Charter Review Board - Regular Meeting

Get started. If Clerk Kavanaugh could please call the meeting to order until we appoint a chair.

I'm calling the 04/21/2026, redistricting board meeting to order. Going to do the roll call right now. When I say your name, just say present. Brandy Martin.

Present.

As a reminder to speak into your microphone, if you press the button, it will turn red, so we can make sure we get your important voices and messaging on the record.

Present. Thank you.

Alex Escoriasa. GORIASA.

ALEXIS

GORIASA. ALEXIS JAMES City Attorney Pyeburn.

JAMES Present.

JAMES you.

JAMES M. Thank you. Anyone wishing to appeal any decision made will need a record of the proceedings, and for such purpose may need to ensure that a verbatim recording of the proceedings is made, including the testimony and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based. The audio of this meeting may be requested from the city clerk or may be heard online at coconutcreek.gov. Welcome, board members.

At this time, I'm going to ask each of you to do a self introduction, starting with Brandi here. And then we're going to go on to introduce our consultant and other staff members. But actually, I guess I should have said starting with me. I'm Terrell Pyburn. I'm the city attorney and your board liaison.

Occasionally, I may not be here, in which case I will then have Kathy Mahaffy, deputy city attorney I can't see her, but hopefully you can over there sitting in my place. But the two of us will be the board liaison. And coupled with Joe Kavanaugh, our city clerk, you may receive emails from any of us at any given time about things having to do with this board. And you may contact us with any questions. And with that, go ahead, Brandi.

I'm Brandi Drayvik. You can forget the Martin part when you're dressing me. I've lived in Coconut Creek for over thirty years. This is my first time serving on a board here. And that's about it. I'm excited.

Thank you.

Alex Escoriasa. I'm also a proud Coconut Creek resident. I guess started on the planning and zoning board a couple of years ago and have served on the charter review board. So this is, I guess, my third board here.

David Mintzis. I've lived full time in Coconut Creek since 2017. Been visiting down here since 1978. So I feel kind of like I've been here for a long time. Previously served on the Chart Review Board. So this is my second board.

Hi, Aileen Smith, aka Leeny, which most people know me by. I've lived in Coconut Creek since 2009, and I work in Coconut Creek, and I served on the Civil Service Board.

Craig Valvo. I've lived in the city for thirty years plus as well. Own a restaurant on the North Side of town. I've gotten to serve on redistricting a couple of times, but not in the past ten years or so, and more recently, to serve on the Charter Review Board with a couple of the committee members up here today, and it was a great experience. And for those of you who haven't done this before, like, the city staff's just incredible. No nerves. They guide us through everything. They're really, really good. So thank you so much. I look forward to serving with all of you.

Okay, and now I'm going to turn it over to our consultants. If you could please introduce yourself for the board. Go ahead, Ron.

I'm Doctor. Ron Schultz. I've been consulting with Coconut Creek since the mid-80s. I think I've done every redistricting that's been done okay in the city. And with me today, I have James Gammit Clark, who's a university instructor at FAU in the geosciences department. And I have with us Michael Staum, who is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. James and I are both in Department of Geosciences. I'm retired. James is still active.

Thank you, Doctor. Scholz.

I

don't know if you want to add anything, James.

I'm really happy to be back here. This is the third redistricting effort that we've done with the city of Coconut Creek, and we've always said this is our favorite city to work with.

Thank you. We appreciate that. Michael, would you like to add anything? And welcome.

Just that, so my day job is I'm an assistant city manager in the city of Pembroke Pines. I've worked with your deputy city manager, Scott Stottemeyer, for many, many years. Know some of your staff. I'm in the planning department for my city, and I've been doing these redistricting projects for the last thirty years. So as long as you've lived in the city, been I've doing these redistricting projects through many, many cities. And I've been happy to work with these gentlemen. We just finished up Pembroke Park recently in some other cities. So together, collectively, we have tons of experience. Doctor. Schulz, obviously, leading the way. But we're really happy to be here and excited about this project.

Great. Thank you so much. I failed to mention at the beginning that there is a cultural series event happening in this room at around, what is it, 06:15? And I was told that we have the room until about 05:30. I know initially you were told four to six, but we have the room until 05:30.

I don't even think it will necessarily take that long. I just wanted to set the stage at the get go so you were aware of the time constraints. Any questions so far? All right, great. So at this point in time, I'm going to have deputy city attorney Kathy Mahaffy give a brief presentation on Florida's sunshine law, public records, and ethics laws.

Thank you. So I'm going to give a brief overview. You all received a memo which kind of summarized everything from the city attorney. And if you haven't read that, that is a real nice summary that I'd advise you to read before our next meeting. It gives you a nice overview of the more detailed stuff that I'm going to cover right now.

I'm going to touch briefly on Sunshine Law, public records, social media and ethics. Sunshine Law applies to all meetings of local government bodies. It basically means that every meeting should be a marketplace of ideas that the government agency has sufficient input from the public in order to make their decision with that public knowledge and in a way that the public has an awareness of those decisions, how they're made, and how they're going to impact their public lives. It not only promotes confidence in government, it prevents governmental abuses, and it helps the public understand those decisions as well as those impacts on them. And the most important thing in this process is that we operate in a manner that is transparent and open and honest.

So what is a meeting? It is a meeting of any time there are two members of the same board. Okay, I'm going to make a real quick shake. And

while you're doing that, I would like to just mention that our Vice Mayor, John Brody, is here in the audience. Hi, Vice Mayor.

This feels better. I can see you all. Does that work better? Thank you. Okay.

So when a meeting is any time there's two or more of you as a board as members of the board that are discussing anything that could come before the board as an agenda item, or any topic that you guys will discuss, which means it's anything related to redistricting. So it doesn't matter that you're not in this formal meeting, it doesn't matter that there's only two of you, it just matters if there's two of you from the same board talking about board business. And that, anything in there, is considered a meeting. And when there is a meeting, for it to be legal, that meeting has to be publicly noticed, it has to be in a place that is open and reasonably accessible to the public, and minutes have to be taken. If those criteria aren't met, and we've had a meeting, then we have a sunshine violation.

