- So, we are officially starting.
I just want to welcome you.
Thank you for being here.
We have been,
foreseeing what this meeting
would look like for some time
and we're really excited,
there's no way to predict how
many people would turn out.
So we're very very
happy that you are here.
And when I use we, who is we, right?
There is a team.
So first, let me introduce
the city of Palm Desert,
the General Manager, Lauri,
Aylaian, thank you, Lauri Aylaian.
We also have from the city,
David who's been at the
forefront of this, so David.
(audience applauds)
and a very very supportive team
who is all here, either as a facilitator
or has been helping
just ex, about having
a conversation with you
about the changes to the electoral process
that are coming to Palm Desert.
So again, the city of
Palm Desert, thank you.
And the city of Palm Desert
has also engaged the support,
- [Attendee] It would be nice if we knew
what David's role is?
- Thank you, David is the
public informations officer.
He's with the city of Palm
Desert and he's right there,
and I will introduce myself.
I'm, traditionally, I
introduce everybody else first
and then myself.
Culturally I think, it's a thing.
So, the city of Palm
Desert has also engaged
the support of Tripepi Smith,
and we have Ryder in the
back and we have Bryn
and they are supporting
with communications,
graphic design, outreach
and they do many other things
but thank you for being here.
And the Alianza team.
So Alianza is a local
non-profit organization
and what we do is,
we encourage communication
between public agencies
and residents in a very different way
as you're seeing today.
How many of you have attended a meeting,
especially on an issue
that is dear to our hearts?
Whatever position we might have.
And we hear the yay-sayers,
we hear the nay-sayers
and there's really no
room for a conversation
and then we all walk out, frustrated
and that's not the intent
that brings any of you here.
That's not the intent that
cities have, that agencies have,
so at Alianza, it's part of our mission
to try to foster these communications.
One of the ways in which we do it
is by, through facilitation.
So my team is here, Sahara Huazano,
Victor Gonzalez, and Barrett Newkirk.
We're all with Alianza and we're again,
supporting the city in this effort
through facilitation,
engagement, meeting designed.
We're very happy to be here.
Finally, who I am.
My name is Silvia Paz.
I am the executive director
and founder of Alianza Coachella Valley
and the process that,
that we're following here
is a process that I've used
in various points in my career
and through this approach,
we've been able to achieve many changes.
Like having the first clinic built
in the community of Mecca years ago,
like having common spaces
designed and created
at Harvard University,
and like having
the disadvantaged infrastructure district
created within the Coachella
Water Valley district.
So this is why we are
committed to this approach.
I think that through conversation,
we can emerge more refreshed
and see things from a
different perspective
so again, I'm happy to be
with you on this journey.
So we're gonna move now to the
purpose of the meeting today.
And we did that, introductions.
So it's very important to understand
the purpose of today's meeting.
What is this meeting about?
And this meeting is to
inform the community
about the City's new election process
and it has two parts,
to learn from community members
what's important for you as
the city undergoes this change.
So it's very again,
important to understand
what this meeting is about
and what this meeting is not about.
This meeting is not a debate.
This meeting is really
to have a conversation
and to learn what's important for you
because these changes
are coming to Palm Desert
and we can do 'em together.
To meet our purpose, we have
established three goals.
One, to increase the understanding
of the changes in Palm Desert's elections.
Some of you might have been
following this all along
and your level of
understanding might be up here.
Some of you, maybe you started
hearing about it recently
so today is an opportunity
to create that baseline
understanding for all of us
because today is not going
to be the first meeting
and you will hear from
Lauri in her presentation,
more about the process that
the city's going to be taking.
So that take us to number two.
We're going to identify the
opportunities for engagement.
And goal number three is, again,
to identify what is
important for the community
as the city undergoes these changes.
Now, to meet our,
goals, we have community agreements.
In other meetings, you might
have heard them as rules.
We like to believe
that we can have agreements
that we can all follow.
So our agreements is to
listen with curiosity,
the first two, listen with curiosity
and speak from a space of curiosity.
I think I'm going to demonstrate
what that might mean.
So you're gonna have to tell me,
what am I holding in my hand right now?
- [Attendee] Microphone.
- A microphone.
Now, look at what I'm holding in my hand
from a perspective of
curiosity and tell me,
what am I holding in my hand right now?
(audience calling out answers)
- What is a microphone.
- It's still a microphone.
- [Attendee] Something to talk into.
- Something to talk into?
- [Attendee] What are you using it for?
- So what am I using it?
So something to communicate with?
What else could you tell me?
What else could you tell me?
(audience calling out answers)
- It's wireless, it has a weight,
it has a color, it has a function, right?
So our first response, and
we're trained like this,
is, it's a microphone.
