Captain, thank you so much. I'm glad to be back on baton. It's great to have so many sailors from the waterfront and Marines from Camp Allen here as well. I'm honored to be once again standing in the Hanger Bay aboard baton. Sailors and Marines aboard this ship made history a few weeks ago when they came back here to Norfolk after a successful 10 and 1 half month deployment. The baton amphibious ready group deployed ahead of schedule last year in support of the NATO-led mission to Libya and went on to conduct several security operations and also provided support in Afghanistan. It was our Navy's longest deployment in over 40 years. Thank all of you here today on baton. You exemplify the service, the readiness, and the resiliency of all sailors and Marines. Readiness and resiliency is what brings us together today. In the time I've had the privilege of serving as your secretary, I've visited with sailors, Marines, wherever stationed and deployed on countless ships and bases around the world. Those sailors and Marines and the thousands they represent, in other words, the people I'm talking to right now here in this Hanger Bay and around the world are dedicated to the job and to our nation and willing to do what it takes to get our mission done. Over the past decade, you and the Navy and Marine Corps team have proven you can withstand sustained high operation tempo. The new defense strategy will put increased responsibilities on the Navy and the Marine Corps in the years to come. You, the sailors and Marines, are the department's most essential asset. And it is the duty of this department's leadership to do all we can to provide every individual sailor and every individual Marine with the resources to maintain that resiliency. The 21st Century Sailor and Marine Initiative I'm announcing today puts together a set of objectives and policies, new and existing, to maximize every sailor and Marines' personal readiness. We have the most effective combat force in history now. And it is our job to maintain and to hone that effectiveness. The programs that I'm announcing are divided into five areas, readiness, safety, physical fitness, inclusion, and continuum of service. I'm going to briefly describe some programs in each category. But first, why are we doing this? Well, being in the Navy and Marine Corps is rewarding, but it's also difficult, and it's demanding. All sailors, Marines, and their families have to be equipped to meet both the physical and the mental challenges of being in our military. We've had an understanding of the need, but the approach has been two piecemeal. Dozens of programs designed to improve health and well-being of sailors and Marines were implemented, but there wasn't enough attention paid to the fact that many of these programs should be interrelated. What was lacking and what we're launching today is a comprehensive and more effective approach. Now, one example of a factor cutting across a lot of concerns and a lot of programs is alcohol. I'm going to highlight it, and I'm going to talk about it first because it's bound to get a lot of attention.  Promoting the responsible use of alcohol comes under the first area, readiness. Sailors and Marines have to have the ability to avoid career altering, career ending, or life threatening, or life ending incidents with alcohol abuse. We're not telling you not to drink if you're old enough. We are telling you that it's important to keep legal, responsible use of alcohol from turning into a problem.  You work in and on the most technologically advanced systems in the world, and you have to report to work, prepared to meet the challenges that come with the incredibly important work that you do. The effects of drinking, even that done several hours earlier, can affect you and your shipmates in a very serious way. Sailors who drink excessively are too late the night before, and report to duty can place themselves, their shipmates, and equipment at risk. So beginning in this year, the Navy will expand a pilot program where duty sections reporting to work will take a breathalyzer test. Other sailors will be subject to random breathalyzer testing. The test will be used only as a training and prevention to. This is a deterrence to, used to identify and direct appropriate counseling or treatment before any of those career or life altering incidents happen. Pilot programs using these tests have shown a marked reduction in alcohol-related incidents. And it's not just young sailors and Marines who are at risk. Poor decisions with alcohol have affected our fleet in all the ranks. In 13 of 20 recent Navy commanding officers relieved, alcohol was a component in the incident for which they were relieved. The Marine Corps will be implementing a similar program in select units before moving it as soon as possible force-wide. I want to stress, this is not done to punish but to help. To help sailors and Marines make good choices before something happens that can't be undone. There are several other individual programs under readiness like suicide prevention to help sailors, Marines, and their families help meet the mental and emotional rigors of military service. The second big area is safety. And I want to emphasize two things in this area. The first is enhanced prevention of sexual assault. A sexual assault is an attack on a sailor or a marine, and none of their shipmates should tolerate such an attack. They should intervene to prevent it whenever they can. The Department of the Navy is working aggressively to prevent sexual assaults from occurring, to support sexual assault victims, and to hold offenders accountable. All sailors, from now on going through a school, will have three 90-minute sessions about how to spot and how to intervene in these cases. Sexual assault hotlines are staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by uniform victim advocates, by victim advocates, and by sexual assault response coordinators. They are trained to provide emotional support, advocacy, information, and critical resources to victims. We're coordinating with the Department of Defense to eliminate barriers to reporting such as requirements to report post-assault counseling on any federal application forms. And commanders, COs, have to set the tone and establish an environment of trust and respect. The Marines have hired 18 new full-time sexual assault program managers, and both services are working to implement new standards for training and certifying victim advocates and also sexual assault response coordinators. NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, has hired new investigators with expertise in sexual assault at all major Navy and Marine Corps installations. And we've conducted special training on sexual assault cases for both criminal investigators and military lawyers. Overall, we're working to try to make sure that victims don't lose control of their lives or their privacy and are not stigmatized for reporting an assault. Also, the message that we are sending is that there is no place for sexual assault in the Navy or Marine Corps. All allegations will be thoroughly investigated and, where appropriate, prosecuted. The next thing under safety is driving. Statistically, the most dangerous thing a sailor or Marine does every day is drive a personal motor vehicle. Going back to alcohol abuse, drinking and driving cannot be tolerated. One thing we'll do to ensure that our officers set the example of zero tolerance for drinking and driving is we're establishing a formal policy that requires any alcohol-related incident be properly reviewed prior to an officer's promotion. More training is going to be mandatory for motorcycle riders. The Navy had 12 sport bikes fatality last year, and in nine of those, the rider had not yet attended an advanced motorcycle course. So every motorcycle rider has got to have the basic rider course, and every sport bike rider also has to complete the military sport bike rider course within 60 days of completing the basic rider course, or you won't get a permanent decal to bring your ride on base. Third is physical fitness. We have to move from a culture of testing to a culture of fitness. There are some who approach exercise like they do studying for a test. Cram before the PRT, give it up as soon as you pass. We're going to try to change that. First, all waivers for body composition assessment, BCAs, have been removed. You're going to have to have a BCA even when you scored an outstanding or an excellent on the PRT, or even if you're over 40. Fitness needs to be a more central part of our culture, and that means everybody has to meet the fitness standards required. And we're going to provide the tools you need to meet those standards. Naval Operation Fleet and Fueling Series, NOFs, provide sailors board ships, submarines, and other operational platforms with fitness programs designed to replicate the activities sailors conduct in their operational duties. And we even have an app for that, downloadable smartphones. We've developed different workout regimes that can be followed anywhere on submarines, on small boys, or an expeditionary setting with no gym. We're going to improve nutritional standards at our dining facilities with the introduction of fuel to fight, nutrition program ensuring that healthy food options are available and understood at every meal. Any effort, any effort to improve or maintain fitness levels have to include efforts toward a smoke-free Navy. There's no question that smoking seriously hurts your physical readiness and your health. So we will be launching a big and unprecedented educational campaign and will provide free smoking cessation, either products or services, a float and a shore, any sailor or marine who wants to quit. And beginning in this fiscal year, we're going to end discounts on smoking products in our exchanges and our ship stores. Doesn't make sense to promote quitting smoking and moving toward a smoke-free Navy and Marine Corps while at the same time making it cheaper to buy cigarettes. Next, fourth area, inclusion. And this is to ensure that all personnel are given every opportunity to succeed. To that end, we're establishing a new Department of the Navy Diversity Officer with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Juan Garcia, who is here today, serving as the Department's diversity officer. Diversity is important for a lot of reasons. But the most important is that we're better warfighters when we have a diversity of ideas, experiences, expertise, and backgrounds to fulfill our variety of missions. We've had success in some areas, which is obvious just by looking at the sailors and marines here today. And one example of that is women in the Navy. In the last 33 years, the number of women in the Department of the Navy has increased by 240%. But we have to do better in making the Navy and Marine Corps a place where more women want to stay and make a career and move on to the top ranks of our officers and our NCOs. Among the programs to help do this, a 12-month operational deferment following the birth of a child, a career and a mission program that we're now doing in a pilot form which