>> Can people hear me okay? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. I think we're waiting for two more Commissioners to have quorum. Just waiting for one more Commissioner. Okay. We have quorum. SARAH SAYEED: Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to call the meeting to order. Thank you so much for being here today. And I will begin as we usually do, to go through the technical assistance in case anyone should need that. So as you recall, our audio is enabled for all Commissioners. We ask you to mute yourself if you're not speaking. We'd love to have you on video camera. And unless there's some reason why you would prefer not to be. But we would love to have you on video camera, since we are being livestreamed, and it's recorded. For everyone else who is on the line, we are muting all the participants on entry. And we will enable audio for participants during the public comment period. For the public comment period, we call participants in the order in which they registered for public comment. Francis, is anyone registered? FRANCIS URROZ: Not yet. SARAH SAYEED: Okay. If you're dialing in with the phone during the meeting, and do not have access to a computer monitor, you can text your name and affiliation to 646-763-2189 to offer public comment. And we will call you in the order in which we received your text. Otherwise, you may sign up if you're on the computer. You may sign up to comment using the chat function. And we ask you to please sign up by 3:00 pm, so that we can know how we are going to run the meeting. And plan accordingly. So by 3:00 pm, either put your name in the chat or text 646-763-2189 to offer comment in the last half hour of this meeting. You may enable closed captioning using the "more options" button, which you will see if you hold your mouse over the three ellipses next to the X on your screen. And you can enable closed captioning. So... Moving right along, the next slide... It provides an overview of what we'll be talking about today. As you recall, the last meeting that we attempted to hold in August did not end up being... Some people came in person. And we didn't have a quorum in person. So we weren't able to really take care of the business, particularly voting on the minutes from June 1. So we'll do that today. I'll also be giving you an overview of the annual report, which you have had, and we do need to submit that. In two days. To the Mayor and Speaker's office. So I'll just take you through a high level overview of what's in it, and hopefully everyone has had a chance to read it, and we'll vote on that report and then give you a quick summary of what's to come for our poll site language assistance program. And to give you an update a little bit on the TRIE Coalitions, the participatory budgeting process that we are just on the beginning right now. And then we're having a presentation from United Neighborhood Houses, to take about their civic engagement work and their perspective on Intro 1867, which you may have heard testimony and conversation happening in the City Council. And this is about non-citizen voting. So we'll have a conversation about that today and we welcome public comments. To get us started, before we actually turn to the meeting, I wanted to go through the attendance. So I'll call your name. Please just say "here". Chuck Apelian. >> I'm here. >> Eve Baron. >> Present. >> Polly Bonner. Amy is not here. Mark Diller. >> I'm here, thanks. >> Donna Gill. >> Good afternoon. I'm here. >> Hi, Donna. Anthony Harmon. José Hernandez. >> I'm here. >> Hi, José. Okay. Great. Michael Nussbaum? Lilliam Perez? >> Here. >> You are here, Lilliam? >> Am I hearing? >> Oh, Lilliam, you're there. >> Yes, I'm here. >> Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes. Annetta Seecherran. I'm not sure if she's here yet. I know she's on her way, but she's running a little late. And Anastasia. >> Hi. I'm here. >> Hi. Okay. Terrific. All right. So just for the record, I will say my name as well. My name is Sarah Sayeed, and I'm one of the 15 Commissioners who make up the Civic Engagement Commission and the chair and Executive Director. For everyone's information, I did not call Laurie Pieroto's name, as she indicated she was stepping down from the Commission, and we're trying to sort of formalize releasing her. And I just wanted to let the Commissioners know that that was going on. And everyone should have the meeting minutes for June. Is there anyone who does not have that? If we all do have that record, could someone please make a motion to approve the meeting notes? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you. So all in favor of approving the minutes from June? Say Aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. SARAH SAYEED: Anyone opposed, please say nay. So we have unanimously approved the minutes. From June. So thank you so much for that. So the next couple of slides that we'll be sharing with you -- again, as you know, we gave you the draft of the annual report for you to comment, provide feedback on. We're kind of at the final stretch of that. So just in case someone did not have a chance to go through the annual report, I would like to just provide a high level overview for you. As to what is in the annual report. So I want to begin first of all by thanking the entire team for working on this report. And particularly want to thank Leslie Brown, our chief of staff, who really kind of shepherded the whole process. And also Yasmani, who is our artist in residence, who is responsible for the graphic design, with help from interns. So I just want to give them particular special thanks for all their work that they've been doing on this report. The report is laid out to begin with our charter requirements. We talk about the programs that we are mandated to provide. Participatory budgeting. Poll site language assistance. Strengthening community boards. And the partnerships that we've been asked to build. And strengthen with city agencies and community partners. If you go to the next slide... In the participatory budgeting section, we talk about the demonstration that we held. And you all are familiar with this. Right? In New York City, we did pretty much... I guess with the exception of the schools-based participatory budgeting program that was held before, we ran a youth-led participatory budgeting process. And during the development of this program, we were the first city in the United States to launch the Decidim platform, an Open Source platform that enables resident participation online. And we created the space participate.nyc.gov, which is a space to enhance civic participation, promote civic trust, and strengthen democracy in New York City. One of the great things about this space is it allows us to have greater transparency in the process of participatory budgeting. It lets us identify... Lets the participants identify their needs, have that be collectively shared, to propose ideas for participatory budgeting and vote on ideas. This platform is widely used in European cities. For participatory budgeting. And we were, as I mentioned, the first city in the United States to launch this platform, which is very exciting. And we had a youth fellowship and a youth-led process. $100,000 from CEC's budget was the PB pot for this process. And the goal was to fund five winning projects. We went through phases of identifying youth priorities and needs. What was important to them in the pandemic. Some of the needs that surfaced included mental health, arts and culture, education, job training, Civic Engagement. Then we took those needs and we said to partners: We would like you to generate ideas for how to address these needs. So we got 49 proposals from a variety of organizations around the city. And then we put those proposals to vote, and over 2,000 youth participated in this process. Which was really exciting. And they've pretty much -- all the five projects that won are pretty much completed, most of their work, except for one that is still continuing. And in the participatory budgeting space, CEC is also beginning another process, which is not city-wide participatory budgeting, but it is a PB, and we are gonna be doing a recovery focus participatory budgeting process in the neighborhoods that were identified as hardest hit by COVID. By the Task Force for racial inclusion and equity. So we'll hear a little bit more about that from Daniela later on. So those are our highlights for PB. Poll site language assistance. For the charter requirement, we assembled a language assistance advisory committee, with a representative from all the program languages that we serve. 11 languages. We had a public hearing on our poll site methodology. That was also a charter milestone. We also went through... Sorry. This should say public comment and public hearing. To develop a rule on minimum standards for interpreters. And how we train them. So that's also been codified in a rule. And then once those pieces, those links were sort of established, we actually ran the services for two elections. One was in November 2020. June 2021 was our second round of cycle of services. 