Quality Municipal Services/Ethics & Elections Committee Meeting - November 26, 2025

You're up.

Okay, good. Perfect. All right, uh, good afternoon everyone. Uh, the time is 12:01. I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order for the Assembly Quality Municipal Services Ethics and Elections Committee.

We're noticed today, Wednesday, November 26th, from 12 noon to 1 PM here at City Hall, Room 155. Let's go ahead and start with Assemblymember introductions, starting in person. And Ron. Felix Rivera. And then on the phone we have Member Martinez.

Yes, thank you, Chair. Great. And then any other members on the phone? Yes, uh, I'm here, Zach Johnson. Oh, great.

Thank you, Member Johnson. Uh, okay. Then let's go ahead and get started. We have 3 items of business today. We'll start with our first item, which is the overview of the downtown library project.

You can come on up here. Love to hear what's going on. And then I will note for the record—. Oh, sorry. We'll note for the record that we've been joined by a member of all of the day.

Floor is yours. Thank you very much. Happy to be here. Um, wanted to keep everyone in the loop with what's going on with the Downtown Library Project. And so just kind of a brief update.

We're moving forward, and I think the last time we talked, it was, um, we were in the concept space, um, plan finalization and receiving public input. And so we did receive quite a bit of public input, and so, um, we are now incorporating that input into the, uh, 65% drawing plan. So we're moving forward with that. We did get a cost estimate, and the cost estimate did come in high, so we're looking at value engineering. And what we are moving forward, you know, to go out to bid.

So where we're at right now, we're the design phase, um, and we're definitely taking that input and incorporating it into the design. Um, should have 65% submittals to us by mid-December, and then according to the timeline, 95% by mid-February. That's what we're looking at. And then this has to go through the Historic Preservation Commission, and so we're thinking that will happen in February, and 100% and permitting by early April. So that's where we're at.

Great, thank you. Um, all right, let's go ahead and go through the queue. I have Member Broadley. Yeah, thank you. Um, I'm curious, you mentioned kind of the cost increases, and that's not surprising, but I wondered, um, if you could characterize, um, is it materials?

Like, are there— where are those cost increases happening? Um, is it, you know, the permitting process, you know, kind of what are you seeing in terms of that increase? My understanding is that the overall cost per square foot was a lot higher than what was expected, and so, and that's why we're looking at, um, different ways to kind of, um, to incorporate some things into the project that, um, I guess would be more efficient. So that value engineering, and so we've been working towards making some of those changes because that's what we want when it goes up to 41.

It to be affordable. Yeah, for sure. And just a quick follow-up too, I know it's— I think it's a historic building. I don't know what designation it has, but I wonder, um, how much of it is kind of sticking to— and this could be a follow-up, but just curious how much it's sticking to you have to use certain materials or those kinds of things, and/or if it's just, you know, kind of building flaws, whether it was to begin with or over time, you know, that it's needing to be corrected versus kind of what you're talking about, which is the actual design and like what you want to do there.

So I'd be curious about that. And so we'll actually be in, um, the side or the part of the building that isn't really the most historic. And so, um, so I don't think we're up against some of those— okay, some of those issues. Okay, thank you. Okay, thanks.

I'm in the queue next. Just out of curiosity, did any of the public comments you received drastically change the design? And could you just brief us on what some of those might be?

Yes. Um, no, so I would say not drastically changed, but we were able to— so one of the comments, um, we heard was more about having a youth services aspect there, more children's. So we, in this new design phase that we're looking at, that we're creating a more substantial space for that. And so, um, so it does kind of— things have moved around because of it, so we're doing that. Um, some of the other things mentioned were, um, some of the staffing areas.

And so we're trying to incorporate, take some of the space and make more room for lounge furniture and spaces for, for patrons to, um, you know, use the library. And, and so the architects, they've come up with some great ideas. So I think So we've actually gained a little more square footage in this new design for patron square footage, created more of a children's area. I believe we looked at additional computers, things like that. So yeah.

Great. That's exciting. Any other comments, questions? Not seeing any. Not seeing any coming in.

Okay, well, thank you so much for that update. Thank you very much.

All right, uh, second item on our agenda is an HR update on recruitment and retention.

Are these just paper slides, or is there anything going on up there? There is a presentation. Okay, good. Thank you. All right, floor is yours.

Uh, thank you and good morning. So my name is Ron Kamaheli. I'm with Human Resource Services, and I'm here to give an update on MOA recruiting and retention.

Next slide, please. Or no. The next slide is actually an abstract, so I have to go into detail on that. I'm not going to read it to you or anything. I'd rather go into pictures.

So moving on to the next slide after, after that. So what we're looking at here is um, uh, regular employees only. So I don't— I didn't analyze, uh, temps or seasonals because they're, um, they're kind of a whole separate thing. Um, so I went back to, uh, 2018 forward to October 2025 so we can get a good longitudinal view of hiring activity.

So as you can see, there's a whole lot of variation that happens month to month. I mean, we could hire as many as 52 in one month and as few as 6 in another month. Nevertheless, I go ahead and try and draw a trend line using some mathematical techniques so we can get a better look at, you know, how things are in fact trending. So if you go to the next, next slide. Um, so this removes all the variation and we just see the trend line.

And so you can kind of clearly see that, uh, actually the next slide after this one.

