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Home My WebLink AboutMIN RDC 2011-06-232011 HAWAII COUNTY REDISTRICTING COMMISSION 3rd Session Thursday, June 23, 2011 County Council Chambers 25 Aupuni Street Hilo, Hawaii 96720 CALL TO ORDER: CHR. SIRACUSA: This is the 2011 Redistricting Commission. Today is Thursday, June 23, 2011 and the time is 1:30 p.m. We are at the Council Chambers in Hilo. This is our 3rd session. This meeting will now come to order. I will now call the roll. ATTENDANCE: Present: Mr. Joseph Carvalho, Commissioner Mr. Patrick Kahawaiolaa, Commissioner Mr. Craig `Bo" Kahui, Commissioner (Kona Office) Mr. Dru Mamo Kanuha, Commissioner (Kona Office) Mr. Jeffrey Melrose, Commissioner Mr. Mike Middlesworth, Commissioner Ms. Rene Siracusa, Chair Ms. Valerie Poindexter, Commissioner Ms. Linda Ugalde, Commissioner Also Present: Michael Udovic, Deputy Corporation Counsel Rodney Oshiro, Deputy County Clerk David Rosenbrock, State Reapportionment Project Manager Royce Jones, Hawaii- Pacific Islands Region Manager, Esri Corp. Pat Nakamoto, Elections Program Administrator Cori Saiki, Elections Assistant Shyla Ayau, Senior Elections Clerk Glen Shikuma, Warehouse Supervisor Nora Avenue, Admin. Assist. to Clerk Maile David, Legislative Specialist Dave Hirt, Legislative Assistant in Waimea Leslie "Lali" Robinson, Council Aide in Kona Karen Eoff, Secretary STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS CHR. SIRACUSA: The first person I have to testify is Yen Chin, representing Friends of Puna's Future. Please come forward. Mr. Chin is coming forward to make a comment. YEN CHIN (At this time Yen Chin came forward to address members of the Commission.) MR. CHIN: Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Yen Chin, I am the President of Friends of Puna's Future. We take a keen interest in these proceedings because we advocate for Puna. Moreover, we believe that Puna has not received its due in the past, so we approach Redistricting with a healthy measure of skepticism and caution. Please don't take this to mean that I, or we, distrust any one of you. We begin with a belief in your fairness. Rather, the issue is our being welcome and welcomed to the table, because we have both interest and expertise. Part of today's meeting is the introduction of and training on the computer system that will be your essential tool. I am not now, nor have I ever been a computer "techie" and I imagine that at least some of you could make a similar declaration. Fortunately, two of Friends of Puna's Future's members really know their way around computers; and they are here today. Please allow them to share their skills and knowledge in this Redistricting effort. Please insist that the idea that a private citizen could submit an alternate plan has a foundation in reality. That idea should not simply exist as pretty words on paper, so having real access to this computer tool is essential for all of us. Thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: The next person who wishes to comment is Dwight Vicente representing the Hawaiian Kingdom. DWIGHT VICENTE (At this time Dwight Vicente came forward to address members of the Commission.) MR. VICENTE: Good afternoon, my name is Dwight Vicente. I am making a special appearance representing the Hawaiian Kingdom. It is not here today because of illegal military occupation by the United States. It goes back to the Reciprocity Treaty; even way before, to 1820 when the United States assigned a Naval Officer to be counselor to the Hawaiian Kingdom. There was never a valid treaty between the United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom because of the United States violation of its Constitution. The Hawaiian Kingdom has laws of naturalization; very few people were ever naturalized. The majority of the people here were Asians; Chinese and Japanese were the first contract slaves brought over by the plantations; they were never naturalized. The Queen signing the Lottery Bill on the morning of January 13, 1893 is the cause of the overthrow. U.S. Minister Stevens declared war on the Hawaiian Kingdom because it abolished the taxes that allowed the foreigners to vote under the Bayonet Constitution. The Bayonet Constitution is a product of importation of European mercenaries by the plantation; mostly Portuguese. King Kalakaua questioned why they were doing that, but they lied to him. That is how they got the Bayonet Constitution and then the overthrow was because K of the lottery, and because the U.S. Navy was illegally stationed there with land forces on board, which is a standing Army; a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Not to mention, there was no treaty for them to be here to begin with. That is military and its citizens; and they are still here today. If one was to research the history of the Provisional Government, it is a government of 13 foreigners, 9 Americans, 2 Germans, and 2 British. They had no laws of naturalization. They existed because of military occupation and for no other reason. The territory of Hawaii is a creature of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It was written by the three stooges; Jefferson, Monroe, and Dean under the Articles of a Federation which never authorized them to write that document to begin with. It is still in use today by the United States. It is called the Colonial Doctrine; some call it the Manifest Destiny. If you look at what it says in there, it dealt with lands mostly acquired by Virginia, outside of Virginia. So they had problems during the Articles of Confederation, so when they adopted the United States Constitution in 1791, it was transferred to Congress to dispose of, and that is in the U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2. Now, they never got rid of that. It continues today; they created the Territory of Hawaii in 1900 based on that document. They created the State of Hawaii in 1950. It's very important to know all of this because - -- CHR. SIRACUSA: I want to interrupt you for just a second. First of all, you are over your three minutes, so I would ask you to give us your final conclusion, and try to let us understand how this ties in with an item on the agenda. MR. VICENTE: You've got population; the majority of the population is foreign nationals; they don't even know what their nationality is. They are so confused because of the lies that have been made out. The United States is only 13 States. CHR. SIRACUSA: It's not nationality that we are looking at here; it's residents. MR. VICENTE: Resident means temporary. MR. OSHIRO: Ms. Chair, if Mr. Vicente can summarize and finish. MR. VICENTE: So, the question is who you actually belong to, because in 1950 the Constitutional says Asians couldn't be naturalized in 1950. But if you look at the whole history there are no laws of naturalization for the Provisional Republic, Territory, and State of Hawaii. The Hawaiian Kingdom has laws of naturalization. So that is the question; who do you belong to? Who do you owe your allegiance to? And taxation; we shouldn't have taxes here. The U.S. Census shouldn't be applied to the Hawaiian Kingdom. We are actually in the Hawaiian Kingdom, not in the fake State of Hawaii. So I am going to leave you some copies so you can actually see what I am talking about. I want these copies to be made part of the record and each and every one of you should read it so you can see why I am saying what I am saying. CHR. SIRACUSA: Did you make enough for everybody? MR. VICENTE: No, you guys are all going to have to share. 3 CHR. SIRACUSA: In that case, you would give it to the Clerk and she would make sure that everybody got a copy. MR. OSHIRO: Dwight, I'll take it. MR. VICENTE: Don't throw it in the trash, it's very important. CHR. SIRACUSA: I can't speak for any one else, but I certainly don't throw anything into the trash; I want to read it. MR. VICENTE: I'm going to reserve the rights of the Hawaiian Kingdom, since the military occupation has removed the Queen, and there is no replacement. Another thing too is that her protest of January 17, 1893 against U.S. Minister Stevens has yet to make it's way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Article III, Section 3, Clause 2. Thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you. Our third member of the public wishing to comment on items on the agenda is Richard Bidleman. He has also submitted written testimony. RICHARD BIDLEMAN (At this time Richard Bidleman came forward to address members of the Commission.) MR. BIDLEMAN: Good afternoon. I am one of the two nerds here from the public. You all should have notes on Communication 15, and my comments about it. I think when documents are being made available to the public, that the County is being sloppy about the documentation. There is absolutely no reason why those documents can't be created from the original document in a PDF format, rather than scanning them. That is why that document looks so poor. I'm hoping that when you request documents that you simply say that they should all be in PDF format and converted, not a scanned document. That's my comment on Communication 15. Communication 17, the definition on resident population; that information was not available on the web site until yesterday. It would seem to me that those documents ought to be available in a little more timely fashion, not only for the benefit of the public, but for the benefit of you folks. You should be given more time to look at those documents. Communication 19, the document from Rosenbrock, was not available until yesterday. I think they should be available in a little more timely fashion. On Communication 20, the training materials were not available until yesterday on the web site. Those documents ought to be available in advance. We have come here today to take part in this training. Without sounding arrogant here, I hazard to guess that during the course of this training, we will have questions that some of the people on this Commission will simply not have enough background to ask "the right questions." So we want to be granted the privilege of being able to ask questions during the training session. We have a computer here, and we should be able to ask questions; so I hope during that session we can. If we are not, then we will simply register our objections. I understand why you may not want questions from the audience who do not have a computer, because you might be bogged down with asking too C! many questions. But we are taking part in the training, and we want to be able to ask questions. Those are my comments, thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you. I would like to ask whoever in the County knows the answer; is there some mechanism by which the members of the public could ask those questions and then submit them in a written form and have either the Clerk's office or Elections respond? MR. OSHIRO: The time for the public to testify is now. During your meeting, it is the Commission's time. So, if any one of the Commissioners wants to ask questions, they can. CHR. SIRACUSA: Yes, I understand that the Commissioners can ask questions; I am considering Mr. Bidleman's question. Is there a mechanism by which the members of the public who are planning to create their own plans can ask questions? If not at the meeting, then is there another way, through another route? MR. OSHIRO: The public cannot ask questions, only the Commissioners. So if the Commissioner wants to call up a testifier during the meeting they can as a so called witness, but that is purely up to the Commissioners. RECESS: At 1:50 p.m. Chair called for a short recess. (Videoconference connection lost) RECONVENE: The meeting was reconvened at 2:10 p.m. CHR. SIRACUSA: I was in the process of asking, based on a concern raised by the public, how they could ask questions. So I would like to know if members of the public could submit their questions to one of the members and have that member ask the question on their behalf. Would that be allowed? Or do we have to do a motion? MR. OSHIRO: This is out of the ordinary. If they have a question why don't you just slip it to me and I'll slip it to Mr. Carvalho. We just want to make it as fast as possible to get though our meeting without people interrupting us. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you. Mr. Bidleman, I hope you were listening. MR. MELROSE: Just before the lights went out, there was a suggestion that perhaps if somebody had a question we could recognize somebody and have them come forward. MR. OSHIRO: That is true. MR. MELROSE: So we can do that as well. I just want to say that I think public questions are instructive for us as well as for themselves. So getting the meeting over with quick is not the goal; getting the right information is the goal. So if somebody has a question, try to hold them together in a cluster instead of every little one. If you can get our attention, it doesn't hurt to 67 raise the questions. In the training, I want to do that because we are all going to learn something. If you want to you can write it down; or we can recognize you to ask a question. APPROVAL OF MINUTES CHR. SIRACUSA: Our next item is approval of the minutes. May I have a motion to approve the May 12, 2011 minutes? Mr. Melrose moved to approve the minutes of the May 12, 2011 Hawaii County Redistricting Commission meeting. Seconded by Ms. Poindexter. CHR. SIRACUSA: Any discussion? I want to start off the discussion, if I may. I have a couple of corrections. On page 7, Communication 7, on the first line of the title the word opinion is misspelled. On page 9, at the very bottom, Communication 10, the word Hawaii is misspelled. On page 10, Communication 11, Commissioner Melrose's first name is misspelled. And also in Mr. Melrose's comment in the next to the last sentence, "...anyways this is kind of the bread of butter" it should be bread and butter. These are not substantive, but I think we should make these notations for an accurate rendering. MR. OSHIRO: I think we should have a motion to amend the minutes as stated. Mr. Melrose moved to amend the minutes of the May 12, 2011 Hawaii County Redistricting Commission meeting as stated. Seconded by Ms. Ugalde and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. MR. OSHIRO: So we are now back to the main motion as amended. The motion to approve the minutes of the May 12, 2011 Hawaii County Redistricting Commission meeting as amended was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. 2 COMMUNICATIONS COMM. 15: COSTS FOR CENSUS BLOCK MAPS Memo from Elections Program Administrator, Patricia Nakamoto, dated June 8, 2011, regarding the costs for Census Block Maps. CHR. SIRACUSA: Do I have a motion to close file on COMM. 15? Mr. Melrose moved to close file on COMM. 15. Seconded by Ms. Poindexter. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any discussion? MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: Madam Chair, I have something I would like to discuss that is based on Mr. Biddleman's opening statements. I would like to know if the copies could be PDF and is that an added cost? CHR. SIRACUSA: Patricia, please come forward. PATRICIA NAKAMOTO (At this time Pat Nakamoto, Elections Supervisor came forward to address members of the Commission.) MS. NAKAMOTO: The Census Maps that we are talking about in this Communication are already available on the County web site in PDF. MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: I am going to have to say that I think could this copy also be in PDF? CHR. SIRACUSA: The question that Mr. Bidleman raised is that this is not a clear copy. In the future, these copies could either be sent to us directly from the computer that produced it, as a WORD doc or a PDF. But the scanned version is obviously not the greatest scanner in the world and it comes through pretty fuzzy. MS. NAKAMOTO: I think what I will do in the future is fax it over to Karen with my signature. If I email it, it won't have my signature. CHR. SIRACUSA: Okay, thank you. The substantive issue in this communication is the Census Block Maps. You have found out for us how much it would cost for us to get them done both in house and farming it out. MR. MELROSE: I made the request that we get the numbers because Ms. Ford had asked several times that maybe we should use those tools. My suggestion is that we take the number and we keep it under advisement; we don't go buy them today. Let's get the training and see what we need and whether or not we need physical maps. Frankly, I can see some value in it, but I don't think right now. Until we figure out how we are going to do this, we don't need to VA spend that money. So I would just thank her for the Communication and kind of use it as a tool and move on. CHR. SIRACUSA: We do have money that expires at the end of this month and if we are going to get that, we would want to do so by end of this month. On the other hand, there will be money in the next fiscal year's budget to do it if we feel we need to. One of the things we can do is after the end of today, after we have had the training, we can see if we feel that we need it. Can we revisit this at the end of today's meeting? Can we table it until the end? MR. OSHIRO: It just requires your approval to purchase. You would let staff know, and we will go out and do it. MR. MELROSE: My suggestion at this point is that we simply accept the communication and we go ahead forward and let's not deal with buying the maps right now. We can do it at whatever point we feel we need it. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is that a motion? MR. MELROSE: It's just a suggestion. CHR. SIRACUSA: Okay, we do have a motion on the floor to close file on this communication. It's been moved and seconded, we can have the vote now. The motion to close file on COMM. 15 regarding the cost for Census Block Maps was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. COMM. 16: RESIDENTS IN VOLCANO NATIONAL PARK AND KILAUEA MILITARY CK__ ►�7 Memo from Elections Program Administrator, Patricia Nakamoto, dated June 14, 2011, providing information on residents of Volcano National Park and Kilauea Military Camp. CHR. SIRACUSA: This memo was in response to a question that I had of Ms. Nakamoto. A letter was written to the National Park Headquarters and to Kilauea Military Camp. Patricia, do you want to read that into the record. MR. OSHIRO: Ms. Chair, you need a motion to close file on this communication first to discuss it. E:l CHR. SIRACUSA: I keep forgetting that. Do I have a motion to close file on COMM. 16? Ms. Ugalde moved to close file on COMM. 16. Seconded by Mr. Melrose. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any discussion? We lost connection again. RECESS: At 2:20 p.m. Chair called for a short recess. (Videoconference connection lost) RECONVENE: The meeting was reconvened at 2:38 p.m. CHR. SIRACUSA: I call this meeting back to order. We are on COMM. 16, and we had a motion to close file and it was seconded. Did we vote on it? MR. OSHIRO: We were in discussion. CHR. SIRACUSA: Okay, we were in discussion mode. Patricia, please come up. We had asked you to find out if there were any residents in Hawaii Volcano National Park and Kilauea Military Camp. You indicated in your communication that there were a few. Do we have actual numbers? PATRICIA NAKAMOTO (At this time Pat Nakamoto, Elections Supervisor came forward to address members of the Commission.) MS. NAKAMOTO: Yes, we now have actual numbers. CHR. SIRACUSA: Could we have those numbers please? MRS. NAKAMOTO: At the Hawaii Volcano National Park there is one person who resides there. At the Kilauea Military Camp there are three. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you. Does anybody have any questions of Patricia? Okay, we have a motion to close file, all in favor. The motion to close file on COMM. 16 regarding residents in Volcano National Park and Kilauea Military Camp was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. Q COMM. 17: DEFINITION OF RESIDENT POPULATION Memo from Commission Attorney, Michael Udovic, dated May 14, 2011, regarding the definition of "Resident Population." CHR. SIRACUSA: I need a motion to file. Mr. Middlesworth moved to close file on COMM. 17. Seconded by Ms. Poindexter. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any discussion? Have members of the public had an opportunity to be aware of your - -other than the newspaper coverage? MR. UDOVIC: It's been on the web site. CHR. SIRACUSA: Were there any handouts on the table? MR. UDOVIC: Yes, it was there. CHR. SIRACUSA: Okay, great. MR. UDOVIC: I think it is pretty straight forward about my interpretation of the laws of the State of Hawaii as well as the court decisions interpreting this decision. I think it is pretty evident that we are required to only include "permanent residents" which includes people who are considered having their domicile in the County of Hawaii. That not only means a physical presence, but an intent to remain here. That's kind of a legal term that they use. It is commonly used in divorce cases and things where they try to find the domicile to determine who gets what property. That's how we learned it in law school, quite frankly, when I was in California. So it's not a real common kind of a phrase, but it really means an intent to remain permanently. That's why those two groups, the non - resident students and the non - resident military are excluded; because of the intent to remain or not to remain permanently. So, we need to exclude those as far as I can tell. We had another question posed by one of the commissioners to me in a communication also; was that how is the State going to get around this. I have no idea; I think it's pretty evident. I understand that the State Reapportionment Commission is going to be meeting on the 28th of June, in five more days. One of the things they are going to be taking up will be the question as to whether or not they are going to include the military or the students. I know for a fact --I was at a Commission meeting of the Advisory Council for the Island of Hawaii and - -they voted to exclude as well. I think all of the Counties, except for Oahu, Honolulu County, voted to exclude. I don't know how the vote is going to go. CHR. SIRACUSA: Two questions; one is, so we are not bound by the decision of the State Reapportionment Commission? `[ll MR. UDOVIC: I think we are bound by the decision of the Supreme Court. CHR. SIRACUSA: The Supreme Court, right. The second question is, in anticipation of trying to get these numbers - -and thank you for drafting those letters for us to the University and the Community College and the Military installations on this island asking for those numbers - -and we have since, as Pat indicated, gotten the numbers for one resident in the National Park and three in Kilauea Military Camp. And we have just gotten the figures from the Community College, so you people who want to do your own programs should make a note that the Community College has advised us that they have 261 non - resident students. I am hoping that we will also be able to get a figure from the U.H. and from the other Military installation. MR. UDOVIC: Pohakuloa. CHR. SIRACUSA: Yes, Pohakuloa. Then there won't be a problem, we will be able to make those extractions. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: I can see a huge problem coming; that somebody is going to sit down on each one of those residents addresses and I would guess extract them from the census blocks in order to make the software work. MR. UDOVIC: I don't know if it works that way, quite frankly. My understanding is that the way it works is that it is taken off the total population base, so it reduces the population base to begin with, and then the population base is what it is, but there is no need to go through on an individual basis and do that. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: I would guess that there are certain Councilmembers who are not going to be pleased with that answer. MR. UDOVIC: But I think that is the way it's being done. What it calls for, even the case law calls for how you reference it with respect to the population base, not within each individual district. So it reduces the population base. CHR. SIRACUSA: We are not supposed to take into consideration where Councilpersons make their domicile. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: Let me rephrase that. My recollection of the lawsuit the last time around was based on numbers in districts being out of balance because on non - residents being counted. MR. UDOVIC: Well, the lawsuit is what it is. The lawsuit, Citizens for Equitable Government, determined that there were 871 non - resident military and students on this island. What the Supreme Court said was that should have reduced the population base by that number. It didn't say anything about individual districts. So what happened was those skewed the individual districts. That was the complaint, not - - -Do you follow what I am saying? 11 MS. POINDEXTER: When we talk about non - residents, so then do we exclude all of the people here in the condos and timeshares that are non - residents, and the people in the vacation rentals in the County of Hawaii that are non residents; are we excluding them? Because at the time that the census is taken, it's whoever is on island is counted, correct? MR. UDOVIC: You are going to have to ask someone else those particular questions. I know that if they are here on vacation, they are not counted as a resident, or a permanent resident of the island of Hawaii; and those are the things that we are talking about. I don't think they are part of that anyways. Mr. Rosenbrock and Ms. Nakamoto might have more information on that. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any other discussion? MR. MELROSE: I have a question. You focused your discussion particularly the University and the Military; there are people from Micronesia, there are people who come and go for the coffee industry in fairly large numbers. How do we deal with people who are here for a period in time under some kind of a green card circumstance, and don't intend to be here permanently? How do you deal with that? MR. UDOVIC: I honestly don't know; those thoughts have crossed my mind as well, but I think we have to take the census data that we have and deal with it. We could have an infinite supply; we have to make sure whether or not everybody was counted. If we get to that point in time, we are never going to be able to have any numbers, quite frankly. We have to deal with the census data as it is, and I think it is counted in that fashion. MR. MELROSE: We'll wait and refresh that with Mr. Rosenbrock. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any other discussion? We have a motion to close file and it was seconded, so let's vote on that. The motion to close file on COMM. 17 regarding the definition of Resident Population was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. COMM. 18: NON - RESIDENT STUDENT AND NON - RESIDENT MILITARY Memo from Commission Attorney, Michael Udovic, dated May 14, 2011, transmitting Mayor William P. Kenoi's letters requesting information regarding the number of non- resident students and non - resident military personnel. CHR. SIRACUSA: Do I have a motion to close file? `K Mr. Kahui moved to close file on COMM. 18. Seconded by Mr. Carvalho. CHR. SIRACUSA: Now we go to discussion on Communication 18. MR. MELROSE: Are we discussing Communication. 18.2? Is that part of this current action? We do have Communication 18.2 in our file now. Can we talk about this one here, or is it just about the letter that went out. MR. OSHIRO: It is all part of Communication 18. MR. MELROSE: Okay, so what I see here in Communication 18.2 is a list of some 261, and this includes both East and West Hawaii. CHR. SIRACUSA: This is the Community College system, not the U.H. We have yet to hear from U.H. MR. MELROSE: But it does split them into both Ka`u, Hilo, as well as far away. So this is what will come up to talk about later about how to actually accommodate these kinds of names. MR. UDOVIC: I would just caution members of the Commission that some of this information that is contained on there is probably considered confidential, personal information; so for our purposes here, our numbers are 261, but please don't share the addresses and things. I don't want anybody contacting these people and asking them questions. MR. MELROSE: That's clear. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any more discussion? MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: I do. I may be ahead of myself, but we are still missing some numbers from the University. MR. UDOVIC: We haven't received anything other than the Community College yet. CHR. SIRACUSA: And Pohakuloa also. MR. UDOVIC: They've been in contact by telephone with Ms. Nakamoto and they are working on numbers. MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: So we have the non - resident students, but not the military information. MR. UDOVIC: For the Community College only, not for the University of Hawaii. So we are starting. I'm surprised, quite frankly, that we got that information so quickly. 