And you're right.
But we could also see it
from different perspectives
and be able to see more.
So that's the invitation and
the first two agreements,
to listen with curiosity
and speak from curiosity.
If you represent the City,
your job is to listen to learn.
And we have a,
parking lot.
So we understand that there
might be many questions
that you might have that we
cannot get to at this point,
that the meeting's purpose and goals
are not designed to address.
- In a half hour, we can learn nothing
except for that microphone.
- I agree!
- Yeah.
- Thank you.
And we'll get to it, we'll get to it.
Trust me, it's a different process
so I appreciate your patience.
So the parking lot is gonna serve for you
for any questions that you may have,
to write them on a Post-it
and then you can put 'em on a parking lot
and someone will get to it.
So those are, again, our
community agreements.
Can we all agree that
throughout this meeting,
we can follow those agreements?
Thank you, thank you.
So we've been here for almost half an hour
and we're almost half
through the presentation.
So we've done number one,
number two and number three.
And now I'm going to introduce Lauri
to talk about the changes that
are coming to Palm Desert.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you, it's seldom
that I get applause
before I've even said anything.
How refreshing!
It's my privilege to be City Manager for
the city of Palm Desert
and I'm here to start
by explaining a little bit
about how we got to where we are
and what the process is, going forward,
in order to get us to the point
where Palm Desert employs district voting
rather than at-large voting.
Just quick terminology,
two things, one is district voting is
where you have a city or community,
divided up into specific districts
and each district votes for
one or more representatives
to their central body.
At large voting is what we currently have
and what is frequently
seen throughout California,
but is disappearing and that
is where everybody gets to vote
for all the candidates
and all the seats that are
held on the elected body.
So Clint, if you can advance me one there?
Let me tell you a little
bit about how we got here.
In 2001, California enacted what's called
the California Voter Rights Act.
And if it's okay with you,
I'm going to call the CVRA,
otherwise we'll be here until tomorrow
every time I have to say
California Voter Rights Act.
It was implemented in
2001 and the purpose of it
was to provide a voice
to under-represented,
protected classes and minorities
it was to make sure that
they had equal opportunity
to elect people that they thought
would represent them most, best,
and to be able to have
a voice in elections
that they might not otherwise have,
to be able to influence the outcome.
In June of last year, 2019,
we had a lawsuit filed against us.
It was filed by two community members
who we had not heard from in the past
and hadn't been engaged in City Hall
and we really didn't understand
what they were trying to accomplish.
So when they filed suit,
we began negotiations
and talking with them,
to determine what really is
wrong with what we're doing now,
how do you not feel represented?
What can we do to change that?
What would you like to see
the outcome of this be?
And they listened to us as well
to see what we were trying to accomplish.
The City was trying to accomplish
two things in particular.
One was, we wanted to maintain
our tradition of community
unity and integrity.
Throughout Palm Desert's
47 year history now,
the community has worked as a whole
and they've worked pretty
respectfully of one another
and their interests towards common goals.
Our greatest fear was that
if we immediately institute
district voting and divide
ourselves into five districts
because we have five council members,
we'll have individual
portions of Palm Desert
fighting against one another
to get the same money,
to get the same resources,
to be able to do the projects
they wanna do in their areas.
And we thought,
we've been so well-served
by working together,
we don't want to lose that.
So that was number one, what
we wanted to accomplish.
Number two was, we wanted
fairness and representation.
It's really important to us
to know that everybody is represented,
they feel and the understand
and they believe that they're represented.
And if they're not,
that they have the opportunity
to elect somebody to represent them,
who they believe does represent
their interests as well.
So it was important for us to be fair.
As an aside, I will tell
you one question that never,
I didn't ever hear,
one concern I never heard from
any of our elected officials
and I still haven't, to this day is,
what will that do for my
chances for re-election?
Not a single one of
them has wanted to know
how can the districts be divided
so that I can get re-elected.
And that really, I'm a cynic at heart,
so having our five council members
never even look to
themselves in this discussion
was really refreshing
and I think it reflects
the values of Palm Desert
as a community working together.
We were able to reach then,
terms for settlement agreement
with the plaintiffs who had filed suit
and we announced that
coming out of our council
meeting in December.
So we just wrapped that up
and we're now embarking on
the next part of how to
make the settlement work
and the CVRA work
and to represent the best
interests of Palm Desert.
Click it.
Alright, so what we came up with is
completely different from
what other cities have done.
We have proposed and decided upon
trying to enact a two-district solution.
Rather than dividing
the city up into five,
which is what almost all the
cities of California have done,
we've recognized that
Palm Desert is different.
We have our own interests,
our own concerns.
We can accomplish a couple of things
we've been working on for a long time
if we're able to implement
a two-district solution.
