Worksession re AO 2025 119, amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 2 to adjust community council...

Good morning everybody. Um, today is November 7th, 2025. We're here for a work session on AO 2025-119, ordinance amending Anchorage Municipal Code Title 2, Sections 2.40.035, retention of community councils; 2.40.040, staff for community councils; and 2.40.090, community council maps or chair of container review. An adjustment of community council district boundaries. We're on the schedule from 8:50 to 9:50.

The first thing I will do is apologize to everybody for this early meeting. It just was impossible for us to schedule later because of the budget work that we have to finish today midday. So, um, thank you all who have made it and who will tune in over the rest of this time. Let's go ahead and start with the motions. Cameron Brozier.

Jared Kirker. Scott Myers. Anna Broley. Christopher Marston. Piero Silvers.

On the phone we have Erin Baldwin-Day. Miss Baldwin-Day?

I'm here. All right, so, um, with that then, we'll hand the ball off to Mr. Davis. Tom Davis here for the board. Thank you, Tom Davis, Senior Planner, Planning Department. And I'll just start out by giving a brief intro to myself and several other folks who participated in this process over here.

Secondly, I wanted to just give a brief overview of the three phases of this public process and quickly go over the criteria and then quickly check and make sure that the packet is readable to you and some key items in the packet. First of all, we had a boundary advisory committee that the Federation and the Planning Department formed that went through this process. And I don't know if Melinda Gant, who's the chair, is able to make it yet, but ex officio member of that committee, Darrell Best, is here. He can also speak to the community council.

Process. The, uh, the list of the committee members, uh, is on page 3— 43 of Exhibit D1 in your packet.

They were a key part of the first phase of the public process, which kicked off with a questionnaire survey that was received by about 10,000 people. I received about 420 responses plus additional emails and other comments. And those public comments that came from community councils, members of the public, established 40 boundary study areas as part of this project. So for this round, this, uh, the semi-annual review of the community council boundaries, that we based it on feedback from the public, those new community councils regarding boundary issues that they had. The Federation helped the Planning Department form the Boundary Advisory Committee, and it's a geographically representative committee of community council active members and leaders from Chugachco River, from around Bull, Turney Arm, and with that committee we walked through each of those almost 40 boundary study areas The committee ran its meetings like a commission, open meetings, and so any council members, members of the public were invited to comment and provide, provide advice and information.

There were 6 meetings of that committee. We then— the next phase began. The second phase was to bring the community council boundaries to the Planning and Zoning Commission as a public hearing draft, recommendations of the Planning Department and Boundary Advisory Committee. We had informally engaged with the community council officers, so all community councils affected by any boundary proposal or public comment, we had been in and engaged with those officers, with those presidents. And it was at this phase that we requested each community council that was subject to any boundary study area to provide the community council's recommendations, its position as to its boundaries, in a form of a written resolution adopted by its membership.

And in fact, 27 community councils provided resolutions as to their boundaries, uh, and a few more community councils provided comments from their officers. The community council comments up to the Planning and Zoning Commission and the resolutions. Those are available in Exhibit D2, basically Exhibit D, Part 2 of Exhibit D, and those are available on pages 25 through 110. In that Phase 2 process, several more community council boundary study areas came forward. So a boundary study area that we, we found just means that the area, it arose from public comments and that we are going to evaluate it.

So we evaluated each boundary study area. So we evaluated about 40 boundary study areas in the first phase, and then during the public hearing process, an additional 5 boundary study emerged based on public comments. Public comments from Basher, public comments from Glenhouse, public comments from North Star, And, uh, so, uh, so all of those, uh, are available in Exhibit D. And then Exhibit E, we received a few more comments from community councils after the Planning and Zoning Commission process, and that's why that's separated out.

The evaluation criteria are set in, um, the Municipal Code, uh, Section 2.4.0.040.

And those are that the community councils shall reflect natural communities and to recognize community desires as the boundaries. Now, with respect to natural communities, the code defines that as being community areas divided one from another by physical or traffic barriers. So we looked for strong, simple boundaries between neighborhoods that would be easy for the public, for members of those community councils, to easily understand their boundaries. You know, yes, I'm in this area. Secondly, areas having a common interest.

And third, natural communities being areas that are achieving or have a common identity. With respect to community desires, Community councils are not municipal government agencies. They are independent nonprofit organizations, and while the municipality recognizes them, they are from the grassroots. And so we do take, take comments from community council general membership seriously, and that criteria was important. To us.

We also use the questionnaires and other means, and we can go over those criteria. And then lastly, just going through the packet, I think Exhibits A— Exhibit A are the maps that are recommended, the new community council boundary maps. In most cases. Those are the exact same boundaries as the old maps. We just had to overhaul the maps.