13 MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: I am just going to make an assumption then. Whatever the number is going to be, it should be done the same way that we just did the previous motion. CHR. SIRACUSA: I'm going to ask Patricia; do you have an update from the University system or from Pohakuloa? She is indicating she has not. So we don't have those numbers yet. In that case, if there is no other discussion, let's vote on closing file. The motion to close file on COMM. 18 regarding non - resident student and non - resident military population was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. ORDER OF THE DAY / NEW BUSINESS COMM. 19: POPULATION NUMBERS Update by David Rosenbrock, State of Hawaii Reapportionment Project Manager, on: Hawaii population; who gets counted by the US Census and where are they counted; and the status of Hawaii State legislative redistricting resident population base definition. CHR. SIRACUSA: Hopefully this will address some of the questions that have been raised. You are up, Mr. Rosenbrock. DAVID ROSENBROCK (At this time David Rosenbrock, Reapportionment Project Manager for the State of Hawaii came forward to address members of the Commission.) MR. ROSENBROCK: It's good to be back with you all. I am David Rosenbrock, the Project Manager for the State of Hawaii Reapportionment Project. CHR. SIRACUSA: One moment, first a little technical thing, I forgot to ask for a motion to close file on Communication 19. Mr. Melrose moved to close file on COMM. 19. Seconded by Mr. Middlesworth. CHR. SIRACUSA: I'm being told that the motion should be to close file on Communication 19 and all related communications. MR. ROSENBROCK: The last time I was here I talked about the State entering into a contract with Esri to help us with our Reapportionment and Redistricting. The Bill got signed, the 14 contract itself is weaning it's way through the bureaucracy of DAGS. I expect to issue a notice to proceed today, tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday. For all intents and purposes, they have started as risk. So Royce will be here today from Esri to share the hands on training with the software that we are making available to you all to use. So, that's the status of the contract. How the State reapportions and redistricts; we do need to know what the number is, and what the location is, because it does affect individual districts. In our case, you could have a rather large amount of military, 5,000, in a district which would then be apportioned throughout the whole state, and would still leave inequitable relation between the one man one vote rule. So we would assign any extractions we make to the population out of the census block in which that number comes from. Does that make sense? We will have to do that through a modeling process which will start at the military base itself, move out from the military base to the military housing and then out to the community housing after that. So it's a gradiated model that goes out from the military installation itself. CHR. SIRACUSA: And does it also do the same thing from the University or the Community College? MR. ROSENBROCK: That's correct, we must have both items; the number and the locations. As far as who gets counted - - -You know, this is a long list, and I have 23 slides which goes through what the census goes through, and I think everybody is more excited about learning about the software. I will try to go to slide 20 in your handout. Who was counted in Hawaii by the U.S. Census for Federal Redistricting purposes? The green check marks, out of all of the options that we could determine; if, if, if and if, the green check marks say you were counted i£ You resided in Hawaii on census day, if you resided in a correctional facility in Hawaii on census day, if you resided in Hawaii on census day who are alien. If you are on vacation and you are in Hawaii on census day, you were not counted. If you would like to go to the census page and download all of this information you can. But for the State's purposes, the population base that we will use will be the redistricting count from the census bureau, minus whatever groups the Reapportionment Commission decides to extract. I expect their decision on Tuesday and we will share that population base with you all; or you are free to get your own. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: From what I have read, it appears that the State Reapportionment Commission wants to count everybody, for political reasons. I don't want to get into all of that, but if they do, and that is the number that you use over there for the State, does that mean that is going to be the number that is in the data base from Esri? MR. ROSENBROCK: That is correct. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: Which means that it will not be accurate for us? MR. ROSENBROCK: That is possible. `N7 CHR. SIRACUSA: Will there be a methodology whereby we could then take that data base and make our own extractions? MR. ROSENBROCK: We would be willing to share with you how we how we create our model. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments to Mr. Rosenbrock on Communication 19? MR. MELROSE: I'm going to ask the question that I asked of Mr. Udovic before as it relates to people who are not citizens. Micronesian population is a fairly sizable one here in certain portions of our community and they are counted as part of the base. They, by definition, aren't necessarily seeing themselves as permanent residents without a permanent intent to be here. MR. ROSENBROCK: The problem that we encounter -- because this came up the last Reapportionment for the State in 2001, and we visited with INS at the time, we went down to the INS office. What they told us was, that they didn't have a good count because they have a turnover of people becoming naturalized. So they didn't have a good count and they had no location information from whence to make an extraction. If you don't have both of these parts, we don't make the extraction. You have to know the count and the location. MR. MELROSE: I understand the difficulty of that, and if that is the principle, no data, no change, then how does the State do the University population? Do you have a standard process by which you pull out the students in the same sense? MR. ROSEN13ROCK: I'm probably contacting the same folks and requesting the same information. MR. MELROSE: So when you take that material, you will have done that because these are part of the State population base. MR. ROSENBROCK: That is correct. MR. MELROSE: So, our need to extract student numbers will be taken care of at the State level, is that correct? MR. ROSENBROCK: Most likely, if that is what the determination is on Tuesday. And they are getting the same legal advice you are getting. The same thing that your attorney said, I think the Attorney General said. MR. MELROSE: So if it is to be extracted, that particular piece will be extracted at your level, because all students are part of all bases. Will that also be true about the military numbers? MR. ROSENBROCK: That is correct. 16 MR. MELROSE: So our need to do the retroactive assessment of this is in your hands, not in ours. MR. ROSENBROCK: That's correct. MR. MELROSE: Thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: I just realized that there is a small little college here in Hilo, a private college, Hawaii Pacific Academy I believe it is called, and they have mostly non - American students. I'm wondering if they were counted, or if we should maybe send them a letter. MR. ROSENBROCK: I have a list of about five Universities, plus the U.H. system, that I have contacted, asking for that information. That one isn't rolling off the top of my head, but it could be that I have written a letter to those folks. I know that there was one University that we contacted in 2001 that is no longer in business and it is one of those international Universities. But, I can check and see. CHR. SIRACUSA: Please do so, thank you. MR. MELROSE: If that's the case, that the extraction was done at the statewide level, was that true ten years ago? MR. ROSENBROCK: Yes. MR. MELROSE: So then the issue of whether or not those numbers were in or out of the base was already done at your level? So the legal case that asserted that that is an issue missed the point, that you had already adjusted them? MR. ROSENBROCK: If you all used our base, we extracted them. But because there were two bases last time, if you remember, the Commission came out initially with a plan that included canoe districts and only extracted the non - resident military sponsor; which would be the member himself. The dependents were included in the population base. And that was true up until the first set of hearings, which I believe finished in September 2001. The Commission, based on testimony they got at the statewide public hearings against canoe districts and the population base, they went back and looked at both of those issues. And ostensibly, we went back through and removed non - resident military sponsor, non - resident military sponsor's dependents, and non- resident students from the base. So I, off hand, don't know which base was used. But, non- resident students, and at least the military member was extracted in the first go- around. MR. MELROSE: Thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any other discussion? MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: This may be just something that, after seeing the permanent resident population base and who is going to be counted by the U.S. Census for Redistricting purposes, I am truly floored now when I'm looking at it. We are going to count convicted felons that are in 17 the correction facilities, but we are not prepared to go in and count some of the dependents for the military. But that is just me sounding off, when it just doesn't make sense to me. If this is about census, one man one vote, please correct me, if felons can vote. I just need to get that in my mind. They are in jail, they are incarcerated. Unless I've been told a whole bunch of beans, I'm really, really confused. If Hawaii is doing it, obviously I'm going to assume that if we do it, a lot of other states do it; and I just have a problem. Then it goes to the fact they are even going to count aliens and their dependents who were here and were counted on that day. I thought it would be easier not to give them a form to sign; then you know the true people who are supposed to be part of this census; but that is just me thinking, and when a Hawaiian thinks, it just goes off. That's what I've got to say. Thank you. MR. ROSENBROCK: I'm not with the census. CHR. SIRACUSA: I have a problem with some of those things too. We are looking at Council districts, and Council means voters. Council persons are people who are voted into office and voters have to be U.S. citizens, and they have to be residents and they have to be eligible to vote, and felons, until they have completed all of their - -- MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: Madam Chair, I don't think it is about voters, this is about residents; people that live here. It eventually comes to the residents; if they are registered they become the voters, but this is about residents. My concern is we are now saying felons in the correctional facilities are residents. MR. MELROSE: For the sake of moving on, I think I got your point. I would like to move on and get the training. We are not here to debate the census. CHR. SIRACUSA: Do you want to call the question? MR. MELROSE: Yes, I would like to call for the question. The motion to close file on COMM. 19 regarding population numbers was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. COMM. 20: DEMONSTRATION /TRAINING ON HAWAII REDISTRICTING ONLINE APPLICATION Hands -on demonstration and training on the Hawaii Redistricting Online application, conducted by Royce Jones, Hawaii- Pacific Islands Region Manager, Esri. CHR. SIRACUSA: Do I have a motion to close file? 11:1 Mr. Middlesworth moved to close file on COMM. 20. Seconded by Ms. Poindexter. CHR. SIRACUSA: We are now in on the training, finally. Welcome Royce. ROYCE JONES (At this time Royce Jones, Hawaii- Pacific Islands Region Manager, Esri Corporation, came forward to address members of the Commission.) MR. JONES: Thank you for inviting me here. I've been watching your proceedings online, and the videos and following your minutes, and believe me, I'm as anxious to get you on the software as you are anxious to get on it. So, I've got a couple of things to share with you today and actually get you trying the software out. I have few slides here. First, there are a lot of things about Redistricting and Reapportionment, that I think at an earlier meeting David shared a lot of those slides with you; so I won't go through them again where we talk about the fact that it is based on census blocks and we assign a whole census block to one district or another. We do not split census blocks. So, I'll show you today one application that will show you the population of each individual census block for the entire County of Hawaii. I'm not going to go through all those slides, but a couple of things just to review. There are three basic parts to Reapportionment and Redistricting. The first part is establishing the population base, which you have been discussing up until now. The second part is apportioning representatives; so here I believe you have nine council districts, and you will be apportioning the total population base into nine equal districts. And the third part is to actually draw those district boundaries. So that's really the focus of what I am going to show you today; that third step of redistricting, and drawing new boundaries and trying to establish that; balance of population, a low deviation we call it, 10% is the magic number. Not any higher than +5 %, and not any lower -5 %; but also to preserve communities and all the other guidelines that have been shared with you before and that are in your council ordinance. Some of those guidelines - -and again, I'm not going to go through them all because you have got them in your ordinance, you've heard them before; compactness, both geometric and geographic compactness, contiguity, no disconnects, no floating district, no census blocks that aren't connected to one district and no submergence. Of course the key word here is "where practicable." All of this, once you start looking at the data, sometimes you have to draw the line in a certain place to preserve the balance. We have some very interesting shaped census blocks in the State of Hawaii, and you have many of them here in the County of Hawaii. You have to draw a line that follows the edge of that census block; that's a given. I'll show you some of those examples as we go through. There are two applications that I'll show you today. Hawaii Redistricting Online is the one for Redistricting, this is the one being developed for the State, funded by the State Reapportionment Commission. With this one you can create and share plans. It does require a login; username and password. It does work through a browser, but it does require a Flash Plug -in, Adobe Flash technology. Most computers have that this day, because people use it already to watch videos 19 and other things. Probably your computers have Flash Plug -ins. If they don't, it's a free download. MR. KAHUL• Madam Chair, since we are having difficulty looking at some of these worksheets and the like, we do have a computer here and could follow as part of this exercise on a computer. Is that possible, is that something we can do during this training right now? MR. JONES: You folks don't see the screen there that they are seeing here I take it. This is Royce speaking. MR. KAHUI: We can't see anything, and even if you had the screen up, we couldn't see anything. MR. JONES: Here within the Council chambers, I'm projecting some slides up on a screen and each of the Commissioners has a screen in front of them that they are viewing. I don't know if that can be brought up where you can see it. There is Communication 20.2 that does have these slides, but it would be much easier to see if you could pull up the screen. MR. KAHUI: You may need to project