So we're going to talk very briefly about the things that we do to make sure that we don't inadvertently have a meeting because that touches on how conversations we have, even on social media aspects of that. It is very easy to inadvertently violate the Sunshine Law by simply liking a Facebook post or replying all to an email. So those are things that we'll talk a little bit more about social media in a minute. Replying all, basically, you could inadvertently express how you feel about a subject matter to other board members. So we'd always advise you never reply all in anything related to board action.

Public records, these apply to any governmental officials and governmental employees. And you, as board members, are governmental officials that are subject to the public records law, which is based on Florida statutes chapter one nineteen. So this is any communication, email, texts, social media postings, a letter, a voicemail, anything that is a written or verbal communication that is retained so that there is a physical embodiment of, and that becomes a public record. And we have a legal obligation to retain that public record, to produce that public record if we're requested to. How that record is obtained or where it's located is irrelevant.

So if it is on your personal email, or personal Instagram or Facebook or voicemail, it is still a public record even though it's on your personal device. So anytime you get a public record related to your board business, please forward that to publicrecords@coconutcreek.gov, or if it's a text, you can forward it to texts,texts,@publicrecords.gov. And both of those addresses are provided in the memo that that we provided you earlier as part of this agenda packet. It does exclude memory devices or notes to aid your own personal memory as long as they are not circulated or shared. So you can get an agenda and make some notes about things you wanna discuss, and as long as you don't share those notes, those are not a public record, and you can discard them after the meeting without any problem.

Social media can be an asset, of course. It's something that we use as a city. It helps build a positive city brand, promotes city programs and events, and it provides direct communication with our residents. It's a great communication tool, but it has a lot of legal risks, touching on First Amendment, public records, social media, ADA access, copyright, and even just bad behavior. There's no innocent until proven guilty in the court of public opinion.

You are immediately guilty, so we want to avoid those things. First amendment, when we speak as a government official, we don't have the same first amendment protections and rights. So we can only regulate things like time, place, and manner. Putting that in perspective for where we're at, say you post something on social media related to a board activity. If somebody comments on that and it's you can't you, as a government official, cannot delete that because in your capacity as a government official or in the city's capacity as a government official, to delete that post would be viewpoint discrimination.

So we actually have to be very, very careful. Preferably don't post on social media related to board business. In addition to First Amendment issues, there's sunshine issues, just like I did I talked about earlier. If there's a post about redistricting and one board member posts on it and says something about how they feel about it and another board member posts on it, or even if they like that post or like another post that's on there and both board members are communicating on the same thread, the courts have determined that those communications, whether it was written words or even just alike, those communications are Sunshine Law violations. So we don't want we wanna kinda stay off of social media related to board business.

Those are They are also public records. Anything that we post on social media related to city business is a public record, even if it's on your personal Facebook page. So they also have to meet ADA accessibility requirements and copyright law, which is much easier to violate than we think it is. Some of the best practices, please, I go back to don't conduct city business, anything related to board business on on social media. Just don't post it there.

There's other avenues to communicate, and and I'd recommend you use those other avenues. But be prepared if you do plan how you will handle city business related comments or questions on your personal pages, how will you get those to city records, and how will you manage them. Establish clear sets of rules for your personal accounts and follow them, and don't discuss your private accounts in public meetings or with people who are not friends. Don't link your private accounts from a public account. I'm going to cover basic a couple of basic things because in the grand scheme of things, ethics in local government ties into everything, whether it's voting conflicts or gifts or misuse of position, there's a lot of broad ethics issues.

We want to remember the overall global issue though is to remember to act in a manner that promotes public trust and confidence in government and is transparent and honest. At all costs, make sure in all of your actions you create and avoid the appearance and perception of impropriety. Because even the perception of impropriety is enough to file a complaint and to instigate an investigation, and we don't wanna go there. If at any point you feel that you or a family member may have a personal or business interest or conflict with anything that the board is working on, Please give the city attorney's office a call, and we'll parse through this situation and figure out whether or not there's a conflict and what to deal do with it if if there is. They're not likely to occur, but in the event that you are approached or you feel something is a possible concern, let's just talk about it and figure it out so that we don't jeopardize the work of the board or the city.

Violations of any of these issues, whether it's sunshine or public records or ethics, they can have serious repercussions, not just on the city, but on you as individuals. They include an invalidation of the actions of the city commission after you guys are done. It includes city it can include fines against the city, individual fines. It can include civil and criminal suits against the city or individuals violators. A few basics that help us cover everything else, and that is no table talk once the meeting has started, keep the conversation to the agenda items, focus on one person talking at a time.

That helps us with a lot of those different issues, including the sunshine law. Little conversations on the dais that can't be heard, so whispered conversations between two people, or texts and texting during a meeting. Those that conversation whispered between two people can be perceived as a meeting. If that whispered conversation, let's say for example, is about the meeting substance, and nobody can hear it, then it is a meeting that is occurring outside of the sunshine. So even though I might be leaning over and saying, hey, can you pick up my kid after soccer tomorrow?

The public doesn't know that. So keep the conversations focused directly on the subject matter where everybody can hear everything that's going on. The decisions that you make as a board are the decisions of the board as a whole, and always just remember to demonstrate respect for each other and staff and members of the public. We are very grateful for your time, and we appreciate your willingness to serve and look forward to spending the next one hundred and twenty days getting this project done. So thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions

you have. Are there any questions? Does the board have any questions regarding Sunshine Law, public records, ethics? Okay, thank you, Kathy. We did provide you with a memorandum, as Kathy mentioned earlier, dated April 14, so just last week.

It was a little bit of a thicker thicker packet that really explained in more detail all of the requirements that pertain to you having to do with Sunshine Law, public records, etcetera. If you happen to have any questions after this meeting, feel free to give me or Cathy a call, and we're happy to answer them. And I'll give you my information, before the meeting has concluded. I believe there's a number on the memo, but I'll go ahead and give you that information anyhow. Before we go any further, I think that now that you've been trained up in public records and sunshine law and ethics, we're ready to administer the oath of office with clerk Kavanaugh.

Thank you, Clerk Kavanaugh. Now I'm going to go over with you just a very high level overview of your duties and responsibilities on the board before I turn it over to our consultant, Doctor. Schulz, and his team. So as you are aware, you were selected by the commission to serve on the redistricting board. This board convenes for one hundred and twenty days from today, the first date, the first meeting date, and your responsibilities include, in this particular or at this particular juncture, unlike prior times when the redistricting board would convene, really, your charge is to take the city's districts, which we currently have five, down to four in order to help effectuate the wishes of the commission as well as the voting public in helping us get from five voting districts to four voting districts and then a mayor elected at large by the twenty twenty nine election.