allows men or women to return to service after up to three years without penalty after taking time off to care for a child or a relative, let you keep health care during that time, exchange privileges, commissary privileges during that time, so that your career gets restarted after that three years at exactly the point that you left off. We're also doing flex work hours during shore duty and a telework option for up to two days a week at some commands. The Navy is the only service where, regardless of mission, women are permanently assigned to operational units, such as ships and aviation squadrons, afloat staffs, naval construction force units, and submarine platforms. And that will be expanding to all our subs soon. Starting this summer, the Marine Corps under an exception to policy, unrestricted female company grade officers and female non-commissioned officers in the grades of E6 and E7 in open occupational specialties will serve in direct select combat ground units at the battalion level. This builds on the Marines' highly effective female engagement teams in Afghanistan. The final area is continuum of service. This 21st century sailor-marine initiative is focused on the whole life of an individual and that individual's families. When a sailor or marine's time in the military ends, whether it's after four years or 40, we want your productive life to continue and for you to leave the service in better health, more trained, and better educated than when you came in. While you're on active duty, the Navy's voluntary educational program provides continual academic support to pursue a technical or a college degree, regardless of location or duty station. Support assistance programs and benefits available to those transitioning to civilian life include educational benefits, transition assistance, career management training, individualized counseling, life work battles programs, and morale, welfare, and recreation programs. Programs which have been recognized as some of the best personnel support mechanisms anywhere in the country. One example is Navy credentialing opportunities online, Navy COO. This is a centralized, web-based hub that consolidates the information on certifications, on licenses, on apprenticeships, and on opportunities that correspond to every Navy rating, job, and occupation. It also provides funding to the enlisted ranks to get these civilian licenses and certification. The Navy itself highly values former sailors and marines, hiring as civilians nearly 13,000 in 2011 and more than 3,000 already in 2012. So as you leave, don't forget where you work now. We have a special, wholly deserved, and appropriate commitment to wounded warriors. We're providing tailored lifetime assistance. Again, the Navy is a leader in wounded warrior hiring. The ethos, once a marine, always a marine, sums up the marine's approach to continuing the service. The Marine for Life Network, including employers, educational institutions, and mentors, helps marines make connections that lead to their success in the community, in the workplace, and in civilian life. The eMarine website provides information, resource, and support to marines and their family members 24 hours a day in a secure environment. Commanders use eMarine to communicate directly to marines and their family members. The Wounded Warrior Regiment provides assistance to wounded, ill, and injured marines and their family members throughout all phases of recovery. Now, there's a whole lot more to 21st century sailor and marine, but I'm going to stop before this all hands call feels like it's longer than Baton's last deployment. There'll be more information about 21st century sailor and marine soon. It's going to include a website that'll be online before the end of this month, which brings together all the things in this effort for use by sailors, marines, and their leadership. So talk about this. We want to know what else and what more you think can be done. The new defense strategy, as I mentioned, that the President announced in January, with his focus on the Western Pacific, the Arabian Gulf region, the need for global presence using innovative, low cost, light foot print engagements requires a Navy and Marine Corps team that is built and ready for eventuality.  I hope that the programs I've touched on today and the others that will be available will help you with the responsibilities and the readiness you have and will have. For 236 years, from sail to steam to nuclear, from the USS Constitution to the USS Carl Vincent, from triple E to triple E, you have upheld a proud heritage, protected our nation, projected our power and provided freedom of the seas. In the coming years, this new strategy and our plans to execute it will ultimately depend on your skills, your talents, and your well-being that will assure that our Navy and Marine Corps not only perseveres but continues to prevail. Semper Fortis, Semper Fidelis, thank you all very much.


To come up with a strategic plan based on her experience Because she's been working in the field working with kids for a long time And so I think anyone on a city council should give their support to someone that we've recently hired To come up with a plan to meet those needs. And so that's why I'm in favor of this proposal The two things a strategic plan from park and rec In a study to help us But not make the decision but to help us come To a point of systematically identify the various needs of this community in concert with the fact that we're part of a larger community But we're also responsible directly to the voters of capitol So with that I'd like to call for a vote Councilmember story. No councilmember Peterson. Hi councilmember Brooks. Hi councilmember botorf. Hi Mayor Bertrand. Hi So we've Done direct staff measure j. We've done community grants um I thought the second one was going to be the hardest one and that is direct staff regarding measure j revenue for business groups Determined to split between bia and chamber if we need to direct recipients on how to develop a budget that allocates marketing and community improvements And direct staff to return to future meeting with proposed budgets for funding bia and chamber um Boy, so uh, we're going to be out here about one o'clock. So I just want to let everyone know Um Would anyone does anyone have any well first? So I'd like to set the the conversation going I think that um We've just spent a long time trying to figure out how we are going to allocate funds for Children's groups We've been doing that for many years now. We've had programs for children. We've been allocating programs for community program community Community recipients of 501c3s and stuff like we've been doing that But we've never before started to take public funds and allocated to private groups We've given money to the chamber We've had wonderful programs with them over the years, but now we're expanding that to the bia So I'd like to put it out to the board before we start the conversation That we probably should Require more of a dutiful approach to this because I think the city of capitol and its residents Want to know that public funds Are being spent adequately And to the best benefit of this community And especially now that we're giving it to private groups that are in profit Businesses, I think this is particularly important So I'd like to have comments and yeah, I'll start it off and try to get us through this one This is new money and and so Yeah, I think our allocation correct me wrong city manager. I believe the chamber already we see is it 30 000 a year Okay, and and we anticipate that this is going to be a 30 000 semi-annual or 60 000 a year So to keep it simple I think that for the time being we should Determine the split between the bia and the chamber should be 50 50 That would be my recommendation Determined that the recipient direct the recipients to develop how the budget budget allocates I think we need to challenge the the two organizations the the chamber of commerce and and the bia to tell us how they plan to spend the money I don't really want to dictate to them. I think the premise that you pretty much touched on was is is you know The bia for example, I think they want to use some of their money for marketing and I don't know the problem with that I mean, it's pretty much where they they sponsored us and measured j and supported us and and that partnership says that They want to use some of that money for for marketing. That's fine But the the the other statement we made was an inclusive thing like it would include village enhancements or Or other elements, okay So one thing is is that I I would consider a village enhancement is when they go out each year And they spend four or five thousand dollars on christmas trees That would be okay That would be something that they could say to us and I would typically like to see some kind of a budget of the money we give them where between 25 percent and You know one third is spent on enhancements And then allow them to use the other money as they see fit for their marketing whatever and when it comes to the chamber It would be the same thing, you know, uh, you know, maybe a two-thirds one-third And and I already see that the things that I think that the chamber does that might qualify as enhancements for the village Events like the easter egg hunt the surfing santa um the halloween Parade, okay, so I I don't think it's going to be difficult It's just a way of wording it and I don't even know what the exact budget is But um, tony, thanks for staying so late sorry about that but um, so I would direct them to come back to us with the budget of how they plan to do that and uh, You know in the village, you know One thing that's in contention right now is that the village made an effort to buy lights And a good better indifferent they the lights were an enhancement, okay And and to me things that enhance capitol It can either be of a permanent nature like a light Or it could be of a temporary nature like hiding easter egg candy So I'm really willing to call it enhancements or other elements that uh, that's how I'd look at it And rex staff to return to future me with a pose Yeah, so I would be my thoughts on that So you basically are saying you'd like to have a better understanding from the two groups How they propose to use this money some is already pretty well Well, they got to submit a but I want them to submit a budget I mean they're the budget is to include that they plan to use the money we're giving them For the intent that we Distributed them we we said we want some enhance. It was a term enhancement. Is that what the ballot language was? It's actually Marketing and community improvements and an improvement like I said, I just want to expand it in my mind improvement As it relates to the chamber could be like, you know The events okay improvement doesn't necessarily be Something tangible like like a light fixture or a Christmas tree. It could be an easter egg Yeah, whatever whatever I'll let them submit. So those are my thoughts. Yeah, I see you that's hand up um I'm in agreement I I agree that the chamber should utilize the