it over the big screen so that we could see it over on this side. Currently we are not viewing anything, and Communication 20.2 is too small to read. If we could get a display of the screen, of the information that you are showing, that might be helpful because we do not have that showing on our side. Could we zoom in on it and maybe if we could eliminate all the other screens on our side, we might be able to blow that up. Again, if there was a chance to access the site throughout this process, we might be able to follow you. MR. JONES: We'll get to that point a little bit later of actually accessing the software and we can step you through that. MR. KAHUI: Okay, thank you. MR. JONES: So, hopefully now at the bottom of your screen you can see the slides that I am showing. MR. KAHUI: We do, thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: I've just been informed by Karen that you will also be able to see this on the website. It will be posted up tomorrow. MR. KAHUI: Thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any way we can eliminate those other two pictures and blow up the one that Royce is trying to discuss with us? MR. OSHIRO: This is the best we can do right now. MR. KAHUI: Madam Chair, I would recommend that we move on. N11 MR. JONES: Hopefully you can see the bottom of the screen and at least get part of this. Communication 20.2 is my responsibility. I didn't finish it until last night and I communicated it to them, but they could only fax it over. That's probably why the quality isn't so good on the copy that you have. But, it will all be posted online in full quality. So there are two applications that I am going to be showing. The first is the Redistricting Online which does require the Flash Plug -in and most computers have this; if not you can download it for free. CHR. SIRACUSA: Excuse me, would you tell me what a Flash Plug -in is, because I have no idea if my computer has it or not. MR. JONES: It's a little piece of technology that is published by Adobe and it comes automatically. It's kind of like the Adobe Reader that everybody gets to read PDF's. There is a similar little reader that reads Flash. So this application is written in Flash. So just don't be surprised if you go to install this application at home it might pop up and say, "You must install adobe Flash 10.3," click okay and it just does it, it takes it 30 seconds. The sad part here is it is not available until mid -July. We are still working on it. The good news is there is a version of it. So, the second piece that I will show you that is available now uses desk top software and we will give links to where you can download that. And here is where you can see the individual census data along with your council boundaries, and you will be able to zoom in to any part of the island and see that information. It's not for redistricting and moving lines, but it is for viewing it and it a way to share, once you do have a plan. You can share it with the public without having to have a log in. It's a way to view plans and census data. It does not require a log in and it is available now. So I will show you both pieces. For the Hawaii one, the other piece of information will use the Hawaii State population base. So if you end up adopting the same base as the State does, it will be there ready for you to use. As David mentioned, the State has not yet determined their base, therefore we cannot start loading it into the software yet. But, there is a generic on -line; the same one that the Hawaii State will be using is online now for use across the United States with the standard census data. The raw data that comes from the census is called PL94171. This is the data that will be used for drawing Congressional District lines and that is what we will be giving you practice on today. We will give a single log -in for the entire Commission to share. At the point that it becomes the Hawaii based application, you will each have an individual log -in that you can use separately. The basic step, when you are doing redistricting online, is to start with some sort of plan. We have all the census blocks in Hawaii County need to be assigned. You can start with them totally blank, or you can start with existing Councils, or you can make custom. I'll show you examples of each of those. The first step then is to start editing; to start assigning blocks to districts, changing the assignment. It was District 4, now it's going to be District 3. Whatever changes you need to make, it's very easy to do that. As you make those changes, you will check the deviation. Deviation means how far away you are from the target population. It shows you that automatically as soon as you make the change. There are options to change the base map 21 and I'll show you some of that also. Once you have a plan that you think is pretty good, you need to check some of these other guidelines; like compactness and integrity. I'll show you how to run those tests. The software supports all of those tests and creates other demographic reports; if you want to see some of the other census data by the districts that you define. The final step is to share your plan. There are several different options. You can export it as a text file; there is a standard format of census blocks and district assignments that is used by a lot of different software. You can export it as KML, which if you use Google Earth, KML is the Google Earth format, so you can download it and then pull it up in Google Earth. Or, for the GIS folks, you can export it as a Shape file. So there are several different options once you have a plan that you want to then share with other people. I'm going to step through actually some of these now. When you are opening up a plan, you can start with a blank plan. A blank plan means nothing has been assigned yet. Here is your total Big Island population, this is again the Federal PL94171; 185, 079 people. In each of your districts, 1 -9, none of them have been assigned, because this is a blank plan; so all of your deviations are 100% because every one of your districts need 20,564 people. Another way to start is to start with your existing boundaries, and start moving them. So bringing in the existing boundaries, you can see then the existing population. You have seen those figures before by the existing districts. The deviation from the ideal of 20,564 and then the final column is the percent deviation. That's where you can see District 4 at -27% and District 5 at +17.9 almost 18% is your total deviation of 45% almost. So you have some work to do to get it down under 10 %. But, I'll show you with the tools, I think getting the number down is fairly easy with the tools I'll show you. What takes more time is having it reflect your community concerns; both the knowledge that you folks have and the other community groups. Because it is actually fairly easy, you will see in the software, to get a very low number. But to get a very low number that respects all the local communities and doesn't draw a line through the middle of a community; that takes more work. It's easy to see how to change some numbers, see how it works, if you don't like it, you can undo it and try something else. Some examples of that now, if I go into edit mode, I didn't pick this example because you have to do it this way, you can change every single block, I just picked one particular area to show as an example. I liked this one because there were three different districts that all came together, and it is not too far from here. Some of the tools that are on here; there are several sets of tools, the first is the set of pan and zoom tools. I can move around on the map, I can zoom out and see larger areas. As I zoom out, if you look up here on the corner, the second circle that circles the word block, that's telling me that each of these black lines on my map is a census block. So this is where you can see in some areas that is a very large census block; probably not very many people in it. Then you get down here, and each of these is a census block. Each of these black line areas is a census block. If I zoom out even further, you see the text changes to block group. If you have worked with the census data, you know that they first start with block, then they combine those into block groups, then they combine those into tracts, tracts combine into counties, then into states, then into the entire country. So a block group is the next level up, so now my black lines represent block groups and you can see that now there are not as many. My experience is that it 22 works best with this software to work at the block level, so I tend to stay zoomed in enough to where it says block up here; to where each of the black areas I see is an individual census block. You can redistrict and change an entire block group at once; but I've done quite a bit of this and that is not the easiest way to do it. The easiest way is to work at a block level and then there are some tools that I will show you where you can take each of those blocks and assign them into a new district. The other thing to show you is over here; this district button, if you want to see those deviations at any time, you can hit that district button and it will pull up and show you for your nine districts what is the current population deviation and percent deviation. So any time that you are working - -and you will get a chance to try this in a little bit - -I usually close this window because I want to see more of my map, but I can very quickly go over and click this button and pull it back open. MR. MELROSE: This was the second option when you start at the district level, you started with existing districts. When you started with a blank map and you were to choose a starting point, does that map present you that visual enough to identify where that starting point is? That is how you would use that one; you would go to a starting point and begin to count. MR. JONES: Actually you could have one starting point or multiple starting points. I'll explain one at the end, one that I chose just as an example, where I chose two starting points; one in Kona and one in Hilo, and I'll explain why. MR. MELROSE: Two starting points for the same map? MR. JONES: Yes, because in the end you need one map. In the end you need one plan for all of the Big Island that includes all nine council districts. While it can be informative to make a plan for one district, when it really comes time to do it, you have to bump up against all the neighbors and you really do have to make one integrated plan. Now we are going to discuss the tools for actually doing the assignment; now we are into the meat and potatoes here. These are the tools to assign a census block to a new district. The first thing you have to ask yourself is what district they are going to go to. For purposes of this illustration, I can see that District 4 has 16,173 people. I can see District 2 has 17,845 and District 3 has 20,500. District 3 is almost exactly where we want it at 20,500. District 4, I don't want to take from District 2, but for my example I am going to do that. In reality you are probably going to want to go somewhere else, but for my example, I want to take some of these blocks from District 2 and assign them to District 4. So the first thing I do is up here from this pull down it gives me which of these nine districts do I want to assign to; I'll choose District 4. So now, the next work I'm going to do will all be for District 4. I can go in and choose one of these tools. This is the simplest tool, it is a single click, I can click on a census block and change it to District 4. Notice that it turned orange in the background; that means it is my active tool. So each time I click on my map this census block just became part of District 4. I don't know if you can catch it or not, this number here changed. Here is was 16,173; here it's 16,620, so we got several hundred people just in this one census block that we assigned to District 4. 23 Sometimes, you make an assignment and you didn't mean to do that. This is a very handy button right here; the undo button. If I click that, it goes back to the way it was and immediately the population number goes back; so you get immediate feedback. As soon as you make a change, you know what that is and you can see the numbers. The point tool is sometimes handy just to click on a few, but the reality is if you want to grab all these, that is a lot of pointing and clicking. So it would be nice to grab and outline a whole area and do all of them at once. That is what this polygon tool is for. So, I take this tool and it becomes orange, I click, click, click on my maps and when I'm on the final one I double click and it takes all of those blocks at once and assigns them to District 4. Again, the number immediately updates. I can pop over to my district and see I'm now down to 8% deviation. Just with that we moved from -27% to -8 %. This is where you can see that once you start using the software you can quickly get down to very low deviations. I started coming to the Big Island in 1972 and I've been coming here pretty regularly since. I'm based on Oahu and I get here at least quarterly to support the GIS folks here on the islands. I don't know your communities, you guys do. I can really easily come up with a plan that has real sweet, low numbers, but you guys are going to know way more that you want to take into account when you are drawing these lines. The numbers are just one piece, one indicator, and you have got to keep it under 10 %. But within that, is where you start moving lines to protect communities and do the other things that you need to do. So that's the basic assignment part. Are there any other questions on that before I go to the next? CHR. SIRACUSA: What are some of those other icons over there? MR. JONES: There are different ways of selecting. You can try these when we get to the hands on part of the training. I showed you a way you can just lasso; there are ways you can lasso a box or you can draw a line through them. There is a variety of tools you can experiment with and find what they all do. The other thing that is nice is the base map by default is these streets. You can see the street name underneath here; that is coming from the base map. Sometimes you want to see an image underneath. Here you don't really have an idea of the number of houses, but if I choose an image background, now I can see the white roofs of the houses and it kind of gives me a little bit better idea of where I am working with. The other thing I can do here is turn off the colored inside and only color the lines so I chose to display the lines. That makes it even easier to see my imagery, but these black lines are still the census blocks. I can still use those same tools to assign those census blocks. CHR. SIRACUSA: Somewhere in this software is there going to be like a manual? MR. JONES: It's all online. I'll show you that on my last slide. CHR. SIRACUSA: Because I know that a lot of this I will not remember and I will want something to refer to. 24 MR. JONES: That's where when we reach this stage I have a very simple one, just