They were 22 years old and they were in old software and whatnot. So we had to overhaul the maps. It's a new set of maps. Secondly, Exhibit A, those maps, those are legal boundary descriptions, and so you can use those. There's some interpretation guidance in the code.

I'm not sure what those— those maps are designed so that you know exactly where that property is, you know, where it falls exactly. Um, Exhibit B is a community council resolution. Um, skipping Exhibit C for a moment, Exhibit D is all the planning zoning commission packet materials, all the background materials, the questionnaire survey results, uh, the boundary study area, uh, that we presented. And as well as all the minutes from the Boundary Advisory Committee. And anyone who wants to nerd out on the community council's process and learn a lot about how the community council's debated and decided on these issues, the 5 sets of minutes from those meetings is very informative.

It's a learning process for everyone.

Exhibit C is for the assembly, and what we did in Exhibit C was to summarize the 12 community— excuse me, the 12 boundary study areas where a recommended.

Has come to you to change community council boundaries. So Exhibit C is— well, it's just the third exhibit. It's, uh, it's after Exhibit B. Is there a page number? There are page numbers in our packet.

Okay.

Oh gosh, it comes right after the Community Council resolution, right after the AM and the Community Council resolution. I started— sorry, the Planning Zone Commission resolution. Um, sorry about that. So it's just Exhibit C and it's, it's about 19, 20, about 25 pages long itself. In any case, uh, Exhibit C. I really— I guess, yeah, it comes after page 3 of the 606 resolution, which is Exhibit B. I see Appendix B.

We're not talking about Appendix, we're talking about Exhibit.

—And can't track it until we have some way to know where it is. I got to go to D. Where is that? No page number. How many pages are there? Oh, each exhibit set has their own set of numbers.

Sure. Okay. So near the beginning, um, There's also, if folks go back into the prior— this is a little harder to dig for— but the prior meeting, it does have the 8 different pieces of the packet broken up into separate PDFs. It just takes a few more steps to go back and download those. But that's not as much information.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] It's 20 sheets in.

Looks like this. So while you're looking for it, I'll just quickly overview it and finish. So basically, Exhibit C, it's in two parts, and the main part is summarizing the recommendations and the, um, The rationale and references to other resources in the packet for each of those 12 boundary study areas where a recommendation has been made to change the community council boundary. So those are the 12 areas where there's a recommendation to change. There are— it also, after those 12, it covers 5 community council boundary study areas where there's no recommendation for change, but those boundary study areas garnered a fair amount of public discussion and in some cases disagreements.

Those 5 include a study area northeast that was considered for shifting, uh, transferring to Scenic Foothills. They include a, um, Belle Haven Park which was considered for transferring from South Addition to, um, Northstar. Similar case for the Ship Creek boat launch facility. And two others.

So Exhibit C, once you find it, is a great resource for you to hone in on those.

I, I don't think to walk you through each and every one of those, but I can certainly quickly name them if you wish. But I prefer to refer to— save time for questions and answers.

Thank you. So, can you please substitute for questions? Okay, we'll start. Thanks. Yeah, I do have a couple specific, but we can dive into those after this.

2 Broad questions. One is, you know, you talked about kind of the decisions about natural communities, and I guess the main observation I've seen through this process is geography is more sticky than the people. You know, so we're not doing redistricting like we do with elections so that there's equal representation, but it seems like a lot of the disputes end up being where, you know, one council is bigger than the other, or neighborhoods get built over time, and like you said, these maps are 20 years old, or maybe just the physical maps are. But just wondering how population, or how balancing population has ever been considered, or because it's not a formal criteria, why it wasn't included.

Sure, so population was one of the criteria we looked at. And we looked at it in cases where the— that we got public comments or comments from community councils or other evidence that in fact community council boundary study area could affect the community council's sustainability to, you know, fill officer positions, make quorum, and be representative. And So, uh, you might write this down. Exhibit D3, uh, what the staff and Boundary Advisory Committee did in Exhibit D3 on pages 9 through 11 of our white paper report is that we took those basic broad boundary criteria that we just talked about And we elaborated on them and into 7 boundary review criteria. One of the key boundary review criteria that we, we wanted to hit on was the idea of active representation.

So that each member of the community, each property owner, each business, they have an active community council that represents them, where they can participate in. And that, that's key. So that's fundamental. Then we go through the other criteria which I've named. Uh, we also had secondary factors, and, uh, in that, uh, on page 11 in D3— and I think I'm referring to the page numbers of the actual report— um, We talk about population, and, and we're not trying to equalize population between community councils, but we do talk about it in two ways.

