2021-09-23 Redistricting Commission minutes (3rd Session)

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BATH: My first thought is for everybody to get confident, to be trained. That would be the first point. Once we can all use the tools and are confident, some of us aren’t quite there yet, then we can start really doing the work efficiently. The second thing would be to establish a work meeting where we’re working together. During the Puna Community Development Plan, what I was saying is, we were trying to identify connectivity locations between subdivisions for redundancy. We did that as a committee. Then what we did was, later on we had this prep fair, two prep fairs, and we put out the maps to the community. They came in a marked up the maps. We brought the data back, we crunched it and we resubmitted our plan to them. So, everybody was working together. What I’m putting out, it doesn’t have to be, but I’m putting out first, to get trained properly, and then to have a work meeting where we’re all working together so we’re not at home doing our plans, coming together, and the one district saying “No way! That’s going to mess up my district.” We can’t do that. Then we’d have to go back to the drawing board. So, working together. And it is possible that the public could be involved in these work meetings as well if that’s allowable. What do you guys think? KOSSOW: Mr. Hustace. HUSTACE: Thank you, Ms. Bath. I do like your idea of a working meeting. This does violate a Sunshine Law. We’d have to have a public—we’d have to be a very public setting for us to do that. I think you kind of mentioned that, we’d all have to be physically together, right that’s what you’re recommending? BATH: That’s correct. HUSTACE: I think you touched on it earlier before our fire alarm here, and it really was a question for Ms. Mellon-Lacey. I don’t know if during your transition from being virtual to being present in the room, you missed some of that information, but we are still—and I would hope to speak for everyone here (indiscernible)—that we are aiming st for this 31 deadline of December. However, we are hoping have something in our back pocket just in case we need additional time. I think our goal here is to really stick with the timeline. Ms. Lui sent in the writ from the courts, or the Supreme Court, granting the State Reapportionment Commission time and I think there’s some hope that the other Commissioners at the County level would be able to piggyback on that or be granted that under emergency proclamation, and the delay of the census, these number of things that have pushed us back and have caused some difficulty for us here. We’re crunched for the technical reasons, we’re crunched because the data wasn’t given to us, all these sorts of things but I still believe that the rest of the Commissioners, and myself, we want to aim for this deadline but are just looking for some sort of back up in case we need that additional time to meet with community members and massage these plans. MELLON-LACEY: I understand what you’re asking. Isn’t this on the floor as a motion, or am I incorrect? YOSHINA: That’s correct. I call for a vote on the motion. 19