to get you started; like a jump -start guide, that is Communication 20.1. We'll go through that when we reach the hands -on part. And that's where to go, beyond that, there is extensive online help. At some point you have got a plan that you kind of like the changes you have made and you want to save it. This is where you want to save a local copy. Because you are all sharing accounts, you will want to save a local copy so that no one else gets on and changes your plan. Later, when you are on the State one, and you each have your own account, this won't be an issue; but for right now, since you are sharing accounts, you will want to save a local copy. When you click this it will save it on your computer, what ever computer you are using. It will save it as a file on the hard disk and later when you come back and want to continue work, you just go ahead and open it up. That is the editing stage where you are changing districts; creating a new plan. Then it's time to review that plan that you've got; talk about some of these other things that we have mentioned before. One of the things might be - -so I've changed to my review tab now - -I can ask to see a plan histogram. Here is each of my nine districts. It's the same information that I saw before when I clicked up the district matrix and it showed all the percentage deviations, but here it is shown as a bar chart. If you like to look at things more graphically, more visually, here is a bar chart. We can clearly see the gray bar, District 5, still has the largest population. It needs to come down. Right now, we can see District 2, because I stole a bunch from it, is quite low and is going to have to come up. So it is a visual way to see that. We've mentioned the different tests of compactness. There are a series of mathematical measures for compactness and the software supports them all. I can't even begin to explain what they are, but again, there is online that will tell you all this stuff if you are interested in them. But, the idea is this is a measure of how compact your districts are. My sense is that here in Hawaii, because of our unusual shaped census blocks this may not be very useful. However, when you are at a final stage and you are comparing a couple different plans, this may be a way to decide between them. Until you get to that stage, I can't really say, but certainly the software supports it if this is useful information for you there is a variety of measures of compactness. Probably the more useful one is these integrity checks. This is where is will make sure that you don't have a census block assigned to two different districts. Which if you use the software here that is not an issue, but later we will talk about if the public submits plans they may not have followed the same guidelines as you did, so you will want to run their plan through this check to make sure there are no dual assignments. Here is a key one, maximum deviation. We have already seen we are not within our 10% at all right now. Every block should be assigned to a district. It turns out there are census blocks that are out in the ocean. There is no population in them, but they are there, but we don't assign them to a district because they span the entire island offshore. You will always have some that are not assigned offshore. Connectivity check is this one that you have a floating district out here. Now, when you run this check it will show you if you have a census block that is not connected to the rest. So we did this when I was showing the staff here, it showed a connectivity problem. So we went out and saw that it was Coconut Island; which is its own census block. You can see this when you go in actually with the software there is a single census block, Coconut Island. It is going to be disconnected from everything else because it is disconnected. Then we went through, and I intentionally made one out here that was a little island and we can step through 25 until we find the ones that we really do need to pay attention to. So the connectivity check is there. Be aware, there may be some that are actually disconnected because they are small little islands and they are blocks. But you will see if they are a real one and you can correct them. The software makes that pretty easy to do. This other button is the report button. You can go in and get demographics for your districts that you are drawing for your plan. Let me see the demographics; the race breakdown is the standard one that the census collects and reports. This is White, Black, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, Hawaii Pacific Islander, Others and Multi. I can get it out as a PDF for my nine districts, the population currently as I have assigned them, and this is the actual race breakdown as I have assigned for the districts, for the blocks that I have assigned theses are the breakdowns. So this is all in this review tab. There are a whole lot of tests. Another thing that you may want to do is compare specifically with another plan. This is where you saw me change this area here. I would like to go back and compare with that original plan, the existing districts, and see how much I actually changed. So I can go here an open that existing plan that I started with and when I do, you can see both lines, from both plans and you can see it with the hatch marks and see that this is the area that is different. Everything out here is the same between both plans, but this part in here is different. So it is a set of visual tools if you want to actually compare two different plans. Again, I'll give you some practice on this very soon, but I have a few more things to share with you. In addition to reviewing your plan, once you have got something ready, you want to share it. So here I'm going to go back to this file tab. This is where there are a bunch of icons here that right now we won't be using. The thing we will be using is the save local. One way to share a plan is to go ahead and take that .plan file on your hard disk and put it on a jump drive and give it to somebody else. Then they can take that plan and load it into the software and have that plan. The other option is to export it - -and this is where I mentioned KML - -if you want to look at it in Google Earth; look at your plan, your plan lines in Google Earth, you can export it in KML and then open it up in Google Earth. The fixed text format is just a plain text file that tells every census block and the district block it is assigned to. Or, if you have GIS folks that are using Shape files, you can export it in that GIS format called a Shape file. What the State has done, and this is where I'm not sure if you guys have reached this point, if not, you probably want to consider something like this; the State does plan to make this software to the public to use to create their own plans. But they don't have to. There is other software out there that you can use to create plans. So, there is nothing that says the public has to use this software to create a plan; they can use whatever they want, but they do need to follow certain guidelines. So these guidelines are online on the State Reapportionment web site. Their guidelines are first you have to use the same population base that the commission is using. If you want another plan to consider, it has to use the same population base. Population geography; it has got to be based on census blocks, you cannot split census blocks. It has got to be apportioned to the same number of seats. You want a plan that has nine council seats; and minimum geographic area. You have to redistrict an entire island. It doesn't do us any good to get one plan for District 4; we need the entire island. Again, these are State guidelines. You 26 may want to tweak them a little bit, but if you are looking at public submissions, you probably need to consider something like this. On the technical side, this is the format that we need to see. I mentioned a text file. This is kind of a standard so pretty much any of the different software that does redistricting can write out a text file because this is what is sent in to the bureau of census and the other Federal agencies when the commission finishes their work. That report has to go up to them, and this is the format that it goes is in these text files. So if the public is using this software it will create these text files. If they want to send other information, maybe they have a plan or a photo, the state will have an email address that the public can submit their plan and it will be acknowledged and considered by the commission. The other option that the State is giving folks - -if they have used the software - -is you can submit your plan directly. You don't have to got through this export and text and all these other things. It is simple for us to just submit it and bring it back in. That is where, with the text file format, you would this import to bring it in. So if the public submitted a plan to you, they have given you the text file, you would go here and click import, point to that text file, and immediately it would become a new active plan. You could check integrity, you could check compactness; whatever it is you want to check. CHR. SIRACUSA: What is "plan book ?" I saw an icon. MR. JONES: That's what I mentioned; there are several things here that aren't going to be too useful for us here. It will create a map of each of the different districts. CHR. SIRACUSA: You mean topo? MR. JONES: You can choose whatever base map you want and it will show you your boundaries. You can look at it and see; it will be there in the software. But my experience is it is not that useful for us here in Hawaii because we have such irregularly shaped and large districts. When we reach the hands -on part I'll be glad to come over and show you the plan book. You can generate a page for each of your nine districts, plus an overview page. MR. MELROSE: Technically, I know when Pat showed us what last Commission's submission was, it was basically kind of a legal description from here to here to here to here. Is that what plan book produces? MR. JONES: No, the plan book is just a graphic. It is just an image, a map book. No, the actual legal thing that needs to be sent in is that meets and bounds description that you are describing. MR. MELROSE: And this system doesn't do that? It has to be done manually by the Elections office? MR. JONES: No, this system doesn't do that. That's where, at the tail end of this process, after you guys are done, there is actually a whole bunch more work that needs to be done. That is to create the precincts and identify new precinct boundaries and then get every voter assigned to MA their proper precinct. That is where we will be using the same software to do that, but then in the end we will pull it in to Arc View Desktop and then we have routines that will draw that automatically. You guys won't have to do that. MR. MELROSE: But it goes to the timing. That was our question. We are now running behind time; we won't start until July now in this process to get the real data in. We were looking at an August time to have people submit their plans, but that isn't much time if we only give them a month and a half. Then we kind of walked backwards from that date. MR. JONES: Doing the meets and bounds shouldn't impact that. That's the very final step. MR. MELROSE: It goes to whether Pat and the Elections office have a Christmas at the end of the year or not. MR. CARVALHO: I have a question. When a district line is on a street, how is the addresses divided; is half of the street in one district and the other side in another? MR. JONES: Right, so you probably have heard the complaint, I certainly have. They come and say, "Hey, the guy across the street from me is in a different district, how can this be ?" Well, one slide I didn't show you, the census blocks themselves 80% of the census block boundaries follow streets. So, the fact that you have to assign an entire census block to one district or another means that 80% of the time you guys have to follow a street. And, that does mean the guy is going to be in a different district across the street. CHR. SIRACUSA: So, that is unavoidable then. MR. JONES: It is unavoidable. What you try to do though is try to make that happen in the less populated areas. There are some blocks that don't. Sometimes you will have that choice, and sometimes -- -This is where you will use your percent deviation; ideally we want 0 %, but reality is we want to draw that line up here so we don't have to split that guy's street. To draw it up here it is going to push us up to a 1% deviation, but that is okay. We are going to accept that because it is a better representation of the community. That's a common question, a common complaint, and where else can they draw the census line. They could draw it down the fence in your backyard and you would be in a different one than your neighbor. They have got to draw the line somewhere, and they draw them on things that tend to be fixed, which are streets, ridge lines, streams, fixed features like that. Good question. Are there any other questions? I have one other piece of software and then we can jump into the hands -on training. The other software that is on here that any one from the public can access now - -it does not require a log -in- -uses a desktop download called Arc GIS Explorer. The State Reapportionment Commission is using this to make census block data available for people to view. So you can go to their site and it will give you information on how to download Arc GIS Explorer. It will send you to the Esri website where you can go download -- presumably you want the English version, but you could get the French or the Dutch or the Japanese version - -you download the software. Once you have downloaded it, the State has a map that has census blocks and that is interesting, but I thought for you guys you would like to see your Council Districts also. So I created a M.