One, if a community council appears to be so large that it's covering a lot of neighborhoods that are disparate, that don't relate to each other, some feel left out, that is a concern. Secondly, obviously, if community council population seems to be getting away, that you may not function at all. That's also a concern. So for about a third or maybe even up to half of the community councils in that white paper, we did take the time to determine what the population was, and we reported that to Boundary Committee, and we looked at those numbers. And they're in the report, they're not in Exhibit C. We do have forthcoming a— it would be— we'll submit it as an AIM, just a nice list of population by community council.

We're working on getting that from the census. We'll be able to get that. What we find is that community councils, neighborhoods, community councils are different sizes, and that's okay. The community council has few members, it's very active, it's, it's okay. So Sand Lake, Abbott Loop, they have very large populations.

I don't know what the population is, we'll find out, but I bet it's closing on Northeast. And so we get a lot of comments about Northeast being too big, but geographically is much smaller than Sand Lake. Abbott Loop, similar size, and but no one's talking about those community councils. So what may be happening in Northeast may be, uh, have to do with natural communities or the other criteria, not boundaries. Maybe the problem is the functioning of that community council.

Population is a factor, but we did look at population, but we did primarily use natural communities. We weren't ignoring it.

I would note that Erin Holiday just joined in the room, and I would note that Erin Holiday just informed us in the room that we just have some adjustments going on there. Public. Okay, thanks. Dean Adriano. Yes, if I may.

Um, thank you again, Mr. Davis. He's done an excellent job here, and all the criteria that he's described drives to recovery our section 244E, Section of the Indian Constitution, it has those— says natural communities are the finest organs, etc., etc. The last sentence, you will know, other populations consideration. The last sentence says population is not quite so urgent. So he's exactly right in how you look at it.

Population is so relevant, but it's not quite so urgent as others. And how would you define population in Um, well, I don't think the code has a definition for population here, but it's a neighborhood context, your definition of population. Would you consider it just the mere number, or would you consider demographics, or what would you consider as population?

Um, I think number only. Okay, thank you. I wouldn't— I might have a problem.

Again, natural communities might get into that demographics piece relative to the question of population. Ms. Summers.

Hi. Okay, so, um, I am looking at the public comments from Northeast Community Council. 14 People said it was too large, 3 people said it was right-sized. I'm going to read some of the comments, so bear with me. Should be broken into 2 councils.

NECC should be split to create two smaller councils. Next one: It has become too disjointed and spread out. Next one: Has effectively left out people who live in my area of town. Next one: It feels like there's a natural separation from the Glen Highway to Devar and then Devar to Northern Lights. Next one: Residents have been arguing about splitting NECC for years and the board blocked an effort to create a new council.

Next one. The boundaries need to be more closely aligned with the assembly districts. If you don't know, the assembly district cuts across on DeVar up to Turpin. And so south of DeVar is one assembly district, and most of north of DeVar is another assembly district. Um, next one.

Uh, you know, I probably actually don't need to read any more of these, but they continue on in that vein. There was a real effort to align with these comments as well as the comments by Scenic Foothills, which is to the south, saying that they were too small and they did not have population numbers to really be sustainable with getting new board members and things like that, and they actually passed a resolution.

At some point in the process, a couple people from Northeast Community Council decided that they didn't like the idea of splitting the council, and they kind of got some other members involved, and I think they ended up passing a resolution. That was kind of after all these public comments went through and after the real effort was put in to try to get better representation, community health representation, for the people in that area between Northern Lights and Barr. Anyhow, that was snuffed out, and now you shifted and decided to grab a whole chunk of population from University Community Council. And so this process is really It's just really left me dumbfounded, um, as to what the criteria was when the public comment clearly wanted that area. Um, and I know you said that population is not a criterion, um, but what is a criterion is adequate representation.

And when population is a piece of adequate representation, then you have to take that into consideration. And so I think this whole process, I'm just, I'm not really supportive of the methodology. I'm not really supportive of the results. I think it's flawed. Oh, sure, if you want to come up.

I know Mr. Martinez just joined from the phone about 9:15.

To make sure he does know what capacity you're speaking in. So I, I was at— I attended all the meetings of the Boundary Advisory Committee. I was asked to be an ex officio member because I've had a lot of— I've worked with community councils a lot over the years, and my advice to the committee when this issue came up with— came up was It's putting the cart before the horse. If you read the code, a group of people have to hold public meetings, they have to draft bylaws, and then they petition the assembly to form a community council. So Northeast Community Council can't prevent anybody from doing that.

