Right. Well, welcome everyone to tonight's free precincting forum hosted by the civic engagement group of Envision Arlington. And before I hand off to Julie, our temp arc, I just wanted to quickly go over some general ground rules. We're still relatively new with this as a civic engagement group. So, you know, just try out having some basic rules here, expect this discussion to be civil and to focus on the facts. It's it's fair to disagree with another person's claims or conclusions, but it's not acceptable to speculate about the intentions or motivations of others, nor to treat others with prejudice or instability. If someone is unable to follow these rules, I'll temporarily mute them with a brief reminder, then on repeated offenses, they may be removed from a meeting. If anyone's uncomfortable with any other participants here, feel free to chat me privately if you prefer, and I'll take your feedback into consideration. So hopefully none of that ends up mattering and we'll just have a fine discussion. So So, without further ado, I'd like to head it off to our town clerk, Julie Brazil, to present to us the plans that are going before the select board. And we expect to have plenty of time for questions and answers afterwards.  All right. Thank you so much to the civic engagement group for doing this. I want to make sure everybody knows that Kelly line Emma, the assistant director of planning is with us tonight. And she'll be able to help answer questions. Adam Korowski, our GIS expert who drew the maps will hopefully be able to join us if he can resolve his technical difficulties and he can certainly answer a lot of detailed questions about about the maps as well. Before I Jump into the slideshow, which will be the same slides. I'll just step through them relatively quickly. So we're all on the same page and have a chance to remember what's on the two different maps. I want to just give it just a tiny bit of background because this is the civic engagement group On represincting and the related function of redistricting. So the state process for drawing the house and Senate districts normally relies on our local precincts as the building blocks that was disrupted this year because the federal census was late. But technically, they can be two completely different processes. The state districts. Districts. Have a sort of a much more complex requirement to manage Or have a much more complex problem to solve in terms of managing minority voting rights. Not all small towns or even large towns have have significant minority racial minority populations. So the state districting process. They set themselves a goal this year and I watched the presentations and read some of the reports from the district and committee and they wanted to Both increase the number of minority Majority precincts precincts where the majority of residents were either Hispanic or black And then they wanted to increase the number of minority opportunity precincts where more than 50% of the district Would be people of color. So, You know, sort of that that sort of broad BIPOC everyone who's not white and they added a number of precincts to both category districts across the state. And so they were very happy and I share their joy that the work that they did. It does disrupt things for some towns where, you know, in order to make the district work and meet the same types of legal requirements to balance The population numbers.  They had to put lines where lines weren't Didn't used to go. And so there are town clerks across the state really wrestling with with the changes. Arlington is lucky. We don't have any of those split precincts where, you know, half of one of our precincts is in each of two districts. So that was, you know, that was great for us. Although It's scary there for a few weeks looking as they started drafting the maps at the house level. So that's the state sort of process and requirement. Our local process is Is actually, although we have to meet the similar legal requirements. It's, it's not the same. Our precincts only exist in an important way to elect people to representative town meeting, which is why it's legal Under the law for our precincts to not coordinate with the house districts because we're electing to completely different types of representatives And, you know, theirs is a much more, you know, partisan process, but they're all they're, you know, they're running as representative, you know, Republicans and Democrats and, and in Arlington, we're either electing everyone in a nonpartisan way townwide, or we're electing representatives to town meeting. And that's important. And that's why the state representing guidelines advise communities to look at their local issues. What are their local communities of interest, what are the concerns facing the community that town meeting will be will be discussing. In Arlington, we've had a lot recently and more to come talking about housing and town meetings job, of course, is to, you know, approve the budgets and town bylaws and zoning bylaws so that that focus means that this is an opportunity, and we are sort of It's recommended that we take the opportunity to, to look at the map, look at the residents look at the neighborhoods and do the best job we can to To, in our case, you know, the the representing working group sort of thought of it, try to improve the diversity of the voices in town meeting by proposing precincts that allow more people in lower income or densely populated areas to be elected. So, you know, that's sort of a little bit of the sort of the context of districts and precinct. And then I just sort of is everyone remembers and to sort of set the stage for the conversation when a precinct line is changed. All of the town meeting members have to be reelected. So there would be in any of the precincts that are affected there would be all 12 people. There would be 12 seats on the ballot of course the incumbents don't have to run, but there would be 12 open seats on the ballot. And of course, if the change in the map leaves could leave some town town some precincts where there are more town meeting members existing town meeting members in the precinct. And some of the new precincts would have fewer town meeting members, you know, sort of incumbents returning in the precinct. And that is how you. And that sort of you can think of it is in those precincts where there are the new precincts where there are now fewer returning town meeting members. You've made space for new participants it's it's much easier. I think for people to contemplate running for town meeting if they're not running against 12 incumbents. And so I think creating that space in some of the precincts is the goal. So unless I mean unless people want to stop and ask questions about that context, I'm happy to share my screen and step through the slideshow. It's entirely up to the group. Charlie go ahead. Okay. Can you hear me. Yes, Charlie. Yep, I can hear you go ahead. Thank you. So, Julie. I have a question. You made the comment that it is recommended to do something. Wasn't exactly sure what it was recommended to do, but I'm interested in who is the recommender. Number one, the secretary of state. I mean, it's a state process. So we get all we get our instructions from the secretary of state. When you say we you mean the town clerk or the town of Arlington or. Yes. And you have this suggestion that if there are new precincts, you're making room for more people to run or different people to run. I mean, I think in any precinct, anyone can run any time right. Sure. So what's I'm trying to understand the value of displacing people who have been active participants in the town. And for, for, for the potential engagement of people whom you don't know will become engaged. So, yes, that that process. Well, so the value is not in displacing people, but the value is in in creating space. Why don't so that's I will absolutely answer all of these questions. And it might be clearer if we, if I step through the presentation I've added some some slides in anticipation of this question, having read some of the comments in feedback and understanding there's more we can explain. So I can certainly go ahead and go through the presentation, explain a little bit about what we're talking about. And so, I guess I'll make it, I'll make it just sort of a prefacing comment. I know I just from looking at the names here a lot of the people here are town meeting members.  But, but disruption of, you know, sort of town meeting members isn't. That's not really the guiding the guiding driving force behind representing we're really rebalancing population and looking at the broader communities of interest in the town may have to follow up question please you didn't you didn't answer my question. I could answer your question why don't I answer your question when I've gone through all the slides and I have slides that capture the data questions and I said I had a question. My question is very simple. Okay, what is the value of displacing existing members to engage people whom you don't know are going to become engaged. Again, the value isn't in displacing members the value is in making space for new people and yes there will be work and outreach. But I mean a lot of us have talked for many years and worked towards the goal of using diversity in town meeting and this is this is part of it. So, I respect with respect I will answer all the questions but I think some of the questions will make more sense when I've gone through the slides. If that. So why don't we try that and then, and then. I just really wanted to give people a chance to ask you know as answering a question asking a question they had about sort of the bigger picture house district and stuff because I know that that's sort of a new way of talking about the process. All right, so shall I share as why don't I just walk through the slides now and see if that answers some of the questions. There's still hands up. The deal is that we're going to go through the slides first mean and then we'll deal with the hands. Okay. So, let's do the slides. Okay. All right. So, let me figure out how to advance. Okay. All right, there we go. All right. Again, I'll walk through this at a reasonable clip since we can loop