* special map - -and this is where you probably don't want to type in this URL, probably on your website you probably want to shorten it and make it a link that you can just click, or we'll share this as a PDF and you can go click the link on the PDF. Once you have installed the Arc GIS software you can open up this map that I have made and it will show you the entire Big Island. The census blocks are colored, so census blocks with more than 1,000 people are colored red, then yellow, then down to dark blue if there are less than 100. You can zoom in and out here. I put a set of bookmarks here. I made this to work state wide, but here you are going to focus - - -On the Big Island, I have set some bookmarks, but you can set some others if you want. So let's say we are going to go to the Hilo area; once you have zoomed in, if you zoom in far enough, each of these is a census block with the population of that block. So here you can see there are 531. Look at this, this is one block here with 205 and then inside of it is a smaller block with less than 100. I have to zoom in to see what it is. So this is a way that you can go in and quickly start looking. You were discussing earlier the paper maps. Paper may be useful for some things, but if really just want to see the data, this is a pretty convenient way to go in and you can go anywhere on the island and see the census blocks. If there is no population, it is not colored at all. So these areas here, they look like agricultural areas, there is nobody counted there. It is a census block, but the population is zero and we didn't color it. CHR. SIRACUSA: Where is the color code menu that tells us what each color means? MR. JONES: I'll pop it up. I don't have it here on my slide, but when you get to the application, you can pop it up and it will show you. I'll show you where it is. There are only five of them. If it is more than 1,000 it's red, then it drops to yellow if it's more than 400, if it's 250 -500 it's green, and then it's dark blue. I'll show you where it is when we get to the hands -on part. The other thing you can do is for any one of these blocks you can click on the block itself, and then click on here where it says "All Dist." What this does is it gives you all the districts. There is the technical block ID. Every block has a number. Who cares about that? Well, the report you generate in the end cares, but for us we don't care. But we do care that it is House District II, that it is State House, State Senate District I, County Council District 2, U.S. Congressional District 11, and then the total population of 531. So for any block you can click on it and pull up this information and immediately see that. So I've just put in a couple of bookmarks here. I went to them real quick, just to show you examples, but this is where with the hands on part you will be able to go and see any of them. Here is one of your larger census blocks, 1,166 in District 8. Some of the others - -- Anyone want to guess where this is? It is Hawaiian Ocean View Estates. Each one of those is a census block. Ten people, eight people; there was one that had two people. Each of these is a census block that will need to get assigned to one district or another. Probably you are going to try to preserve them all as one district and keep them all in one council district I would guess. But still, you have got to assign every one of those blocks to a district. That is the two pieces of software. They are both installed on your computers. I don't know how you want to move to hands -on training, I've never done a hands -on session in a public meeting. I don't know if you recess and then we do hands -on, or if you do it as part of your 29 session. I don't know if your parliamentarian has suggestions on that, but unless you have further questions, I'm ready to have you actually try this. MR. MELROSE: Royce, can I ask a question before we go to that point? MR. JONES: Yes. MR. MELROSE: What I'm taking out of this is that the first set of software that you showed us is really the workhorse of this process, so if we are going to learn one, that is a good one to learn. For some reason, which I am not clear on, that is not available to us until mid -July. MR. JONES: It is not available to anyone, it is not ready. It's being developed right now. MR. MELROSE: So it isn't a contractual issue, it's a technical issue. MR. JONES: Originally it was contractual, because we can't start until we have a contract. Now that we do have a contract, we are starting work on building the site, and then once the State decides on their base, then we will do the modeling to pull out the State population base. Then we will load that data up into the site, then we will test the site to make sure that it works and then we will release it to the public and the commission. MR. MELROSE: So we can blame part of that delay on the Governor's not signing. MR. JONES: The whole point is, as soon as the State Commission has it, you guys will have it. There is no delay. Everybody is waiting for it. I'm waiting for it. Everybody wants it. The software you have right now, the current base that is in there, even you extract out the non resident students and military- -maybe that's 1,000 - -most of your districts, that is not going to impact them. Some of the ones around U.H. maybe effected, but by and large, my guess would be that a plan that you come up with on this software, once the new software comes, you can do that import-export and pull that same plan in and continue working with the final base. You won't have to change much. If you have a plan that you really like with this software, you won't have to change it much because the base will be almost identical. CHR. SIRACUSA: How do we get the software? Like how do I get the software to put on my computer at my office? MR. JONES: That is what we will do next. We will show you that right now. The nice part is that it is online, so all you need is the log -in. This is where there is one log -in now for the Commission. It is not released to the public right now, but we are going to go and type it in and give it to you folks to use. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: That gets us the 2010 numbers? MR. JONES: Yes, that gets you the 2010 numbers; we emailed about that. 30 MR. MELROSE: Let me continue my train of thought. The workhorse one, that is not quite ready yet, will, when we get it, have data that is reflective of the adjustments that the State has decided to make. The other one will not, it is simply the straight numbers. MR. JONES: The one that you have right now that we are going to use next is the straight census numbers, the PL94 -171 numbers. They are used for Congressional Redistricting. MR. MELROSE: That is the one with the pretty colored map. MR. JONES: It's the same data in both; the 2010 data. MR. MELROSE: I have a question from the public which I think is a good one. Will the County data set cause additional delays? In other words, if we are going to wait until the middle of July to get your set; if for some reason we want to deviate from that by virtue of the Ordinance passed or other things, then you are not going to take those numbers and adjust that. Do we have to find some other way; what other way do we have to make an adjustment if we for some reason decide we need to go off of the State numbers. How do we make that adjustment apply to the technology of that system, or do we kind of fake it until we make it? MR. JONES: There are different ways to do it, but the best way to do it would be to make that decision now and start the process going. There are two sides. The first side is to determine what the base is and subtract those numbers. Then you need to apply that to the census blocks. At the State level we need to then model. For the students, we will get an address. We don't know the student's name, but we get an address. We take that address--just like you go right now to Google Maps and you type in an address - -and it will jump you to that point. We do a similar process with that student data. We get a whole bunch of points on the map where they are and then we know which census block they are in and we can subtract them out from that census block. For us, at the State level, for the State to redistrict, we need those counts by block. That's what we redistrict on, is blocks. We apportion based on total population, but we redistrict based on blocks. If you are using your numbers just for apportionment purposes for making a new target you probably don't need to do that. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: The State is going to decide next week? MR. JONES: It's on their agenda. CHR. SIRACUSA: I'm wondering how this is going to play out into when we should agendize our next meeting, but we haven't gotten to that point on the agenda yet but let's start thinking about that. We want to have all of that before our next meeting. MR. MELROSE: I think we need to continue with the training, but the question is will that cause additional delays? It may; it depends on how different the county's is from what they decide in a week. MR. JONES: I know you do have one more agenda item. Do you want to, and can you move and address that item and then come back to the hands -on part? I don't know the rules that you 31 are operating under, but if that can be the last one, then we are not time constrained in terms of trying to get out of here. CHR. SIRACUSA: I'm going to ask Rodney to answer that. MR. OSHIRO: If there are no objections by the Commission, we can move to do Comm. 21 first. The motion would be to take it out of order. If there are no objections, than we can go ahead. You don't have to take a vote. The question you posed to the Commission would be, if there are no objections to taking Communication number 21 out of order and if none, we just move on. CHR. SIRACUSA: So even though we haven't closed file? MR. OSHIRO: We need to postpone this to the end of the agenda. So the motion for Communication 20 would be to postpone to the end of the agenda. CHR. SIRACUSA: We have a motion on the floor. MR. OSHIRO: The motion on the floor is to close file on Communication 20. So we would have to dispose of Comm. 20 or postpone Comm. 20 to go to Comm. 21. MR. MELROSE: If we are going to do that, then under what circumstances are we going through the training? Is this like after the meeting is over, or are we just going to keep it open and go to the hands -on training? MR. OSHIRO: It's still open. Mr. Melrose moved to postpone Comm. 20 until the end of the agenda. Seconded by Mr. Middlesworth and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. UNFINISHED BUSINESS COMM. 21: CREATION OF AN AD HOC TECHNICAL COMMITTEE Memo from Rene Siracusa, Chair, Hawaii County Redistricting Commission, dated June 15, 2011, regarding the creation of an Ad -Hoc Technical Committee. CHR. SIRACUSA: Do I have a motion to close file? 32 Mr. Kahui moved to close file on Comm. 21 regarding the creation of an Ad -Hoc Technical Committee. Seconded by Mr. Kahawaiolaa. CHR. SIRACUSA: Is there any discussion? The question came up last time and I put it on the agenda so that we would be able to discuss it. There are some members of this Commission who are a lot more technically savvy than others and the idea was that if we had them on an ad- hoc committee, not that they would discuss Commission business, but only assist the not so technically savvy. Without coming to a decision on anything, or discussing board business, but just dealing with the technical aspects of the program and ability to help some of the other, less savvy people on the Commission. We had a little discussion on it in the past, and I want to know now that we have seen some of this, how do people feel about that. I would like your mana`o. MR. MELROSE: My suggestion is; this is a useful tool, we should create it both for interaction between us and perhaps for interaction with the Elections office as well to kind of track that along. I think it is useful; how useful, we will see. But I think it makes sense to create it so you have the ability to do it. If there is value in it, I would be glad to be part of that committee. CHR. SIRACUSA: Are there any other remarks on that? MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: Any one of those three would be fine with me. MR. OSHIRO: Ms. Chair, I just want to caution the Commission that only two and not more than four can be on this ad -hoc committee to discuss the scope of what this committee is set up for. They cannot discuss it with any body else. This body cannot discuss the scope until the ad- hoc committee brings it back to the Commission in the three step process. CHR. SIRACUSA: I'm trying to figure out what you mean by scope. What I thought we had in mind was just looking at the technical aspects of how the programming works, and not making any decisions. MR. OSHIRO: The Sunshine Law puts certain restrictions upon the Commission that you have to follow in order to make this ad -hoc committee. If you are looking for technical support, then I think we should be looking at the trainers who we can call individually, or go see individually. Because the three -step process includes today's meeting, which is the formation and the scope of your ad -hoc committee. The second would be the presentation of your findings, which is just presentation and no discussion. And on the third meeting it is the deliberation and the voting to accept the recommendation of the committee. It is usually used for an investigative committee. CHR. SIRACUSA: That is certainly not what I had in mind, that there would be findings; just that people who know how to use computers and know how to do this programming would be available to help some of those who are not. For example, Royce is on Oahu, and I can't make long distance calls to him every time I have a question. 9191 MR. UDOVIC: You need to be very, very careful because Section 92 -2.5 of the Sunshine Law really limits what can be done. The scope of a technical committee or an ad -hoc committee is not to be like a friendly helper that can roam around and talk to others because you have this committee. There are some specific requirements; and quite frankly, if that is what the intent of this committee is, I would recommend in all honesty, and I don't want to place the burden on the Elections office, but they might be the first source for information if you are having difficulty in doing something and then perhaps someone else. But I don't think we can assign someone to talk to the other members and things about things that could potentially be board business. MR. KAHUI: I understand your intention but the truth is we ought to just give it a first round; a personal first round. Try and see if in fact we need assistance. I agree with Michael, that if we do need help, we should seek the Elections office or use the help guide on the GIS system to get us through. In all honesty, we ought to just go home right now and go work on it. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you for that input, any one else? MR. MELROSE: I just have a quick question. Maybe this is a Royce question. What provisions are in place to provide ongoing technical support? I know when I tried to get on your first one that had the 2000 data on it, within a day of having logged on I got a request saying, "How can I help you ?" This came out of Esri. Is there an ongoing Esri -based technical support attached to this service? MR. JONES: There is help to get logged in, but once you are logged in, there is not help to build a plan. There is extensive on -line documentation to supplement to what I am going to show you now, but there is not an 800 number to call in and say, "Hey, I'm trying to get this block and it won't go from 4 to 3." There is not that kind of phone support. But that is where you could then turn to the resources here. MR. MELROSE: I don't think we necessarily need a committee, particularly if we have to go through a whole three step process. That seems like a very long process. We could easily do this by using the Elections office. MR. MIDDLESWORTH: If we don't have a committee, and Rene has a problem and she calls Jeff and she says, "Hey, I'm working with this and I don't understand this piece of the software, can you help me ?" Is that going to be a Sunshine Law issue? MR. UDOVIC: No, that wouldn't be board business. Because the board business is the business of the board, but you still cannot get together and talk about it. Also, when they talk about this share feature, sharing the plans; I would recommend against that because that is what your business is, to present plans. So you shouldn't be sharing them with one another until you are in a meeting. Do you understand what I am saying? If you are just talking about how to use the software, that is not the same thing. My recommendation would be to be very, very careful. If we have problems, this is going to come back to bite all of us and all of the good work that we have done. 34 CHR. SIRACUSA: At the same time, you say to check with Elections, but if we are working in the evening and every body has gone home for the day, I could still call Jeff or Mike and ask a question and ask how I do a certain thing. MR. UDOVIC: I think Bo's comment is pretty telling. Let's not assume we are going to have problems. CHR. SIRACUSA: I think I can safely assume that. MR. UDOVIC: But that doesn't mean it isn't something we can't work through. I think we really ought to give it a chance. Let's not create problems before they exist. CHR. SIRACUSA: Well, I get "program not responding" messages up on my computer all the time, and so I'm just worried that I'll be working on something and that will happen and I won't be able to get out. This has nothing to do with a board decision or any thing else. It would just be a technical question. MR. UDOVIC: Maybe someone from our IT office can provide some technical support. We would have to call and talk to them. MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: Maybe we can get Mr. Bidleman's number and if we need help at night and the IT people are closed, maybe we can get to Mr. Biddleman. CHR. SIRACUSA: Mr. Kahawaiolaa, I have Mr. Bidleman's number; and he is on my help list. MRS. NAKAMOTO: We've been sitting back there listening to the discussion and I guess we are confused. For one thing, in the past, when there was a technical committee, the technical committee worked with our office. I'm just mentioning how it was done in the past, and I have no intention of saying this is the way it needs to be done this year. But they had starting points, and our office was involved in drawing the maps. There were two people who were part of the technical committee and one person would be in our office working with us. When there were questions which block we should include into this district or those kinds of questions, the person from the technical committee would give us guidance on what to do. That was my idea of what the role of the technical committee would be. Listening to the discussion and hearing how all of you will probably be drawing your own plans, I was just wondering what our role will be? MR. MELROSE: I think the way we have been doing it worked in the past; my suggestion is that we all need to be comfortable with the software so we know how it works and we can maybe even be a vector to help the community know how it works. What I'd like to see, rather than having us all try to scramble to do our own, that at our next meeting we think through a series of starting points and directional instructions and then we give them to the Elections office. We have the Elections office prepare a series of draft alternative maps. All of that is going to instruct us as to how those differ, what the implications of those are, and what the refinement of them are. But, we are not here to draw right now, the map; we are here to draw alternative maps. That is what it is going to take for us to make good decisions. I would like to suggest that we look to the Elections office to be the drawer of our maps. We can certainly do our own technical 917 things. That way we will know better how to critique the maps, but that we look to the staff to actually prepare them, print them out, or form them so we can have a good conversation about the alternatives. That's what we are doing now. We are doing alternatives; we are not picking a map. We can all be part of that; for the community to be able to do those as well. That would be my hope. We aren't waiting for each of us to do a map, we are actually suggesting a starting place, and you guys to that work and then we get a chance to review it and understand how to do it. That way, the pressure for you to actually do your own map, unless you choose to, is not as big. That would be my suggestion. CHR. SIRACUSA: Pat, is that doable from your perspective? MRS. NAKAMOTO: Yes, yes it is doable. If that is what the commission is going to agree upon, then it gives us an idea of what our role will be and how we can move forward in our planning stages for our office. CHR. SIRACUSA: Do we have any more discussion on this matter? MR. MIDDLESWORTH: I agree generally with Jeff, although I do not think that we need to agree upon a starting point; starting points maybe. We are also going to have to give some guidance on variance. There is that conflicting business in the Ordinance about over and under and also taking into account growth. We are going to have to give them some guidance in that area. I don't think we ought to discourage any body from drawing plans if they want to do it. CHR. SIRACUSA: Are there any other comments? MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: Yes, I would tend to agree with both Commissioners before me, and with do respect to the Commission, I do believe, myself, personally, being on this Commission ten years ago; I would want to point out that there is a matter of trust that we need to place. And it goes both ways. The trust that what we come up with, they will do. When I say "they" I mean the Elections Division will do the biddings that we would want to. So I clearly want to make the point that when we come up with the points, even the public, it becomes a matter of trust. I don't think they have an agenda. They never showed that they had one. It's a matter of trust, and I think that what Ms. Nakamoto is really, truly asking is that they need to know because they have got to plan too. They just can't just sit there and wait for nine plans to come in and hopefully that is the way it's going to go. I'll close by saying that I would also want to do what Mr. Kahui mentioned, that the instructors would come back and instruct us in how to use this thing. I think it's important, and I believe Rene, you will be the top of the class. I don't think you need to call Mr. Bidleman, you will know exactly what to do. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you for that vote of confidence, but you have more than I do. It seems to be the general feeling here then that we do not need to form a Technical Committee. Therefore, since we do have a motion to close file on this matter, I'm going to call for the vote, unless anyone objects. MR. MELROSE: I just have one comment. I think that the question of a Technical Committee is still to be seen, if we need one or not. Under the definition that Pat was offering, which was 36 an interaction with Elections office; that may be yet to be seen as a useful relationship, where somebody is assigned to help do that. If not, let's just pass it on and get to the next thing today, but I wouldn't say it is not necessary, let's just wait and see how necessary it might be. CHR. SIRACUSA: Then we are now ready for the vote. The motion to close file on COMM. 21, the formation of an ad -hoc Technical Committee was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Kahui, Kanuha, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: None. CHR. SIRACUSA: Now we go back to Communication 20, which we left in limbo. Is there a special wording to re -open it? MR. OSHIRO: The wording would be that the motion that is live on the floor is Communication 20. CHR. SIRACUSA: So we are back into discussion and that was the next phase of the training. Royce, you are on. Back to Communication 20: Training on Hawai `i Redistricting Online Application MR. JONES: Thank you very much. I am going to show you two things. I'm going to show you the second one first. I am going to show you the free tool, the generic tool that everyone can use right now without a password. I will show you that first because that is the easiest, there is not much to learn there. Once I show you how to go get it you can pan and move around. After we spend a few minutes, and you can explore the population census blocks, then we will turn around and log each of you in. There is just a single log -in for the entire Commission. We will come and log each of your machines in and we'll be able to go through the hands -on on the actual redistricting; changing the district blocks. That is where we will be able to log in their computers so they can do it here. They just won't have that password to take with them until we have the full State one. Then the public gets theirs. But for this session, so that they can be learning, we will go ahead and log them in. You should have several buttons at the bottom and one of them says Arc GIS Explorer. If you want to just click that button, hopefully it will open up. When it opens up you should see a map of the Big Island. I am at the Hawaii County Council 2001. If I click that plus sign, it opens up and shows the boundaries. If I click the plus sign here it shows me my blocks with population. The blocks colored red have 1,000 and more, the orange color have 599, 250 -499 are green, light blue 100 -249, dark blue less than 100. 37 CHR. SIRACUSA: That is what I was asking before about the color coding. MR. JONES: Now that we are live it is working. You can click this and do the same thing. The other thing you can click is the plus sign next to Hawaii bookmarks. Click the plus sign next to Big Island and then double click on any of these that you want. I am going to double click on Hilo right now and when I do that it will zoom in on Hilo. Either double click on Hilo or right click and "go to." The folks in Kona, are you still with there? MR. KAHUL• This is Bo, we have actually lost our battery time waiting for this exercise. MR. JONES: Can you see it on the screen? MR. KAHUL No, we cannot. So, if you could get your screen up, that would be helpful. MR. JONES: Can the camera person here capture the screen? Okay, so now we have the screen on there. Once you get your battery charged, you will be able to download this same software; get connected to the internet, download the Arc GIS Explorer and open up this map. Each of these is a census block. I can use my mouse wheel and zoom out or move it the other direction and zoom in. As I zoom in, it will show me more of the census block information. Each of these numbers is the population of that census block. So here is a census block with 421 people. If I actually go and click on that block it is going to pop open a small box or window. Once that box is open, I am going to click where it says, "All Dists." That means all districts. I click on that and it will pull up all of the information about that census block; the State House District, State Senate District, County Council and U.S. Congress. At this point, I am going to get up and walk around and see how you each are doing. Hands -on Training - Commissioners had access to laptops and Royce Jones gave hands -on assistance. MR. JONES: Now let's let the real work begin. Once you do come up with a plan that you want to share with the public. You can share it with them in the same way. You can put in these lines as the new lines and they can still see the same base data, the census data, the same imagery in the background, and see your new lines. So this is one mechanism. Another way is you will probably want to make printed maps and PDF's and all the other things. But another alternative is to have a live map just like this with your new boundaries that you end up proposing. I am going to close Arc GIS Explorer now. There is a whole lot more that this software does, but that is not the point of today's exercise. I am going to close this down and go to the next software. You may already have the window open. If not, you have a shortcut on your desktop to the Esri Redistricting Online. When you click that, you should get a screen that looks like this. Again, this is not the State of Hawaii custom version. That doesn't come until several weeks from now. At that point you will each have your own log -in. Right now, we have a single log in so the Commission can start looking at different ideas for different ways to do a 91:1 plan. I will come around to you now and log each of your computers in and we will give you that password for now. MR. KANUHA: Was that password and user name only for today's session, or were you going to hand it out to the Commission so we can start looking at this stuff? MR. JONES: The Elections office will call you to give it to you. The user name you will know, but the password they will call and let you know. So you can type in the user name, HCRC2011. If you turn to Communication 20. 1, these are the basic steps that I am going to go through. We just did Step 1. Hopefully if your request was processed, your screen looks like this. It says loading plan list and you got here and there was a list of plans. If you go down here and click on "Shared Plans," this is #2 on Communication 20. 1, under Shared Plans, click "Hawai`i County Redistricting." If you click on that you will see three possible plans. The one I mentioned is totally empty. The one that we are going to open, which is the existing 2001, the other one that I created that you can explore I called 2 seeds, 5.4 %. This is one where I spent some time. What you will find is when you start to use the software, you will get painted into a corner and you will have a census block that suddenly has 1,000 people and you have got to draw a line right in that area. Those 1,000 people are going to throw your deviation off. So instead you have got to try and draw it somewhere else. That is how Kona ends up getting split in the middle or Hilo ends up getting split in the middle. So my thought was, start with start with two seeds; one seed in Kona and one seed in Hilo and make two districts there. Again, the population is so much I still had to cut it somewhere. This is where I cut it, but I don't know the communities there; you guys do. This is where you could use my plan, if you would like, it is an option. Where I started there, created the district that was low deviation and then built out from there. You can explore that as one alternative. For now, we are going to jump and use the existing. Unless there are questions, we are going to go ahead and open the existing plan. Click on "Existing" and click "Open Plan." What it is doing now is that online it has stored all of the census blocks and all of their current assignments according to your existing Council Districts. It is downloading that now on to your computer to open up a plan. So hopefully on yours you have the same. There are four different tabs, learn, create, review and share. There is actually a file tab over here that doesn't have a number. We are on Step 3 now, click the "create" tab to open the create ribbon. This should look familiar to you from my PowerPoint slide. There is the entire Big Island and here is the district statistics with each of the deviations. You can pull that up a little bit if you want and then grab on the lower right corner. If you click that and drag it down you will get all nine of them; you can see them all at once, and it will remember it from then on. So again, these are the existing district boundaries with the existing deviations. Just like in the other application, you can use your mouse wheel and you can zoom in. If you have closed it, you can just click the district button and it will come back up. I can pan over to the same place that I showed you in the example and you can expand from there. If you get over into Hilo right at the intersections of Districts 2, 3, and 4, you can assign some of them to District 4. So I go up to this pull down, and find District 4. 