And what this means is that,
or where this comes from,
is that the city has been
working since about 2013,
towards developing an identifiable
heart and core of the city, a downtown.
We worked with it
with a group of over a hundred
residents and volunteers
and I see some faces in the
room who were involved in that,
to help develop a strategic plan
for where we wanted to be
20 years into the future.
Almost everybody involved in that
identified, there's no downtown.
If you want to meet
downtown, where do you go?
Is it El Paseo, is it
Highway 111, where is it?
So we've been working to develop
the downtown identifiable
district since 2013.
We did it by addressing
our general plan update
and what we identified was,
we have El Paseo, we have Highway 111,
we have the Civic Center
Park, where we are now,
which is a beautiful community amenity
and it's surrounded by cohesive
neighborhoods and neighbors.
We also have the McCallum
Theatre and College of the Desert
and the City Hall, all right in this area,
that are connected to the other areas,
Palm, excuse me, El Paseo
and Highway 111 by San Pablo
and San Pablo would be
the perfect city center.
Through our strategic planning,
we had identified that this
is really a key corridor
and you can see,
depending on how you drove or
walked to get here tonight,
that there's a lot of work
going on in San Pablo.
We have already, by the
time the suit was filed,
we had already embarked upon a project
to create an integrated,
walkable neighborhood
that would connect the resources we have
at the Civic Center Park,
at College of the Desert,
with the San Pablo surrounding
neighborhoods and communities
and with, all the way down
to Highway 111 in El Paseo.
So that was underway
and we determined that
what would be really useful
is to use this process
to have a two-district system.
One that encompasses the heart of El Pas--
excuse me, the heart of Palm Desert
and the other encompasses
the larger surrounding areas.
So what we have identified is somewhere,
a city core that will have about
20 percent of the residents
and that will have a
single elected official,
surrounded by the larger area
that will have about 80
percent of the residents
and that will have four elected officials.
It was also a goal to
implement ranked choice voting.
And we'll talk more about that later,
that was something that was very important
to the plaintiffs in the case,
and what you need to know at
this point are two things.
One is, we'll go into that whole
lot more at future meetings
because it's something that's new to us,
and we're going to, we
understand that there will be
a lot of education necessary
and outreach to include the public.
So everybody knows, going
into the 2020 election,
how to vote most effectively
to represent their own interests.
And then, let's go on to the next one.
What we really saw is,
we've be able to create
what we think is a win-win solution.
Because with the plaintiffs,
we helped to make sure that
we are embracing the CVRA
and it's not only the letter of the law
but the intent and the spirit of it.
As well as, our interest in embracing
the creation of a identified,
specific downtown district.
I have some notes here.
Some of them have big words
that David put in here
that I don't even know what they mean,
so I'm gonna skip those.
(audience laughing)
Afterwards, anybody who
knows what balkanization is,
please, let me know.
Okay, I do also want to say,
on the rank choice voting,
although it's new to us and
new to the Coachella Valley,
there are cities in the Bay
Area, Oakland, San Francisco,
that have used it for a couple of decades
and it's now gonna be
used in New York City,
so it's being used across the country.
It's just new to us.
Let's try the next one please.
Okay, this gives us a
little bit of a schedule
to let you know what to
anticipate, going forward.
We are part-way down.
We are in January 15th.
This is our first public open house.
All this information is available online
but what you need to know
is that over the next couple months,
you'll have plenty of
opportunity for input
and plenty of opportunity
to get information.
There will be two public
forum meetings at least,
like this, where you'll be
able to work in small groups
to get information specific
to the questions that you have
and how you can have input.
And there will be four public hearings
that will be held in
front of the city council
where you will be able
to speak your opinion,
or, as with any public
hearing in the city council,
you can write emails, calls, send letters,
and all of that goes
into the public record
and will enable the city
council to be fully informed
on the opinions and the input
that our residents have to offer.
And all of this leads up,
of course, to November 3rd,
where we'll have a general election.
That is our, the first time at which
we will implement the two-district system.
(coughs)
Excuse me.
Could we move along to
the next one please?
Okay, I wanna give you a
broad brush view of the maps.
We're not gonna talk about maps tonight
other than this general introduction,
and that is to show you Palm
Desert, for those of you,
some of us are steeped in
looking at maps of the city every day.
Other people aren't as familiar.
Let me just orient you generally,
which is that we have Highway
111 going through here,
Fred Waring Drive bisects.
At this moment, we are
right about in here.
Portola, Cook Street,
are running north-south
and Palm Desert Country Club is over here.
We have Bighorn and South
Palm Desert in this area.
What the colors indicate,
and when you see the larger blow up,
you'll be able to tell is,
percentage of population
that is Latino in the
voting age population in Palm Desert.