back and answer questions so we have two maps one is the limited changes map that changes the fewest precincts and really only attempts to solve for the need to balance rebalance the population and a recommended changes map, which goes ahead and makes broader adjustments to a few neighborhoods in town in order to into in order to sort of make some improvements to representation in town meeting. You can see the five precincts that in Martin read are either over or under the population and have to be changed and then in the limited changes map and additional five precincts have to be adjusted just to make the numbers work in the recommended changes map the only difference is changes to precinct 13. And limited changes map focuses on the five precincts that have to be changed, and it adheres to the state district house districts so that we don't have any split precincts. So, the first area is in precinct five which needs to pick up population. We sort of smooth out the line. Using this large, the large streets here we add these precincts into precinct five, which means we need to then pull a precinct out district of a census block out of precinct five and put it into precinct seven and the center of town precinct 17 needs to lose population. So, this large section in the center was all part of precinct 17, and it is now divided up, and a big chunk of it goes to precinct nine, a little slice of it is moved into precinct 11. In order to balance the numbers, this little part of precinct 15 in area one is moved into precinct 17. And then there's a, there's a sort of little pieces of precincts that have to be moved around in order to make the math work. So one of the advantages to this map is that the center part here around the high school sort of makes a little more sense in precinct nine is fairly compact and spends most of its time sort of following along the massive corridor, which is sort of a sort of a focus a characteristic that will make representation in precinct nine sort of sort of coherent. Then, and then the last changes we have to bring a few census blocks from precinct 10 into precinct eight in order to balance that population. The final change and it's the same on both maps precinct 16 needs to gain just a little bit of population and so it takes, it takes one census block from precinct 18. And since both precincts vote at the down school. That's not not sort of very disruptive change. So, again, we've balanced all the numbers and impacted 10 precincts. But as again this pre this model this map doesn't make any additional changes. So there's still some, some parts of town that have that we will definitely present some ideas for changes in the recommended map. But the total number of census blocks that change polling locations that's 11. But I think it's only four of those 11 are looking at sort of an increased distance to travel to the polls. And again, that's a separate conversation but there's a lot we can do to make polling locations better for some precincts just based on on adjusting them over time. And in the recommended changes map, we wanted to, we wanted to present the select board with some options that would let us draw neighborhoods, you know, draw, draw precinct lines that were sort of work better with some of the way the data makes the look. We tried to respect large, you know, sort of neighborhood boundaries and streets and school district lines, just because that's how some members, how some residents, you know, proceed their neighborhood is where their kids go to school and so that's a helpful a helpful guideline. And again, we've managed to not split any precincts across the house district lines. And then we made a few more additional changes. So, I this slide just sort of brings up a little bit about the idea of natural neighborhoods we you know we sort of we talk about neighborhoods and one of the challenges that we face is that after 50 years with very very similar map. And a lot of people think of their neighborhood as their precinct. And so, you know, I do recognize we're, we're challenging a lot of assumptions and, and, and, you know, sort of what makes sense to people and, and what's comfortable. So, you know, I think it's important to think about sort of what makes up a neighborhood and what makes up a precinct. And it's very important that precincts, you know, we do everything that we can to to think about the impact on of the precinct lines on representation in town meeting. For instance, we have some precincts that sort of are are less compact, and they travel, sort of longer distances across the map. They travel from, you know, massive all the way north or south to one of the borders, and they tend to include a wider range of demographic profiles in the precinct. And when there are when there's that sort of much difference in the demographic characteristics. It's, it's likely and we can see in some of the precincts more town meeting members come from from the wealthy or less densely populated single family parts of the precinct. And again, we, as much as we wanted to look at some of these changes we did. We did focus only on the neighborhoods where, where we were already making changes. And so this, the recommended map only adds one extra precinct to the total that would have to have their lines changed and would and have to reelect all of their town meeting members. So, let's just look at the map. Again precinct five has to gain population. So, one of the biggest changes is we wanted to include the web talent neighborhood in area one in in precinct five. This is a neighborhood that's much more similar in profile to the rest of precinct five than it is to the rest of precinct nine. And the. This is a neighborhood that's already zoned to the Thompson school. So, and so it's some of their, you know, sort of neighborhood identity is focused around being part of the Thompson school district. And so, we don't believe that that's going to feel terribly disruptive to to the neighborhood in general. In order after in order to accommodate this, many people moving into the precinct, some of precinct five moves back into precinct seven. And then we sort of continue flowing along and adjust the line between nine and seven in order to make the numbers work. So, in our LinkedIn center, we're, we're looking more to your sort of we started with precinct 15, which we wanted to take a look at it needed to lose population but in this case, sort of looking at the underlying data. It made more sense to sort of shift 1311 and 15 around precinct 15 is now more of a transitional neighborhood, sort of between residential. And, and, you know, sort of, well, sort of 11 and 13 are more are more single family less densely populated and 15 is a little more concentrated it's much smaller as you'll notice, in terms of area on the map. And it sort of nestles in between the leafy suburbs and the somewhat denser mass have corridor precinct. So again, you know, it's the sections are moved from 15 into 13 and 11 and 15 move around a little bit. And, and again, we see the same little piece of 15 moving into 17 that we saw in the previous map. This is just one of the, we can spend more time with the interactive map later this evening. This is just a sample of what the interactive map looks like. And, you know, we sort of as we step through the data layers. You know, we're looking to see if it looks right and if the demographics makes sense. Very similar changes again, precinct, this section of precinct 17 moves into nine and 15. Precinct nine changes here we've talked about. And then, and then we have the, and then we do it have a different approach to the eight and 10 changes in this case. So we're seeing that we continue using Gray Street as a dividing line. And, and use and treat, you know, precinct eight very similarly to the other precincts that are sort of following along the mass have corridor. And this is slightly more densely populated precinct on average and this is is less dense, as you can see from the map and sort of that becomes that becomes a dividing line that makes sense. And then the same changes precinct 16 and 18 in the downland area. So, again, we just made, you know, change change that one extra precinct for affecting a total of 11 precincts. There are a few more precincts that are census blocks that are looking at different polling locations. But again, a lot of, I think we can remediate a lot of those changes, simply by revisiting revisiting the polling locations with the select board. So let me look briefly. This chart is tries to explain a somewhat complex situation with the way the finance committee appointments work. So, the first chart table shows that there are three precincts where the person who represents the precinct doesn't live in the precinct. And that's, and that's fine. The rules say that you can do that as long as you don't have more than two people from any one precinct in town on the finance committee. So, if we implemented the limited change map, we would have three people living who would live in precinct five the new precinct five on the finance committee, which can't work. Either Mr. Gibbian or Mr. Beck could not be reappointed to the finance committee, and there would be four precincts now instead of three, where the serving member didn't live in the precinct. So this is what it would look like the roster is exactly the same we would just need to find a new new person to represent precinct one or nine. So 20 out of 21 members can return to the finance committee. The recommended changes map. We have the same problem with, you know, Mr. Gibbian and Mr. Beck, and also Ms. Franklin month coming all from precinct five so that that problem remains, and then a few people are sort of moved around. So they would represent different precincts. And, but, and we increase by one the total number of precincts where there isn't a member from the precinct. But again, we can return 20 out of 25. I mean 20 out of 21 people to the finance committee. It's the same problem that we have in the limited changes map. A couple people would represent a different precinct so Mr. Wallach currently represents seven, but he would now live in nine and could represent nine. And this look or currently represents lives in 15 and