11 languages, two days of early voting, and election day. And this was -- I mean, I think we have a lot to be grateful and proud of, for our work as a Commission. Because we increased the number of languages that we're serving, and we also increased the number of days of services, compared to what was happening before the CEC was established. And then for the number of voters that we served in total, around 1171 voters in the November 2020 election and 675 in the June 2021 primary. If you go to the next slide... One thing I wanted to lift up -- this is a graph that is in the annual report. But it kind of shows you... We want to contextualize the numbers I just shared. Right? The totals between November and June. We see a decrease in the number of voters that are turning out to vote between the general election and the primary. That is a pretty standard pattern that we see. In November 2020 presidential election, that's kind of the highest turnout rates overall. So the number of people who were using our services was also greater in November. Than it was in June. And that's an as-expected pattern. What I felt was really interesting is that for some of the languages, it's actually the reverse. You know, we see that for 7 out of the 11 languages, the number of people who are using services actually increased in June. Compared to November. So it's, I think, again, it shows that when there's a need for services, and we're doing the right thing by providing these services, and that different language communities may have different types of participation. And Michael, you're right. There is a large difference in the number of people who participate in a presidential versus a local primary. Very large. And we see that pattern playing out in our overall numbers. It's just curious and interesting that the usage of our services is increasing. Or increased over the two elections, for some language communities. Not all. The bigger language communities that we're serving -- Russian, Haitian Creole, those declined over time as well. So it's just an interesting note. I don't know if anyone has any comment to add to this particular segment. We'll keep going. >> Do we know if the proportion of people... The proportion of decrease in usage of the language services is roughly proportional to the decrease overall? In voter turnout, between the general and the primary? SARAH SAYEED: That's a really good question. We do not know the answer to that. We will look at that. Yeah. I'll make a note. To follow up. Okay. So next slide. Also in the annual report, we talked a little bit about our work with community boards. We began the CEC -- in the first year, we began with a needs assessment to try to get a better sense of what was happening with community boards. And what their priorities were, vis-a-vis our own sort of charter-given mandates. And we have those findings, and we found that the participation rates were pretty strong. 49 out of 59 boards, their district managers and/or chairs participated in this survey. And we found some interesting patterns in what they were looking to learn more about. They definitely -- as an example, they definitely reported that they were using the support of DCP and Borough President planners. And they wanted to learn more about land use, about zoning. So the findings of the needs assessment give us some important areas to follow up on developing trainings for them. Another area that they mentioned they would like to learn more about was social media. How to engage communities through social media. So we have the opportunity to develop some training around that as well. Following the needs assessment, we began developing some trainings and resources that were in line with our charter mandate. We are asked to help community boards with language assistance. So we provided language line services to every Community Board. We're noticing that utilization of language line is not that high right now. And so we've got to work with community boards on how we can potentially help them reach out to communities, to say these services are available. And connecting with communities in different languages. So we hope to work on that in the coming year. We held a bunch of workshops with parliamentarians of metro New York on parliamentary procedures. Including committees. And the numbers here on the side are the number of people, Community Board members, who participated in these trainings. So committees, efficient meetings, motions and amendments, nominations and elections, and secretary workshops. Also did a workshop on conflict resolution. With OATH and the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution. And then we're trying to figure out how we can better support community boards on land use. So we have developed a portal that we'll be sharing with district managers later this week, where we're keeping sort of information that is helpful to them not on land use, as well as other material. For instance, conflict of interest, resource materials. Things they get in their training. But they may not have access to later. We're trying to create a central repository of some of that information. We've also given out some guides from the Center for Urban Pedagogy, ULURP, one is ULURP 101, Zoning 101, Affordable Housing 101, sort of basic overviews, and we'll be looking to develop more in this area in the coming year. Lastly, we talked about some of our partnerships. With city agencies and with community partners. Some of the highlights noted in the annual report include our ranked choice voting and elections outreach. We built out a volunteer management program. We have been working in the coalition space to advance recovery, equity in recovery. In the 33 neighborhoods, doing coalition building. And then we have the public artist in residency program. And then during the people's festival, the five-day festival, where we were out in one stop, in one location in each Borough, we had multiple agency partners engage in the festival, sharing their resources and materials. It's perfectly in line with what we are tasked to do with sort of centralizing Civic Engagement, helping agencies get the word out about what they offer more. And then over the course of the last few years, we also had some great university partnerships. There was one series of symposia that were held with Columbia University, where we talked about civic tech, and we had experts from government, academia, philanthropy, non-profit come together to talk about what is helpful to engage communities, using tech. And then also giving us advice about how we can do online engagement. Including -- because in the pandemic, we had to really build that particular capacity. And lastly, there was a project that we had with NYU, where we had a capstone, a group of capstone students, who analyzed and wrote a paper for us about the state of Civic Engagement in New York City. And how do we measure Civic Engagement. Gave us some advice on that. So it's been, overall, really fantastic. I think buildup of the Commission -- and I'm really proud of the annual report. And I hope you are too. Both in terms of content and also visual appeal, I definitely think it's probably one of the more beautiful annual reports that we're putting forward. And it's also great to have you featured in the report with us. With the work that all of us have been doing together. So with that, I don't know if anyone has any comments or thoughts to share before we move to vote on the annual report. >> With respect to the bios of those of us, the report I reviewed last week didn't include everybody. Has that been updated so that everybody is in there now? Great. Okay. Thanks. SARAH SAYEED: Hi, Annetta. Anyone else? Okay. So if no one else has a comment, could someone please... Is there a motion to approve the Civic Engagement Commission's very first annual report for submission to the Mayor and Council by September 30th? Would someone like to make a motion? >> So moved. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. SARAH SAYEED: All in favor for approving the report for submission, say aye. >> Aye. SARAH SAYEED: Any opposed, say nay. Awesome. So... The report is now approved for submission. >> Sarah? SARAH SAYEED: Yes? >> I wanted to echo, now that we've gone through the content, I was pleasantly pleased that you said that everything was done in-house. And I wanted to echo what you said from a design and a format and content presentation... It's pretty impressive. It was done very, very professionally. It's very simple but very smart. And I say this with great experience. I spent the great part of my career printing annual reports with major corporations. And the fact that this was done in house -- it deserves kudos. So kudos to everybody that worked on it. Especially the design and format team. So good job. >> Thank you so much. That's great. I'm glad you had that wider perspective and can appreciate it from that lens as well. That's really great. Okay. So to turn to the next part of it with an agenda, I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what's coming down the pipe. What we're working on now. So as we speak, we are thinking through the scope for the November 2021 election. And as you know, I've talked to you -- like we've all talked before -- about how we did receive an allocation to scale up our services. So the way that we are going to scale up is that we are going to scale up by adding sites to election day. So we're gonna keep the sites for early voting at 25, the way we've had it before. And then we will scale up to 75 sites for election day. We're essentially adding overall, if you count the number of sites we're serving by day, it will scale up to -- it will total about 125 locations over the three-day period. Some of those locations are obviously in the early voting period repeated. However, we pay for services, we pay for this program on