2021-12-09 Redistricting Commission minutes (9th Session)

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to give representation for our members of our community into our local government. But what Mr. I'm not too sure what you're alluding to, Ms. Bath. Mr. Lopez wants an educational stance on—for our public. And we don't have enough of that. Ms. Bath, you still have the floor. BATH: Yeah, so I think that the education isn't I just wanted to clarify what our purpose was. So, I understand that it's to ensure that the public has a voice in elections, and that it's fair. And so, I like the idea, but I wanted to make sure I got that right. That that's our main goal, to make sure that everybody has a voice. Then I can continue in my thoughts as far as education. I just wanted to clarify that that is our goal, drawing lines to ensure that everybody has a vote. Is that correct? KOSSOW: I believe that's correct, but perhaps if you need Mr. Lopez to hash out his motion, we can do that too. BATH: No. No. You don't have to. I just needed clarification so I can speak to his motion. KOSSOW: I believe that was the premise of his motion, was to provide education. BATH: Okay so, I like the idea of having education for our public. I really like having education for the commissioners as well. Some on our Commission are well versed on this, others of us are new to the process. And there was a big—we got the census information late. And this is all about education. Educating people to how the process should go. And so, what I'd like to see for future commissioners, is for one thing getting the census numbers on time, and not having a pandemic. But that's an act of God, not man. What I'm really trying to say is that we can have a lot of education and things, but if we don't maximize the time that we have as a Commission, so that we can get together and we can talk about things—We're talking about this now, and we had weeks and weeks of down time where we could have had this dialogue as we united as a Commission. And so, I'm grateful that this motion is on the floor now so that it can be something for other commissioners to do so the process isn't as messy as is what we've been through here because of a lack of connectivity. So, the education is good, but I wanted to put out the reasons why. I yield. KOSSOW: Mr. Akamu. AKAMU: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to share that when I joined this Commission, I myself was very new to all of this. And one of the things that I did was, I went into the 2011 Commission folder, which is public on the County website, and I read all of the reports. I read all of their old minutes. It took some time, but I did my best to try to educate myself. Additionally, if I had questions about what my roles or responsibilities was, I'm very appreciative that also posted on the 2021 Commission public site is Communication Number 1, which is the presentation by Mr. Rosenbrock, which outlined the system, census blocks, and that was very informative to me. So, I referred back to that document often throughout this process. Additionally, I found that Communication 21