If it's purple like this,
it means it's less than 25 percent.
As you change into other colors,
it means it's a greater percentage.
What we're trying to do is,
make sure that we give
representation to the city core
in this area where we have others,
where we have greater
concentration of Latino voters.
You can see that there's
plenty of room for variation
in how the district might
be shaped and formed
but all of it generally
encompasses San Pablo
that we've talked about
how important that is, as well as
the communities immediately surrounding
and some of the things
like College of the Desert,
City Hall, coming down here
to some of the most important
financial districts in Palm Desert.
It will be in the best interest
of all elected officials,
the one person from the downtown district
and the four from the
surrounding district,
to protect the interest
of this specific area
because it is so important
to us, financially,
it is so rich in cultural resources,
and it is the home of many
of our city institutions.
Okay, next slide please,
which I think is my last one?
The question is, who
decides on the districts?
Who decides what they will be?
Good, bad, or indifferent,
it is the members of the city council.
This is not something that
goes to vote at the public
and we do get a lot of confusion
or questions about that.
It turns out, when there have
been initiatives in the past,
in other cities or communities
to try to have the voters
decide the boundaries,
those have not been upheld in court.
So it does need to be done
by the members of the city council,
whose representatives and
bright and shiny faces you see
right there in front of you.
Ultimately, after the public hearings,
they will be the ones to
vote on the boundaries.
However, they need your input.
They need to know where
you think it's important
to not divide up portions of the community
and where exactly you think
it should be constructed
to create the interest center
for the downtown district
that best represents
unified, cohesive communities
and the interests of the city.
So they'll be looking through
this public input phase of the process
to get input from the city residents,
from the city voters, to know how exactly
this should be shaped.
You'll have the opportunity
to put input going forward
and then that will help the city council
inform the decision that
they ultimately make.
The decision will also have to be approved
by the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
That was part of the terms of settlement.
So we'll be going through that process
and consulting with them
as we go in further.
Future meetings, we'll talk more about
how the districts will be shaped
and how you can input and help
create each individual space.
With that, I would like to
turn this back over to Silvia,
who's going to talk us
through the next phase,
where we break out into smaller groups
and work with the people at our tables.
- Thank you.
(audience applauds)
Thank you, Lauri.
All right, so, again as we break out
into the group discussions,
the city of Palm Desert
is really trying to get
your input from right now, moving forward,
to how the other meetings
are going to take place
so in order to do that,
we all need to understand
what is important for you?
So you've heard information,
how we got here,
what's gonna happen?
And now it's in the small
group conversations,
you each have a facilitator,
and they'll be leading
you through questions,
a series of questions or
facilitating a conversation,
to try to get information that
would help the city move on,
what they have to do in their next steps,
in the next meetings.
Again, we know that there
might be some questions
that are still burning.
Use the notepads and put
them in the parking lot.
After the group conversations,
there will be a report out.
And Lauri's here, she'll be a floater,
looking at what's happening,
what's bubbling up,
looking at what's happening
in the parking lot
and during the report back session,
she might also be able
to generally answer,
there's a common concern
coming, topic that's coming up.
But there will be future
meetings so don't think that
if it doesn't get answered
today, it won't get answered.
You have a survey at your table
and if you want to continue
receiving information,
make sure that you gave us
all your contact information
at the registration table.
And with that, the facilitators
have the questions,
they'll be here and our
community agreement still apply.
So we we have about 35 minutes
for the discussion in the groups.
(chattering discussion)
- Have just this one district,
- So if you look at the neighborhood,
- So I do understand some
people are ready to leave,
so we're gonna switch the order.
We wanted really to hear from all of you
but as long as there's
people from your group
that can represent your
voices, we'll get to that
and first, we're gonna have Lauri answer
some of the questions that
are in the parking lot.
- Alrighty, I've taken a
look through your questions.
Most of them I can answer for you tonight.
One or two, I will need a
little bit more help on.
So let's see what we have?
Why rank order voting?
This is something that was
insisted upon by the plaintiffs.
It was not the city's first choice,
it was not the city's
idea but the plaintiffs,
this was a sticking point for them.
They said it was important for them
and they needed to have it incorporated.
What is the website address
for more information?
It is www.representpd.org.
You can also get to it
through the city's website,
which is cityofpalmdesert.org
and there's a link there
but it's representpd.org.
Okay, tell us what it will fix.
The, what it will fix is
it avoids a lengthy and very
expensive court battle which,
according to all legal advice we get,
we will, the city would not prevail in.
Nobody yet, has successfully,
no city yet in California,
has successfully challenged
the CVRA and won,
and prevailed in court.