funds for marketing and development For community events such as mentioned the surfing santa at easter egg hunt And then the bia should utilize Their budget and if it's a two-third one-thirds for, you know, what you said or a 50 50 bia should utilize 50 percent other budget on marketing and then the other 50 percent on Community improvements just as mentioned in that ballot language earlier or the tooth I don't that's not the right mouth but or the or two-thirds one-thirds However, we want to move forward and that the budget should be presented I agree that the budget should be presented to council for discussion and approval So the sense I get is that this is not a carp launch in either case They come to the city council to get approval for whatever that budget is There may be some discussion on that budget at that point And then we will either approve or send it back to the respective group I think we need to give them some parameters on what we expect though. I think you know, I think a 50 50 would be Maybe too much to ask. I don't think that's reasonable I in my mind. I envision it somewhere between 25 and 33 percent of their Allocation should go back towards the city the rest their will to do with what they want and when I say city it's those It's a pretty broad spectrum if we tell them they can buy in Christmas trees For example, it's something they already do. It's not like we're trying to but I think that between 25 and 33 percent Is a reasonable ask To reinvest in the city. This is a yearly amount they get you know, they'll be getting 30 000 every year So if they put 10 000 back in the city improvements Okay Do I hear other comments sam? Yes Um, my understanding from the stamp report that the bia has already submitted Uh, an amended budget They do they did submit a um a draft budget amended budget But like I said, we're working through their contract So I was going to bundle those together and then I wanted to wait for council direction Tonight off the top of my head. I couldn't tell you right. I think they had about 5 000 of their addition adjustments All right, so I mean just they've already have a plan And we should just Invite them or have it submitted to us so we can evaluate it along the lines that you mentioned and And just discuss it then yes My suggestion is is to take advantage of this hearing I think and to give them some direction because they they submitted that I think without the advice of council and it would be I think it'd be easier to for them to come in with a budget that's consistent with council direction rather than come in One that maybe didn't meet your expectations, but Well, I mean I've seen that they've heard the comments and they know what the measure j says You know concerning marketing and community improvements And they can either I mean if their current mid-year budget amendment for 17 000 If it falls within those lines, that's fine. If not, they can take it back and Make some appropriate adjustments. I don't think we've established any percentages, Sam I think that's what we need to do is is it give them some expectation of us As to of the Allocation how what percentage would we like to see them reinvest Into the city? Yeah, well, I thought you spoke to that very well Ed though about certain range And I didn't even put that I mean i'm fine with the range right I don't know that this point. I wanted to you know, like strictly say oh, it's 50 50 and you gotta live with that Because I think it is truly about you know, how do they see there and what are their needs? How do they perceive them and how do they want to present them to us and And so and they can maybe follow the directions and give a better sense of of success when it does come here Um, but I don't necessarily want to tell them how to make their request to us If I may is it uh, would it be reasonable for us to Essentially ask them to come back for a budget with language saying the council strongly suggests that you use 25 to 33 percent of your funding on Whatever this may be so we're kind of putting the guidelines out there for them saying please stay within this But then if they come back and say no that doesn't work and here's why We we can consider that yeah, it may be even simple We just say minimum of 20 we don't have to put the range just say minimum of 25 percent We suggest please show us a we recommend a minimum investment of 25 annually Okay, I would like to step in here. Um, I brought this up a number of years ago and um, I know that Because I was a merchant president of a merchants group for many years and I always thought the city did not provide enough for us in our particular area But I know that the city of capitol provides a lot of services to the bia downtown and I would actually like to see the city the city come up with an accounting of about how much we provide now We clean sidewalks. We do policing. We do the roads. We pick up trash We do a number of things and I would like to see that figure out there so that the business community actually understands How much the city contributes To the well-being of that area and then we can have a discussion about What more can we do using this new fund? I want to start with a base level and that's the important thing to me. I don't know if Other city council members agree with that, but We've been doing a lot for the city Down by the Espanade in the center of the city and and that's a very important thing to do And I don't think anyone has a problem with that, but I want this to be a two-way street here I want this to be understood that we're all helping each other And I wanted to also be understood that there's been a lot done that is continuously being done to support the Espanade and the business community downtown And when I talk to people sometimes I get the impression that there's a lot of complaints about how the city responds to the business needs in the community and our Espanade and the center of our city And I totally understand that because I was in that position once But the city never came to me and said this is what we do And this is how much we actually spend on you and I think that's an important thing to level the conversation And I agree that we need to say to the community That Excuse me the bia that how much are you doing for the general good of your area? And so I think the city should tell us tell them how much we're doing to the general good of their area So how much is the business community doing or are we going to ask them to do For the general good of that area So that's my input on that If there's a motion I would like to see that I'm prepared to make a motion I'll make a motion that we uh the split between the bia and the chamber to be set at 50 50 and the Direction to the budget is direct the chamber and the bia to show a minimum 25 investment in What's the term improvements and enhancements improvements and or enhancements And I had them return with budgets for for our approval I'll second Okay, I'd like to make a friendly amendment if I may I'd like to also Add to that that we direct city staff to come up with an accounting of how much the city spends on The be excuse me the Espenot area the central part of our city as part of that discussion If I may I would take issue with that. I think it's our responsibility as a city to do those things Take care of our roads and and whatnot and so to ask them to show us how much we're doing for them already is kind of I don't know. I think that's our job is to do those things I would agree. I I think that that is our job and I and those discussions have come up And it's not a good way to have a relationship. I think we're doing it. This is a positive thing We're we're allocating the money and we're just asking for some simple Accountability of how they spend and and what we do for them We are in the business of providing services as councilmember Peterson And so I I'm not going to accept that friendly amendment that that's something you can ask the city to give you at any time And I think that information is readily available, but I don't I don't think it's pertinent to this conversation Yeah, I I could see the sentiment behind your comments and christen's comments I just want the discussion to be a level playing field and Yes, the city does provide resources, but sometimes it's not always appreciated And I think it's important in any kind of relationship to have an appreciation Just like the police department depends on the appreciation of the people in the city for their services That helps for effective Communication and the effective providing of those services I think the same thing applies to the merchants I think we need to have a better relationship with the merchants so that there's Communication so we could share these things and appreciate each other's part of that deal of helping each other out and I I'm not sure that I see that here I'd ask we call the question all the question, please Are we going to get roll call please? We have not had any public comment. Oh, I'm awfully sorry public comment my my I see I tony. Yeah, if you'd like to you know, I'm sorry tony I came here for direction tonight I that's why I did not submit anything yet So I just wanted to clear understanding of what you know, the chamber should submit for our funding request and you know, the last couple of years I haven't had to Provide anything so I'm glad we are going to be providing information to you As to what we do with that funding and Just some more information for you. We work hand in hand with the bia We have since it was established So we're working in partnership with them no matter how much Funding they get and how much funding the chamber gets We still work together on promoting You know the capitola village But the chamber goes past that it's just not capitola village. We promote we promote all of capitola So in my report to you and my request I'll submit all that information as to what we're what we're doing So I just wanted direction tonight as to what to do And you got it, right? I got it. Thank you Thank you for everything you do, Tony Okay, so let's have a roll call vote Councilmember story Councilmember peterson. Hi councilmember brooks. Hi councilmember botthorff. Hi Member trend. Hi So with that we are moving on to approve overall mid-year budget amendment And um, can we go over what those are because It's been so long ago Do you want to revisit to clarify? Yeah It was all the ups and downs that that jim summarized in this presentation and it's included in attachment to I do remember them. Do people want to hear those again? No. Yes. No. No, okay Um, in the interest of moving along. I don't think we need to hear all those Do I hear a motion? Can you say go to the sheet? We may be able to wrap up everything What's going to go back to the other side? Oh, you do. Okay. Sorry. Is there two or one there? Two arrows Motion to approve mid-year budget and authorized staffing changes second Okay, all those in favor. Hi. Hi. Okay. So we have budget amendment authorized. Okay. We're almost done. Let's see In your budget Oh my god, we have item c consider resolution ratifying the state division of voting