So your responsibility is to help to create those districts, those four districts, going from five to four. And you will do that with the expert guidance of Doctor. Schulz and his team, as well as any assistance that you need from staff. Doctor. Schulz will go into more detail as to what the parameters are that you would have to follow and what you are kind of allowed to do and not allowed to do.

In years past, when the redistricting board met, I will say that the goal was always to try to keep communities together and to try to differentiate the district by either natural or man made boundaries, meaning major roadways, canals, those kinds of things, bodies of water, while, again, still keeping communities together. We try not to split up a neighborhood right in the middle of it, with the ultimate goal being to have as close as possible to equal sized populations in each of the districts. So you all will be given a lot of expert guidance from Doctor. Scholz, from which he will also make some suggestions and recommendations, and will bring those before you, and then you all will discuss them. And ultimately, you will make a recommendation to the city commission, and the city commission will then vote on that recommendation going forward with the ultimate goal in this instance of the redistricting not to take effect, which is a little different than in the past redistricting board when they've convened.

It will not take effect until 2029 at the twenty twenty nine election. And the reason for that is because, again, we're eliminating a district, and so we don't want to sort of outzone one of our commissioners that's currently sitting on the board, on the commission, from their district. And so it wouldn't be effective until that twenty twenty nine election when we will then have a complete lineup of all of the seats on the commission to go from five to four districts with four commissioners and one mayor elected at large. As you're aware, we currently elect the mayor. The commission elects the mayor amongst themselves every year in March at the second meeting, and that will change in 2029.

Do you have any questions about that just kind of high level overview, understanding we're going to take a deeper dive here in a minute with Doctor. Schulz and his team? Any concerns? Great. I know you all are up to the task. I know all of you. I've met you before, and some of you I've worked with on other boards. So I'm really excited and looking forward to working with all of you. And with that, I will turn it over to Doctor. Shultz.

Do

you need help? Okay, thank you.

We did share a digital report, actually. Thank you.

We will distribute to all of you the digital version that we have, and we'll figure out if anything's missing.

So do we have a PowerPoint for everyone?

Good afternoon, everybody. How are we doing? You excited? I'm excited. Okay. So,

have

a quick agenda that we want to go through for this presentation. Obviously, we've already introduced the redistricting team. Then we'll talk about the data that we've used in our analysis thus far. We're going to discuss the redistricting parameters that we use in all of our redistricting projects. Then we'll do a brief update on the population analysis and projection that we've done up until this point.

We'll dig further into the population data by taking a regional approach to what's changed since the 2020 census. Then we'll step aside and talk about the very important main street projects and how it has implications as to this effort. And then we'll finish up by talking about the next steps that we all need to take together. You've already been introduced to us. Those are our names for your reference.

This data that we're using is the same data that's used in every redistricting effort all across the country. That is The U. S. Census redistricting files, specifically in this case from the most recent decennial census, which is the 2020 census. Specifically for that data, we're using The U.

S. Census block, which is the smallest enumeration unit that the census makes available to the public. And the reason we use the smallest census unit is because we need that little spatial detail to carve up the city into equal populations. So, as I said, we're aggregating those blocks together to form your commission districts. Of course, 2020 is six years ago now, so we need to update that population.

And we do that using data that was provided to us by the City of Coconut Creek staff. So, using that data, we've been able to complete both the population estimates for the housing that's occurred since 2020 and also a population projection into the future. Terrell did a fantastic job describing the basic parameters of how redistricting works. The main goal, of course, is to achieve population equity. So ideally, each of the four new districts would have exactly the same population.

That's the ideal. In reality, it's very difficult to have every district be exactly the same population. So our goal is to achieve no more than 10% overall deviation from the ideal size, the average population for each district, across those districts. We also strictly adhere to section two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which states that arbitrary dilution of minority populations is strictly prohibited. As Harold mentioned, we also will seek geographic contiguity and compactness.

So, to the extent possible, we will always try to follow major roads, major natural boundaries, or major boundaries man as those occur. Let me back up a second. The last point there was where possible we should minimize the degree of change to the existing districts. Of course, in this case, that's a little bit challenging because we're going from five districts to four districts. So, it's going be a pretty significant change.

Still, we'll try to retain any identity that already does exist. We also abide by state of Florida requirements. So we abide by Florida's Fair Redistricting Amendment and section 166.0321 of Florida statutes, which states a couple of things. One, that you need to adopt new districts well in advance of any election. As Terrell mentioned, we're not having elections here until 2029, so we're well ahead of the February requirement that stipulated there.

The other requirement that stipulated in that statute is that the registering process cannot in any way seek to favor any one particular elected official, or disfavor any one particular elected official. That said, let me go back to the idea that the primary driving factor is population equity. All the other parameters we just discussed are useful in driving us towards that particular goal. Okay, so here we see the election districts map. You'll find a copy of this in the report that Ron handed out to you in a moment.

You'll find it as a pullout sheet. I'm sure you're all familiar with these district boundaries, but this is the present state of affairs. Let's take a look at very briefly some population data that we associate with that. According to The U. S.

Census, on census day, which was 04/01/2020, the population of Coconut Creek was 57,833. If we divide that by the five districts, that gives us an average population of 11,567. The largest district at the moment is District E. The smallest district is District C. The major takeaway from this is that since we last did the redistricting effort in 2018, the districts have not veered significantly away from one another.

Right? So the population balance remains pretty good. That would mean that normally, if we weren't changing our districts from five to four, you might be able to stand back or just kind of slightly tweak the existing districts. But again, that's not the case in this situation. So our next step is then to work on a population projection.

And this is where the city's data comes into effect. So here you see a table that shows all of the units that have been created since 2020 and projected to be created through to the year 2029, which is the year that these new election districts, commission districts will go into effect. You can see here that that gives us six zero two units. And, the way we perform our population projection is to use a statistic that's provided by the American Community Survey, which is a section of The U. S.