would live in 13 and represent 13. Similarly with Mr. Coker who currently lives in 15 would live in 15 and would represent 15. We'd end up with two people who live in precinct 11. And so one of them would continue to serve precinct 11. And this pokers could could represent precinct 18 instead of Mr. Coker who does that now. So again, 20 out of 21 people could return. So, while there's some disruption I think it's not. It's not going to crush the finance committee and Mr. Foskett could be there would be there are two people who would now live in precinct 10. But Mr. Foskett who currently could continue to represent precinct eight. In terms of the impact on town meeting. This is how this is one way to think about it. You have 12 seats on the ballot. For any precincts that's affected. It's either 10 or 11. If there are more than 12 incumbents living in the precinct. Then some of those incumbents if all of them were to run again, couldn't win. And that's true in both maps for three precincts. Some precincts in the new in the maps would have fewer than 12 incumbents in them. And there would be two on the limited change map. And that really is what we're talking about here in terms of creating space there would be four precincts where it's probably easier for new voices that new new new candidates to throw their hat in the ring. Because there wouldn't be a full roster of incumbents. And then some number of precincts would likely continue to have 12 incumbents if everybody ran again. All right. So that is my presentation so far. And of course we can go back and look at slides. Julie, if we need to. Yeah, really. Before before we get into questions, would you mind if I shared just a little bit of information about the process and who's absolutely. Thanks. I just wanted to share and I think we've said this many, many times over but this process is required of the town of every municipality in Massachusetts every 10 years. So we don't, we don't have a choice about whether to do we precincting we precincting has to happen we have to make adjustments based on population. The members of the we precincting working group are not making the decision. We are, we are creating maps. We actually created a lot of maps, many, many, many, many, many maps. We have shared those maps with the public and actually this is the first time in recreasing team that we've had an extensive public process we've really tried to invite feedback from the community to hear what works to hear if there's certain boundaries that are not working for people. We've heard a lot of feedback and that has guided the process and that is part of why we've had so many maps. We have presented those maps to the community through the process. We've also presented those maps to the select board and the select board is ultimately the body that is making the decision we are not making the decision. Now, we have based on feedback from the select board. We have made a limited change map, but we've also made a recommended map, and that recommended map is really informed by additional information that has not been considered in we precincting and we precincting efforts in prior decades. So this is again the first time where we've included information like race, income, ethnicity, tenure, whether somebody owns or rents we've, we've considered those additional layers as part of guiding the drawing of the maps, but again it's really up to the select board, whether they decide to choose a limited change map for our recommended map. So we have, we have a feedback form up on the tongue website if you go to Arlington MA.gov slash clerk. There's a news article right at the top of that page. And on that page is a link to a Google form. You're also invited to share your feedback with any of the select board members because they have invited it and in fact, they could have made a decision about one of these maps that their most recent select board hearing, but they asked us to come back and do more engagement with the community and invite more feedback. So that's part of the reason that we're here today is to really just show you again, what kind of went into the maps, what the, what sort of guiding information was, what information was guiding the decisions that we were making, what the select board has asked us to do, and show you exactly how and where you can give that feedback as the select board goes into making their decision, which I believe will happen next week. So thanks Kelly for kind of jumping in on that. Are there any other members? I think there's other four members of the representing working group, is that right? Are the other two members by any chance in attendance? I didn't notice. Adam Kurowski was trying. I lost track of whether he joined us. And Jill Harvey, the DEI director, it has had conflict with one week's notice. We couldn't clear everybody's schedule for this. No worries. I just want to make sure if they were present, I just wanted to introduce them so folks know who they are. I am here, Greg and Julie. This is Adam Kurowski. Hey Adam, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. And just to further introduction, I'm the director of GIS with the town, I mean the IT department, and I'm responsible for drawing the maps based on all the input that Julie and Kelly have so eloquently outlined for you. So Julie or any members of the representing working group, did you have any more material that you wanted to share or present or should we jump into Q&A? I didn't have anything specific, although I did think some people might enjoy seeing how the interactive map works. I think it's up to you all. I mean I have the map ready to go, but if people really want to get into questions and answers, I'm happy to do that as well. I just know that maybe certain aspects of the map are maybe not quite as intuitive if you're not used to working with layers and an online map. So we did want to show that to everyone who is attending tonight just to make sure they feel comfortable using the map if they want to look up more information. Yeah, why don't you at least briefly introduce that map and if you can drop, if you have a link to that, if you put that in the chat that would be great. So just like introduce it now and if that comes up during questions, feel free to use that as a tool to answer those questions. So go for it. I'm going to put this in the chat. And that is a long URL. So I'm going to quick show you how to get there. If you aren't clicking on this. So when you go to, if you go to Arlington MA God slash clerk, that gets you to the clerks page right at the top here there's this link for repressing thing in Arlington. And then there are PDF maps for the limited change map and the recommended map, this interactive map is the link you want to click on. So when you click on this map. It brings you to the interactive map right now it's showing. Let's see here is showing our proposed recommended precincts it's showing the house districts. It's showing the median household income and this is based on census block group level information. If you want to explore the map a little bit further can everyone see this I don't know if it's too small. What you want to do is click over here.  We want to click on this little layers layer this time this layers icon. And that will open up this layers menu here on this layers menu, you can toggle on and off different options. So you can turn off the recommended precincts you can turn off the median household income and basically gets you a map with. The proposed house districts. Something to keep in mind is that when we were working on this process, and when anybody's worked on this process before we have to use this redistricting data. So we cannot draw a line that separates any one of these that splits any one of these red outlines. So some people have asked us throughout this process like why is let's say this this area of sunny side over here why is this looking thing it looks like you're gerrymandering or not we can we just can't divide. We can't divide those map those certain blocks those are the smallest building block blocks of precincts. And those are called census blocks. So that's just a way you can kind of look at like the different like the Legos that we had to work with when we were when we were building these maps. And these other considerations. So you can look at the limited change precincts and I'm going to turn off this redistricting data a second here. So this is the limited change map here. If you wanted to see like, what is median household income look like layered underneath that you can turn on that layer. So we don't have this information. Some of this information is from the American Community Survey. It's not collected by a set by an actual census. So it's collected by it's collected by the Census Bureau as a sample. So that's why it's delivered to us in these larger, these larger clusters of block groups not just individual blocks. And so we don't have this data for every individual block we only have it for a block group. What we do have on a more fine grain level is data on race and ethnicity. So if you were to click on like this category here of Asian population is a ratio to total population. If you wanted to look at how those categories are broken out. Click on that layer again after you've turned on the little eyeball there. And you can see what the proportion is here. So this lightest pink here is zero to half a percent. Alright, zero to 5%, 5 to 9, just 5 to almost 10%, etc. That's how it's broken up. If you wanted to look at where our black population is, basically it's the same scale over here. But you can see like what proportion of the overall population in any given census block is black. You can see the same for Hispanic or Latina. One of the things to notice if you really want to get funky with this you can like, you can mess around with the transparency. And so actually I don't know if I know I've done this before but you have to be clicked on the layer sorry and you can you can make that layer a little bit more transparent. So if you wanted to put another layer on top of it and see how those two interact you could. So basically how if you wanted to go through and look at a little bit more detail each of this