So my advice was to potentially put a comment in the recommendations encouraging the assembly to seriously consider forming— breaking up the community council if a group of people came to the assembly, followed the required process in the code, and petitioned to be recognized. So for— should the assembly be breaking up that, that council area, establishing a new council boundary before somebody petitions? That was, that was the problem. I'll let you address Ms. Wilson myself. I'm going to hop in too.

I mean, I guess the problem that I'm not actually talking here is about them creating another community council, but the fact that that council, that community council was left as is. It was left with 30,000 members, and instead of taking the population, we had the other council that was too small And instead of taking the population from the council that wanted and that pointed to the natural boundaries of Debar, and instead of taking that population from there, you went to University Community Council instead. Okay, so I'm gonna pop in there and just a suggestion or a thought on this, that Daryl's right, we don't create community councils, but that seems a bit like a red herring. If the question is what are the natural boundaries, the comments coming in were it's disjointed, it's spread out, or you could even argue it's overrepresented by, uh, Assembly members, legislators broadly. There are a number of ways you could get to the question of merit that you're raising without even using the word population, because we've heard from Council population is not a criteria.

Right, no, I get that, but the public comment talked about disjointed and spread out public comment, talked about natural boundaries. What was the rationale there? Why didn't you kind of dive into that part instead of the question of population adding a new council, which again seems like a red herring? And for us, the, uh, Planning Department and the, um, the Boundary Advisory Committee recommended that if a group does come forward to form community council, that that boundary be on the bar and then split northeast into two along the bar because the bar is boundary. You mentioned that it breaks up assembly districts.

It also happens to be boundary that breaks up elementary school attendance areas. It would be a good boundary.

So the, the general recommendation is to retain existing boundaries at the time a group comes forward wanting to form another community council, that the assembly support that. It was difficult for us to recommend breaking up the community council district now because we didn't have a group that was— we didn't have community council to operate it. That was our— that's very confusing. Just a question, did you have that in writing somewhere where you suggested that a community council, if it emerged at that boundary— Yeah, that's in, uh, the white paper recommendations. It's on page 70 of Exhibit D. Excuse me, 70 and 71.

Um, and that the northeast issues, uh, in detail on pages 69, 70, halfway through 71. And so the D— well, that's why it's in writing somewhere. That's going to be helpful for our process. Yeah, I mean, I guess what we're talking about here isn't creating a new community council. What we're talking about is recommendations for redrawing the borders.

Sure. Okay. And instead of making the recommendation to redraw the border, the bar south and.

And put that area into Scenic Foothills, which I think would have solved the issues that were raised by both Northeast Community Council and Scenic Foothills Community Council. Instead of doing that, you recommended that it stayed at 30,000 people, and then you took membership from University Community Council, moving them from 10,000 people to 7,000 people. Yeah, uh, just to plenty of information regarding the boundary study area between University Area and scenic foothills. Just as an aside there, that boundary study area was, um, the second most popular talked about questionnaire survey response. So I'm going to ask that part until we come back around.

Okay, so we're just going to ask that question when she's back in the queue. I'll just in a sentence say that boundary study area shifting between University and scenic foothills was his own issue. It was not instead of, and it would be recommended regardless of whether Parks Northeast were to be sliced off. So I would note that Mr. Monroe just joined us.

And, uh, next in the queue— was it on this topic, Ms. Baldridge? Um, related. Because I have a queue. If it was related to that, then I would say jump the queue, but if not, we should probably move through the queue. Go ahead.

Okay, Mr. President, you can pass me. I was called a bitch.

Good morning. Yeah, good morning. Thank you for being here. So I think, I think I'm unclear as to what the purpose of this process is, if not to do some of this puzzle piecing work. So University Area Community Council falls into my district.

Also with Silver's district. So this is an area of shared concern for us, and, you know, Clinton Hills is immediately adjacent. And I think my concern, you know, Mayor Silver, is if this is not the appropriate opportunity to create equity and parity among the 8 councils, that it becomes very difficult for the Assembly to encourage individual groups of citizens to self-organize in a different fashion using a different process. So that they are better represented in the community. And I think I'm struggling with that because this feels like the natural process by which something like that could happen.

Seeing that Foothills getting more people from the neighborhood that's immediately adjacent, university area, perhaps retaining people who have been a part of their community council for upwards of a decade or more. And so I think I would like to understand whether or not the Boundary Advisory Committee had other recommendations for parameters that ought to be considered, or things that ought to be put in place in code in the future, so that the next time we go through this process in 10 years, we aren't stuck in the same sort of limbo situation where changes are very minimal and they don't contemplate things like community council participation or population within boundary area. Because to me, in terms of like actual participation in the most local form of government we have, those are Those are essential questions, and I don't think those should be left out just because they're not explicitly named or they weren't contemplated when these parameters were written. So did the committee have any suggestions to that end? Were there any internal discussions about how this process ought to be different in the future?