Census, which goes into all the communities in the country and updates statistics in the years in between those decennial census. And so the specific statistic that we're using is the persons per household value. And so The U. S. Census, the American Community Survey, has determined that the persons per household value for Coconut Creek is 2.39.

So if we multiply that by the number of units that have occurred since census day, and are scheduled to be occurred by 2029, that gives us an estimated increase in population of fourteen thirty eight people since 2020. So, using the five current districts, that would bring up the population of the city to 59,271. And if you divide that by five, that gives you an average population of 11,854. We'll come back to that thought in just a second. What we wanted to do now is try to give you a sense of where this population growth has occurred, or will occur, between now and 2029.

And so we did that by breaking up the city into different regions. Here's the region map that's again found on your report. So that's the second map that you can pull out. And you can see on this map that we've split the city into five East West tiers, stretching from the North part of the city down to the South part of the city, where each of those tiers is separated by a major thoroughfare. So, the major point that you want to take away from this particular slide is that there hasn't been a lot of new housing that's been added to the city in the last six years.

Okay? We're adding this additional population, and the majority of it is occurring in what we call Region 2, which is where the Main Street development is planned. Main Street, of course, is a multi year project that has only now begun construction. The units in this project are not scheduled for completion until 2032. Again, as I mentioned before, our population projection only includes those units that are scheduled for completion by 2029 when the new four commission, four district commission takes effect.

Projecting further than 2029 is very problematic. There's several reasons for this. One is that there's a certain amount of uncertainty when you try to forecast into the future. Right? We're not fortune tellers.

And so you have to account for the chaos that's going to occur naturally in life. And so it's impossible for us to properly account for what the economic conditions are going mean in the future, what the housing trends are going be in the future, and all the other variables, okay? So you have to be somewhat pragmatic in your population projections if you're going to have a result that's defendable if these districts were ever taken to court, for example. Okay? Another factor that we need to be aware of is the idea that before that 2032 date comes to pass, before that project is completed, we will have another decennial census.

That we had a census in 2030, and that data will be released in 2031. And so we would suggest that that census will be a good opportunity for us to ground truth just how good our population projection has been. And we would encourage the city not to be self serving, but we would encourage the city to, after that census, to come back and look at that new data and see just how balanced these new districts are. Finally, what I'd like to do is talk about what our next steps are for this project. As we're creating these new districts, we need to take this projected population of 59,721 and divide it by four.

That gives us an idealized average population of 14,818. That's a number that you're going to want to pin in your brains, right? Highlight it. Put a star next to it, right? That's the magic number.

Ideally, each of the four districts that we would create would be exactly that number as we move forward with that project. There's a couple of different ways we can begin to approach redistricting. We could potentially create an alternative for you where the districts are largely East West oriented across the city, or we could try to create districts for you that have a more of a North South alignment with an East West border that's made up of Lyon's Road. Okay? Regardless of the approach we take, what will always be true is that we need to start out at the extremities of the city, in this case the northern and southern extremities of the city, and create districts that are as close to that 14,818 number as we can achieve it.

And then we'll work towards the middle part of the city as we try to achieve population balance. Now there's one last point, very important point that I would like to emphasize. Even though our population projection is only going to go out to 2029, we are aware that there are additional units planned in Main Street. And so as we start to work on these districts, whatever district Main Street ends up in being, we can plan that district to have enough margin for error, enough room for growth, such that it can still accommodate that future growth in Main Street in 2032 and beyond. And with that, we'd be very happy to answer any questions that you all have.

Go ahead, Ms. Smith.

Hi, thank you for that. When we're I don't know if this is confusing the issue at all, but when we talk about population versus eligible voters, so that's kind of two different things here. So we're just talking population?

We are. Ron, you look itching to answer that question.

Residence is what is counted in the census population. Every citizen of not even citizen every resident of The United States is counted in one place. Snowbirds who identify themselves as snowbirds claim their permanent home elsewhere are not counted as the population of Coconut Creek or any other place in the nation. So we deal with people who identify themselves as residents of Coconut Creek, age, they could be born that day on April 1, and they'd be counted, okay, or they could be a 100 years old. They can be citizens, they can be noncitizens, okay?

They're a resident. That's what counts.

I heard a few things around projections that I just want to drill in on. Although not recommended, and obviously a higher or a lower degree of certainty, Could you provide us a projection for 2032?

We can make a projection for 2032, but we would just caution the further out of the future you go, the more uncertain it's going to be. So, yes, I and and I I can assure you that, as I mentioned, when we do work on these districts for you, we will have those future units and those future people in mind. So, we can show you that data, but we've got to be very careful about putting a very uncertain population projection into the record.

Understood, yeah. I think it would definitely be of benefit. And obviously, there's a second DAY: cycle of redistricting five years from now,

in 2030? Actually, the next time that the redistricting board is scheduled to meet is in 2032.

Okay.

Because, again, this won't be effective until 2029, so it will only be three years after that. And the reason is because we knew that Main Street would be coming online and we would have more specific information, more factual information as to the exact number of residents living in Main Street at that time. So we didn't normally, in the past, it's been about every five years. But we specifically and purposefully and I say we, actually, it was the Charter Review Board, as you may recall, coupled with the city commission, had decided the last time that the redistricting board met was in 2018.

Yeah, we realigned it, yeah.

And they decided to wait until 2026, so eight years, because they had speculated that Main Street would be kind of online already. However, at that time, there were no there was nothing really there was a PMDD, so it was kind of big master plan approved. But there were no site plans approved. There was not a developer at the table. Since then, Main Street has had almost every single block, with the exception of about three, for which there is an approved site plan.

I think three or four are left without an approved site plan. And additionally, there's a developer at the table. There's a development agreement. We've made a lot more progress. So it was very smart of the redistricting board back then to wait until 2026 to have this next meeting, because it would have been probably premature if it had just been in 2023, you know, at the regular five year mark.

And then the thought process was that, again, by 2032, after the election in 2029, after Main Street is more or less almost built out, and because we are expecting it to be completely built out by 2032, there would be more certainty, and it would be time to kind of regroup the redistricting board and see if things pan out the way that we believe. Hopefully, answered your question.

Okay. I'm just trying to weigh, I guess, maybe more information now that might have a higher degree of uncertainty versus waiting until the next time to potentially fix something that we could have addressed now.

City attorney

Understood. Yes.