information. That's how you could do it. I do want to point out like all of this information here, except for the residential units per parcel. And I believe there's one other. Oh, we have a layer for the elementary school districts. Some of these more local level layers are from our local data, but everything else is available on the census website. So this is all publicly available data if somebody knows GIS or wants to play around with it or you can use QGIS which is a free geographic information systems program. But if you wanted to just look at it here you could also look at it here. So I can. I can keep this open in the background and then if there's any other questions I'm happy to share it but I think if we're going to have a discussion it might be better if we can see each other's faces. Yeah, thanks Kelly. That was really helpful. It's a really impressive tool. We have Kudos to Adam for this one he really worked his pale off putting it together and he's been updated so this has been available since I think the end of October Adam. And we've been updating it every time we've created new maps so he's really been instrumental in kind of looking at these different layers and making sure they're publicly available. So why don't we open it up now for questions. I apologize I didn't track early on the initial hands that went up so I might have the order wrong but I did my best. And so start, why don't we start with like Charlie you don't have your hand raised currently but I know you had some follow up questions. Well, I think I asked my question it wasn't answered. So, I'll just pass for now and let other people ask their questions. Okay, very good thanks Charlie. Don, Don Seltzer. Thank you Don Seltzer Irving Street. I want to talk a lot about the data in these maps, but first I want to address Charlie's question which wasn't really answered. I heard it said that this, the Secretary of State recommended that we make these changes for opening up town meeting seats or something to the effect. We read the Secretaries of State's guidance on representing. And I saw references to equalizing the population, making sure we didn't dilute minority voting power, keeping districts compact and contiguous, and also ensuring we didn't dilute polling access. I didn't see anything remotely like what was suggested as being recommended. Perhaps that could be clarified. But now I want to address the data here. For the beginning of this process. I was troubled by the use of the 2018 American community survey data. I took this data before and I know it's limitations, particularly the coarseness of the data that makes it unsuitable for characterizing smaller neighborhoods. I could see that the demographic maps that were being shown were clearly wrong, including some that have been shown this evening. I had some doubts about the primary assumption made by the committee that it would be necessary to change every precinct in town to achieve the required balance. The US Census Bureau data released the official information that is to be used for redrawing lines for all voting districts. And that was in mid August. The data on population broken down into racial and ethnic distinctions. It does not provide information on income, housing, tenure, or any other demographic distinctions. The census data showed that we can do rebalancing with only minor changes to less than half of our precincts and affecting only 2% of our residents. It can be done while observing the state issued guidelines. The re precincting working group has continued to show maps based upon the American community survey data throughout the original public review period. These maps did not even fulfill the primary requirement to balance population. Some of them actually diluted minority voting strength. Only in October, did they actually issue new laps maps based upon official Census Bureau numbers. And we are now being presented with a choice of two maps. One is labeled limited change. The other is labeled recommended, even though it has yet to receive any public review. It seems that the committee has already made up its mind. And maybe what we say here tonight doesn't even really matter. If we compare the two maps, there is no significant difference in regard to minority distributions and voting powder. There is no difference in number of precincts in which renters have the majority population. And very little consideration given to common neighborhoods that are created by school districts. I mean, everyone in town knows that our elementary school districts are the most useful means of defining neighborhoods. People identify themselves by what school district they're from. And the more radical plan that's being presented tonight would take a precinct date which is mostly Bishop school and precinct 10 which is mostly bracket school and completely scramble them up. Precinct 11 is Bishop oriented also the radical plan would have it span both Bishop and Stratton, and similarly for precinct 15. And if we look at precinct nine, we can see that it's actually been Jerry manager so badly that it will span from Thompson and East Arlington, all the way to Stratton, and with some Bishop thrown in the middle. There's little difference.  I just want to be clear that we, we do have several people on the queue and I want to make sure that we do have time to address folks. I'll finish up in 10 seconds. Please. Yeah, go ahead. There's a little difference between these two maps in regard to equity and fairness. The only real difference is that one of them results in unnecessary disruption of town meeting membership and Fincom representation. Thank you. Okay, is anyone from the reproducing thing working group on to I mean I don't know if there were specific questions in there, just concerns about using different bases of data or any response. I think folks want to have from the right, let us talk. We need some structured dialogue or else it's going to be kind of chaos. No, it's a forum. Yes, but it's a talk for an hour. I'm making people in turn and those are the rules that we're following here. I mean, folks are happy to have different forms with different rules. Those are the rules are falling tonight. You know, Greg, Greg. If people want to just put statements out and have us listen that's fine. You know, and ultimately I would recommend that people share this comment on the feedback forums because we again as we as I just said, we're not making the decisions here. We've drawn the two draft maps. I'm sorry that Don thinks that they're moronical, and I wish that people wouldn't use the famatory words to talk about the work that we've been doing. But, and we have been using data that is available and if he disagrees with the census data that are then the American Community Service survey data then that's really up to him. If people really just want to share their opinions tonight with it, we're welcome to do that. That's, I know, I know that's part of the reason for this forum. If people want to ask us questions and find out a little bit more about the thinking that went into this we're also happy to answer those questions but it seems like some people really want to talk so I'll let you make the decision. Thanks Kelly. And yeah I just want to make the point that I want to make sure. Ideally, I want to see us have good conflict. Right, and I think it's like a healthy conflict, right. And I want to make sure that we're kind of, it's hard to ride that line. It's really hard to manage a conversation that rides that line of healthy good conflict. It's very easy for it to steer very quickly and very strictly into bad conflict unhealthy conflict. And so, we're not going to get this perfectly. I'm not going to get this perfectly tonight I apologize for that. I wish I had more skill at that so I do want to try to strike that balance. I don't want this to just be a platform for one side whether it's the repressing working group or other points of view to just put out their thoughts unchallenged. I think we do want challenge we do want conflict that I think we want a healthy kind of conflict that that isn't just heightening everyone's, you know, stress levels in bad unhealthy ways that just create tension animosity and contempt. Right, so I think it's hard to steer that and I apologize that I'm not more skillful at steering it. So what I what I'm going to do tonight is I want to at least get through the any questions or concerns that folks have who raised their hands and are waiting in queue and waiting for for some time now to have a chance to miss their concerns or questions. And if there's time I'd love to have a more open exchange where you know to the extent that we can keep it from getting kind of to chaotic. So, with that in mind, so I want to move on to the next person I have in the queue. Patricia Warden. Yes. Yes, go ahead. Okay, I'm going to my husband. He's also taught to register so my husband's going to speak and then maybe you can take care of that. Thank you. John Warden recent date senior member of town meeting. I have a couple. I have some questions and they are. They're trying to be limited to just yes no or numbers. So, so they don't require any speeches. I don't want to take up more more of the time that's been consumed so far by the presentation. Okay, in our in the precinct eight. There are seven large apartment buildings. And I believe there are three in precinct 10. How many do you know this or no, how many candidates from those buildings ran for town meeting in the past say, whatever 10 years 20 years. We don't know. Okay. And I can, but I can answer the question. I can't speak for 10, but I can speak for eight. And I was, I know that one such person ran. He didn't win, but then there was a vacancy and we will we chose him to fill the vacancy, which I think was so he just served for one year. One, one out of, and that's in a 50 year prospect precinct eight. Do you know the percentage of people living in the apartment buildings who voters are more or less than the typical 20 25% of people vote in town and elections in general. We haven't studied that now. Okay. So, and one of the purposes. I believe you explained it was that the, the people who are in the apartment buildings who renters if you will, though many of those buildings are kind of minions. The purpose was to give them a better voice by putting more by putting them all in precinct eight none of them precinct 10, for example, that's the ones I know best. But if they, if they don't, if they don't take out papers, which is easy to do, and they don't run. How can we expect them to get elected in those three time meeting numbers. I mean, it's a rhetorical question. I mean, any of those folks, any of those apartment dwellers had the same opportunity that I have or Patricia has or you have to go down to the clerk's office and take get get papers get 10 signatures, bring them in beyond the ballot. Walk around tap on doors and ask people to vote for you at least that's what I did in 1970. And I believe some people still do that or handout flyers. It's not limited to, you don't, you don't have to put out a lot of colored postcards, huge size, or we can do it with little bit zerox pages like, like I did in 1970. I'm trying to see what possible advantage there is in clustering these these folks if they have demonstrated over the course of time that they really don't have that kind of interest in town affairs to run for town meeting. So I think at that point I will. Oh, I just wanted to say one other thing. I mean, as long as we've lived in this town which is over 50 years, we've had we had two different houses. We've had neighbors, either next door or nearby were black.  