And do you have any other reflections on those? Sure. Um, and first of all, about this process, you described a Phase 1 and Phase 2. And, uh, for better or worse for you, the assembly is phase 3, so the process is still going on and there is still the opportunity for the assembly to discuss the concerns about Northeast, U-Med, and Tutor Area and scenic foothills with the community councils and staff and determine if we took those issues far enough. So it's still, still the process, and it's fine for the 70 localities.

Secondly, the Boundary Advisory Committee did discuss several, several criteria and asked about several criteria— or excuse me, not criteria, but factors that that several members thought should be considered. We discussed population, but the other was legislative districts. Can community councils align with legislative districts, assembly districts, and legislature districts? Can they align with service districts, school district, you know, penitentiary boundaries? And, um, in the, um, that white paper deep in your packet, uh, when, when I described the criteria that we, uh, elaborated on, on pages 9 through 11 in the white paper, Exhibit D3, and I can email that out afterwards, that one of— we, we did we did identify districts as a factor.

And then secondly, uh, the Boundary Advisory Committee on— okay, the Boundary Advisory Committee had a discussion in its last meeting regarding legislative districts. And they, they talked about should people have small legislative districts. And so they were a consideration. The committee discussed this on page 174 of Exhibit D. And they noted, you know, with regard to assembly districts, there are 6 districts that are legislative district met districts. We studied them and we found that they do not match neighborhood boundaries in a lot of cases.

They frequently run through the middle of what we think of as neighborhoods, right through the core of, of Spinnard, right through the core of Arapahoe Heights. Legislative boundaries, well, they have their own criteria. They're not neighborhood-oriented, and they also change more often than neighborhoods. So for the community councils to be able to stay focused and allow the neighborhood members to participate in their neighborhood matters, um, community council districts are just different from electoral districts. But all things being equal or close We did look into it.

We looked into it, for example, in case the University Area Community Council assembly district boundary, it goes through University Area and it slices down Pine Street, uh, right through the middle of a core neighborhood of University Area. So it didn't seem appropriate to just break the neighborhood that way. Um, and a similar case with Airborne Heights and Spanard. So that's, that's the one other factor that, uh, that they discussed that you can find in their minutes. And their minutes did document all of their discussions, and they adopted their minutes.

I think that's a bit of a stretch to suggest from this dais, in your professional position, that their minutes captured all of their conversations. That's— I wrote that, I think. Yeah, I don't know, maybe all of the conversations that were in the moment of the formal conversation. I think those community councils have a lot of different conversations. Oh, I'm sorry, it was captured that the minutes of the Boundary Advisory Committee.

Okay, sorry about that. I have a brief question on that. How was the Boundary Advisory Committee formed?

Uh, Planning Department had a request for representatives, geographically representative members, so we reached out to, by basically sub-area of the, of the municipality. So we look for members from, uh, Torreon Arms, we look for members from Chugach River, and then Northeast sub-area, Northwest sub-area. When I think of Northeast sub-area, it's more of the Northeast Community Council, that's the Northeast part of the bowl. Northwest, the downtown area and Midtown, and then the Southwest, Sand Lake Ocean View, Altsur, Ocean View area. Clarifying question, is there a place within the document that identifies who?

Yes, the Boundary Advisory Committee, they're identified by Melinda Gantt in her letter to the Planning and Zoning Commission, and that's in page 43 of Exhibit D-1. Uh, and you have all 12 members there. It identifies who they are, what area they represent. Several members are at-large members, and of course Darryl's an ex-official member.

And that was Attachment D-1.

1 Or Appendix B1? Uh, exhibit. I'm just trying to refer just to exhibits here. There's a lot of attachments and appendices related to the Planning Zone Commission process. I have, um, were you satisfied with all of the I'll—.

For now. And I would just offer that simply, there's no universe in which we can create equity and parity, but we certainly can work toward it. It's a philosophical theory, most broadly. Thanks. I have another general question, and I know there's probably a lot of other questions, so maybe we can answer just a brief answer.

I just want a rationale for— this was raised by Trinity Community Council, but I see it along multiple Coastal councils, what is the rationale for— it looks like switching from the low tide line to a high tide line. So the concern raised was that that would not allow the council to basically be involved or make comments on something happening in those areas. I don't know if that's— I imagine councils can take positions on anything, but just curious kind of why the coastline decision was made and what the significance of that is. Sure, so the coastline boundary is currently mean low water versus mean low tide. The recommendation is to shift that to mean high tide, basically what we think of as the shoreline.