So one of my roles, I'm a planning director, and I think about these things. So your main tree project has a level of entitlement already, but as your city attorney alluded to, sometimes just because there's entitlement, you may not have a developer lined up, you may not have an approved site plan tied to. So when that site plan finally comes in, those units let's just say for the sake of argument, the entitlement allows 10,000 units, but when the developer starts putting pen to paper and they start to look at the cost of infrastructure, they lost it caught the traffic impacts and all those other things, you may only build 7,000 units. So I think the distinction that you have at this point is that what we're proposing and what we're analyzing against is really tied to site plans, where that 2032 projection is like the final entitlement, if everything were to get built out absolutely

to

the max. So I think it's very precautionary, and as James alluded to, you're also going to have a census between then. Know, 2031, sometime around summer two thousand thirty one, we'll get new census data. And provided the timing with the elections, I think you'll be in a much better place to understand where those are at. What we have done in other projects is we have done a cursory review for most municipalities, where we just take a look to see, hey, what did the census say based on the districts that are in place? Do they need an alignment? Do they not need an alignment? So there's some other provisions that can happen. And by the way, I definitely appreciate your thought process. There's other things that can happen.

You can look to put the district where Main Street resides on the lower end of the spectrum, to possibly account for future growth, depending on what that level of growth may occur. So I think there's some approaches that the districting committee can take with those things in mind, but without committing to that 2032 projection.

I think that gave enough direction

to kind of move forward. Appreciate it.

Jill, I have a question. Yes. Are we, or is the city stuck to waiting till 1930, till the 'thirty two, till 2032? Does it have to be that five, six year? Or if we see between now and then some miracles happen and interest rates drop and a bunch of those units get built and sold, perhaps waiting until 'thirty two for the new data might be the districts might be secured. So

excellent question. The short answer is that our charter provides for the next redistricting board to convene in 2032. Probably the cleanest way would be to amend the charter, which we do not have a charter review board scheduled to reconvene until roughly around the same time anyhow. And actually, the Charter Review Board's changes from last spring are going on the ballot this November. They haven't even been formally adopted by the voters yet.

That being said, is it possible? It's always possible if it is the will of the commission to reconvene the redistricting board sooner. You know, we can do what is necessary in order to effectuate that. However, it is important to note that the city commission, in giving direction to staff with regards to this redistricting board, this go around in 2026, they did specifically ask that the board take into account Main Street and what had been approved as far as site plan approvals for Main Street because we have every understanding and belief that the developer will, in fact, build everything that they got site plan approval for, which is, as Mr. Stam had pointed out, different than the entitlements.

The entitlements on the property had a larger number than ultimately what was submitted through site plan approval by the developer for Main Street for those blocks that did obtain site plan approval. So we feel like that's a more exact number. But, again, that doesn't necessarily account for changes in the market where maybe ultimately those units don't get built, or if there's some kind of local disaster. Hopefully, is not. I don't wish that on us.

We're, you know, just changing circumstances on the ground. But we feel like it is less speculative to take into account the population that we anticipate for those units that were site plan approved and the expected population to go in there. Again, not taking into account like block two, block 10, Block 16, and I believe there's another block I don't recall the number of it right now for which there is no current site plan, and those are in a little bit of flux. And even though they have some entitlements on them, they could end up being more commercial versus residential. So we're still trying to figure that out, and that would be a little more speculative and something more for the board to decide in 2032.

If I could. So I think the only real substantial thought I had, based on what you presented, which thank you very much for that, was probably similar to what everybody else said. I think we're probably just looking for how can we achieve the most shelf life for the work that we put in. So, off the top of my head, I think I'm going be interested in whatever district the Main Street project ends up being in. We're going to have to put some, I guess it's I don't know if it's assumed what district it'll be in, but whichever district it's in, if we edge it closer to the minus 10% parameter, as we kind of crunch the numbers and form some lines, that would give it the maximum shelf life.

And if we get some data maybe on what we we have data on what we're expecting the population of residents to be in there in 2029, but when it's fully built out. And Terrell kind of said there's some things we don't know that are still in the works, but we might have a better number for what to expect in the year or two following that. But if we start off kind of edging on the negative 10% of the 10% guideline, and with the idea that it would then grow and give us a couple of more years of shelf life on the higher end of 10%, so it starts off a little lower than the rest of the districts, and ends up a little higher than the rest of the districts.

Yes, that's what you're describing is exactly the intent. I would just correct one thing. The difference is 10% overall. So any one district might be 5% below the average, and the other district will be 5% above the average. So, yes, the district that is going to include Main Street so that we can include those units that are going to come online beyond 2029, it'll be at the very low end of the of the 5% deviation.

Well, that's what I was thinking also,

kind of building it a cushion. That's what Craig was saying. Right. Building that little cushion knowing that Main Street is gonna increase.

Correct.

So the deviation is five down, five up, total 10. Correct. Approximately.

Yes. Okay. Yes. Exactly.

Deviations The sum of should try to be under 10%. So there's four districts. Each one will have a plus or a minus deviation from the magic number, and the sum of those deviations should add to less than 10%.

Sure.

That's the goal.

Yeah.

And we'll be showing you information about that and details on all that as we go forward.

Okay. And, of course, we can't draw the lines wherever we want, so there's some other factors, right? But then, yeah, so I would imagine three of the districts will be really tightly grouped numerically, and then there'll be one with more of a pronounced deviation, the Main Street one,

possibly. Certainly certainly, the district that's gonna have Main Street is gonna be on the low end, by design, to build in that buffer buffer room.

One of the questions that I have, okay, was to get some guidance from the board. Okay, we presented our little thinking ahead slide. Can you bring that slide back up, James? Thinking ahead here, okay, the question is, okay, we're going to develop a small number of scenarios. I think a maximum of three, I think, is what we have specified in our work agreement.

One of those scenarios, or alternatives is a word that we use occasionally, okay, could be the East West. Like the tiers that we saw, the five tiers on the map you have in front of you. Okay. We can build four, okay, districts that are tiered, trying to use the main roads as much as possible. East West Roads.

Alternatively, say alternative to, a second option, would be to use Lyons Road, which is currently used in a significant way for dividing some of the districts. We could use Lyons Road as a north South dividing line to separate districts from the East Side of the city from districts on the West Side. And we What we would like to do is to get you to consider those options and any others that come to mind, okay, and discuss them, okay, with us here today, so that we're ready to proceed over the next two weeks before our next meeting.