I mean, if they're black, then the census data would record them as black. Okay, all these people I didn't announce I said that for only some single family houses. So, again, I think we should, with respect, I think we should probably move on to hear other questions. I'm happy to continue to try and answer them, but the interactive map allows you to see the groupings. I'm just suggesting that that your theory of trying to set one group, one bunch of our citizens against another group doesn't seem to have any, any, any rational basis. I think it's a bad thing for the town. So I urge everybody to support the limited change map. Thank you. Okay, so the next person I had the hand up was Joe and Preston. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Oh, good. By the way, it was brought up in another discussion of this. I'm not afraid of change. I've worked my whole life for social change. That's why I ran for the board of the housing authority. But I'm also a social scientists. And I know you've worked very hard with various demographic data. So, demographic, demographic characteristics do not form a social cohesion of a neighborhood. And I have actually three times, either verbally or I just did it today, talked about the situation of the webcam at neighborhood, which is being clocked out of precinct nine, and attached. To Medford Street to precinct seven. And I think that your charge is well thought of. I just think you cannot make these changes without actually going into neighborhoods and knowing what the issues are and what bring people together. So the school district, right now, the Thompson, the people and web cow at the children go to the Thompson school. When I moved to the web cow at a third of them went to the Bishop school, because the line between those two schools is right on the cusp of the web cow at neighborhood. Who knows how the Democrat, how the school populations are going to change, but we might very well be back or partly back in the Bishop area, just to correct that. The greatest issues in our neighborhood are the pedestrian safety on Chestnut Street, because everybody in my neighborhood goes to the book rack they go to Arlington Center. They have to cross Chestnut Street, which you may not know, but a senior citizen was killed several years ago, and the whole neighborhood is working on that project. I've yet to see anybody from precinct seven, because they don't need to cross Chestnut Street. So, these kind of common interest and concerns or what bring people together. And as far as we had two long term. Town meeting members who are defeated last time, and one by a woman who is who is Haitian who lives in an apartment. They were perfectly able to campaign in our neighborhood and got quite a few votes. So I don't think is the implication about how rigid town meeting is, is just all the same people. It's just not true. In fact, I noticed that there were some empty slots and town meeting very close to our actual meeting at town meeting. So there've been empty slots. There's been I think one way to do this in a more thorough way is to look to see what kind of turnover there is within town meeting, because I think that data would say, whether it really calls for some kind of dramatic change. So people in the web, how it neighborhood or also have formed now relationships with the housing authority, Chestnut Manor, because we've working together on traffic calming on Chestnut Street, and also trees were donated by the tree committee to Chestnut Manor. And some people from our neighborhood water the trees with the people from Chestnut Manor, which is the kind of integration I think we should encourage. Also, the two other building complexes and the housing authority Winslow Terrace and Cusack Terrace, they have to go to Chestnut Street to go to various places they want to go to and they're also part of this group that's looking for traffic calming on Chestnut Street and mystic Medford exchanges. That has brought these are the some of the common interests that have brought us together. So in our neighborhood. So, some of the children may go to the Thompson School with the people and seven. I hardly know anybody over there. And I'm afraid our little neighborhood, which has three town meeting members will have no town meeting members if we're just attached. And I also don't understand that precinct seven needed to. It was too large or something, but you moved part precinct seven block over. And then you took webcallit and moved it to precinct seven. I have, as I said, contacted you not many times no one's ever answered me. And in your presentation, you didn't even mention that there was some input from webcallit about this problem. My neighbors are very upset that we have precinct nine meetings. They don't all attend, but some of them attend. We have our own discussion group on the web as an as an integral part of precinct nine. And we don't want to be just moved across met Medford Street, where we don't have these kind of connections. So I strongly suggest the plan, which is least disruptive, in which does not pluck the webcallit neighborhood and just place it somewhere else. When there's been no no one's ever come to the webcallit neighborhood to ask us why you were doing this. And what kinds of reasons that you have. And more importantly, what people in the webcallit neighborhood need. I believe in social change from the bottom up, not from the top down. And, and I'm sure you had all these good intentions, but the types of house to not make a neighborhood. If you'd like to ask me more questions about the web now neighborhood I'd be glad to answer them and come down and meet us and talk to us and also with the people in the housing authority. The housing authority has most of the diversity. And I think that ethnic and certainly racial in all of Arlington, yet they live in a very isolated way. And in precinct nine we've worked on that and then we've brought them more into the precinct. But, but I think that it's important to recognize that that's where the diversity is. And that's where hopefully. We've had one resident now on town meeting, one unfortunately was defeated because she did not have to wear with all to buy all those cards and send them through the mail, which is another issue. If everyone has to run again. I just interrupt. I'm sorry, I'm getting comments here from the chat and I agree that like we do need to kind of make it work for me to comment or for it. I'm sorry, you can finish your last point I just want to point out that we are really we have about 20 minutes left and we do have a few more people and I think for people to everyone to run again. Would mean that people would have to raise funds in order to get votes in neighborhoods, which they've been unfamiliar with. It's not just knocking on doors. People don't like knocking on doors, because they're taking care of their children they're eating, or they're working at home. And I think that that has a bias, because if you do not have the where with all to send out cards for $600 to $800, which is what I've paid for. Then you can't run for town meeting. And I think that has not been part of your calculations. Thank you. Let me just say two things very very briefly. First, somebody has to run I mean some number of precincts are going to have to run for town meeting. The limited change map. You know that's 10, the recommended change map that's 11. That's 10% 9 is impacted either way. You know, Mr warden made the opposite comment that you don't have to you can just run for town meeting you don't have to campaign so this is an example we the feedback. You know on both sides, you know, we get feedback from people who don't identify strongly the school district and we get people, you know we get comments from people who identify strongly with the school district. We hear all of it in terms of running for town meeting I will do everything I can as clerk have already started the process of trying to navigate. I want to support residents who want to run I want to do everything I can to as clerk make it as you're sort of an official process for collecting candidate statements and publishing them, making them available on the elections that we can under campaign finance laws in order to mitigate that that inconvenience and that expense and get word out from candidates to voters. So, there was a lot going on in the comments so let's I'm happy to take more questions and hear more feedback. Okay, so next person I have in queue is Carl, Carl Wagner, you still there. Yeah, hi, I'm here, can you hear me. Yes, we can. Thanks I'm Carl Wagner I live on Edge Hill Road in precinct 11. I wanted to thank the efforts of the working group in working through the reprinting process. And I think it's been great that our new clerk has been able to implement improvements