39 Now we want to assign some blocks to District 4. One of the tools that I showed you before is this "click" tool, where I can click and it turns orange. Now any block that I click on my map will be assigned to District 4, because District 4 is what I chose on the pull down. Now when I click this one, it gets assigned to District 4 and I'll immediately see the numbers change. Whichever block you want to change, click inside that block. You have to assign it to the District first to make it active District. Then wherever you click gets assigned to District 4. So if I click over here, then that one goes to District 4. Everything you do with these tools assigns it to whatever District is active. By default it is unassigned. I will show you the way to make a big selection. If I make the polygon tool active, the third one over, then I click inside District 4, then as I draw, then click at the corner, click, move it, click, move it, click and then once I have everything I want I double click. When I do, all those blocks get assigned to District 4 and you get new numbers and new districts. If you need to move your map, be sure to grab the "pan" tool, the hand. I'm going to come around and see how you are doing now. Royce Jones gave hands -on assistance to each Commissioner individually on their laptop computers. MR. JONES: I want to show you something else that you will really like. Go over here where is says, "base map" and click that base map. It will show you some different choices and go to where it says, "imagery." Click on imagery, click the x to close the base map window, and now you will see the actual image underneath. MR. KAHUI: Hello, this is Kona. Dru and I aren't having much fun here. We are just hearing all this gargle going on. The truth is, because we don't have a computer that we can access right now, I think we are both going to leave and excuse ourselves and go home and practice. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you for letting us know that. Hopefully you will be able to follow along and get comfortable with the software. Thank you. MR. KAHUI: Okay, on behalf of Kona, we say, "mahalo." MR. JONES: Valerie was trying to grab a whole series of block here in District 5 and assign them to District 3. The issue is, remember this little thing up here called Selection Level? You have zoomed out so far it is set to Block Group, so you cannot select Blocks if the level is set to Block Group. If you zoom back in far enough until it goes back to Block, then try it again and it should work. If you are selecting Blocks, you have to be zoomed in far enough to see and select Blocks. The first application I showed you had the lovely colored census blocks with each of the census numbers in there. You wanted to see this in here; that's where I spoiled you guys. It is actually not part of this application to do that. I added that in because I like it; we are trying to get that added into the State version. When the State one comes online, we are trying to get that added in so you do have it. In the meantime, here is what you can do; as long as you are at the block level, make the "Identify" tool your tool, and when you click on any block it will go get you the .e full demographics. So that block has 63 people, and it gives you all the demographics. Asian, Black, over 18, under 18, White; it gives you all the census demographics for that block. Now we are on Step 7. You have done a lot of good work now, and you want to save it; you don't want to loose it. So every so often, it is a good idea to Save. So close the Identify window and go over to the File tab. Once over there, you can save a local copy of your plan. So this will save it on your hard disk. "Save As" will save it in the community part, where everybody has access to it; later you may want to do that, but right now you just want to save a local copy because it is just you working with it. So you give it a name and next time you open up you can point to that same file and you will be right where you were. All your assignments are remembered and you can continue working. If you are going to a different computer, put it on a jump drive and take it with you. Later, once the State one is online, you can save it online and you won't have to do that. But that's a limitation we are facing right now. I am just going to show you a couple more things and that will pretty much wrap up the Communication itself and then we can answer whatever other questions you have. So, just to wrap this up I'm going to jump to Step 8 now. Say you have a plan that you like. We are going to jump to the "Review" tab. This is where I showed you these tools, and we don't need to spend a lot of time now, you can explore them on your own. For instance, Plan Histogram will show you in Bar Chart form. If you want to expand it, you click here where it says "Show Total." It shows me for my current districts the way I have assigned them; this is the total population for each district. You can do the compactness test here. The integrity check, I want to show you one that doesn't work. I'm going to intentionally introduce one that doesn't work; I am going to intentionally introduce a disconnected block here. I am going back to my Create tab because I am going to assign one of these districts down here to District 4. I'm going to assign this census block to District 4. Now, obviously that is not a good idea; that is not a good plan. But if I'm over here and I accidentally did that, or it's a residual from an earlier plan, I may not realize that is sitting out there. So this is where, when I am doing my test, and checking for integrity, it tells me I have some connectivity problems. I can click the Details button and now I can see there are some issues with Districts 2, 4, 6, and 8. I know I'm working with District 4 right now; show me those. I click District 4, it tells me District 4 has four different parts. Here is the first part; that's good, that's the district. I can click the next part button, and there it is, there is a block that is disconnected from the others. You will see the problems and choose the right tools to adjust it. So this is the Review stage where you are looking for possible problems with your plan. Step 8 is where you check the Integrity, Compactness and the Report Tool. If you want to do the Report, Population Summary, click OK and you can get a preview. You can save it on your disk if you want, but I just want to preview it. So I click on Preview and I don't save it. It will pop up a report of different demographic characteristics for the census blocks that I have assigned to each district. It is for your exact plan drawn at that time. The Open Plan is where you can see the differences between your plan and another one. I am going to go back so you can see that. I want to compare it with the original, existing boundaries. This is where I click Open Plan, then click Existing, and now we see two plans at once. My plan, that is active and the compared plan which is the existing districts. This is one way to see the change from the districts that are currently there. Now I can see the parts that I changed that t,I are different from the existing plan. This is where I can grab these tools and maybe highlight the compared plan. You can see both at once. The last thing I'll show you and then I'll let you explore as much as you want until you want to call it quits, is this button right here, the Online Help; this little question mark up in the corner. When I click that it is going to open a new window. I've shown you about 5% of what this software does, but it will do 95% of what you need to do. Just like with most software, it does a whole lot of things, but with 5% of the buttons, you can do 95% of what you want to do. But if you are interested in what some of the other ones are, you can open up this Help and there is a tour to take you through or you can just go, I'm working with a district plan and I want to know more about working with that plan, how do I manage plans, how do I create a district plan, how do I navigate, how do I identify; all the other buttons are all explained here. Jeff is asking if there is a hand function. When you are in create, and you're in the click, when you click on the map it wants to assign something. So instead, you grab the hand tool. It is called the Pan Hand. When that is your active tool, you can drag and click your map to see other areas. I've been using this software for months now, and I still forget sometimes. That's where the Undo button is handy too. If you accidently assign a district, you can undo it. One of the things, as in most software, there is an FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, if you go all the way down to the bottom, you might find the answer to your question right here. There is a whole series of questions about data formats, mark -ups, how to share plans. There is an FAQ that describes some of the more common questions. There is really a lot of help here online. That kind of completes the content of Communication 20. 1, but I am happy to stay here and continue answering your questions. The question is, "How can I change the color on my districts ?" If you open up your District window, each of the colors used is actually in this color column. So you can see District l; I'll click on that block, and if I want to I can make it red. So it's real easy to change color. You open up your district statistics, hit the color box, and choose whatever you want. MR. MELROSE: Madam Chair, can I make a suggestion? I think we ought to think about when our next meeting is. In that regard, my suggestion is since we don't know when the data is going to be ready. Optimistically, we are talking the 15th of July. If they make a separate decision on the 28th and they decide they are not going to extract - - -It could take longer. It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to be meeting while that is being decided. CHR. SIRACUSA: I agree. MR. MELROSE: So maybe if we met near the end of July. CHR. SIRACUSA: We could keep playing with and familiarizing ourselves with the software in the meantime. Remember too, our next meeting is when we are going to have to set the date for the deadline for the Alternate Plans. MR. MELROSE: Right, and we should have a conversation about that after we have gotten used to the software and know what we are asking the people to do. t,% CHR. SIRACUSA: And the community can give us some input on how they feel they are coming along with it. MR. MELROSE: My suggestion is at that meeting, on the agenda, we give directions to the Elections Office on starting points; we have some conversation about that. We may end up with eight or nine starting points, and let them do the maps. We would give them some time to prepare that. It could take two or three weeks maybe to put that map group together. We'll bring them back and kibbitz about how to make them better, or throw ones out that don't make any sense. CHR. SIRACUSA: Or certainly ones that where we know from our own communities where community lines should be drawn. MR. MELROSE: I think some of that they are going to take into account; they are going to struggle with that just as we are. So if we set a meeting near the end of July, is that a reasonable timeframe? CHR. SIRACUSA: It seems so to me. How does everyone else feel about that? Let me look at my calendar. MR. KAHAWAIOLA`A: We are talking about software being available then and the numbers being available then hopefully. CHR. SIRACUSA: We already had a meeting scheduled for the 28th from our original plan for two meetings a month. So, I would propose that we leave that as is unless someone has something to say about it. I guess we need a motion on that. MR. OSHIRO: Ms. Chair, you still have a main motion on the floor; that is Communication 20. So we need to vote on this Communication 20 before we move on. CHR. SIRACUSA: That motion that we had on the floor was to enable us to do the training. If everyone feels comfortable now with closing that, I'll call for the question. The motion to close file on Comm. 20, the training on Hawaii Redistricting Online software, was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Kahui and Kanuha. CHR. SIRACUSA: We have no Reports and we have no referrals for Executive Session, so we now go to Announcements. 43 ANNOUNCEMENTS CHR. SIRACUSA: We are looking at cancelling the meeting on July 14th since the software won't be available to us and retain July 28th as our next meeting. Mr. Melrose moved to hold the next meeting on July 28, 2011. Seconded by Ms. Ugalde and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Kahui and Kanuha. MR. MELROSE: Quick discussion on the topic of agenda items. Just in general - -and you can shape this with Karen - -I think the starting points conversation. There are some instructions that you showed in your software about what the public is going to see about the instructions about how to create a map, what those basic instructions are. I don't know if the State's guidelines are in any way different from what ours may be? I guess it is going to depend on the decision; the population base decision. I guess we can't do it until we know what that decision is. Another agenda item is setting the time frame for the public Alternate Plan map. CHR. SIRACUSA: Karen, will you pick that up when you are doing the minutes and make sure that those two things get on the agenda, please? If any of you have any other thoughts during the course of the interval, please get through to Karen with your ideas about agenda items. Then we will take it from there. If that is it, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. ADJOURNMENT There being no further business, at 5:30 p.m., Mr. Carvalho moved to adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Ms. Ugalde and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Carvalho, Kahawaiolaa, Melrose, Middlesworth, Poindexter, Ugalde, and Chair Siracusa. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Kahui and Kanuha. CHR. SIRACUSA: Motion carries, we are adjourned. ., Respectfully Submitted, Karen Eoff, Secretary Approved on July 28, 2011: Ms. Rene Siracusa, Chair Hawaii County Redistricting Commission C167