I have a question from Matt. Has there been any research done as to where developments, if you will, are? For example, I think now Winston Park is split in half because of the North South Lions Township. I don't know, positive or negative, has that research been done to keep all of Winston Park in the district, keep all the township? That might shorten the south end of the city. But do we know where those boundaries are?

So, I mean, the existing districts are going away. So whatever splits exist aren't really relevant to the future. These new districts, we're starting from scratch. And so, you know, when we're working towards that 14818 number, there'll be a couple of different ways that we can come to a solution. But that said, the potential solutions where we can get four districts at that number or close to that number within the plusminus 5% are limited. They are finite.

All right. If I may, am I missing it? Or do we have granular data like population per community, or, you know, what are the effects of, for instance, moving Banyan Trails from one district to another? At some point, we would need granular data, right?

So, what's going to happen is you've hired us as the consultant to go away and look at the data and bring back some options to you. When we present those options, you know, we will be able to have a discussion as to what if we could move this here or that there. But, the intent is not to provide you with a GIS database where

you go in and make your own maps.

So if I could add something to that. What we always try to avoid is what we call districting from the dais. Hey, if I move this person here and move this person here, what's the immediate effect? What's happening in your situation is that you're eliminating a complete district.

So your

numbers, you're experiencing more of a dramatic change than you would normally experience in these types of processes. So I think that's kind of the overall goal. So where James is kind of going with this, how you may have looked at this before, where maybe the changes were a little bit more, a little smaller, a little This is going be a more dramatic change. So this look is going to feel a lot different than maybe previous approaches to the project.

Fair enough. Yeah, my experience in the past has been building the districts. And I'm probably going to put words in your mouth at the risk of doing it, and I don't mean to sound rude, but I hope our involvement is going to be I mean, we did a division problem and said we'd come up with 14,800 per district. I hope our involvement is going to be more than indicating to you whether we want four slices or an H shaped city. Right? And I don't so, again, I don't mean that to sound curt, but It's not you're fine. Because otherwise, we would just say, hey, you could have brought us six or eight options today, and we could vote, and we really don't need a one hundred and twenty day term, right?

So Well, we can expedite this if you like.

Yeah. Well, I want to be involved in our city's governance and our programming, right? So I'm open to the idea. It's news to me that we don't need granular data, but I guess I'll follow your guidance.

So,

we're not going to bring to you three options and then talk done. We're going to bring you three options, then we're going to have a discussion. That's the intent. And so I understand that, you know, it's a bit nebulous to you at this particular moment in time. We're more comfortable with this because we've done this, you know, dozens and dozens of times. But we're not dictating to you an outcome. You are very much going be involved in this process.

And if I could, you know, the purpose of today's meeting was really to give you an overview of how this works and what the consultant's role is. Ultimately, you will have the options presented to you. You will be able to drill down and ask some questions and ask them to move things around if you are uncomfortable with what it is they're presenting, again, keeping in mind that the end goal is to have as much equity as possible within the resulting districts. So this isn't like, Okay, here's your three options, you know, select, and what do you want on your pizza? You want vegetables, meat lovers, or pepperoni.

It's going to be a more detailed conversation. But for purposes of today, it was intended to be somewhat high level with less detail, and we'll drill down a little further in the future meetings. That being said, I failed to mention earlier and I know Kathy Mahaffy had given the presentation on Sunshine Law keeping in mind you all cannot speak to each other about board business between meetings, but you can speak to city staff. You can speak to your commissioner that appointed you. You can speak to anybody else there about board business, you just can't speak to each other.

So if you want to go and meet with your commissioner who appointed you, you want to ask some questions of staff, you need more information, we can provide that to you. So I don't want you to be afraid to ask those questions in between meeting times either.

That's a good point.

I wanted to peel back on something you said, that these districts would be from scratch, which yes, but no. I feel like they're not from scratch, depending on who you talk to in the city as a resident or employee. So is there a way to, I guess, instead of this cardinal direction, vertical or horizontal, is there a way to stay near the current districts but get to four? Is that another is there an algorithm for that?

I don't know about an algorithm. I mean The geography is the geography, okay? So and when we worked to build these four districts, there's going be significant overlap with the existing districts. But we've still, in putting the blocks together, we've still got to come up to that 14,000 number, 14,800 number. I think

I guess if we could see when we come up with the districts, if we could see how much in the new, in the four new districts, came from prior districts Certainly. Would be at least Absolutely. Not visually, at least numerically a good comparison.

We could do it visually. There's nothing, know, maps are weapons of mass communication.

Weapons of mass communication.

I wonder, do we have population data for the current districts? I'm sure we

do. Just Yes. Don't

That's in your report.

It is in here. Okay. So we do have the way those are broken down.

That's on that's on your first chart, table one.

No. No. This is for that's the regions. Because I I noticed that the current districts obviously seem to be broken up by Lyon's Road, right, for the most part.

It's the projection that has the different slice.

Right. It's the regions. When we get down to population change by region, we break it down the other way. But that's what I was looking for. Right? What we currently have in Oakland. So I wanted to see the current district populations. Thank you. You're welcome. It's on this page.

One thing I'll point out, when you look at the current districts compared to the 2029 projection, you can see that the largest and smallest, number one, the deviation grows, but number two, a different district rises to the top, and that gap grows. And obviously, that's one of the challenges that the committee is going face, you start to look through the options that come to you. And by the way, please don't misconstrue what I was saying before, when we're looking at this data, we're looking at a block. A block could be seven houses, it could be multiple houses, it could be an entire apartment building, it could be split between an apartment building. So while it may feel like an effective exercise in your mind that, oh, if I put this block here, and this block here, and this block here, you could really get into a situation where, like you were alluding to before, we end up splitting a neighborhood 15 different ways, just inadvertently.

So as we present these options to you, things like neighborhoods will still be in the back of our minds. Things like major roads and waterways are still going be in our minds. But looking at the criteria that we gave the committee, if you're using that as your guidance to help build the questions that you need answers, I think it'll help direct you. The big change, though, is going from that five to four, moving those 3,000 plus or minus people, we're going have to take another pretty big piece of geography. And in some situations, it may be a whole condo, but in other situations, may be multiple single family neighborhoods to achieve some of those changes. So, I think that's really where this is kind of a bigger leap of faith that you may have been used to in previous efforts, that's all.