This includes cities that have spent
over 10 million dollars fighting it,
and they still don't win.
So, that's the long and short of that.
Let's see.
Must council members
live in their district?
Yes, they must.
You must be elected from your own district
and you must live in it.
Same question, do the council members
need to live in their district?
Yes they do.
We had a related question,
which said, hmm,
keep going and see where they are.
How did they determine the new district?
The new district has not been determined.
The map that I showed generally shows
areas of concentration
of minority residents
but it does not identify where
the new district will be.
That's what we're having
the open houses for,
that's what the public
hearings will be for,
is to have you help shape
what those districts
will actually look like,
where they boundaries will go.
So the districts have been named,
identified, only very generally
as somewhere in the core
and the surrounding areas.
The actual boundaries
will be determined through this process.
What if no one from the district runs?
That's always a possibility.
If there were nobody who were going to run
from a particular district,
and this would be,
whether it's the internal district,
the downtown district
or the outer district,
according to our city attorney,
I believe that we might
have to look into this
a little bit further,
but it is likely that, if
there were no candidates,
somebody could be appointed
by the city council.
We can look into that a little
bit more, Bob is indicating,
(muffled speaking)
- [Bob] Verify that with the city,
I believe that is the
case, city council could,
(muffled speaking)
- Okay, thank you.
Okay, if I live in the downtown district,
and by the way, people,
penmanship, please, penmanship!
If I live in, it has nothing
to do with my aged eyes.
If I live in the downtown
district, do I only vote for one,
for the one downtown district,
or can I vote for the people in the other,
the other four candidates
in the other district?
The answer is, you only get
to vote in your own district
for the representatives
of your own district.
If you're in the downtown
district, you vote for one.
You don't vote for anybody
in the surrounding district.
If you're in the surrounding district,
you only vote for the
four in your district,
you don't get to vote for the one
that will represent the downtown district.
Okay, we had a question
about money, where did it go?
How much is this gonna cost?
Just changing the software,
purchasing new software
for the rank choice voting,
we have estimates of $350,000
and the city has identified
that we have that money
available, we can pay up to that.
As far as the education and outreach
so that everybody
understands what we're doing,
we don't have a firm cost on that yet.
We'll see how much interest there is,
how much confusion,
what it takes to get the
message out to everybody
to make sure that they know how to vote
to maximize their interests.
I'm guessing all told,
that's probably somewhere
less than 100,000
but that's a little bit of a wild guess
on my part at this point.
Is district residents required
in the district in order
to be on the council?
Yes, you have to be a
resident of a district
in order to be elected there.
Will this become a we versus them?
The answer is no.
That's the beauty of the,
of what we've proposed,
is that it is in the
interest of everybody,
all five council members, the entire city,
to protect and invest in
and work on the downtown district
because of the cultural resources there
and the financial implications
and impact of that area
on the rest of the city.
So everybody works together on the core,
four of the five work together
on the areas outside of the core.
What will this cost?
How will districts affect
accountability of the city council?
That's one of the other things
that we preserve doing this,
that we're very concerned about.
As it is now, if you vote,
if there's somebody who you
don't think is doing a good job
on the city council, you get
to vote them out of office.
Doesn't matter what district they're in.
That's what happens when
you have at large voting.
This way, we have at
least four individuals,
council members, who will
be in the exterior district
and each of them are gonna be accountable
to everybody who votes for them
and one representative
from the downtown district
is responsible to everybody
in the downtown district.
I see, somebody's holding a
card, telling me wrap up time.
Do you want me to finish
these last four or we,
- [Woman] There's more.
- Oh, there's even more.
Let's, I'm gonna see,
because you've all tooken
time to come here tonight
and have your questions answered,
I'm gonna see if I can do that.
Why two districts, not,
- [Audience] Five.
- Five.
Why is the issue only about
the Latino population?
In Palm Desert,
there is only one protected minority class
that is represented in
numbers that register, really,
on our demographics and those are Latinos.
And the idea is that
in order to protect
the interests of the Latinos,
of the minority class,
you need to protect them in a district.
If they were spread
across the entire city,
then it would be a different matter,
but you look where the
concentrated areas are.
In our city, there's
distribution of all minorities,
not just Latinos,
generally across the city,
but one area where there is concentration.
Therefore, the city for the
reasons I talked about earlier,
thought that it would be best
for the integrity and
the unity of the city
to work together in two districts.
One focused on downtown
and the surrounding area,
also focused on downtown
because of its importance
to the rest of the city,
but representing the areas
where they don't have the concentration,
there are not enough Latinos
to be able to influence votes
or to be blocked from
influencing the outcome of votes
if that was an issue.
Redevelopment was broken into zones
and worked, why don't
multiple districts work?