in how the clerk's office runs. I caution anybody who's on this call and isn't in the working group to be really concerned about this. I mean, for example, we the town people elected the clerk. Should that clerk's office now be overthrown because somebody decides that there is some new thing that tops democracy. And likewise, I'm not a town meeting member but I live in precinct 11. I would like to be a town meeting member but I don't think you should throw off the people who I'd like to run against and beat simply because of this basically gerrymandering scheme that's been drawn up. I encourage people who want to run for time being to do that and I encourage people to respect the democratic process but also, and this sounds old fashioned and stodgy but it's not the town is a big deal it has financial problems. It has problems building things and making roads and there are people who've been on the various committees and in town meeting who will be destabilized and and sent away and it will really have a negative effect. If you allow me to suddenly jump in because you kick out 12 other people and then there's going to be there's going to be a kind of entirely new government it's it's it's the reason we don't throw the legislature of the United States out and start again just because we don't like the fact they don't do much up there. So I honestly ask anybody who's here who's not on the working group to consider that none of these plans are good the whole thing that has been produced by this star chamber is absolutely wrong for the town and the select board should should reject it they should ask for something that is involving the people of Arlington, the ones who elected the clerk to come up with a better process. And that's what I'd say is as a non town meeting member this is the wrong way to let me get into town meeting. Thank you. Okay. Anyone from the working group want to respond to any of that or not sure how to respond. We some, but we have to change the map. So this like board has to choose something. And we have definitely worked very hard to make sure that the limited change map is, you know, sort of the best version of limited change that we can do impacts the fewest people, and then we've proposed the recommended changes map. I also note that like we have actually taken feedback from Don Seltzer who created probably the original change map and incorporated that into drafting our limited change map and he's attacked that as well so I guess. I mean what I what I'm trying to point out is there's really no way to win here. We've tried to stay from the beginning that there is no perfect map. We're trying to do. We're trying to create a map or two options for the select board to vote on that that facilitate maybe two different perspectives of how to do this. And again, we, we have a recommended we're not saying it is the best map or the only map what we're not saying it's the only map we're saying it's the best map that we could create under the circumstances. We're not saying that we're underneeding to comply with the house districts and are needing to think about also making as few changes as possible, but we're also trying to prioritize certain groupings of demographic so I, yeah, maybe just a little bit of maybe just some grace discussion here and thinking about all of us having best interests I mean we're not trying to do anything negative for the town we're working very hard, and I guess you don't have to believe that and you don't have to believe we had good intentions but that's what all I can say in response. Thanks Kelly and I will just as a host I will just add that referring to like gender gerrymandering scheme in my opinion as host is is really starting to border on speculating about the intentions and motivations of others which which I will not accept in this meeting. So any year you're up next to have a commentary or questions. I'm kind of startled by some of what's been raised tonight you know I've been living in precinct 15 for 33 years and I've never thought of myself as living in the precinct 15 neighborhood. So, I'm a little foothold by the idea that our precincts correspond to our neighborhoods in some way they don't really their arbitrary political decisions and they have been since they were first formed. And beyond that I'm really interested in understanding what the new precincting working group thinking was with regards to the issue of increasing equity. And I'm particularly interested because I will note that our director of diversity equity and inclusion sits on that committee and I have to assume that the decisions here about equity were in part made based on Ms Harvey's input. And that is the expertise we hired her for. And I think maybe it would behoove us all to have a little bit of respect for that input on her part so I don't know Julie, or Kelly if you want to speak to that I know Jill's not here so I don't want to put you on the spot to have to say what her thinking was but let me try to pull a couple threads together. Yeah, the whole thing's very confusing. And the questions are hard to answer. So I can answer this. There are four precincts that will have fewer than 12 incumbents on the recommended map, and they are precinct seven, eight, nine and 17, all of which are drawn, you know, primarily along that massive corridor that sort of their focus so again that that that you know, the goal is to is to make a little more space in those precincts that are a little underserved and you can tell they're underserved because when we drew the map, they had fewer town meeting members in them. So in some precincts, other parts of town have more, you know, sort of more even spacing. And in these, in these cases, the town meeting members were concentrated a little bit away from the massive corridor. And of course, you know, we can't, we can't make people run it will take, it will take a lot of work, but I know that, you know, there are three different parts of the vision Arlington. So the engagement group, the diversity task group and even the fiscal resources task group have all been interested in, in this kind of outreach and this kind of work in the past and I assume it will continue as a good process for Arlington. And I could also add just kind of going back to the beginning we started this process with the question of what if, like, what if we actually, you know, that we've been given these maps that are purely based on, on population data alone. And so we were like, we ended up pushing forward one that has been based on population data alone. But, you know, town meeting has voted on resolutions in recent years we now have a, we have an office of diversity equity and inclusion we've, we've, we have a, we've had a Black Lives Matter better on the, on the front of town hall there are like certain statements of town has made about equity and inclusion. And so when we asked that question what if we're, we were trying to ask the question of like, So what do we think about when we think about equity and what data is attached to that. And how do we introduce that data into this process. So when we think about equity, we're thinking about race, we're thinking about ethnicity, we're thinking about income, we're thinking about age, we're thinking about the location of AHA properties. We're thinking about renters versus owners we're thinking about some of these areas in town where we just hadn't thought about them before. So it's not to say that the prayer maps were horrible or bad, but we were saying what if like what if we just, what if we tried what if we brought in this data and what if the data impacted how the maps look. And so, you know, through this process like the one of the, some of the first maps we started from answering that what if question resulted in a lot of change, like it resulted in every precinct changing. And that was not something that people were interested in. And so we went back to the drawing board. Now, the map that we've come up with is maybe as some people have kind of pointed out is not resulting in a ton of change. We're looking at incorporating different layers of these data so you're, we're looking at categories of income we're looking at categories of race we're looking at all these different variables, and some of them come in large data in like sample data set some of them come in actual population cover we're trying to consider all of these things. So that's in a map that is slightly different than the limited change map, but that actually resulting in a lot more change to town meeting members or fincom as Julie pointed out. So it's kind of, it's maybe it's maybe like a little bit inching towards some progress. It's not perfect. Nothing is perfect, but we were trying to think about if we were going to think about equity if we're going to take cues from town and select board and some of the votes that they've had. How would we change things. And so that's, I guess, does that answer the question of like what we were thinking about and like what our process was. I mean, I know that's like super quick way of answering it and it's not like showing you exactly how it helped us draw lines on the map. So those are the various factors that we consider. I understand and I appreciate the answer Kelly I think what I wanted to pull out for the group here is that this was something that the working group thought carefully about and thought about from a particular lens. So some of us, for me, for example, if we do the limited are the, the recommended map, I will be in a different precinct, and yes that means a different neighborhood will. I'll have to ask for their votes for my to get my town meeting seat back I'll have to run. I think off cycle I don't remember when I'm next. I will, as a Fincom member, be in a different district, and that leaves the appointing authority for you know Fincom able to sort of throw everybody up in the air and do whatever they want but of course they can do that every year. Our Fincom seats are appointed and they can be unappointed. Based on what that committee decides based on I mean it doesn't happen very often but it's possible for the committee to just decide you're not making good contributions and therefore they're going to look for somebody else for your