That's understood and fair. Block is far too granular. Neighborhoods with 1,800 people that live in them, I don't feel is too granular. Right. So, in my previous experiences, it's been, do we move this neighborhood over there? Do we move it down here? We don't want to split it in the middle, right? Because there's some guidelines and parameters that we want to follow. But, yeah, blocks, too granular.

I might be able to help with that a little bit. I'm actually a property manager, and I do a lot in Coconut Creek. So I'll be able to help you guys, like, with how many homes are in Winston Park Foundation, how many are in Banyan Trails. I know a lot of that data that I know you were asking for. So we try not to break up a lot of these communities.

I don't know if you have or have not. I think it might help all of us in deciding, ultimately, if we could see the I don't know what all the big ones are. We have Winston Park. We have Winmore. We have the township. What those populations and where those lines are on here to maybe or maybe not split up a neighborhood?

MR. Yeah. Again, our goal is to absolutely not split up neighborhoods to the greatest extent that we can possibly manage it. We don't want to be splitting neighborhoods. We want to be following those major roads. We want to be following those canals to the extent that's possible. But, yeah, when we get into this redistricting process, we'll I assure you, there's nothing opaque about this process. If you need some data, we can provide it.

I'd like to see that, because it is I

might be able to help with that too,

is, see what so I can get for can see the overlay on this, or however you want to do it, of how that breaks up. Thanks.

Thank you. I was just going to tell Ms. Drebich. She was offering to get some data. If you could just submit the data to me as the board liaison, and we can distribute it to everybody, rather than have you reach out to the board in between meetings. Because then, even though there's not a back and forth, it kind of can invite the back and forth, which then could be a sunshine issue. So if you could give it to me, that'd be great. You.

We also need the boundaries.

Just let go.

Yeah, along

with the data, I mean, the neighborhood data in terms of population, those boundaries are important as well. Yeah, overlaid somehow on this.

Most of this sounds like a math problem. What are the non math problems here? What else do we need to consider?

Well, it's a geography problem. It's a geography and a math problem. So, if it was just a math problem, it would be a lot easier. When you actually get into the mapping process, it becomes much more challenging than you might think at first glance because every move you make has a knock on effect. So if you can think of the city as a container that you might buy at Home Depot and each district is being four balloons that fill that container.

If you squeeze down one balloon, the other balloons have to expand to to fill in the missing space, to fill in the void. So as you shrink the population of one district, the other districts are expanding. So that becomes the challenge. It's always a give and take.

Does city staff have any opinion on this? Is there any other considerations?

Well, there's legal considerations as it relates to you can't purposefully single out certain voting blocs and that kind of a thing. And there's more information about

JULIE can't gerrymander.

Yeah, there you go. There's more information about that in the consultant's report. But beyond that, and that's part of why, you know, in the past and customarily, you try to follow natural and man made borders that make sense without splitting neighborhoods as much as you possibly can. And while you can't necessarily favor, the location of a particular sitting commissioner in deciding on the district, again, you can try to just keep a neighborhood together without having to split up the neighborhood to the extent that's possible. Thank you for putting that back I

was going to say this is new since the last time you've districted.

Correct. So what he's referencing is Section 166.0321 is a new statute that became effective in July 2023, since the last time we redistricted in 2018. And that provides some additional parameters as to the requirements for redistricting and what we cannot do. Again, we can't redistrict two seventy days or fewer before the next election. Luckily, our next election is until 2029, so we're Okay.

We can't draw the districts with the intent to favor or disfavor a particular candidate or member of the governing body or an incumbent member of the governing body based on their existing residential address. Aside from that, as previously mentioned, the point is just to try to keep the districts as equitable as possible based on population size, and really to the extent that we can, to keep them equitable as well as it relates to the makeup of those districts, if we can. And that way, they're equal in all ways. But beyond that, staff doesn't really have an opinion. This is something that is specifically a policy level decision to be decided by the board, unlike the Charter Review Board, where we had commissioners come in and give their opinions, and you got to hear from staff, some of the directors, as to different provisions that they thought would be helpful to keep or to change.

There will be no such presentation here involving staff or city commissioners, because this really is both a math and a geography problem while staying within the confines of the law. And for that reason, you have fewer meetings than you did for the redistricting board. And the amount of time is I'm sorry, for the Charter Review Board, the amount of time is about the same, one hundred and twenty days. But we are anticipating fewer meetings unless you all want to meet more frequently and discuss it further. I believe initially, I think we had said about four or five meetings. Four total?

This plus three.

Yeah, this plus three. I was going to go over those in just a minute, but I'll do that once you're done asking questions, unless you're ready to discuss that now.

Terrell, you just said something about trying to keep the makeup similar. Well, the makeup from Windmoor to the makeup of Winston Park would be two totally different makeups, if you will. But yet, on the other side, we're saying we're trying to keep subdivisions or areas together.

And that's to the extent possible. I mean, are some things beyond our control. Wynmore, as we know, is a senior community. We don't have a lot of those in the city, and so therefore, it's difficult to match that in each of the other districts. But that's where it may be helpful to and in the past, they've included Centura Park in that district to try to have single family homes and basically add to it a population of different ages. And so those are things that you can keep in mind going forward.

Think another board member mentioned the voting capacity versus residents. Does the voting make up matter?

No. This is about this is a question of representation. So, babies deserve representatives too. It's not a question of whether you can vote or not. Babies can't vote, but they still need representation in case they get cancer, God forbid, or any other emergency happens to them.

If I might add, what I've heard so far from the committee is that you'd like to see, not necessarily really small data, but you'd really like to understand population by neighborhood, if possible, where possible, and what that looks like today. And you'd like to see some sort of overlay on the existing map, or existing district map, with those neighborhoods in mind. And again, I just want to make sure that when we come back, we're bringing what the committee needs to help advance the project. Obviously, we do have one hundred and twenty days. But is there anything else that you believe that you would need to help keep moving this through?

You know your community, and you've obviously You've been put here for a reason because of that knowledge, but we want to make sure you have the tools to take the next steps. Is there anything else?