a day by day basis. So the number of hours that interpreters serve on a daily basis. So that's how -- so half of the funds will be spent on increasing the number of poll sites. We're not adding languages. We're just providing services in the same 11 languages. And the remainder of the allocation will be used towards making sure that we are getting the word out about these services. And helping people become aware of what we're providing, so they can plan to participate more. So that's what's coming up for November 2021. And we're beginning by getting... We just received the sites for early voting from the Board of Elections. So we're analyzing that data right now, to make sure that we can break them out by the concentration of languages around the poll sites, so we can figure out which poll sites we'll be serving at. Any questions on this? Okay. And then... So afterwards, after this, we're gonna turn now... Daniella, who is our PB advisor, is going to tell us a little bit more about what's happening in the coalition space with participatory budgeting. Daniella, the floor is yours. DANIELLA: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. Yeah, as mentioned, CC is leading the TRIE coalition initiative, alongside the Task Force for racial inclusion and equity. And the young men's initiative. Next slide, please. The first update that we want to provide is that we're really happy to let everyone know that the official website for the initiative is up. You can go to www.nyc.gov/trie to find all the information that you need about the initiative. It also has a couple of interactive tools. One is an address search bar that lets you know if you reside in one of the 33 TRIE neighborhoods. And the interactive map also has a list of which organization, which non-profit is the coalition lead in those neighborhoods. The website also provides a list and more information of all the activities that we're conducting with these coalitions. We are continuing to meet with them on a monthly basis. And continuing to work on different sets of deliverables. At the moment, right now, we are in the second phase of the initiative, which is the participatory budgeting phase. As you all know, there's $1.3 million behind this initiative that will be used to invest in projects that directly relate to COVID recovery. And the way that this money is gonna get to the neighborhoods is through local participatory budgeting processes. Next slide, please. This is exciting, because of the amount of money. This is the first time it has happened in New York City with expense dollars. Traditionally, the PB -- the participatory budgeting process is done with capital discretionary funding that comes from City Council members. There's a couple of City Council districts that do have... That do set aside expense dollars for participatory budgeting processes, but this is the first time that the City has done this with this amount of money. So in this slide, you'll see the high level timeline of how we're intending to run the process. In June, the neighborhood coalitions conducted a series of exercises. They had to map out the neighborhood stakeholders and also do some resource mapping. And used that information to conduct a survey. With their coalition members. Each coalition lead in each of the 33 neighborhoods is working with an additional 8 non-profits. And the first step in this process was to survey all of those organizations. And try to get a sense of what is it that the CBOs and non-profits that are working directly with communities -- what is it that they're seeing? Where are the areas that need more investment? From that initial survey, we intend to conduct another survey to get the information more personalized for each neighborhood. And that will happen -- that is happening at the moment. So all 33 neighborhood coalitions are conducting community surveys using that data. After they get the top needs from their communities, the CBOs will develop proposals that will go on a ballot. And the residents of those 33 neighborhoods will select which of those proposals they believe are the best for their communities. The proposal development will happen in October. The vetting of those proposals and the ballot creation will happen in November. And we're hoping that the vote will occur in December, in order for the projects to start in January. As you all know, the expense funding needs to be spent before the fiscal year ends. So we're looking at 6-month projects. Projects that will pay for programs and services. So that's the main difference that we see with a traditional PB process. Whereas in the City Council, the projects that residents select are infrastructure projects. Next slide, please. We wanted to show the preliminary results of the survey, of the first step in this needs assessment. SARAH SAYEED: Daniella, sorry. Michael has his hand up. DANIELLA ERAS: Sorry. I didn't see that. MICHAEL: In the survey results you have in each of your sections, how many participants per neighborhood, both in the number of coalitions, but individuals, actually participated? And what was the largest number of people that you received responses from in the survey? Do you have whole numbers? DANIELLA ERAS: Yes. So there were some residents that were engaged in the first phase of the survey process. But right now, at this moment, the coalitions are conducting resident survey. The first phase was having the coalition leads meet with their own coalitions. And conduct the survey in that way. So each of the neighborhoods has a total of eight coalitions that they work with for this initiative. So we had over 240 entries. But there was a lot of interaction on this platform. MICHAEL: 248 for the entire city? SARAH SAYEED: Can you go back to the prior slide for a minute, so we can clarify the steps in this process? What we're doing here is... In the first phase, we wanted to have the coalition members in each neighborhood. So these are CBOs. That are kind of surfacing just between the organization leadership... What are some pressing needs that they're seeing on the ground. And just to give us a sense of: What are some important issues? The residents' survey is actually happening now. And anyone who lives in these ZIP codes can fill that out. So it's just like... The first phase wasn't really a resident survey. So the number of people who filled it out -- we didn't expect it to be very, very big. And as you know, with every survey, we always have this tension, with this project, as Daniella explained, we have this challenge. Because at the end of the project, at the end of the fiscal year, we expect all of these organizations in each neighborhood to have completed one project that has been determined by participatory budgeting. We are working backwards from that timeline, so at this initial phase, in a two-year process, the data collection would look different. Right? So we had the first phase of just generating some topics. Now the resident survey is happening, and we're gonna have to, at some point, in the next month, close that survey. Because we need to keep on time with the remainder. And this is not city-wide. It's only the 33 neighborhoods that were focused on. We do need to see high levels of participation regardless, from the 33 neighborhoods. So we're trying to help the coalitions get the word out. Give them different formats to collect the data. Translating that... You can go back to the next slide... There's one question on this resident survey that everyone will fill out. This will be translated into multiple languages. We're giving them some tools to help promote it on social media. So that's the focus over the next couple of weeks. I don't know if I answered your question. MICHAEL: Sarah, my question is: The content is fine. The concept of participatory budgeting is the future. Whether it be through new Council, the new government, whatever it may be. But that should be encouraged. My question... I'm trying to find out how broad or narrow the participation is, within the 33 years that have been designated. And are those coalitions that are participating representative of the broader community within those areas? So without that information, from my perspective, it's hard to determine how broad or narrow the outreach is, and the involvement of the larger group. As we all know, every neighborhood has very active organizations that represents in many cases a very narrow segment of their community. So I'm just trying to get a handle... And I would love to see in the future, Daniella, if you could give us a little bit more data that shows us how broad or narrow and who participated and who didn't, and some of the numbers. Because it would make us work harder and get more support, if we can demonstrate the need for greater funding to spread the word on participatory budgeting. Because not every Councilmember does this. DANIELLA ERAS: Yeah. I would love to explain the process. The first step of the survey process. And my apologies for not getting into it. Just because of time. The first step in the survey that we did -- we asked the coalition leads to engage the group of 8 non-profits that they work with on the ground with this initiative. The tool that we use is called Pollist. So it's not a traditional survey in the sense that you go read a survey and then select the answer. It's more of an open-ended survey. So the person that's participating can input their opinion, or they can input their opinion or they can read other people's opinion and either agree or