And the community council is— their concern, we looked into it, we investigated with the DNR. First of all, why are we proposing that in the first place. We don't know where Mean Low is. It's not a feature. It's in the waters of the inlet.

It's areas of the inlet that for most of the day, or the majority of the day, are part underwater. And it's the mudflats. The maps that we have that show those boundaries are inaccurate there. Some cases that are really fanciful, not fact. And so we think somebody at NOAA may know, but the DNR doesn't know.

The Public Works GIS, Municipal Survey, refused to give us a map of it because they can't say that it's accurate. We believe that it extends out miles into the inlet. So that each day the size of San Jose Community Council expands by about 3 times and then it shrinks back in by the time, uh, but, uh, we, we, uh, uh, we agreed with the concern of the, uh, that would this, uh, would this affect Community Council's ability to, uh, participate in decisions of our projects out in the mudflats. So the DNR is the regulatory body that approves all leases, developments, and activities in the tidal areas up to about 3 miles, and it comes back. And the way they engage with the public about those kinds of things is through the state's online public notice system.

And so members of the public must monitor that system. The municipality must monitor that system. The, the DNR does not mail out notices to community councils. So regardless of the clean councils extending out into the mudflats, they're not going to receive notice and their public comment participation opportunities are going to stop at that state park. Is wilderness.

With regard to a lot of the areas of concern in the coastlands, like for example alignment of the Coastal Trail, bluff erosion problems near the airport, airport runways, the Fish Creek estuary, Those will remain within the community council boundary. I know we have a lot of other questions, just very brief answer. Is anybody— by changing those boundaries, are any residents actually impacted? Is there anyone living between the low and high rate? No.

Okay, thank you. There's a visual for you. Next in the queue, I have—. Uh, you can go to— might come back. Yeah, so I don't have anyone else, but myself, and briefly, just to, um, go back to the question of how the commission was selected.

You have a group that I've been able to identify now, and, um, how did you choose those individuals? Well, Uh, you know, uh, primarily we were grateful that they came forward. In the case of Shugaki and Morover, we struggled to, uh, find somebody. Uh, but we looked for, um, experienced folks who were active, who had been leaders. And so that group of folks, uh, they tended to be community council leaders or experienced folks.

That wasn't universal. So we put the request out and we got responses, and we did not turn anyone away, but we kept the Boundary Advisory Committee to 12. And so 2 individuals did ask to be on the committee and their request did not get to us until the committee had been formed. We told those individuals, and they were primarily interested in certain areas, so we told those two individuals to— I basically included them in the meeting invites, and the meeting discussions on each of those issues included them, and they participated and others from their community councils. And those individuals were an officer leader from Sana'a Community Council and officer leader from Northeast Community Council.

So looking at the list and hearing that, I, I wonder— it's just something I have to ponder, something maybe we can ponder together a little bit— does it not then make sense that the recommendations coming out of the bodies of the leaders of certain community councils would be, "Don't change our community councils." Isn't there some reasonable kind of basis to believe people would self-select to protect the thing that they believe is their domain? In practice, that's not what I experienced. For example, the representative from University Area Community Council was strongly supportive of the public comments from the area between Baxter and Boniface to transfer to Seaman Foothills, and he is— he was adamant that those— the criteria called for that. The Boundary Advisory Committee member from Seaman Foothills also called for change and actually provided a proposal that appears in Exhibit C to transfer areas of Northeast Community Council on the scenic foothills side of Chester Creek to Scenic Foothills Community Council. And most of the boundary study areas by, by the, uh, that were reviewed, in, in most cases, the community, the committee members they were really weighing in on advising on boundary issues outside of their own community council.

And I think that the— I can't speak for the committee, but my observation was they took their role very seriously and they wanted to be very transparent and follow their criteria. But that's interesting then that most of the recommendations were, it appears. I don't have to read it closely, all the line. So, um, I can say that they were very, um, my observation is that they were very deferential to community councils that were commenting. And so if a community council were providing comments, they were very deferential to that.

So that, that, that might be a top-to-bottom observation. Yes, probably there are multiple factors And one last piece of information, I think sometimes the conversation about boundaries gets overwrought in some ways, um, because procedurally the department and the code recognizes a boundary— or not a boundary, what I jokingly called earlier a DMZ between councils— when policy decisions are being made and when the department is doing outreach to communities relative to a project on a parcel, or what, what is that? Or because the work wasn't like a 500-foot margin for notice and other things. Yes.

A 1,000-foot margin, uh, we, we, uh, consulted with the Parks and Recreation Department and, you know, all processes regarding parks. For example, the, the Parks Department treats all community councils within 1,000 feet of that park equally. They're equal partners in stewarding the park, right? So for all of my kind of pushing our questions about boundaries and others, there is this permeability of our process. So as people might should kind of think through that some a little bit.