And I think steve's coming up boy Royce grant application staff report Sorry jim you're going to have to get up I'll make this quick Really quickly Measure f funds were identified when we Campaign for measure f to do improvements along the waterfront Specifically to the wharf the flume and the jetty The flume and jetty project is ahead of the wharf project We have plans that are about 90 complete right now And we're just waiting to get the last of our permits that are required format We do have fish and wildlife and the regional board permits We're waiting for the core permits which we anticipate next month And we are on the coastal commission agenda in april to get that permit So that will give us all the permits we have One of the things when we talked about measure f was always trying to Use that money and get grants We did find a boating and watersways grant That will pay for to help stabilize beach erosion We've talked to them and our flume and jetty project matches nicely with what they're looking for There was a grant deadline to submit the grant February 1st We public works met that deadline And as part of it they do want a resolution from the council Submitted to them by April 1st That basically says you ratify the application and you request the funding If the city's application is successful the funding will not be available though until June of 2020 That's actually when they'll make the award and it'll probably be take us a few months to get the contract together So that is it you know a year year and a half out Under the application we requested $800,000 which is about approximately 50% of the project cost It is a grant match. So whatever we get we need to match with them Project timing the Once we have all the permits we're really only months away from being able to to put the project out to bid for construction Um The Project construction does need to occur between November and April. That's when the flume is not in use and we're going to be You know needing it dry and to do that. So right now we're kind of on a Trajectory to build it this November through April. It's won't take that long It's probably only a six week project But because of the you know, you're building in winter. You don't know what storms will have We do have this long window um So currently as I said the current schedule is to go out to bid as soon as we have the permits and Constructed this fall if we do wait for a determination For the grant would require delaying most likely until winter of 2020 when we go to construction Oops, sorry. Um, just I guess I really did. Sorry. I guess I'm tired to Excuse me So our recommendations tonight are to Consider two options. You have to either or this is to prove the resolution ratifying the application And requesting funding from the state parks division of boating and waterways and direct public works to Schedule the flume and jetty project for construction as soon as practical for many decision on our on the grant application what that means is The grants are getting up reviewed by different staff members at different times and from what we understand Um, it can get kicked out at any time. So if we get kicked out in Six months from now, we can try and move the project forward at a different time if we wait until june 2020 Um, the other option is to not adopt the resolution and just directory to proceed with the flume and jetty project As soon as we can and construct it this winter That's it We'll be happy to answer any questions comments. How's sam? Thank you, mayor Steve is is there one He said that we may not hear about the award Until maybe june 2020 is is then But and if that's the case Um There would still be I guess what i'm trying to get to is there's some middle ground between this where we could maybe Start, you know, since it's a match And um, and at the time that we hear about the award Then I mean, yeah, we would we would be able to use that 800 000 Apply expenses to that Um At that time so in other words, can we bridge the work And fit in this grant at a later date without Delaying too much the start of some of the work Well, just the way the timing of the project having to be built november through april Right We can't start at this november because we'll complete it before june of 2020 It's only like I said Project so we can't start it this winter And so in reality if we By june 2020 we'll be already in line for the november event So I I don't think we can complete part of it The grant won't reimburse us for any expenses prior to The the date of the contract And and is that also true for the jetty portion of the yes, it's one product in here right all that so Okay, thank you First question is We applied for the permits My question is is How long do the permits last and how expensive are the permits and it's applying for the permits negate us From receiving the grant Is there any advantage to to applying for the permits but not going ahead with the project? No, so we are clear with all the permitting agencies that We this project could be delayed For various reasons why we're waiting further. We originally planned to be in construction right now Right. Well, I got two permits. So all the permits are good through 2020 That's really why you're asking right I mean if we and are they are these permits expensive. I mean, is this a large? Oh, we've probably spent Because of the necessary coordination especially at the core. We've probably spent I'm going to say $30,000 on them so far So it's sizable some but the thing is is these permits now would allow us to postpone this They'd still be intact or wait for this decision in june and even if it came in june We wouldn't be building it until november anyway So the timing might even be better and and the other question is is do you perceive this? The status of the jetty or the flume to be imminent where we couldn't wait the two years No, I think, you know, they've been there for 40 or 50 years and each and I think they're fine I do have a question a little off topic But what's the status of the wharf project? So the wharf project we are waiting for historical evaluation to be completed As we know it's an historic It's registered. So I'm going to have to just briefly interject Oh, sorry not on the agenda for this evening's discussion plenty of stakeholders would probably like to be here for that. Thank you Without mentioning what I just mentioned The public did pass this resolution for three different projects wharf jetty and flume and we're putting off working on two of them and I think the public would like to see some progress on the money that we've been collecting. So that's why I brought in Okay, um, any questions from the public No questions from the public. I'll bring it back to city council for motion You know, I I'm thinking that there's a large degree of fiscal responsibility here And we have an opportunity to possibly get an eight hundred thousand dollar grant. Um, I know that we Have been You know applied for a grant on Claire's and very unsuccessful because it wasn't a worthy project So the fact that you know, I'm hearing the language that this is a a worthy project and one that they like I don't think it behooves us to move ahead with this at this time There's there's no imminent projects. We have and I'm willing to wait And uh, whatever the scrutiny of the public is about us not spending the money. I think they'd much more appreciate if we Try to secure 50% of this funding. So I'll make a motion that we go for, uh The first option or prove resolution ratifying the application requesting the uh project Oh, wait, is it Yes, the top one top one. I want the top recommendation that we wait and see if we can secure this grant and should it fall apart So we need to bring it back. I just should have fall apart. We can just move ahead as planned. Yeah We'll come back to you before we go to bed. You guys need to approve the plan and project anyway That would be my motion. All right. I'll second that second. Okay motion in second. All those in favor I Okay with that adjournment. Thank you You almost exactly attend


When we're looking at a voting method just for some additional background, voting method has to do all these things. So its primary objective is it should be electing a good winner, like that's its main job. But a voting method has these other attributes as well, such as like you, if you can make it simple, you should be able to make it simple and have all else equal, preferring simplicity, thinking about logistics with carrying out the administration for a voting method and then also looking at the reflection of support that it provides for each candidate. So not only is a voting method, is it supposed to be able to elect a good winner or select a good winner or set of winners with the candidates who don't win, it should also gauge their support well. And that's important because if a candidate really has a lot of support, but it's not showing up, then they could get marginalized in a way that's unfair, that keeps their ideas from being heard. So that's kind of a background in terms of when we're looking at voting methods, like well, first like what a voting method is, some of the things that we're looking at when we're comparing or evaluating voting methods and for this call, one of the things that we like to go into is obviously we have a worldwide crisis right now, we have an active pandemic. And so there are some factors that really come into play in terms of really highlighting the importance. So, and part of that is planning for the next inevitable crisis. Like as a society, we go through challenges all the time, the scale of the challenges can vary from moment to moment, but we will inevitably have complex problems that we have to solve in the future. So, one way that a voting method comes into play is that we want a voting method that has strong continuity. So, if we're looking at something where a government has to do planning and management to be able to mitigate disasters, those are complicated, that's a complicated structure to have to set up. And you don't want something where you have a particular administration that is working to set all this up. And yet the next administration comes along and decides, you know what, that's not a good idea. And then they break it all down. And then the administration after that, they decide, well, that first administration had it right. And you have this kind of pendulum effect going back and forth. And that's something that you can experience with the current voting method that we have. And that makes it very difficult to plan for disasters that inevitably will come up. One of the reasons that we like approval voting, which is the method that we advanced. So as a recap, approval voting is a voting method that allows you to select as many candidates as you want and the candidate with the most votes wins. So it's very simple method. One of the perks of that method is that it tends to elect a more consensus style winner versus the current voting method that we have that can kind of have this pendulum effect of electing someone from one to the continuum for one election and the