disagree. So we really can't... The only downside of this tool is that we can't really tell how many people... We can't... Let me rephrase that. We can't tell how many people participated. Because we received over 240 actual opinions. And the tool on the backend, what it does, is that it groups similar opinions in the same... In one category in the same theme or topic. And it lets you know how many times people interacted with other people's opinions. Meaning how many times people agreed or disagreed. So there were over 6,000 interactions, actually, we saw on the backend. So a lot of people were reading through other people's opinions and agreeing, disagreeing, or not. Or just staying neutral in that sense. So as Sarah was saying, we were hoping to get initial data directly from the organizations that are providing services to the residents of these 33 TRIE neighborhoods. Now that we have some data to work on, now we're going to go ahead and do a big push to engage residents and get their opinion on what are the things that they want to see funded. Right? What are the things that they want to see investments in. So as Sarah mentioned, we just started this, and we're hoping to see a large number of people engaging in this. SARAH SAYEED: Sorry. Go ahead and finish. I'll chime in after you're done. DANIELLA ERAS: In this area. And for that, we're building all the tools that we need. That organizations will need to conduct this type of outreach. SARAH SAYEED: Just to get to the thing you were talking about in terms of the numbers of people who participated, the great advantage of this particular survey is that we are gonna be able to track it by ZIP code. So we are gonna have -- we'll have data about who participated. Not who, but how many people who participated from each ZIP code. And we can better answer some of those questions. As to the point about how representative and inclusive are these coalitions, we task the coalition leads to create a coalition that was diverse and included different types of entities in it. It could be businesses. It could be non-profits. It could be academic institutions. Community boards. Right? There's a variety of institutions that may be plugging into these coalitions. I think we can try to make a case that they are attempting to be inclusive. I think we'd have to judge every coalition on its own merits, as to how that's playing out on the ground. We do think that in either case there is... It's a really great opportunity to organize residents. Continue to sort of support recovery planning in the neighborhoods. For the groups of people who are participating. So hopefully the coalitions -- I think most of them are very inclusive. And through the work of this project, they also have the opportunity to connect with stakeholders who are not in their coalition. They might not be meeting with a particular university representative that's in their neighborhood, who comes to the coalition meetings, but they can certainly leverage that relationship they have to send the survey out to people who go to that university, as an example. MICHAEL: Sarah, what are we doing to engage the new Council members, either between November 3rd and January 1st, or thereafter, to make sure that all 51 engage in the participatory budgeting process? For their community? SARAH SAYEED: Yeah. I love that question. I think that we will definitely need to inform people. Certainly start with that. Because a lot of the Council members who are outgoing, who were doing PB, have actually stopped. They are not doing participatory budgeting now. So I think our first layer or our first task is really to let the Council members know that we're running processes in their district. MICHAEL: I would assume it's through the district managers. Through the elected officials. But if the new Council members don't get on board, and don't buy into this concept, we're gonna have what we've had over the last few years. A minimal amount of elected officials willing to engage in this process. And all the work that we're doing from the bottom to the top could be negated. So I would just suggest that we think about asking... Whether it be special funding or special activity from City Hall and the Council, to commit. And we can make this formal request -- to commit that after January 1, all members including whoever is gonna be the new speaker agree to do that. It would give a lot more meat to our organization, as well as to the communities we're engaging with. SARAH SAYEED: Yes. I think we're gonna have to... CEC's mandate is city wide participatory budgeting, independent of whether or not the Council is doing it. We definitely want to work in tandem with the Council. I think on the community level, it would be very important to have as many Council members as possible revive this process for their district, and then districts that never had it to add it for that. So we're gonna make sure that we work with City Hall and the Council to at least let them know what we're doing. Right? Right after the election. So that... It's important for that awareness. And perhaps that will help, in terms of signing people up. MICHAEL: I would think right after November 2nd or thereafter, when it's determined, that we have a package from us going out to every duly elected Council person to explain how we can be supportive and encourage them to do this. And have them designate a point person to be a liaison to the CEC. SARAH SAYEED: Right. There's a direct opportunity for Council members to get involved in this, even without committing their own funding by helping us promote the survey with the neighborhoods. DANIELLA ERAS: I think it's also important to clarify that this is not the city wide participatory budgeting, but part of the work that we're doing with the TRIE Coalition Initiative. In our work, in this coalition, we're using participatory budgeting. And it's also strategic for the agency. Because as advocates, it's part of our mandate. And we want to see it happen. This is also going to help us build the relationships that we need for when we actually do implement a city-wide participatory budgeting process. Should I... Does anybody else have another question? Or I could... SARAH SAYEED: I think you can go to the next slide. Unless someone else has... DANIELLA ERAS: Yeah. So community residents will select their top priorities. And as I mentioned, the top priority from every neighborhood -- the coalition lead from that neighborhood will have to come up with three project proposals to address that issue. And once they're vetted and everything looks good, those are the projects that will go on the ballot, and people will select what they want... What project will receive the $40,000 in city funding. Next slide. Yeah. This is also an example of one of the... Some of the tools and resources that we're giving the coalitions, to conduct outreach and to get the word out, about this process. So we branded the process. We're calling it People's Money. We're also developing a social media toolkit for them with links and everything that they would need to launch a successful outreach campaign. Next slide, please. After the resident survey, as I mentioned, begins the proposal development phase, we really want the coalitions to -- when I mentioned that the coalitions will develop the proposals that address these needs, we really want the non-profits to include residents in the proposal development. So it's not just the CBOs coming up with proposals for funding based on what is in their interests. Or what's the easiest. But actually including residents in that brainstorming process. So as I mentioned also, the proposals -- the final proposals will be vetted by the CEC. And the TRIE Task Force. We're gonna check for feasibility. Are they eligible to receive city funding? Do we think that they would be executed and implemented by the deadline that they need to be? As I mentioned, the projects need to be completed before July 1 of 2022, because of the fiscal year, and because we're using expense funding. I think that's it for where we are in this -- SARAH SAYEED: Mark had a question, I think. MARK: I guess there's two things that are occurring with this to me, Daniella and all. I guess the first is... In the past, when it was a Councilmember participatory budget process, the process for this fiscal year would relate to the budget for the following fiscal year. The notion that we're trying to compress the timeline so that you sort of generate the ideas and create actionable projects and then get them executed and completed by June 30th seems really very aggressive. And I'm wondering if we have reason to believe it will happen. Keeping in mind that agencies with whom some of these projects may be associated are sometimes notoriously slow in how long it takes them to move from idea to execution to funding. I'm thinking in particular of our friends at the Parks Department, where they rely a lot on funding streams like this one, because they don't get direct funding from the usual city budget, the Mayor's budget, in numbers that quite frankly meet their year to year needs. It's sort of like an annual non-recurring manner. So they take years to go from a completely non-controversial and obvious need to execution and delivery. So I guess... Are we confident that this is realistic and that we can get this stuff done? And does that limit certain agencies who just can't take part in it, because their turnaround time is too long? Sorry for the long question. DANIELLA ERAS: No, that's a great question. We feel confident in the timeline, because this is the same timeline and time frame that we had for the It's Our Money, the youth PB process, which is... The same... It was the same amount of time for implementation. And the reason why it was a little easier than going through agency funding is that it's not city agencies that are implementing the projects. It's the non-profits that are implementing the projects. And these non-profits already have contracts with the city. They already have... Everything is in the system already. So the transfer of funds will be faster. And they'll be able to conduct and implement the project in time. And one of the criteria for proposals... For the submission of proposals... Is that it has to be something that they can fund quickly and that they're able to conduct in a short amount of time. MARK: So as a policy matter, we're excluding our own city agencies for eligibility from these funds. I find that a little bit troubling, don't you? SARAH SAYEED: This is an entirely different process than what has run in the past. The reason why agencies were involved in the process before is that it was capital dollars that were on the table for people to ideate and vote on. This is expense funding. Which could include agencies. Or it may not. Right? It could be a separate... We haven't... The charter doesn't tell us that we need to work this process in a specific way. So there's lots of room to sort of be creative and think about different ways to build participation on the ground. And this is one way where we work with CBO partners. You could also imagine a process that's happening in tandem with agencies giving up or allocating a portion of their expense dollars to this process. Right? That is another scenario that we can certainly... Some of the agencies have approached us expressing interest in that. That's their expense funding that they would then dedicate to participatory budgeting. MARK: I'm sorry. I'm going in the opposite direction. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was going in the opposite direction. Which is that agencies are often underfunded in their core needs. I'm thinking for example like our friends at the Parks Department, with the Playground Associates. Who -- programming in not the big parks, but the smaller ones -- they're not putting up their own dollars. They have a net deficit in their ability to fund these things. And that PB dollars would go to fill in gaps and things that they couldn't otherwise afford. So far from asking them to kick in funds, we're trying to supplement their funds. And this process seems structurally designed to prevent them from being a beneficiary of it. That thought is an issue that should be raised. DANIELLA ERAS: Yes, also the issue of having the TRIE Coalition and this initiative is to also fund projects that will help with COVID recovery. Strictly programs and services that will help residents in these 33 neighborhoods. So that is why also this model is different from the traditional... What would you like to see funded in your neighborhood? To: What is it that your neighborhood and your neighbors need? What does the community need at the moment, in terms of where are the gaps in services? And using this investment to get those dollars to residents directly. So that is also, I guess, the main focus of the initiative. SARAH SAYEED: I think Mark is right in that agencies are not benefiting from this funding. So that's true. I don't think that we... We are not... You know, this does not preclude us from having a future process in which agencies could be participants. Right? This is just one iteration of this. Similarly to what we did with the $100,000 that we did -- the youth participatory budgeting process, that went to CBO partners who proposed ideas. Youth voted on CBO ideas and the funding went to them. That's what we're kind of sort of expanding on here. MARK: I completely get it. And with $100,000 across the City of New York, it really has the feel of a pilot project to try to get our legs under us and figure out how to iron out the kinks and do things. Once this starts scaling up, the idea that we structurally preclude our own city agencies from being beneficiaries of scaled up funding is troubling to me. Thanks. SARAH SAYEED: Well, I hear what you're saying, Mark. And I think we can keep talking about that particular point. I also just want to note that: Part of what we're trying to do with this whole program is to build resident participation and have resident voice. To ideate. To tell the city what they need. And one of the tensions in participatory budgeting as it's been run in the capital side with Council is that ideas come up from the community. And agencies vet them based on what is already on their agenda. Right? What do they already want to do? So some of the ideas that residents put forward are not getting seriously entertained, because agencies have their own priorities for what projects they would like to see. And I think we all would like to see those ideas from agencies be informed by greater participatory processes. That's the ideal vision of participatory budgeting. Right? Every time agencies are putting forward ideas for capital and expense projects, the ideal is that they have resident input into what is needed and how those programs and projects look. And I don't think that we can really say that right now. I think there's some level of it. But I don't think we're assured that it is truly as participatory as it could be. And that's why participatory budgeting came about in the first place. Is my understanding of it, anyway. >> I agree with Mark's conundrum here. Someone who began a long time ago, with the District Service Cabinet, that we created so that every city agency could sit at a table and deal with community issues... If they could use the district service cabinet concept for those communities that are participating in this, you would then be able to work with a local agency rep who will probably be on the ground, responsible for implementing any of these projects. Certainly by having the district service people involved, you'll get a sense of where they are, in terms of implementing whatever decisions are made at the local level. In absence of that, I think you have a semblance of a great divide where the agencies may just resist implementing anything, and the community is not gonna build a park by itself. SARAH SAYEED: Yeah. I think we really ought to continue these conversations. Because in mentioning the district cabinets, you're also raising the Community Board. And we need to think more about how that whole needs and priority setting process... How do we leverage that? Because this kind of participatory process is happening to some degree with community boards already. And is there a way to tie that in somehow to the process that's happening with the Council district? And I think these are all kind of design questions that we should continue to engage and I think the questions that have been raised here about the role of agencies are really good ones. So I don't think we can answer them fully today. But we can definitely keep talking about it. So in the future, we will let you know about how this project is going and the rates of participation. And we can think together about what we... How we want to build on this for a city-wide process. Or not. If maybe there's something else we want to do. So I'm gonna turn now to the next part of the meeting. Which is a presentation from United Neighborhood Houses. Nora Moran, the director of policy and advocacy, is here to present. So Nora, the floor is yours. NORA: Thank you. Can folks hear me okay? Okay. Great. So thank you so much for having me. It's really great to be here with you all this afternoon. My name is Nora Moran. I'm the director of policy and advocacy at UNH. We're a membership organization working with 45 settlement houses across New York State. 40 of them are located in New York City. Five outside. And they do everything in neighborhoods across New York City, from early childhood education all the way up through senior services. And I think what makes them unique is that not only are they focused on service provision, but they also have a strong passion for civic engagement, for making sure that people know about their voting rights. Did a lot of work around the 2020 census. Worked to make sure that people who come to settlement houses are connected to their community boards, to different advisory opportunities. Understand the importance of testifying at City Council hearings. All things that make our neighborhoods stronger and make it better for New Yorkers and easier for New Yorkers to raise their voices and participate in civic life. So part of the reason that I'm here today to speak with you all is talking some about intro 1867. Which is a bill that's currently in the City Council. Which would expand voting rights in New York City to individuals with legal permanent residency or work authorization. UNH is a co-lead with our colleagues at the New York immigration commission, our city, our vote campaign. This is the campaign that we are leading to really sort of help get this bill passed finally in the City Council. It's been proposed a couple of times in previous Council sessions, our city has talked about it for several years. But we feel like this really is the right time to pass this bill. So I have a couple slides just to talk through what the bill is, what it would do, what it wouldn't