Redevelopment was kind of a different,
a horse of a different color.
That was a funding mechanism that was,
developed based upon property values
and assessments to individual tax,
to individual property owners
and it was a mechanism
for generating revenue
that could be put back into the district.
It really didn't have, other
than the word district,
it really didn't have anything in common
with what we're addressing here,
which is how does a group of
people, a protected class,
make sure that their
interests are represented
and they are able to be elected to
and influence the outcome of elections
in their own community.
What data is used to create maps?
Ooh, good question, that
leans into our next meetings.
We have a demographer
who has worked on
districting across the state
with more than a hundred different
cities and organizations,
who will be providing us
with detailed information
that will help you, if
you choose to engage,
with identifying and
drawing the districts,
the district boundaries.
It's mostly all census data information
that is available to the public.
When did lawsuit get filed?
It was in June of 2019,
so June of last year.
Why not invite Palm Springs
to share their experience?
We hare absolutely
communicating with other cities,
not just locally but in other places,
to identify what they did
that they think went right
and what didn't go right.
I belong to a couple of different
organizations of city
managers from across the state
and across the country
and when we get together,
you know what we talk about?
Districting, how did that work for you,
how did that not work for you.
It's an ongoing field of inquiry
for all of our staff members
and we do look at this regularly.
We will be consulting with cities
that we haven't talked with previously,
as we go through this.
How much was the plaintiff attorney paid?
Uh, Bob?
How much was the plaintiff attorney paid?
- [Bob] They are entitled
to recover their expenses.
We haven't had that negotiation yet.
- Stay tuned.
What happens after the census?
Excellent question, excellent.
What happens is, we have new demographics
and you have to go back
and visit the boundaries
and make any changes
or adjustments to them
to reflect changes in the demographics.
We had originally thought,
can't we put this off until
we have our 2020 census data?
And the answer is no.
It needs, we need to
move ahead before that,
so we will be looking at a couple years,
at new data that may or may not require us
to go back and adjust boundaries,
same as every other city in
the state will be looking at.
Will this be revisited after
one, two, or five years
to see its effectiveness?
I don't know.
First of all, we're gonna
have to think about this one.
First of all, I'm not sure
how you measure effectiveness
for an issue like this.
Secondly, we have to think about
what we would do with that
information if we had it
because we don't, under
current California law,
we don't have the opportunity to,
go back to at large voting
if this doesn't prove to be effective.
That being said, state
law changes regularly
and there's no telling what
may change in the future.
What are the minimum requirements of law?
Oh, I guess I saw this.
I don't know who wrote this question
but I'm not able to,
I don't understand the question
well enough to be able to answer it.
If somebody, whoever wrote this one,
what are the minimum
requirements of the law,
wants to come talk to me afterwards
or talk to our city
attorney, Bob Hargreaves
or talk to one of the representatives,
we'll see if we can answer that for you.
And finally, representation.
Five districts, where do
existing council members live?
Will the new council members
live in their district?
Let's start in reverse order.
Yes, the new council members
will live in their district.
They'll be required to be elected
from the district in which they live.
Where do existing council members live?
We have council members
generally in the southern half of the city
if I had to pick a defining area.
They are not concentrated
all in one neighborhood
but nor are they dispersed
all across the community.
So that is something that,
state law allows you to
take into consideration
in forming the boundaries,
where the existing council members live.
It is something that, to date,
none of our council members
have expressed an interest in
pursuing or,
revising or suggesting boundaries
to protect where they live.
So that is something that I believe,
Bob, is that public information?
- Yes.
- Yes, Rachelle's indicated.
So that is information that
would be available for you.
I don't, I don't know,
I haven't been to all the
council members' houses.
So I can just tell you
that that information
will be available to you.
They are generally in
the southern half of the city and the end.
- [David] If someone wants
to know the answer to that,
they can email the city
and we will make sure
they get that response.
- What David said.
Which reminds me, the one last
thing I wanted to indicate
and that is where to
turn for more information
if you just want to read up or
tell somebody else about it,
we do have a website
specifically for this issue.
It's called representpd.org.
You can also get to it through the city's,
oh, there we go.
You can also get to it
through the city's website.
Yes, question?
- [Person] Lauri, one of
the questions was answered,
like, what are we trying to fix?
But you went through that
question avoiding the lawsuit,
But what was the intent of
the plaintiffs trying to fix?
(door slams)
(muffled speaking)
- Okay, thank you.
I have not,
- [Attendee] Can you
repeat the question for us?
- Okay, the question was,
what were the plaintiffs trying
to fix in filing their suit.
I haven't had direct
conversation with them,
I can't, and don't speak on their behalf.
We can only surmise and
gather from their information,
that they felt that they were not afforded
an opportunity for equal representation
through the at large district voting.