No, think if I can get this to work, there we go. From my standpoint, yeah, think that that's what we're all saying. We'd like to see some of that population data in terms of the neighborhoods, in

terms of the communities, because that helps, especially if we want to keep

them as uniform as possible, let's put it that way. I think that's critical, at least in my mind.

I think that's it for me. The only other question I have at this moment is, towards the end of the book is the demographic data, is that just there as an informative, or are we trying to thread some kind of needle there with distribution of?

No. No. Not at all. It's in the appendix because we thought you'd be interested in the demographic detail. You know, we stated that one of our redistricting criteria is adherence to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So we cannot arbitrarily dilute our minority population. So we do need to be aware of race and ethnicity when we engage in the redistricting process. However, in our experience, we often start the exercise from a 30,000 foot kind of view, and we just start, you know, we're blind to the race, we're blind to the ethnicity, we just work on the math. And then after that, we make sure that we, you know, we're not doing anything that's going to violate the the voting rights act of 1965. So, yes, the demographics are there for your review.

As we go forward, we will continue to provide you the the updates of those demographics on the new districts in relation to the 2020 data because we don't have demographics beyond 2020. So you'll be fully aware of exactly what the new districts what the impact is to the racial and ethnic makeup in those new districts.

We typically don't provide projections on race and ethnicity. So we use that 2020 baseline along the way. It's easy for the population because we have units, but it's much more complicated when you try to do that on the race and ethnicity. So you'll stick that to the 2020.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'd prefer to ignore, at least at this point, altogether. And I suppose there's some argument to be made at the end that if it looks like something you did unintentionally has negative consequences, that you then move it around a little bit.

Yeah, I don't your instinct's right, but we can't ignore it altogether. We have to be cognizant of it, but I don't believe it's going to

be an issue. MR. There's terms when you're looking at redistricting, you know, where you it's called packing or diluting, right? So you have two options. You could pack somebody in one district, or you could dilute their vote.

So realistically, you try just not to do it arbitrarily. So again, you have to keep it in the back of your mind, but realistically, at this level, as you've already alluded to, we really try to look at neighborhoods and we try to just look at the major roadways and boundaries. We've dealt with it. I personally worked on a districting project for Palm Beach County, and it was the entire county. The 95 Corridor obviously had a minority district, for lack of a better term, and in options you could not purposely either dilute or expand.

Now, as laws have changed over time, we look at these a little bit differently. It's much different when you're looking at a county, maybe from a city, especially when you look at your demographics right now, you can see your city is relatively balanced across all the districts in terms of one group or another group.

Do you have any other questions?

I don't. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. At this point in time, I believe we are ready to proceed with the election of chair and vice chair. Now that you've had a chance to sit with each other on the board for all of an hour, I think you know each other well enough you're ready to make that decision. So we're looking for nominations for the position of board chairperson first.

Oh, if you could speak into the microphone. Thank you.

Do I say I motion? I move. I move to nominate Alex for the board chair.

I'll second that. JULIE Any other nominations? If none, then Alex, congratulations. You're board chair. Yes. And you get this. This is the script.

You

can ask for nominations for the vice chair if you like on the second page. Number nine.

Okay, nominations are now in order for the position of vice chairperson. Are there yeah, that's it. Any nominations?

I move to nominate Craig for the Vice

Chair. Second.

Are there further nominations for Vice Chairperson? If not, nominations are closed. Congrats, Craig, Bravo, Anna, Vice Chairperson.

Congratulations.

Okay. All

right, so we'll move on to the next agenda item, number 10. Is that correct?

Yes.

Establishment of a meeting schedule, Tuesday, May 5, at four p. M.

Is that enough time? Will the consultants be coming back at that meeting, or is that just us, or?

The consultants are scheduled to attend each of the next three meetings.

So is that enough time?

Do you believe that May 5 is Two weeks? Yes.

Two weeks?

Yeah, that's

No, two weeks is fine.

Next

date is May 19 at 4PM.

I'll just say that I would have to leave by 05:45.

Yeah, Tuesday, May 5, Cinco de Mayo.

And forgive me, Board Member Smith, you would have to leave early which date? The ninth I'm sorry, the fifth or the nineteenth?

The fifth.

Okay, thank you.

And the fourth date is June 2 at four p. M.

Do those states work with the board generally? Yes.

Okay. And

with our consultants? Thank you. So do we have a consensus to move forward with those three dates?

Yes, consensus.

Okay. As proposed, we would be finishing early. However, that's good, because if we need additional time, we can always schedule another meeting if we need to. All right. So we have consensus to move forward on that. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN Moving on to the next agenda item, adjournment.

If I may, before you do that, I would like to just give you my business card, and Kathy Mahaffy will give you hers as well to make sure that if you have any questions, you can reach out to us.

Before we actually even get to a German, I have one more question. Are you guys using AI?

Why

not?

Because we think we're intelligent enough to do it without the benefit of computer thinking for us.

Okay. Just curious.

You wanted us to use AI?

No. But I might share something to Citi staff that is pretty interesting, so we'll see.

Yeah. I mean, I think we were hired to do the job. You know, you didn't hire a machine to do the job. Yeah.

No. If you guys use the machines, you know, by all means, go for it.

Well, we're using computers, but but we're not using artificial intelligence.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, on to a German

And I just wanted to mention if you my direct line, I don't believe, is on my card, so I wanted to give that to you. Are you ready? 954. Sorry. 9549561598. That may be the easiest way to reach me, or you can send me an email, which is there on the card. You can also reach me on my cell if you need to, (954) 557-6363. I'm like, wait a minute. What is my number?

57.

557-6363. I don't call myself often enough. I'm sorry.

The direct was 956-1598.

Yes. Correct. And just by way of introduction, I just wanted to introduce. We also have, Cassie Harvey, who's an assistant city attorney in my office, and Laura Vargas Gallardo, an assistant city attorney in my office, and they may help us with gathering data or information, and they're available as well if you have questions. Thank you.

I'm sorry. I'm still confused on the dates. We say May 5, May 19, and June 2?

Correct.

Correct.

Those are all Tuesdays at four p. M.

That's four to six basically. DUMOULIN:

Correct.

CHRISTINE Correct.

Agenda item 11. If there are no further comments, I'll take a motion and second to adjourn this meeting.