do, and then I'm happy to answer any questions and have a deeper conversation at the end. So next slide, please. Okay. So like I said, intro 1867 would allow green card holders, people with work authorization, in New York City to participate in municipal elections. That's Mayor, Comptroller, public advocate, Borough Presidents, City Council, ballot referenda. That includes primary elections, general elections, special elections. What it does not do is authorize folks to vote in state elections or federal elections. We estimate that this would mean nearly a million New Yorkers would be enfranchised if this bill were to pass. Which is very significant. And would really expand the electorate in New York City. Next slide. Okay. Gave the punchline away on that one. Pretty self-explanatory. So we can go to the next one. And really, for UNH, for NYC, and for the nearly 70 organizations now who are part of our coalition and supporting this campaign, the reason that we're doing so is pretty simple. We really believe that New Yorkers who work here, who go to school here, who raise their families here, and who pay taxes should have a say in the direction of our city. And for UNH and our Settlement House members, this issue really became urgent, I would say, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw, time and again, decisions being made at the local level around schools and whether or not they would be opened or closed, who was an essential worker, who would have to report out to work in person, where vaccine sites were placed, things like that, that -- there were a million people who were not able to weigh in, in a very fundamental way. On those issues. So that's a big part of the reason why we feel that this is the right time. Because there's just been so much that's happened that we feel strongly that it's time for people to access the ballot box and to be able to vote. Next slide. So this is a little illustration of... When we think about our current voter landscape, we know that there's sort of... Everybody who lives in a community... The pool of people is often wide. Then in New York, we have a smaller pool based on who is an eligible voter. And then even smaller than that, who actually votes. And I think probably many of us know, based on having participated in voter mobilization or voter outreach efforts, we have lower turnouts in New York City, particularly for local elections. That's something that settlement houses in recent years have really tried to organize around, and make sure that people are voting not just in presidential elections, but all the time, whenever they can. So we know that that pool tends to be smaller. But if we go to the next slide... Really, our goal here, and what we're trying to do, is expand that electorate. So move from having more voters be eligible and also and most importantly, increasing the actual voters and the people who actually show up and vote. We think that this would be an improvement, not only because it would allow people to make their voices heard. It also would make candidates more responsive to different constituencies in their neighborhoods. You know, they would have to sort of think about a wider array of constituents and of voters, who they would work with, when campaigning, and then also ultimately when in office. Next slide. So when we talk about this campaign, we really use three main words. It's about inclusion, it's about expansion, and significantly, it's about restoration. And I'll explain why we use restoration when we talk about this campaign. Next slide. We often get this question, as we're talking about our campaign... Sometimes folks say that non-citizens have never been able to vote. We've always held citizenship as the ideal for access to the ballot box and why someone should be able to vote. And that's actually not true. So in New York City, actually, for 40 years, until school boards were disbanded, anybody was able to vote in school board elections. That included non-citizens. So there is precedent for this in New York City. We also know that many individuals of differing immigration status vote in participatory budgeting processes. That is also not tied to citizenship. But there is precedent for this here in New York City. And then sort of nationally, if we look back in our nation's history, for the first 150 years of US history, non-citizen voting was common. The only sort of thing that people needed to attest to in order to vote was being a landowner. That obviously comes with its own set of challenges. But we point to this to say that there is precedent for non-citizens actually voting in the US. And if you could just put that... Well, there's two more bullets on. Yeah. So we also... As we've been thinking about this campaign and thinking about this concept in New York City, there are several other towns and countries across the country. Several other towns and cities across the country that do allow non-citizens to vote. There are ten towns in Maryland, a couple in Massachusetts, San Francisco recently allowed non-citizens to vote in school board elections. We know that Los Angeles and Chicago are both considering proposals in front of their local legislatures right now, to expand voting rights. So the concept is catching on. And there is precedent. We also have the different advocate groups supporting this campaign. We have spoken with folks, particularly in Tacoma Park, Maryland. That's been the city that in recent history has sort of had non-citizen voting. And passed it for several years. Just to get a sense of how implementation looked for them, what it meant, and they actually told us that in the 20 years that they've been having non-citizens vote in their elections, they've never had someone incorrectly vote in a different election, vote in a federal election when they're not supposed to. We recognize that New York City is a bigger scale than Tacoma Park, Maryland. But they've also shared tips and ways they've managed elections to minimize some of that risk. Which has been extremely helpful. All right. Next slide. So this list just gives a sense of... When we talk with regular people, with different communities, to give a sense of... What is that stake, when we talk about expanding the electorate in this way? Different communities and neighborhoods across the city, who have not been able to vote could influence decision making on a bunch of the different areas that local elections weigh in on. Police reform, land use, school control, sanitation, transit, language access, you know, roads, bike lanes, all of those things are dictated at the local level and are things that City Council, Mayor, and others set policy on. And this really... We lay these things out to underscore for folks exactly what is at stake when we talk about expanding the electorate in this way. All right. And the next slide. So we also often get this question of... You know, why now? Is this the right time? Are we ready for this? And we really feel like the answer is yes. This bill right now on the City Council has I believe 34 co-sponsors. It's the furthest it's made it sort of... The highest number of co-sponsors it's had on the bill. Which is quite significant. We're excited about that, and it shows a broad basis of support within this City Council. More importantly, and if you could put the next two bullets up, that would be great... We found during COVID that half of all front line essential workers are immigrants. And one in five of them are non-citizens. And so going back to what I was saying earlier, about the fact that there were so many decisions being made around COVID, around who's an essential worker, what stays open, who has to go out to work, you know, we asked many individuals to literally risk their lives and to go out to keep our city running. And because of that, we feel that it's incredibly important for those people to have a say in what policies and decisions their local representatives make. And if intro 1867 passes in this City Council session, there also will be a chance for this to be implemented in 2023. So the next time that there is a City Council election, the electorate would be bigger and look different, which is incredibly exciting, and we can see the impact of this bill taking place pretty quickly already. All right. Next slide. And this is just our last place holder slide. We're definitely very excited about this campaign. Happy to talk any deeper about anything that I just mentioned. Answer any questions. If folks would like more information, I can put my contact information in the chat. Feel free to follow up. Yeah. Very happy to speak further and to answer any questions you might have. SARAH SAYEED: Michael, is that a hand from before, or is your hand up? MICHAEL: Sorry, I'm offline. No, continue. >> I have a question. SARAH SAYEED: You have a question? Okay. Chuck. And then Annetta I saw. I don't know if maybe we just want to start a stack in the chat. Because I can't see everyone on my screen. So Chuck. Go ahead. CHUCK: My understanding is that the requirement for voting is a 30-day residency only. Am I correct? NORA: That's how it is currently written in the bill, yes. CHUCK: That's incongruent behind the passion -- the reasons why we should allow non-citizens to vote. There's a big difference between saying that someone who is here on a green card, has a family, pays taxes, et cetera, et cetera... But when you turn around and say that it's a 30-day requirement, that really opens the door for... Who knows what. And