- Thank you, Lauri.
And it is, we're like
two minutes and a half
away from the time we're supposed to end.
We do have, we haven't heard from you.
We have all your notes.
So I have an option for you.
If you all have to leave right now
and that's your preferred option,
we want to be mindful of your time
but you, we were walking around.
It seemed you were engaged
in very fruitful conversation
around the questions
and it is important for
the city to hear this,
for us to hear this.
So we'll allow people who
want and have to leave
at this point, they can do
that, to be mindful of the time
and any of you who have at
least, well there's 12 tables,
so if we do it in one minute per table,
12 minutes, I'll be ambitious.
Just so that we can hear from
you and we have the notes
and there's been a city
representative at each table
so know that your information
will still be informing the city.
Thank you, so we are
going to be hearing back
from all the tables that are still here.
What's important for you?
David has a microphone.
There are cameras here recording.
It's important that you speak to the mic
so that your valuable input is heard.
So we will start, we always
tend to start from the front,
so we're gonna start at the back.
- My name is Michael Meyer.
I've been a resident here for 29 years.
Our discussion here
seems to center around,
if we have a lawsuit, we
have to answer a lawsuit,
let's answer the lawsuit
by forming that district.
District can be defined
by Monterey, by Portola,
by 111, by Fred Waring.
That's basically the area
we were talking about.
Why must we go ahead and add
the downtown district,
quote, unquote, to it,
being our economic base for this area,
why are we including that in the lawsuit
when it wasn't asked for?
So you're asking for
more, you're giving more
than what was asked for.
You decided to, and,
here again, living here for 29 years.
I've seen changes, I've seen it.
I've seen how important
the mall was at one time,
for the economic development
of this community.
El Paseo is the same way.
Why are we giving that
away when we don't have to?
Why not just answer the lawsuit,
do what you're supposed to do, and go on?
To combine the two does not make any sense
and that was the consensus
basically at our table.
- So most of my table left,
but I will represent them fairly.
Bill Bilsco's here, oh good,
and Yasmin's here, okay.
I'm your proxy up here, I'll do my best.
So just going through
the kinda three questions
in the order that they were raised.
Number one, there was a general
sentiment it was important
to go to districts and
ensure representation,
indeed, I would say
several of the members here
felt it was important to
go to multiple districts,
not just one.
There were questions and
concerns about generally,
on timing of the lawsuit and the process
and why it may or may
not have been delayed.
And questions about, there
was a concern expressed
that by creating a single donut district,
that actually quote, unquote,
fences in a population
into a single district
and a different perspective
from an individual at our table
expressed about that.
There was also some
concern generally expressed
about whether or not it
sufficiently represents
that ethnic group or if
there are other ethnic groups
that need to be represented
or other cohorts in the community.
I think you, Lauri spoke
to that a little bit
with some of her answers about
the legal threshold for representation.
There was also a concern
that incumbents are protected
by at large districts
and that at large districts
also require more money to win
because they're bigger.
So what impact might that have
and another person at the table
was very emphatic on using the term
that the city tended to ghetto-ize an area
in creating this particular donut hole
in the middle of the city.
And then last but not least,
the final question three
that was asked of us,
the general sentiment
was this meeting's nice,
it's well done,
but there's a concern that this
solution is mostly baked in
because of the lawsuit,
so there were just some concerns
and questions about how
much the needle's gonna move
as we go through the process
and we had a healthy discussion
about moving some of those
and what that group data
is for the census data.
And then last but not least,
there was a concern
expressed by an individual
who was concerned that by not
having at large districts,
council members would no
longer be concerned about
coming to his mobile home park
and seeking their support.
So if they happen to be in
the one middle district,
or say, one of the outside districts,
then they're basically would
be losing representation
of people who would no
longer be representing them
in that particular mobile home park.
- Radio test here,
first question we have,
how the information,
I believe that was covered pretty well.
How is someone who is not in district one,
get equal representation
compared to someone
who is in district one?
Another one, how were
the boundaries decided?
What does, what do the numbers mean?
Another one, happy with two districts
and did not get broken into five.
Another thought, at what
point do the plaintiffs
get to be a part of the final decision?
This is my thought, at
what point, personally,
and I don't know what's
happening on the other side,
but I'd be happy to have variety
in the room with us tonight.
So as we go through the
boundaries and stuff,
that we hear their side
and they hear our side
and we don't get to March and find out,
well, we're not on the same page here.
Another person, as someone who
lives in Larkwood district,
I'm not sure who will represent me
or understand, understand my problems.
Final, as a teacher in a Title I school,
I hope I will see someone
who will represent my
students in district one.
That's all that this table has.