next election swing to the other side. With approval voting, it tends to focus on a more consistent style candidate. So you have more continuity and you don't have these wild swings. And being able to have that kind of continuity in government is helpful when you wanna have long-term planning. So when you wanna do pandemic preparedness or other complicated long-term projects that require a lot of management and able to have these plans carry over from administration to administration. Another component is, so in the beginning we talked about what are the types of attributes that make a voting method good. The top one there is it should elect a good winner. And so we see that being increasingly apparent right now in terms of having strong leadership. So approval voting focused as you can use it for multi-winner elections, but in kind of its classic state, it's used for executive positions. And we want a good voting method like approval voting so that we can elect strong people to these executive positions because ultimately when times like this come up we need people who are strong in leadership and being able to manage these complicated situations. We don't want a voting method that elects someone that is not able to handle these situations or makes poor decisions. And another component is when, one of the nice features of approval voting is that it gets these, so even if a candidate doesn't win because you can always support your honest favorite and approval voting, it means that you don't have to worry about wasting your vote when people bring new ideas to the table. And new ideas may be just what are necessary in order to mitigate challenges that we have. And so if we have a voting method that fails to capture that support from these other candidates, we can miss out on these ideas and being able to mitigate these situations. So those are some of the highlights here in terms of why a voting method matters and how it can apply to these types of crises. So if we wanna do some questions, be happy to hear what people's thoughts are in terms of how the voting method can apply here. And you can also, yeah. My name is Alan, I'm from Fairfield, California. Can you talk a little bit about how, how voting reform might detoxify our politics?  And I think that the voting system has something to do with that in that it is polarizing and can approval voting help with that? And if so, how? So any, so one reason that we can find ourselves in this toxic environment, and thanks Alan for the question. One reason that we can find ourselves in this environment is because of the way that we vote normally. So when we vote normally, we're forced to choose just one candidate. And what that does is it forces us to now provide information of all the candidates that are there. And obviously we have feelings about practically all the candidates and not just the one that we expressed information about. So this is really providing a scenario where we can hardly provide any information at all. And we might think about how this plays out, for instance, in the primaries. So we saw in the democratic primary, for instance, that there was some hostility between some of the supporters from different campaigns. Whereas if you kind of think about it and take a step back, it feels kind of weird for some of them and that when we look at them just kind of like afar, it looks like they have a lot in common and yet we're seeing a little bit of animosity there. And part of that is that, and we had done a poll on this too, when so when we gave people the option to choose multiple candidates they took that opportunity. And so there are a couple of articles in particular that see how that plays out. There is one and Caitlin can add them into the chat window. One is looking at the poll that we had done just before Super Tuesday. And then another one was looking at the election, taking a Snapchat in November. And there we had compared multiple different voting methods. And so what you see there is that when people are given the option to choose more candidates, they do. And that can play a heavy role in terms of the way that we're able to communicate about politics. So for instance, if we see a couple of candidates with similar ideas, we can look at them and say like, hey, like both of these candidates, they're doing like from your personal perspective, you could say, oh, well, they're really supporting this issue that I care about. I'm really excited about both of them. Whereas when we're forcing the scenario with this choose one voting method that we're stuck with now, when we're looking at it under that lens of this choose one voting method, now we can't say, well, I like both of those candidates. I like to support them both. We're in a position where we're having to like push between those candidates and really force that divisiveness. And that's merely the consequence of being able to provide such little information. So approval voting being able to support multiple candidates really does help to potentially address that situation by allowing, by making it so bitter, so we'll get stuck in the situation where they're forced to choose and support only one candidate, even when they lack the ideas of multiple candidates. Thank you. Excellent. Hello. Hello. Yeah. Hi, this is Joyce from Seattle. Hi, Joyce. Hi. So I just have a few things I'd like to say and maybe you could jot them down. And if you want to talk about any of them, that'd be great. And I'll just lay them out. All right. I believe we should have all paper mail-in ballots like we have in the state of Washington. I believe that all Americans should be automatically registered to vote at age 16. I don't think you have to ever prove a party affiliation in order to vote. I think we should have rank choice voting where you pick your first, second, and third choice. And it does not have to do anything or third choice and it does not have to be in any particular party. It's just whoever you like. I think all primaries should have these mail-in ballots due on the same day and no states go before any other. That there should be no more caucuses and this kind of disparity between caucuses and primaries based on state by state. It should all be primaries. And let me see if there's anything else. And the winner should win by popular vote only. There may be other things I just can't think of them all right now. All right. Well, you've laid out a nice wish list there. I think a lot of these come into play right now. So we're seeing, although it's a little outskied, the scope of the voting methods that we look at, but it's certainly adjacent looking at, for instance, at paper ballots. Perhaps something else that you might like to add to the list is something like risk limiting audits. I know Colorado has taken the lead in that. So there are a lot of adjacent measures that support our democracy. With our organization, we do focus a bit more on approval voting. So the bar is pretty low to where we're at now. So stuck with the choose one voting method. It's kind of when we look at the options that we have for voting methods, it really, the choose one voting method is really the bottom of the barrel in terms of options that we have. So looking at the, so Caitlin looked at shared the, if you look in the chat, the Super Tuesday poll as well as the November poll that we had. And one of the interesting things that really kind of helps to highlight one of the reasons that we push approval voting over some of the other options. So there we didn't see so much of a difference with the winner of the election. But what we did see was a big difference in terms of the reflection of support that other candidates got. And one cool thing that we did, which I'm really proud of our team for putting together is we had a control measure for both of those polls. So we had an honest assessment control measure where we asked people, okay, tell me what you think about these candidates on the scale of zero to five. And just we want you to be honest with your assessment. We're not talking about viability. We just want you to assess these candidates. And it looks like for late joiners, they can't see the earlier link there. We'll blame Zoom on that one. So we had this control measure on top of that. And for the second one, we had an extra cool control measure. And that second one was we, much like the other control measure kind of having a utility or a type of a Likert scale. For the other one, we asked people to rank their options in an honest way. So in kind of a similar fashion with the way that we did for the scale. And we use that to see how candidates would do head to head. So we had these control measures for these kind of honest control measures for these polls as well. And when you look at those and you superimpose them over the results that we got, you see that approval voting really did the best out of the voting methods that were there, which also included the choose one voting method, as well as the rank choice voting method. Both, so rank choice voting, for instance, it's better than the choose one voting method in terms of capturing that support for the other candidates. But when you compare it to that control measure, you see that it really falls short and kind of fumbles a bit in a number of areas with that candidate list in both the November poll and the one on Super Tuesday. And this is also within subject design. So each respondent is replying using multiple voting methods. And that's a way like, that's a technical way of reducing air within the study. But when you look at approval voting, for instance, it doesn't perfectly align but it comes pretty close to the control measure. And it does much better than both the rank choice voting method as well as with the choose one voting method. And you get that nice reflection of support. So not only do you get that clear winner, who matches the high utility score and the all winner with the control measure for that particular sample. So not only do you get that, but you get that nice reflection of support all at the low price of a very low complexity cost. So you get, so you're getting that with a voting method that is very easy to express information on a ballot. Looks basically like a normal ballot. You're just picking the many as you want. And it's easy for people to understand which is just simply adding the votes. So for that low cost of complexity, you're getting these nice results that match well even against a nice control measure. So how does that appear on the ballot? I mean, like you're saying, I don't understand. So rank choice would mean you pick your first, second, and third choice. How does this approval method show up on a ballot? So maybe we can add another link in there to get some visuals. Kim, maybe you can add some, she's already, Kim, it's already on it. I see her typing away. Thank you. I'll, as, so there's that approval voting 101 link that I can't just add it in there. And one of the things that you can tell from that is that the ballot looks a lot like our normal ballot. So when you go to vote normally, you see like your list of options and you get like a box next