is completely incongruent of the whole concept of allowing people to vote and having them have a stake in it. Why wouldn't that be a much higher bar than literally... Somebody that comes on vacation? Literally could be eligible to vote on that point. Or a work visa that would be here for say 60 days could vote. NORA: I believe that that 30-day residency requirement reflects the other... If you are a citizen and move to New York, you have to live here for 30 days before being able to vote in our elections. So I believe that we sort of mirrored the policy for anybody else who might be a new voter coming to New York. But I will double check on that. CHUCK: But again, it's incongruent. Because the passion behind this entire thing in the presentation is a different thing from... 30 days, and you're allowed to vote. So I have a problem with that low minimum. NORA: Sure. From our perspective, we're sort of mirroring the policy that's in place generally for individuals who are able to vote. I think for many of the organizations that are backing this legislation, our intention is really... And our drive really comes from working with individuals who have deep roots in their neighborhoods and communities and who really feel passionate about voting, want to be able to do so, and also we're reflecting and responding to also the fact that processing times have significantly gone up at the federal level for processing people's citizenship applications. They've nearly doubled since 2014. So part of this also is being responsive to that delay at the federal level. CHUCK: But again, the passion again that you're talking about now is different from the requirement. The requirement doesn't mirror the passion of what is being presented. And would be embraced. So they have to mimic... It has to be something to it. Otherwise, it's basically a different scenario. SARAH SAYEED: I'm just gathering from what Nora said so far that the way this was derived was just... I'm sure there was a process that whoever -- the folks who are proposing this went through, to determine how people would be selected, because what I'm gathering is that if you move to New York City and you're a citizen, you're eligible to vote in elections once you've resided in New York City for 30 days. Is that right? NORA: Yes. SARAH SAYEED: For citizens. So I think the effort is to mirror that. I'm curious whether there were conversations that led to that decision. Sort of at the end. Whether there's documentation that we can read about some of those earlier discussions that may have been had amongst some of the folks who are putting this forward. >> If I may, Sarah, first of all, the ability to vote is really upheld by law with the state board of elections and the city board of elections. The constitution says that if you're a US citizen, you're eligible to vote. Obviously on the national or federal elections. If you have an election and there's a congressional election and a local election going on at the same time, could you imagine the complications if the federal law prevails over local law? There'll be confusion. We have millions of people in this city, as well as around the country, that are registered as citizens, and don't vote. To increase the number of people who vote and get beyond that should be directed on those that are already citizens. I think you dilute it by including those who have not become citizens. Many people here have lived enough qualifying years if they wish to register. And I believe that we have to engage 100% of everybody in community affairs. That's why we allow people who are not registered to vote under state or city law to participate in school board elections. That's a different concept than electing in a municipal election or a state or federal election. The constitutionality of expanding everyone to be able to register to vote... You'll have the problem of separation of when that individual can vote or not vote. And how to have two different voting booths. I would spend a lot of energy in terms of engaging everybody in this city to vote. Across America, we had the worst voter turnout in the world. It's not a question of allowing you to vote for a particular election. Because you have a green card or not. What's interesting is that if you have a green card, you can contribute to a federal election. So only federal law, probably, would supersede anything else that could be done to overcome the lack of participation on the part of non-citizens. But this country has been based on that. And yes, 150 years ago, you didn't have to be a citizen of this country. You had to own land. Or you had to be a man. Not a woman. Things have evolved on that. But I think it's incumbent upon us, and I believe the organization that's pushing this, is to get everyone to just vote. If you really want to get people involved, get them involved regardless of race, creed, color, nationality, where they came from, where they live. If you want to be involved in New York City, become a citizen. Register to vote. We have the poorest turnout in our municipal elections. And it's reflected nationally most of the time. And I fear diluting this takes away a lot of our energy to get to people that are registered and citizens, to just come out to vote. >> Can I chime in? SARAH SAYEED: Michael and Chuck, I'm sorry. We have to stay on track, because we do have a public comment period. I'm not sure if anyone signed up, and I want to recognize that Annetta had put her name into the stack. And I believe Mark also raised his hand. So if we could please just go to those two so that others get to participate as well. Annetta? ANNETTA: Hi. I want to say thank you, Nora, for this outstanding presentation. And sorry. My child just walked in. I was hoping to speak earlier. So forgive the background noise. Really congratulations on this. And all the progress that's been made. On this effort for those of us who have been working on this for the last 20 years. I think this is remarkable progress. And I'm glad that you're here, Nora. And I suppose you're here to invite our support. I quantity wanted to ask a question about the time frame for the existing City Council in voting on this bill. NORA: Sure. And thanks for that, Annetta. It's nice to see you. I know you've worked on this bill. In different roles for many years. So you're very familiar with the concept. So right now, the current legislative session in the City Council ends at the end of December. When all sort of sitting Councilmembers are term limited out. So ideally, individuals would like to see this bill be voted on and come up for a vote by end of December. Because that's the current session. If that does not happen, the bill would have to be reintroduced in January, once the new City Council is seated. And sworn in. And then that process will start again, adding co-sponsors onto the bill. Another hearing would have to be held. Things like that. So yeah. The time frame that advocates are hoping for is cast by December. >> Thank you. SARAH SAYEED: Mark? MARK: Thanks. I also have to apologize for background noise. I love my son's singing, but perhaps not everyone will cotton to the opera. So I completely support the goal of this bill. And I'm very glad that you came and gave us this wonderful presentation about it. I share Chuck's concern about the opportunity for forum shopping and other things that may come with a very short timeline. And I think that another timeline that may make more sense is the timeline required when one tries to register for a political party different than the original political party or absence of political party that one registered for. In New York State, I believe it's either 12 or 13 months. It's some crazy long period. And the purpose of it, quite frankly, as I understand it, is to make sure that folks don't register based on who's running in what election, but rather register because that's where they're called to vote and how they're called to vote. So somewhere between 30 days and 390 days is a much more rational approach in my view toward the correct balance of who does have the deep roots in the community. Whether they're citizens or not, I don't give a hoot. But who has deep roots in the community such that they want their vote to count. And I would encourage that thought. I also think getting this voted on by a Council that is largely lame ducks is exactly the right time to vote on this. There's no skin in the game -- no one is gaming this out in terms of how to or not to advantage themselves in connection with the next election. So full speed ahead, as far as I'm concerned. The one thing I have a question about, and I'm struggling to phrase it, because I'm thinking about how our fellow citizens in those big square states in the West already think... Already bought into the fiction that voter fraud is a thing, when those of us who look at numbers have determined that it sure ain't. So that leads me to ask a question somewhere in the realm of: Is the board of elections equipped to do this? In other words, to have one set of books for folks who are eligible to vote in city elections, versus another set of books for people who are eligible to vote in elections other than the city? And forgive my ignorance -- is there ever a time where we're doing both at the same time? And is that a problem for us, that we need to solve? I'm pretty sure it's not. But those are the practical concerns to make this operational. So if you could address that, I would appreciate it. Thank you. NORA: Sure. Those