I have Ms. Sommers and Ms. Baldy, and we have about 10 minutes. I don't, I don't see there. Yeah, I'm just, um, I'm reading, um, the whereas statements, and it says, whereas recognized community desires as boundaries, um, And as you heard earlier, I read all the comments— or not all the comments, I read a sampling of the comments from Northeast Community Council saying that their council was too large, that the boundary would be better on Duvar, that the boundary would be better following the assembly districts, which is Duvar. There was one comment about house districts, which would have made a border of Duvar. And so the community desires obviously were not recognized in this recommendation unless they decide to go out and form a new community council.

And so it feels like through this whole process, which I believe took 3 years, kind of the inequity that people who commented recognized and asked to have something done about was baked in. And was not addressed.

Thank you. Okay, so we would be happy to work with the Assembly and Lucky Math if you wish to investigate, you know, scenarios where— there is one scenario in Exhibit C where a portion of Northeast Community Council would be transferred We can also provide information about the outcome population-wise of other scenarios. In fact, I think those are in Exhibit D, and again, we're still in this processing. We're happy to look at that. My only suggestion with that would be the code does call for the assembly to, um, and all of us to consult with the affected community councils about those and not just going back to them and getting their act.

So I think maybe that's something we should put a pin in, in terms of process. I don't know that if the assembly proposes changes at the last step, that then mandates a trip back to review and consult. I would say it does not, uh, when we have all these proposals and options already laid out of the process and the community councils have already commented, their resolutions meet that criteria. It's when we propose something new or different that they hadn't commented on. That's where I think, when I interpret the code, I, I would see that, that the code is asking us to go back to the community council and get their feedback on it.

Yeah, I think that's definitely an area of kind of, uh, something we would consider. I think I'm going to let Daniel go first. He ever spoke English?

Sure, so, um, Chris brought up the 1,000 feet of any parks. I just want to comment on that and preview to folks that I am going to be bringing forward an amendment. And if you go one of two ways, there in my district there's been competing resolutions between South Edition Community Council and North Star Community Council over who should have a valley in the park. And in the packet, I think there's some information, Planning Department's rationale for why South Edition should retain it. I think they mentioned like the riparian boundary, but in my mind, from an equity point of view, South Edition is very park-rich.

They have the park strip, they have Earl and Meryl Keene Park, they have Goddiah Park, they have portions of the Chester Creek Trail, they have West Chester Lagoon, Mill Bay Park, Elderberry Park, the Captain Cook Monument, Hoppy Park, my own neighborhood, Shadow Cay Street. I Street Community Garden and Frontierland Park. Northstar really just has a portion of the Chesapeake Creek Trail and the C Street Gardens, and then they have half of Charles Smith Memorial Park. So the boundary does kind of go through the lower third of that park between Fairview and Northstar Park— or Fairview and Northstar Community Councils. Valley View Park is really part of the identity of the North Star neighborhood.

They walk across a little footbridge and then you're in the park. And at one point, I think even the rocket ship playground tower was used as part of their logo or one of the flyers that they would put out. And so the amendment could do one of two things. One would be to add Valley View Park to North Star, and South Vision could retain all of their other parks. And—.

Or similar to the Charles Smith Memorial Park, there could be a line that goes through the middle of the park. And so it would just be very clear that South Edition and North Star Park, this is part of their neighborhood identity. And, you know, it's been an interesting conversation. You know, you even had a former manager of the FCC and the former president of North Star Park, after North Star Park Park was kind of taking up this discussion, go to South Edition and tell South Edition they should keep it. Anyway, all I have to say is, um, it's been an interesting conversation, but for me, again, I think approaching it with a lens of fairness, um, I think it would be appropriate for, um, Northstar to really feel like they have some ownership over that park.

Thanks.

No, uh, and did the summary of that issue is on page 32 and 33 of Exhibit C, and it's one of those 5 boundary study areas that got public conversation, no changes recommendation recommended. And I think the map for that where you can see Valley of the Moon Park And that boundary is in the set of C and that's on, uh, sorry, I'll stop there.

My initial response to this is that this may be a case study that more process and longer process isn't exactly always better process. How—. I have 3 questions about the way that this was done. First, how exactly were commission members solicited?

The Boundary Advisory Committee? Yes. Yes, we went through the Federation and sent out requests to all of the community councils. The Federation did, the Planning Department did, we did by email, and then we received responses. The Planning Department sent emails or received emails?