to each of the options. And normally it says, just check one of those boxes. And that's what we're used to. With approval voting, you're still electing one person here, but instead of checking one box, you can still check one box if you like. In some cases that makes sense still, but you're allowed to check as many boxes as you want. And that's the only difference. You'd still add up the check marks, most of the twins for some folks in the, that are a bit more techie. You might think of it as a difference between a radio button that we normally see that allows you to pick just one option, like doing an online survey versus a check box, which online, which allows you to pick as many as you want. So for folks that are thinking about it and like maybe a user experience thing with the internet forms, that's perhaps another way to think about it. But isn't that ranked choice anyway? Cause you're picking more than one person. So that's interesting. So there are a lot of different voting methods that allow us to express more information. So a voting method, it has these parts to it. So a voting method has the expression element where you're putting information down and that information could be all kinds of different information. It could be choosing just one, it could be ranking, could be selecting more as many as you want, could be scoring on a scale. Then you got to do something without information. And if we look just within the class of ranking methods, so it's, right choice voting has a little bit of a weird name in that, like it overlaps with an entire class of voting methods. It has other names, which in the field of voting methods, I think the field does kind of a bad job in naming stuff. So like we see a bunch of voting methods with multiple different names, like even the method that we use now, we're maybe a bit guilty of it ourselves in that we call it a choose one method to try to add simplicity to it, but it goes by plurality of voting, first pass the post. Ranked choice voting that we're talking about also goes by like instant runoff voting, hair method, alternate method. Like it's got a long list. So we're very bad about this and I'll apologize on all of our behalves on doing such a bad job with the naming within the field of voting theory. So if we're looking at say like ranking methods, they're all kinds of ranking methods. So there's ranked choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting. The way that works is that you rank candidates numerically from the candidate like you like the most, you rank them first all the way to the candidate that you like the least. And then it looks at the candidate who has the, so you look at the first choice votes, if the candidate has more than half of the first choice votes, then you have a winner. If not, you look to the candidate with the fewest first choice votes, eliminate that candidate and then transfer those votes over to the voters next choice preference. And then you retell looking at the first choice votes again, someone has more than half, you've got a winner. If not, you keep doing that cycle. And so that's, I'd say kind of moderate complexity in terms of voting methods when we think about the, like the whole survey of voting method options that we have out there, but there are other ranking methods as well. So for instance, another one is board account. You again are using ranking data. So from the voters perspective, it looks the same, but from the calculation component, that other important part of a voting method, you take those rankings and then you translate them to scores. So a candidate ranked is better, gets a higher score, and then it diminishes on down the rankings. Another one is a class of ranking methods called condorsay methods. What a condorsay method does is it uses those rankings to simulate pairwise comparisons between all the other candidates. And you can see that in that second one, the article looking at the Super Tuesday, we use the honest rankings to set up a condorsay matrix. So you see this pairwise comparison thing. If you ever look at like contest or sporting events, you may have heard of around Robin table. So you could think about it like that as well. So a condorsay method, another type of ranking method uses those rankings to simulate who is able to win head to head using all that ranking data. So the mere fact that we have a voting method that's providing more information than choosing just one candidate doesn't mean that it's a right choice, but it just means that like it's not the choose one voting method that we have. So fortunately, we're in a position where we have all kinds of options and the reason we go with approval voting is because not only does it do well in its major job of choosing that winner, but it has some extra bonuses too. So like we can see in those articles, it does a good job gauging support for other candidates even when they don't win. And then on top of that, you're getting all this great stuff for very little complexity. So it looks practically like the same ballot that we have now, really easy to calculate.  That means that you don't need all the ballot data together in one place. You can do it precinct by precinct. It makes, you can do audits with insert and runoff voting or ranked choice voting, but it's also a bit, it's quite a bit easier to do it with the approval voting. So that simplicity also integrates with other components as well. So thanks for the question, Joyce. You're welcome. I just was wondering if you're looking, I don't wanna dominate the questions here, but if you're looking at a ballot and you're using this method, can you just tell me how it would look if you say you had these names on the ballot for a primary? So you had Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg or something. How would that appear other than boxes with their name next to it? I don't understand that. The same, that's a beautiful thing. It's exactly the same. You can just check more than one. So you could say, I like, you know, I could say I like Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. I can check both instead of just one. On the last city council, I can, you know, check everyone, but the guys on Amazon are the checks too. Like, that's the thing. Not one more than another. I mean, you're putting Bernie and Elizabeth equal or what? Just approving, just approving. And so the way that you would tell the difference between an approval voting ballot and just choose one ballot that we're used to is the directions. So the directions normally it says, choose no more than one candidate. The directions would be replaced from choose as many candidates as you approve of or as many candidates as you wish. There are a number of different phrasings, but the key element is you can choose one or more. I think what Joyce might be getting at is there's an intuitive sense that if I'm ranking candidates, I'm giving more information. So that means I'm going to get a better outcome. But I think what you were getting at before is that, in fact, even though you are giving more information in some sense, the way that those votes are tallied up can end up not producing better outcomes in the result. But still, I think we should all remember here, if you're in an area where one of these alternatives, whether it's star or ranked choice or approval, if any of those has momentum and you're part of one of those movements, please continue working on those movements because it's so much more important that we get away from plurality than that we like pick the perfect alternative right now. I think that's one area where we highlight. So a lot of advocates in the space, one of our favorite things to do as a group is to put plurality voting in the center and kind of beat up on it a bit. So that's one of our favorite past times in this space. And so kind of like on that note, we can perhaps do that a bit. So for instance, the primary itself, when we look at, for instance, the data that we collected, comparing it just to the control measure, we see that among the voting methods that we looked at, plurality voting did the absolute worst that there was. We have a gauge of what that reflection of support looks like when people will express information honestly and plurality voting really messes up. So in the November one, it failed to distinguish among the leaders there, even though there was a clear leader according to the control data. And then it just completely failed and collapsed in terms of trying to gauge that support for these other candidates as well. The only thing that our choose one voting method has going forward is that it's simple and people have used it before. And that's about the end of the list of things that it's got going for it. And that's one reason why we're seeing all of these other approaches spark up. So we have like a number, there are a number of different organizations out there that have that push for different methods. And if we imagine the voting methods like it, so we talked about this idea of a condorsay winner.  There's also this concept in voting theory called a condorsay loser. And so that's a candidate who would lose to everyone head to head. And that candidate would certainly be our choose one voting method if we stacked it up against all the other options. So thanks for the reminder to bully around the current voting method that we have because it gets away with way too many free passes. To Alan's point, speaking to the notion of throwing your support behind local initiatives, I'm wondering what suggestions you might have to offer us in terms of how we might move forward to bring this conversation to a broader audience to develop official platforms, get the measure voted on. How do we move forward? Regardless of what method is preferred, what steps would you recommend for getting stuff done? Sure. And kind of a purpose with the work that we're doing, obviously we push for approval voting and it takes, and we've got a good track record for that. So kind of sharing the way that we advance a better voting method. So the system that we have now that's in place is that we ask people, so when people sign up for our newsletter, which I encourage everyone to do on the call, if you go to electionscience.org, it makes it really easy to sign up for our newsletter. So you go there, sign right up and then you will get an email from us. And also if you are in an area that has a lot of other supporters there, you will be invited to a local chapter. And let's see. So once you sign up for the newsletter, if you're in a geographic area that has a lot of support, you'll be invited to a local chapter. And we use those chapters to advance people to basically form a committee and an organization to advance a bell initiative. So we've got some experience in the space. We've already successfully helped the local group in Fargo and North Dakota to pass their approval voting. We did that in 2018, that passed by 63.5%. Right now we're doing the same thing in St. Louis. So Fargo was 120,000 people, St. Louis is over 300,000 people and we're just continually scaling that up. And we have these chapters in multiple cities. And so we work with these local chapters and from there they form a formal organization and then we help them with logistic support and help them with the ability to get approval voting on the ballot. And they are doing an advocacy campaign while we do an education campaign alongside it. And that type of setup or approach to doing this so far has been pretty successful. So we're looking very promising on a road with St. Louis and we had that huge win right out of the gate with Fargo. So we're looking forward to replicating that. And that's the model that we used to do this. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And Caitlin also shared the link for the chapter program that we have. So any other questions? I think I saw one in the chat about statewide initiatives. Like right now are you just doing city by city or any statewide initiatives that you've heard of? I love that enthusiasm. Like so the overall model that we've taken with this like as an organization, we have like a research component and we're working to develop that. We have a lot of material on our site and we've done these polls. But obviously we have this advocacy component at the same time where we take the data that we have and push it to get... So people actually are able to get the benefits of a better voting method. And our overall tactic has been to show proof of concept because here we've taken a voting method that while it's been used in other organizations and studied since the late 1970s, hadn't been used for government elections in the US and hadn't been used anywhere since Greece in 1920. So I had a good hundred years. So we had a lot, a pretty big lift there. So the strategy that we had was to show proof of concept and then replicate and scale. So with Fargo, that was the proof of concept component. We had to show that this could be done as well as like along that timeline as it's being used, collect data and seeing how things work out. St. Louis is that replication and scaling and then we plan to do that into even larger cities. And part of it is just the resources to be able to do that scaling. So like the, some of the smaller states out there are around a million. And so it requires the kind of being within that space to move up to that. So we have it on our radar to move into states but we're taking progressively higher, higher leaps. So like right now, technically, I mean we're moving exponentially in terms of the size that we're looking at. So St. Louis is two and a half times the size of Fargo. And our Vermont, or I see is pointing out that there are really 500,000 people in Vermont. So I think they're trying to focus a little bit. So with St. Louis being two and a half times the size of Fargo and then going to the cities that are, or cities or states that are more than double the size of that. So far like we're moving in terms of exponential growth, obviously exponential growth doesn't last forever. And given the situation that we're in now, I sure hope that exponential growth doesn't last forever for the staff people, like to see that move into an S curve and kind of plateau out. But so states are certainly on a radar that is part of our overall strategic plan but it's just a matter of having those winds that allow us to move into that. And we are, and it's also kind of a balance of when we're looking at places, we have to have the concentration of support and that location. There are a bunch of legal issues that we have to look at. So obviously they have to have the ballot initiative as a tool because it's very challenging to get representatives to agree to a different voting method than they were elected by. So we have to basically not ask them and use this work around using ballot initiative. So there are a number of components that have to line up as well as we're choosing a selection but we will eventually get into states as we're hitting bigger areas. So there's a question about divisiveness. And we were able to get into that before. A part of the way that approval voting addresses divisiveness is by allowing you to express opinion about more than one candidate. And the current setup just kind of putting us in this corner of basically having us fight against candidates even when we have a lot of common ground. So it sounds like this is in some ways a fledgling stage for this organization. And I'm wondering two questions. One, what do you need? What would be optimal in terms of support? Be that volunteers, be that funding, be that highly visible mouthpiece, what have you? And second question, which organizations are you partnering with to help that share common goals in an attempt to share resources and that sort of thing? So on the first question in terms of what can folks do? So it may not be completely new that we're talking about something where a lot of people don't know about it. So the biggest thing that our choose one voting method has going forward is that a lot of people know what it is. And in many cases, they aren't aware about their voting methods. And so being able to share the work that we do and let other people know that this is an issue that they should care about because there are other voting methods. And also being able to help make that connection when people are talking about an issue and saying like, you know what, I'm so annoyed that this policy that I care about is just not getting traction. It's not getting air time by candidates or when a candidate does bring it up that they're getting marginalized. So people just see that end result and they aren't necessarily aware of some of the tools that we have available like approval voting that addresses that concern. So being able to help bridge the gap in knowledge from these challenges that we're facing and the tools that we have available and being able to share our work to help bridge that gap in knowledge. So that's one component that you can do. And then like I mentioned before, we have these chapter systems set up. So by sending up for a newsletter and also there's the chapter link that Caitlin shared in the chat window. Those are ways to get involved directly. And those like by getting involved and being active in those chapters, that is a huge deal because ultimately that's how these things happen by the work of folks in these chapters. Like mini nonprofits, this is something that's quite expensive. Really our organizational capacity could be much greater. Like we are very nimble and we're very quick. For instance, the first major funding that we got at the end of 2017, within a year of that, we hired staff and got approval voting implemented in its first US city. If that doesn't say efficient and nimble, I don't know what does. So we're very good at what we do, but we can absolutely scale up and do more effective work with more funding and we share in how efficient that we can be. So those are some of the highlights in terms of what folks can do, in terms of sharing the work that we do, letting other people know, donating. Again, this capacity is what allows to achieve these outcomes. And then if you are in a place where we have a chapter being involved there, so those are some of the common components in terms of other areas that we work with. Whenever I'm traveling, I'm constantly working with local chapters of the lead woman voters. There are a number of other groups that normally talk with as well. Open primaries recently we joined with them in supporting the group in St. Louis, STL Approves, that's working on the initiative there. And so those are some of the examples. Have you considered doing like a TED talk that lays out the grand vision for how this is going to save democracy in America and also give, this seems like a great topic for a TED talk where you can get in a little bit of depth and just being on that stage would give a little bit of legitimacy to the ideas. That's a great idea. Yeah, that is a great idea. We have, so we do have some talks out there and Kailin might be able to share some of them. One, two that I'm thinking about in particular, one from EA Global and then the other from the TED talk. So the one hyping up the main leader in the city of Fargo. And that was a fun story to tell. Might a lot of fun given that talk, which is really about someone just refusing to say, like recognizing the problem, refusing to say no when the city ignored him and then going ahead and doing it anyway. That was one of my favorite talks to give. And then the other one for the, that I gave a talk at an organization with EA Global, that one is looking at kind of the topic area as a whole and why it makes sense as a cause area and why approval voting particularly makes sense. So those are a couple of talks and I see Kailin going through the interwebs as we speak, we're going to find them. So you should see those in the chat window. Once she's able to grab ahold of those. Looks like there's a couple more questions in the chat. You might have to scroll through a bit. Cool, let's see. So we've got the Vermont. Let's see. Get some voting method comparisons. Here's a fun one. This is from Joel. So Joel was asking about, with the approval voting, does it make sense to ever choose just one person? And the answer is yes. There are a number of circumstances when it makes sense to choose just one person. But what's important about approval voting and see I'll, I know you're, Kailin, you're working on giving the talk. Thanks. I'll find the other link here. I go through- I got, both of the talks are down there. So if you want me to find another link, I'm free. Are they, are they on there? I don't see the links for the talks on there. And I think you're muted. And I'll add the critiques. Sorry guys. Yeah, I was accidentally sending the message just to Joyce instead of to everyone. Well, I hope you enjoyed the talks, Joyce. Yeah. So the, so the question there- Thank you. Yeah. The question was about, what does it make sense to choose only one candidate? And certainly, yes, there are absolutely conditions where it makes sense to choose only one candidate. What's important about approval voting is that you have the option to choose more. And the option, so even when, say, most people, even like 75 or 80% of people choose only one candidate, having the option to choose more and that remainder choosing more than one candidate still makes a big deal. And the reason it makes a big deal is for a couple of reasons. One is that those remainder, who choose more than one candidate, can have a material difference in terms of changing the winner. So oftentimes when we think of elections, unless it was like a total runaway, most of the time the margin of victory is less than, say, like 25%. And so being able to have that remainder come into play can make a difference in terms of selecting the winner. The other component is in keeping in mind that changing the voting method doesn't always change the winner. Sometimes the candidate is so strong that regardless of the voting method that they would win in an election. And so one of the things that approval voting does is it does a really nice job gauging the support of all these other candidates, including