are good questions. And ones that we get a lot. So thank you for raising them. I would say, on the last point, we've struggled to think of when there would be a state or federal election happening at the same time as a municipal one. Because we're more or less on the off years. There could be a special election coming up, particularly ballot proposals, so we would have to think about that, but for the most part, it's in the off years. On the poll books on the DOE... The way the legislation is written now, and obviously there are things that will need to get negotiated and changed as it gets passed through... Right now how it's written is that there would be one poll book for both individuals or for anybody who was voting in local elections. If you were a municipal voter, you would be marked with an M in the poll books. It would be clearly designated that you were only able to vote in certain elections and not all of them. We've also proposed different ideas around making sure that there is a form that's automatically mailed to people, to opt out, if they erroneously register in federal or state elections, so the onus isn't on them. They're able to opt out of that process if they register in the wrong way. And the question on the board of elections... I mean... I will say that many of the individuals and groups in our coalition are also supporting BOE reform. We know when we're talking about voting, we're talking about a lot of different legislative issues. So we're taking a very sort of complete picture, while we're supporting this. We also are supportive at the state level of different reforms at the BOE. And we've also heard the BOE testify last week or two weeks ago, I believe, at the City Council hearing, where they did say we do think we would be able to implement this. We're ready to talk to other counties that have done this, to learn best practices from them. As long as there is enough implementation time for us to be able to do that. Which, you know, we would not -- this would not go into effect immediately. There would be that time for safe and responsible implementation to happen. And also we feel that... While the BOE has made mistakes in the past, and I might be being generous by saying that... We don't think that should stand in the way of a lot of people being enfranchised. We know there are a lot of grassroots groups, community groups, who are talking about voter registration for everyone. I want to make that clear. Even though we're talking about this bill, UNH, all of our colleagues, are consistently doing voter mobilization, voter drives, so we're very committed to Civic Engagement in all of its forms. Not just focusing on one segment of the population.... So anyway, to make a long story short, we don't think that the BOE should prevent all of these additional people from being enfranchised and having that option. SARAH SAYEED: Thanks. Were there any other questions from Commissioners? We are officially in the public comment period. And I think Francis notified me that no one had signed up so far. Is that still the case, Francis? FRANCIS URROZ: Yeah, that's the case. SARAH SAYEED: So I did have a question of my own. For you, Nora. And before I ask you that, I just wanted to ask... Carol from Women Creating Change put a comment in the chat. And since we are in the public comment, I wanted her to say what she was... Clarify a little bit or explain a little bit what she meant when she posted in the chat. Carol? You might be on mute. Not sure. Carol, can you hear us? I don't see her on the call anymore. FRANCIS URROZ: I think she's having audio connectivity issues. SARAH SAYEED: I see. Okay. Well... While we're waiting, I was curious... Nora, because your organization brings together... Is an umbrella for many others. Right? And I was curious about the process that you went through to decide how to sort of... To decide what position we're gonna take on the legislation. I'm just curious about how long that process might have taken and what kind of deliberations you had. Or was it like an immediate yes and no question about it... Just from an organization standpoint. >> Sure. We've supported this for at least 10 years now. Our process... I wasn't working at the organization at the time, but the main way we got involved in this issue specifically, and really for any policy issues that we work on, advocacy campaigns, is hearing directly from the Settlement House members that we work with: What are their top priorities? What are the things they care about and are passionate about? What are changes they want to see in their neighborhoods? And we really got connected to this campaign through several of our members. Specifically ones in Queens. Many of them work with large immigrant communities. They were doing voter outreach and voter mobilization. You know, encouraging families to be plugged into civic life in their neighborhoods, and would often come across people who said: I would love to, but I'm not eligible to vote. I can't register. And so they really brought this issue to us. And then for us, as an organization, you sort of have a membership body, sort of membership group of the leader of Settlement Houses, where we bring issues to them to weigh in on and give us feedback on. They were supportive of this at the time and still very much are, as well as our board of directors. Making sure that they are supportive and behind this as well. So that was our process. And that mirrors a lot of the other topics that we work on. Whether it's increased access to child care. Greater services for seniors in the community. Things like that. We really kind of listen directly from our members and take direction from them. SARAH SAYEED: Thank you so much for explaining that. Carol, are you able to hear us now? Or speak? Her audio is enabled, right, Francis? FRANCIS URROZ: Yes, that's right. SARAH SAYEED: Okay. In the comment, she just wrote that not everyone can become a citizen. And we do have the opportunity to have Our City, Our Vote if the City Council passes this bill. While we're waiting for Carol, I would say that they've been a great organizational partner for the CEC, and has invited us to come and speak at their events. And we've been collaborating and talking about ways we could promote Civic Engagement in partnership. So I just wanted to acknowledge the work of WCC and Carol in that. I'm sorry that we can't hear you. Okay. You want to jump in for her? LEA: Can you hear me? I'll briefly back Carole up to say that the process of becoming a citizen can be very challenging and long and expensive and not accessible to many people. And so that's partly why we think that this bill is so important. Because as I'm sure many of you know, it's not so easy to become a citizen. And as Nora said, especially with this pandemic, it just really highlights the need to give more people that opportunity. SARAH SAYEED: Right. And even the people who have become a citizen... Who have applied for citizenship, are kind of waiting for a long time to make that real. I remember when we came to this country in 1976, my father was a green card holder. And had been here I think for about 6 years. At the time. And he was able to bring us here with myself, my sister, and my mom. And after he became a citizen, personally, I wasn't a part of the initial application. My mother and my sister applied for citizenship. And it took a really, really long time for that to happen. As well. So that was way back in this early '80s, that they went through that process. And I think it might have taken eight years or something. That actually you had to weight eight years after you were a permanent resident to even apply for citizenship. I don't know if that's still the same. And then once you submit your application, that's another process. And I know from the experience of working with New York City community leaders, that people have applied and have waited for years and years and years. And still have not been able to resolve their citizenship status. So yeah. NYCHA residents. Yeah. So thank you for that. So thank you, Nora. I don't know if anyone else on the commission has any other comments or questions. MARK: Could I jump in with one final quick one? Which is this. Would eligibility to vote in elections -- would the category of people who become eligible -- would they also become eligible to run for office? And wouldn't that be a great thing? NORA: That is a good question. I am not sure. And I can follow up and get back to you. I don't think I've gotten that one before. That's why I like doing these. Because we always get a new question that we haven't thought of. But I will ask, and I can follow up with Francis afterward. SARAH SAYEED: Well, thank you, Nora, again, for joining us and for sharing the overview. And also how... Why this matters to the communities you work with. Since we have about 15 minutes left, and I don't think anyone has any other questions or comments, so... If we are... We can close and give everyone back 15 minutes of their time. If somebody would like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting, we can close early. Or we can hang out. It's your call. >> I make a motion. SARAH SAYEED: Do I hear a second? >> I second the motion. >> Second. >> All in favor? Say aye. >> Aye with thanks. Good meeting. >> Any opposed. Say nay. Okay. I think we've all agreed that we're gonna adjourn the meeting. Thanks so much, everyone. We'll stay in touch with you. Take care. >> All right, everyone. Take care. >> Bye.