Send and receive them. Uh, send them to whom? Uh, all Community Council officers, I believe. I can double-check that, but we, uh, as I recall, we went through both the Federation and our own email system just to make sure that gave them coverage. In cases where we weren't getting anybody for a particular sub-area, we did reach out to leaders that, you know, I knew.

For example, I reached out to Debbie Osiander and we found the fellow who ended up representing Eagle River area to her. So the, the only real solicitation of committee members was through the existing community council system? Yes. Okay. Um, was there a, uh, was there a rubric developed when you were, you know, contemplating, um, these boundary study areas?

Was there a rubric that sort of laid out priorities apart from just what a natural boundary was like? Or what, what actual language would make sense? Wherever— did you have like a scoring grid or something that was some form of objective and allowed committee members to make those assessments independently before coming in? We looked into quantitative scoring method. Actually, the chair of the committee suggested we explore that.

We couldn't We couldn't determine how to score, like, river versus road versus, you know, strong boundary versus— what we found, it was case by case. What we did do was we prioritized in general order of priority.

The boundary of the boundary criteria. So we broke them out in 7 criteria, and those are on, again, pages, um, in Exhibit D3. I'm beginning to really regret that I didn't include these in the front summaries of your packet, but in Exhibit D3, um, um, in the white paper on pages 9 through 11 in the white paper. So if you go through those 7, they're in order of priority.

Okay. In general priority, but you know what, it's so— different areas are so different from one another, you know, and you have You know, let's— like, for example, in Daniel Bowman's example, the strong boundary— and you'll see this in Zuni Sea— would be the Keweenaw, uh, Chester Creek. And, you know, the park is north of Chester Creek, it's in South Edition. But there are other factors involved. And so in that case, um, you know, a standard rubric that we would apply to all cases consistently might still result in a less than optimal, you know, recommendation.

So we have to look at each situation for what it is. In other cases, you know, we looked at, uh, yeah, the sewer highway. Well, that's a strong boundary and it's almost insurmountable, right? A community really has to be connected across that highway for us to want to jump that highway. So in some cases, boundaries having a stronger boundary versus less boundary versus a stronger natural community and less, you know, it just varies so much.

So, sure, yeah, I think, I think I was just more interested in understanding whether or not or how future processes might include something more like a sliding scale or something that actually allows for that nuanced conversation to happen in a way that isn't just sort of like, lives-based, which I think is at least my concern, given what I, what I'm reading in the, in these notes, in this document. So we're just about to— so, uh, one more question. I have a suggestion for you. Yes. So the title of this ordinance is quite broad, and it could be a project for attorneys to establish a section of the code now that states assembly will be briefed on the priorities, whatever that we were just describing, in advance of the process beginning Phase 1.

And so I think you could add by amendment into this document at this time a structure to achieve that by the next go-round. Is that title is really broad. I appreciate that suggestion. Dean has got a little consternation because it says in order to carry out the 10-year review, but I would offer that it still is in order to carry out the 10-year review. And so I would just offer you have some flexibility within which to achieve that for the next body because you're seeing it now in relief.

Um, Ms. Saunders, last comment, we are out of time.

I'm looking in here for some comprehensive minutes on the board meetings. I see some planning zoning minutes that are pretty spare. Anyhow, do you have recordings of those meetings, or do you have some minutes that kind of follow the whole conversation that was had around the recommendations? Yes, recordings of the minutes are on the project webpage. Okay.

I think you can get to that from the AM. The minutes are there in your packet. They're on pages 157 through 212 of D1. Are they actual minutes or are they detailed? They're—.

I think—. I think they're minutes. It's summarized. I think other people would say that it's too detailed, right? Okay, they're detailed.

Fair enough. Not actual minutes. They're detailed. Okay. Okay, thank you.

So obviously it's a hot topic. Project is coming before us. The administration has expressed their interest in seeing this passed sooner than later. However, the assembly having just received it after 3 years of process does not mean that we need to rush through this process because you are not just a rubber stamp. And so that question is one for the body to take up when this item is properly before us after the public hearing.

This is— So, um, just folks, keep that in mind that you are not constrained. If the group— if they have 36 months to work on it, you don't have 2 weeks. So, um, just a point of information, it was not a 3-year process, it was about a 1, 1.5-year process with long breaks in between. Right, right. The community councils were very timely and did not contribute to the length of the process.

It wasn't just simply a staff application on price. Yeah, no, I wasn't pointing to community councils. I just would suggest that it is 3 years post reapportionment, realignment, all of that stuff. And so, yes, I mean, we're not 10 years out from the next time. We're 7 years out from the next time.

So that's just what I [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] We're gonna take, like, just a 10-minute break. We'll be a little bit late starting.