candidates who don't win. And so when, even if you're supporting someone who turns out to be the winner in virtually every other voting method under approval voting, if you're one of those remainder folks who are caring about some of these other candidates, then you can support them. And if you hadn't been able to do that, then these candidates would have gotten virtually no support in many cases. And so even in cases where most people support only one candidate, it could still make a difference with this remainder who choose more than one. And being able to have a material impact in terms of the winner, as well as giving that reflection of support for the other candidates. And we see that on average, the number of approvals per ballot increases as a number of candidates increases. So being able to support more than one candidate becomes particularly important as you have a longer candidate list. And that's another area where approval voting really excels is that you have the super simple ballot design even when your candidate list is very long. So it's adaptable quite well, even in that scenario. So that's a good question. That's a common one that comes up. And it's not always immediately obvious what that answer is. I saw another one on there about how can we get this going within the two dominant parties who benefit from the current choose one system? Yeah, that's a good question. And I think that goes back to the tactic that we use. So we've had in the past situations come up where we have like a wonky representative, like they have some kind of engineering or math background and they're working to do good with their position and they reach out to us and say like, hey, we like what you're doing and we think approval voting would be great for our state representative there. Like help me like draft this bill. And these opportunities have come up but their colleagues are in a position where maybe they're not looking at it as altruistically and they say, well, like, you know what? I want to get elected and maybe the only reason I get elected was because we're using this kind of bad voting method and I don't want to take my chances with something else. So we run into that dilemma of this kind of conflict of interest and that conflict of interest is exactly why we don't ask permission. So we use ballot initiatives as a tool for changing the voting method because by running a ballot initiative where we have the voters themselves say yes or no on whether they want to implement approval voting by doing that, we avoid the conflict of interest of asking someone who's already elected to change the voting method that would elect them in the future. So the way that we avoid that is that we don't ask them. We try to get as many people on board. So when we're working within a particular area we're identifying and connecting with all the stakeholders. Some of them are people who are elected. If we can get people who are elected to be supportive, we'll absolutely take that support but it's not necessary for us which is why we do these ballot initiatives so we don't have to ask for permission. I would think another tactic could be pursued in parallel would be to try and get the party's nomination processes using these things. So that they, let's say it's in the Republican party's interests to use approval voting in their primaries because they'll get more consensus candidates that will then go on to win the broader election. So like could we push it? I think you paid it out. Sorry, so could we push it by saying like, hey, Republicans and Democrats, like Democrats, if you want to win elections you should probably use approval voting in your primaries. It seems like ranked choices going that way by like turning states primary processes one by one. And that's also getting them broader attention. So that does vary by state by state. And we like we do work, we haven't had as many inroads within major parties on this front. Although interestingly enough in St. Louis we're doing an open primary system using approval voting where the top two go on to the general election. There were some technical components with the Missouri law that forced us to take that particular route but it did wind up having us work within the primary. There being an open primary which has some advantages in that context because you like for instance with a primary nomination you're dealing with a subset of the population which is inherently partisan in a way that the rest of the population isn't. So there by having it an open primary allowing everyone to take part and also using approval voting it has an even better job job in terms of getting that general support. But even say like with a closed primary which is something like what you were describing when only people within the party can vote you can under approval voting it will give you a nice consensus winner but keeping in mind that it would be a consensus winner given people within that party. Still like even with that like that would be much better primaries would do a better job in terms of getting nominees that represent their party's ideology. But so we've had limited success with those inroads so far but I think part of that is really just a consequence of where we are in time. So as we build up these progressively larger wins this is something that's gonna be become more apparent and on people's radar. And I think people are gonna be open up to that particularly because of how easy this is to implement. So with approval voting for instance it's like you don't need any special kind of software so you don't have that same kind of fiscal cost as you might with other voting methods that require special voting machines that aren't already present. And so it has that kind of shovel readiness but I think that's something that parties will warm up to as it becomes something that's more on their radar. The question about what you just mentioned the open primary and having the top two go on to the general doesn't it highly depend on the number of candidates running at that point for each party. So let's say you have the population that's equally split between Democrats and Republicans which are two Republicans running at seven Democrats then the two Republicans are going to move on to the general election under an approval voting system. So you can't have within St. Louis the way it was a little bit different it was non-partisan. So the party labels weren't required but if you do have a group of people where two candidates are similar they could even be within. So with an open primary system where the top two go on to the general election if you do have two candidates out of the many candidates that are there that are very similar from the same party if they're also very popular yes it's possible for both of them to advance. That's why criticism of a top two system you could have other systems where you take that same kind of setup where you have a non-partisan open primary and using approval voting and you can have it to like the top three or the top four go on to the general election. It doesn't necessarily have to be two and St. Louis we did it as two because there were some issues using alternative voting methods in the general election. And so like our hand was a bit forced with that particular example but there are other approaches to do it and jurisdictions where there's more flexibility. Yeah, thanks Joel. Do we have any remaining questions before we wrap up here? Yeah, I have to sign off but I just want to say thank you so much for this. I really love this work and I really appreciate everybody in here because this really matters for the future. Thank you. You're welcome and thank you, Ellen. We're honored to do the work and we're grateful for the support and we would love to see you get involved. Thanks so much. Thanks, Talyn. Let's see. See one kind of tactical issue there for folks like him about to choose one tactic also known as bullet voting I would highly recommend you read the article on critiques and defenses of approval voting. And I think that the one argument that I mentioned addresses it quite well. There are a number of circumstances where it makes a lot of sense to choose more than one candidate particularly if it's a tight race and there's someone that you really don't want to see win it can be really important to hedge your bets to mitigate against someone you really don't like winning. And then there's a scenario that I think many of us have been in before which is like imagine a race where there's a third party or independent candidate they're not getting very much support. Normally under a choose one method you might think well like I don't want to vote for them because I don't want to throw my vote away under approval voting you're in an entirely different world. So there you can make sure that you have an impact with the outcome of the election. You can choose among your you like the best among the front runners. And then in addition to that you can also support other candidates who bring great ideas to the table that you'd like to see move up in their supports that they're not marginalized. So there are a lot of conditions in which it makes sense to choose multiple candidates and particularly with a long ballot list when you have a lot of when you increase the likelihood of having candidates there that you agree with. And if you look at the articles that we put out both the one on leading up to Super Tuesday as well as the one in November you see a lot of people rationally going ahead and supporting multiple candidates. So we have, so for other stuff you can always interact with us in the future on social media. We're on all of them I'm pretty sure except for Pinterest or not. But you can find the pictures that we take on Facebook and Twitter. We don't need to be on all of them and we're on LinkedIn. So you can join us on there. We've got YouTube videos so you can check us out on YouTube. Most importantly, I would encourage everyone to sign up for our newsletter. If you are not already signed up you can do that right from our homepage. Make it super easy because we really want you to sign up. So I want to thank everyone again for joining us and give Caitlin a moment to so she's not under pressure for getting that link. Let's see. For the, yeah, we're not on TikTok either. I think maybe some of our other staff would do better. I would do terribly on TikTok. I have no doubts about that. So the YouTube ones are up. I think someone's asking about that. Okay, cool. Is there anything else that folks need or any resources? Even if you think of it later, feel free to just email me and I can send you things. Awesome. And I put our email addresses in the chat but you can also, if you lose access to this chat you can find those on our website too on the Meet the Team page. Cool. Well, thank you all for joining us. I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter and also donate to support our work. We make it really easy to do that as you might expect on our website. And thank you for joining us. We really appreciate the support that you give. Thank you everybody. Thanks all. Thank you.