edit with you so that is why i support it so i'm comfortable with what uh clark and malnour asked for i'm supportive of that schedule um thank you mayor we're not we're not you know i mean the state's looking look you know looking at congressional districts and the stuff that's you know bigger way bigger boundaries and so i'm i'm fine i think a lot of people are visual and i think this product process is complex enough that without the visual aid of seeing possibilities and just because they're being presented doesn't mean that's going to be the final version of it but it gives them some kind of a concept of look when you look at this there's like councilman milner said there's it's pretty straightforward i mean you know south and west i mean there's not a whole lot of places we can go with this so i think probably probably we could even just have them say make sure it says sample or make sure it's clear to them that these are just proposed boundaries and that that's why you're here is to and then also make sure that we get that data whatever's being presented to them um at least the day before that it that the first meeting so that if we start hearing from people we know what's been presented to them thank you okay anybody over here no okay so i'm just going to ask is it possible that we can have the ability for you folks to meet with this council for in the month of september and have all those meetings done we'll get it done we may have to do it virtually you know we may not be able to be on site but we can certainly um you know share screens have the map on the screen and talk if if you could do that with the seven of us then that solves that and then that would give us a chance for you to get your maps done we can come back to workshop with that map or no it wouldn't need to do that wouldn't it so we'd want to do a public meeting in october september three public meetings in september right three public meetings okay so now you're talking about uh the seven of us plus three public meetings all in the same month of september is that possible welcome to our lives these days but yes okay because essentially we would get each of your seven meetings done the first two weeks of september while the clerk is publicizing okay why don't we do this and why don't why don't we just all commit that we are all going to talk with you the first week of september to give you some time does that work for everybody on their schedule we can well they try yeah they got a lot of other stuff they're gonna they're gonna have to does that work for the council yes yes yeah okay so first week of september you'll meet with all of us whether it's virtually or in person and then you can we can arrange those public meetings through our clerk yeah all those they wish to okay and then i have one final question for the council is there anybody on this council that lives within a half a mile of any one of the current lines right now there is yeah yeah this could be interesting okay i like one block oh really good you can you can you can move into that's fine ray my deuces went south oh okay that's right yeah that's not gonna affect you um i i had one just wanna so the public meetings essentially the consultant would be so they're basically gonna be basically back to back because they're going to be coming from california so we'd be looking at probably like a tuesday wednesday thursday or something the week of september 20th is that marin council member tom chopper yes that's kind of what we planned okay all right thank you yeah i'm here in calgary i'm from california ivy actually lives here in arizona so we have local people too okay anyone else okay you got what you need i think so you have what you need yes yes thank you okay so we're done with that moving on city manager report good afternoon mayor members of council just two quick items uh for for a note first i want to give you an update on the crystal island project right now they are you know pouring cement and they're making tremendous progress right now they have almost 60 percent of the entire sub foundation for the main hotel port and they expect to have the other two underground parking garages as well as the additional hotel foundations completed and poured within the next two weeks seeing a timeline for the project they're still looking to turn the most complicated part of the project is the main hotel and they're looking at having that topped out in steel in january and they're still on track for having that um turned over to the operator on december 2nd is the current schedule they have there and obviously things can affect that but that's moving along fine next time you're out that way you'll see a lot of activity taking place there second thing is you'll you'll start seeing these posters starting to show up around town as we're getting ready to kick off our live at murphy park series for october so we're really excited about this this is in a better uh weather time of year than when we did the first time around and the the we've got a great lineup of acts that are on board just to give you a couple of the um bigger ones on october 7th we have blaine long and he was on the voice season 11 and at one time had the number two uh uh charting song on itunes uh based on that and he'll be on october 7th uh a ritmo latino which is andres martinez which is a phoenix-based artist from sonora mexico although he's will be performing here hasn't performed here since 2008 so this will have he has a huge following and uh we expect to see um a real large turnout coming there and then fayuka which is a group that has a a large fan base here in arizona they oftentimes sell out the marquee theater in in tempe and they'll be here on october 23rd we'll be announcing the entire slate here next week and you'll be seeing posters coming up but again as in the past hope you'll get a chance to attend and take in the festivities and again this every time we do these we're getting more data points in terms of you know the success of this program but again staff is working hard on this and we are expecting a great uh live at murphy park series and with that mr merritt concludes my report thank you city attorneys report nothing at this time mayor thank you council item special interest any council items anyone would like to discuss at a future workshop mr aldama none at this time mayor thank you councilmember clark not at this time thank you mr tomatraw thank you mayor we had a resident come in and speak at the citizens comments of the last voting meeting um with regard to the cell tower at fire station 156 so i'd like to have put that on the um possibility for a discussion that the lease is up for renewal in february but i believe our charter uh basically directs us to bring it bring it forward once we've been asked by a citizen so um i'd like to have a discussion with the council on the cell tower releases station 156. thank you thank you turner nothing today mayor nothing mayor i have nothing can i get do i need an exact session today oh well then i don't want a promotion okay there being no further business for this council a meeting will be adjourned and we'll be back here in less than two hours you