- [Silvia] Thank you.
- Thank you.
These are the comments from this table.
It's about time that we did something,
did something like this,
but we have concerns.
We believe every person
should have a voice
or a chance to have a voice.
The process should be fair
and have equal representation.
How is it equal for the donut hole
to only get to vote for one representative
where the donut gets to vote for four?
That is not equal representation.
And we should have a range of options
presented to us by the council,
not a (speaks a foreign language),
which is what we're getting right now
and the council should do the hard work
of creating five districts instead of two.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- I will try to keep this short
because a lot of our issues
were covered by other people.
But on this representation issue.
We look at it, or some of us did,
in maybe a different way,
not so much in voting,
but in the actual operation of the city
after this process goes on.
There was some general concern
about how would the rep,
how would we represented presently,
and so in the case of the people
who live in the central district,
they will have one
official that they know,
that they elected
and someone that they could
contact if they have an issue.
Where the people who live
in the outside district
will not have one, they will have four
and so there's some negotiation.
So that's just a concern and
maybe just and it could be,
could be passed on to the
city council presently.
- Thank you, and I wanna
appreciate that you recognize
some of your comments were already shared
and that you didn't share that.
We're gonna try to do this
in the next five minutes,
so help me out here,
maybe we can get out in
the next five minutes.
- Okay, I'm just gonna say that
somehow we need to reach
minority population,
because most people that
came to the meeting today
were not minority and
I know you sent it out,
I got a postcard to my house,
plus it was in a newsletter,
it's on the news,
but somehow we need to reach
the minority population.
- [Attendee] The people
that were in the group
were kind of all on the same page in that
they don't want the status
quo to be disrupted.
They like the city, they
like the way it's run,
they like the leadership.
They don't see anything
wrong with what was broken
so they didn't know what was trying,
what we're trying to fix, the city's part.
They felt that the opportunity
to be heard already exists.
A good example they gave
was a short term rental,
it was going on for meetings and meetings,
so they don't believe that there,
people don't have the
opportunity to be heard.
But they are concerned
about the two district
because they feel that will
become a we versus they
and so they would prefer
something like other cities,
just do five districts.
- Thank you.
- Hi, I'm Randy.
I'm, again as a proxy, the
folks left (muffled speaking)
a lot of the problems
were already addressed.
The main question is, why
two districts and not five.
That was a consensus.
- Thank you, Randy.
Right here, and then
I'll pass the mic here.
- Hi, my table had a couple of items
that haven't been mentioned
and that was a concern over the fact that,
the single district has a
big block of our businesses,
these businesses, it might create
a resident versus business struggle
with the representative for there.
That was one that came up quite often.
And also there were concerns
this may not actually create
diversity on the city council.
The question was that,
will it create diversity
on the city council
and hoping that there
are strong candidates
in both districts.
I think that's pretty much it.
And one thing though
that the table did say
with the last question is,
how will you know that you're being heard?
And that is for the city
to continue to communicate
with the people of this group and others
between now and next meeting
and also to give everyone a
little bit better understanding
of how they came to the
two district process.
- [Silvia] Thank you.
- Okay, so, pretty much
everything is the same on here.
The one thing that I will
say is, the report back.
So what are the survey results
and how is that gonna get back
to the people of the community?
And just for me personally,
my husband ran on this issue in this city,
so I would like to applaud you all
for making a step forward
in the right direction
and I hope that you really listen
to the citizens of this city
and take all of that in
stride as you move forward.
- I wanted to add that
suggestion that Charlie made,
which was to potentially
look into auditoriums
and public schools to
engage the other audience
in the second meeting.
- Hi, I represent our table.
A lot of the things I
believe, were already covered.
A couple of things that
haven't been covered yet is,
the concern about continued cooperation.
It was very important
that people at our table
that there be continued cooperation,
especially as we go to a new
person being on the council
that people,
the other thing that
people were concerned about
at our table was the ranked choice voting
and whether it's too complicated.
And since I couldn't explain
it, they were concerned,
if we can't understand it,
is it too complicated for us to do,
but we don't have a choice and,
making sure this is something
and that the people that are involved
continue to be involved
in the local government.
And I think that's all we got,
I think we've covered
everything, don't you?
And again, to reiterate
what Deborah's table said,
keep the conversation going,
keep the communication going,
with the community and the city.
That's it.
- Thank you, everybody.
February 12th is the next meeting
where we will have the demographer
and getting closer to what that process of
the creation of the
boundaries is gonna be like
and maybe just food for
thought as we close.
There was a lot of information shared
but if you reflect about
what's the one thing that
brought you to Palm Desert
and just maybe for a
different perspective,
was it the way that the
city council is elected?
So some reflection and thank
you, have a good night.