seat. So, I don't think that either town meeting elections or our. I mean I don't think incumbency in town meeting or our Fincom seeds should be the major consideration here. I think what it is that will create equity for voters should be the major consideration and it sounds like the committee has thought about that. I think it's important to me in this process and I think we all have to sort of like, let go of the idea that there's some permanency to how these political lines are drawn they're redrawn every 10 years and they're going to be redrawn again the next 10 years, and 10 years from now and there's no like magic bullet and there's no guarantee for any of us that we keep our seats we all have to keep earning them. Thank you. So we have about five minutes left and I want to respect people's time we do have a number of speakers in the queue left. My next is Mark Rosenthal. Yes, this is Mark Rosenthal and can you hear me. Yes, I can go ahead. Yes, this is Mark Rosenthal I live in precinct 14. Hi, let's see I'm is Brazil made reference to for something I forget was for seats or for precincts or what where I forget how she phrased it but is it. She talked about making more space. That count. I don't find terribly helpful or informative. What would be informative for me is to know the specific names of the town meeting members that she's expecting to step aside in order to make more space. And if I'd appreciate it if she could list either list those names or describe to me how I would go through the list of town meeting members and figure out who those people are. So the answer is the, there would be, you know, depending on the precinct there could be nine returning incumbents. So instead of 12 incumbents in a new in the new precinct there would be nine. So there would be nine incumbents and then that makes the space for three people to run again, without challenging an incumbent which can be, which can be harder for people. Is that answer that question nine incumbents at because three of the incumbents have moved to have been moved into a different precinct. Yes, the line moved. Yeah. Okay, so so so so which are those four precincts that where the line moved in order to make more space. The four precincts are seven, eight, nine and 17 will have fewer incumbents. They'll they'll have fewer they'll be less than 12 incumbents who could run. And in order for me to figure out how, you know, which, you know, which of the three have been moved into another precinct I would have to look up every town town meeting member in those precincts in order to check their home address and then look it up on the map in order to figure out which one had the line moved, you know, moved around them. And of course in terms of the, I mean, we'll communicate all of that once the decision is made because that will come in. My question is how before that I don't want to wait until the decision is made by that time it's too late. I want to figure out, or I want to know before the decision is made. Okay, so given map is selected. Who is going to be moved out of their current out of their current precincts into a different precinct. Okay, yeah, I'm sure we can. Yes, we can pull that together. Yeah, so can you identify the specific town meeting members that will be moved. What are some of the precincts you just listed into some other precinct and how soon can, can you make that publicly available. Yeah, as soon as possible I don't know if we can do it specifically tomorrow, but we'll try. Can I just ask a question here like I guess I'm trying to get what what's the real question because just because somebody gets moved to a new precinct doesn't mean they can't be a town meeting member. So for the lines change, everybody has to run again. So that I, I do want to be careful because it does feel a little bit and these are just my feelings but it does feel a little bit like you're sort of accusing us of trying to wipe a slate. And that's not what we're going at here. I'm simply looking for information that's all I'm not accusing anybody of anything. I just know the information. Julie. Yeah, we can try to pull that together for more. Can I get that before the end of the week. Sure. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we are coming up on a 30 there's been a request in the chat to kind of extend meeting until folks have had their questions answered but I do want to check in with the members of the working group who are fielding the questions and the feedback about your ability to start to put you on the spot. I mean folks might have, you know, a hard limit. I'm, I'm able to stay. Let's agree to 15 more minutes and encourage people to tighten up their answers and we'll do what we can to tighten up to tighten up their questions and we'll do what we can to tighten up our answers. Great. Thanks Julie. Yeah. So next in the queue is john Gersh. So yeah, no, right here. So my question is this it sounds like Mr. Seltzer had presented a plan that was less invasive that was more minimal than the less invasive plan and I'm wondering what happened to that and can it be presented to the select as one of their choices at least let them see what the choices are. Mr. Seltzer's map. I haven't seen any, any changes to it. That map, I believe, did, did cross the, the house district line. And so when I asked him if he wanted to share any revisions before I presented to the select board last week so I could comment on the differences between his limited change and our limited change. He said he didn't want to share it with me so our limited change is, is a true limited change. It's a slightly different take than Mr. Seltzer's, but it impacts. It's a minimal, it's a minimal impact map. Mr. Gersh, does that answer your question? It's good enough. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. See, next in the queue I have Rebecca. Thank you. I just, I know Don Seltzer is attending another meeting. So he can't respond and I just want to briefly say that it's my understanding having talked to Don at length that he was pretty comfortable with the minimal change map that was presented has one of the two alternatives. And I recognize Annie that he has no standing, but he has widely communicated his map and he has made efforts to be helpful using his map. So I'm not suggesting that his map should be presented. I'm just suggesting that it doesn't seem that he feels that it's dramatically different than the minimal change one, but that wasn't the point I wanted to make. What I wanted to make was to, first of all, thank the increasing working group for their efforts and to very much acknowledge and support the goals of the what if question. And has, and I've really been struggling with this because I, by and large prefer the limited change map for a variety of reasons. I also philosophically really support the goals of the recommended map. And after listening to a lot of people, I've come to the following conclusion that to me the recommended map feels like a recommended map based on data and statistics and not an actual human beings. And of course, you know, we can't represent every human being in this decision of making a new map. But the discomfort, and it's always been raised that this discomfort is change. For me now the discomfort is, am I making gross observations about what the data means relative to actual human beings. So looking at precinct date and thinking about the condo buildings that John Warden referred to earlier. I've talked to those people, some of them. And, you know, in some ways, they're more like single family homeowners because they're condo owners with lots of parking in the back. And they're fairly comfortable because they sold homes and they downsized and so it's really hard to know whether the data actually reflects the interest of individual people and I think that was similar to what Joanne Preston was raising about schools and people's interest in the neighborhood in which their children all go to the same school. And I think that we need to seriously think about this what if, but I just don't know whether we're being asked to make a decision about it more quickly than people are able to really understand it, get behind it, and embrace it. And unfortunately, if we don't make a decision we can't have a new decision for 10 more years. So that's kind of a difficult quandary to be in. And I know how hard the real precincting working group has been working lots of extra hours I know and trying to do all this. So I applaud your effort. I just, I'm not sure that we can get around our heads around this as quickly as we need to to be able to make the kind of change that I think we as a community actually want, but maybe can't quite get to yet. Thank you. Rebecca. So we have one more person with their hands raised. It's Charlie. You were the first commenter and you're now the last that's in queue so. Thank you very very quickly. I just wanted to note that the the town clerk does not appoint members of the finance committee. There's an independent authority that does that made up of three different people. And the, the assignment of these positions is much more complex than filling in the slots. It requires individual members to agree with their appointments. And it also requires priority be given to people who live in the precinct to be on the finance committee. So if there's a conflict, then, you know, one has to take the person that lives in the precinct first. So I comment that only that the, the three slides that she showed earlier are not representative of the complexity that actually faces the finance committee with the recommended plan, which is another reason why I oppose that recommended plan. Thank you. I'm so sorry, Julie Brazil. I just put in a comment that says we can re precinct whenever we want. Is that true. Oh, you're on mute. It was found to happen. Let me, let me, I'll just, I'll read it out just so it's in the record in case anyone's like watching afterwards. In the chat, redrawing lines can occur any year, not just after census Doug Heim town council confirms that there is a process for the select board in town meeting to approve new maps in any year. Yes, that is true. The part I'm not entirely certain about is the interaction with the precinct. I certainly wouldn't want to do it to, to, to create any split precincts so it is. I do think it is possible. It is clearly possible if we had if we had a reason that we needed to redraw the precincts I'm less certain what happens with our with the state. But I can find out. And so that we can have that conversation. And so that's what I'm going to do. And so that's what I'm going to do. And so that's what I'm going to do. I would note that there would be merit to doing it. If it were going to be done in any year doing it closer to a census year or closer to the previous census year, because that data will then be more accurate. I mean, part of the other thing that I didn't get to is that we have to consider in the maps is where population growth is anticipated, which is part of the reason for some of that orientation. And that's part of our consideration and I think, you know, there have been some projects that have been approved and we're looking at population growth in the next year to three years, at least in the next five years. So, we do want to if there were going to be new maps those would need to be drawn sooner than later I think. Yeah, to be most reflective of like an actual count. Okay, so this is, let's say, Patricia Warden you have your hand up. Did you want to speak, and given the timing we should probably close on this question or comment. Patricia if you can hear me you're still muted. Can you hear me now. Yes, I can hear you now. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. It's John Worden again. I just, I just wanted to say that at the very first time that the town clerk presented her really disruptive maps and plan to the select board. I did speak later in that meeting was a real meeting in the settlement chamber, select boards chambers by the way not one of these TV shows. I suggested that if such dramatic changes were were to be made. We didn't have time to work all that out and get public input and so on. And with the short time frame that we're under to do this by November 22 something. And that they should do do them do the very minimal thing that's possible. And then if you what you really want to do, think about doing a, a bigger plan or a more, I would call a more disruptive plan. And then do that in due course, and it's been pointed out the, the precincts can be withdrawn at any point. And that's what I urge them to do in the very first time this matter was discussed thank you. Okay, thank you for that comment. So, on that note, it's 841. So let's wrap things up here and I wanted to thank everyone who participated tonight, especially members of the recreasing team working group and everyone who asked questions and offer their input and feedback. I know it got a bit tense at times tonight and we got right up to the line in my opinion of like the edges of stability. And so I thank everyone for bearing with me and the ground rules. That I tried to enforce tonight and I look forward to hosting similar forums and a wide range of topics that affect our town and our community in the future. So thank you everyone. Thank you Greg nice job.


Out of all the video games and comic books and other properties that have been turned into movies over the years, Sonic the Hedgehog was very low on the list of things I cared about. But then the movie came out and it was a big hit and now here I am in 2022 talking about the Sonic the Hedgehog sequel and how I was actually really excited to see it. Let's quickly talk about the pros of that. What's that? Tails miles per hour? Whose name is a pun and there's lots of puns in this movie by the way. I love a good pun. You get me. Tails just reminded me that I should invite you to subscribe to Adam Does Movies right here on this channel because I post tons of movie reviews, rants, reactions, things related to film. As I was saying, there's a lot of puns in this film so if that type of dialogue makes you cringe, maybe back away a little bit. I think it has more than the first. Some of them are revolving around swear words, kind of like in Ninja Turtles when they used to say what the shell. Just kind of skirting the line between kid and adult humor which I appreciate but I know some parents will be like, oh my, oh my stars. Dr. Robotnik almost used a potty word. Come on Garrett and Benison, let's go home and watch Disney's Turning Red. I haven't seen it yet but it looks delightful and definitely won't offend me. I mentioned Dr. Robotnik a.k.a. Eggman, a.k.a. Jim Carrey. He's back just as good as ever. I love Jim Carrey, he's such a fun actor. He might be rocking a new stash and a Jada Pinkett Smith hairdo but he's, dude, I'm sorry, it was just a reference. Okay, okay, wow. Ben Schwartz's back is the blue blur if his voice kind of got to in the first film. That hasn't changed. He's all in on this character. I like Ben Schwartz, I think he's hilarious. And Sonic's a goofball in these films. He likes to goof around. Ben Schwartz nails that. Some Sonic fans might want more of that cool Sonic attitude. You know, backwards hat, skateboard, boogershell necklace, boombox. That's not really present here. He's still very much a child at heart. He's a kid. It's referenced multiple times. He's younger in these movies. He's still growing into his own. Maybe we'll get the more brooding, werehog-style Sonic in later films. Tails and Knuckles are the other new furry friends that join the cast. Knuckles is great. Idris Alba really brings that baritone to the roll, that sexy voice, that power, that dominance. I mean, even I'm getting turned on just talking about it. I love his naivetate, everything happening on earth. He has a bit of Son of Odin thing going on from the early Thor films where there's a little bit of a disconnect between how he talks compared to most people on earth, which brings us to Tails. Now, Colleen O. Shanase, sorry if I said that name wrong, she's the voice actress for the character she has been for, I assume, a very long time. I know fans were very excited when she was cast in the role. And to her credit, she does a great job voicing Tails for the video game and not so much for the movie. Here's the deal. Colleen does a fine job voicing Tails. He's a cute little scamp who runs around. He's a big Sonic sycophant. I think it's more the dialogue she's given to work with and maybe not as much of a performance, but there's definitely a disconnect between when Tails talks and everyone else that just feels off. I feel like a speech bubble should be coming up next to him and a mission objective should pop out from the bottom and he's like okay Sonic, we just gotta get through this turn and then we're gonna be okay. Make sure to collect all six emeralds and you can create the master emerald. Whoa, look out Sonic. I say it's partially the script's fault because some of the dialogue is so bad. He often talks about Sonic like the dude's not even in the room. He'll say that's classic Sonic or that's so Sonic the hedgehog. Dude, you guys just met. I know you've been like secretly spying on him for years which is kind of creepy, a little bit bizarre, but come on brah, pick up on the social cues. So Tails, while cute and delightful, doesn't quite work for me in this movie. He's not terrible. Don't get me wrong. He's still fine. He's still Sonic's best friend. It's a good time, but something about him's just not matching everyone else in the film. And while his dialogue and most of his jokes don't work for me, thankfully everyone else looks pretty great. The jokes do stick more often than not. There's some funny side stories which run far too long. We'll get to the runtime in a little bit, but there is a lot that really works in this film and overall I really had a good time. I enjoyed it. I think it's probably on par with the first. I like the quicker pace of the first movie and the runtime in general, but this does have a lot of fun moments and a lot of unique set pieces that really stand out and do bring Sonic into a much larger world than even the first did. The visuals have definitely been bumped up. Blue Justice looks fantastic. All these CG characters do. Tons of detail on the fur moving around. Even the eyes, which I believe last time were white, have kind of a foggy yellow to it. Almost like someone pissed on the eyes and then just tried to scrub it off but didn't quite get there. Because us humans have stories to tell in our eyes and apparently so does Sonic. I didn't mention this prior, but this is a spoiler free video. There is at least one end credit scene. I think there's probably only one.  If you don't know anything about Sonic, this is gonna be nothing to you. If you're looking for more of those quick silver-esque action moments like the first movie had, they do have them, but nothing rivals the bar scene for me. I thought that was the best moment in the Sonic film so far. Although there are some really cool action moments, they just don't last very long. And I'm at the length again, so let's get into it. The movie is two hours long. That's too long. We don't need a two-hour Sonic the Hedgehog movie, especially with the content we've been given. I think I will do a separate spoiler video for this movie because there are a few things I do want to talk about that are so completely ridiculous. I just have to say something. It probably won't be a long video. Anyway, this was a fun movie. My son, who's just turning 10, absolutely loved it. He's a massive Sonic fan, so this was like a dream come true. This is like the equivalent of me seeing Ninja Turtles 2 in theaters and just how giddy I was at the time. Now I want to hear from you though. Have you seen the film? Did you love it? Did you think it was a step down from the first? Let me know in the comments below. If you enjoyed the video, please give it a like. Subscribe if you want to hear more from me.  All right, see you soon. If you really like what I'm doing, maybe think about joining me on Patreon at Patreon.com slash AdamDoesMovies or becoming a YouTube Join member right here by hitting that button up top. You get access to exclusive videos and other perks that these common peasants can't possibly imagine. Now if you excuse me, I gotta go fast to record my next video. I said the thing. I said the thing that Sonic says.