Uh, so going back to 2018 forward, you see, um, the monthly rate of hiring was actually increasing until the pandemic hit, and then it started to decline for various reasons, but Um, roundabout fall of 2021, there was a turnaround and the rate of hiring, monthly rate of hiring, began to increase. And it's been increasing like consistently, uh, for 4 years. Um, so at the end of the study period, which was October 2025, um, we are up to basically an average of 30 hires per month. And so overall, with respect to recruiting and hiring, it looks, it looks strong. And there's been, you know, very steady improvement over the years.

And so it doesn't appear that we have any problems with hiring.

Moving on to the next slide. Now this depicts actual MOA headcount. Again, this is just regular employees, no elected officials.

And again, it's interesting that our headcount was rising generally from 2018. It even would continue to rise past the point when the pandemic was declared, but then peaked. It leveled out, um, in March of 2021, and then it began a very continuous, um, downhill slide in terms of headcount. There was a few ups and downs, but general trend was all down. However, that ended, uh, in October 2023, and Since then, it has been— headcount has been climbing.

However, in light of the monthly hiring rate we just looked at, where we're hiring approximately 30 people a month, you might think that our headcount would have risen a lot faster, because it's only gone up 4.7%. Since October of 2023. So this, uh, causes us to look at separations because our headcount is actually a function of people we hire and people who separate. So, um, so the next slide, um, again, this shows really the ups and downs. And again, we have lots of variation from month to month.

But I still tried to calculate a trend line in there. And if we move on to the next slide and remove all the variation, it paints a much more clear picture.

So this is the number of monthly separations. And interestingly, in 2018, moving forward, the number of separations was actually declining. And it actually—. Sorry, can we pause really quick? So it sounds like I'm being told that the video—.

It has crashed. I've been trying to get back. The video has crashed. OK. So then we'll continue the meeting.

Just note that the video has crashed and that the recording— people should go back to that for the full audio. Thanks. I knew some of this was dramatic. I didn't know that we were going to— So separations were actually declining prior to the pandemic. My apologies, one last thing.

Okay. Are these— is this presentation on the committee website? Uh, it is not yet, but it can be. Okay, great. Yeah, if, if we can, um, at least email it to members now, that would be helpful so that members online can see these slides.

I wish I could do that, but I was just given the thumb drive and it's being used for the presentation. Okay. But I can do it immediately after the presentation. Got it. So, Member Johnson and Member Martinez, my apologies that you all aren't able to see the slides, but you'll be able to see them post-presentation.

Thanks.

So, uh, once the pandemic hit, you can see that our separations, our monthly separations, really began to skyrocket.

And that very top point where we were something like 31 separations a month on average, that kind of corresponds to the period of time when we saw the headcount dropping. And that's because separations were far exceeding the rate of hiring during that time frame. However, since that time, separations on a monthly basis have been declining, and as of October of this year, we're at about 27 separations per month. Uh, however, when you compare that to the average numbers of hires, you know, separations basically are nullifying 90% of all the hiring activity. We hire 30 and we lose 27.

Every month. That's why the headcount has been suppressed. Um, so I would say that although recruiting and hiring were very strong, the MOA clearly is struggling with retention. Um, if we flip over onto the next slide, this just shows separations and hires one on top of the other. So you can kind of see what was going on and what was in terms of the headcount, what was driving the headcount drop.

But to conclude things on the, on the next slide is a closer look at separations.

So for— from the low point in our headcount of October 2023 up to October 2025, I tallied all of the separations and there were 676 in that 25-month range. So again, that's averaging out to about 27 separations per month. For each one of the separations, I also calculated, uh, for each employee separating, how long were they with the muni before they separated. That's the YOSS, the years of service upon separation, and the mean Y-O-S-S was 2.96, which means 50% of that 676 of employees separating, they left with 2.96 years of service or less. And I draw your attention to the very first column on the left side of the chart where it's around about probably a year or so.

Those tallies, that's probably That's the highest column. So, and of those separations that were 2.96 years or less, I also went to look and see, well, were people leaving voluntarily or not? Were we firing people or people just leaving? And it turns out 80% were voluntary separations. They're leaving under their own steam.

I also put in a chart to show of those separations that were 2.96 years or less, um, which departments they were coming from. And it was Health Department, Police Department, Public Transportation were the top 3.

Great, thank you so much for walking us through that. And, um, I'm wondering now if we can go ahead and email these slides out to the folks. Thanks. So any minute now, uh, Member Johnson and Member Martinez, you will have these slides in your inbox so that you can participate in the discussion piece here. We'll go ahead though and start with Member Valdadez.

Mr. Connelly, thank you for being here. I have a few questions about this. I'm curious whether retirement is counted as voluntary or involuntary separation. Retirement's voluntary. Retirement's voluntary, okay.

And Um, do we have a breakdown within that voluntary separation category of how many of those were retirement versus not? Um, I can get that, um, but remember that, um, that last chart I was looking at separations by employees who separated within 2.96 years or less. Our typical retirements are the folks on the other end of the line where you're around 20, 25, 50. Sure, someone in there with, I think, almost 50 years of service, and we should get a medal. That's impressive.

Um, yeah, I was just— I was curious to understand, you know, if we were going to plot— I mean, it's hard to— hard to know, um, you know, someone joined his late career and then retired after 10 years of the municipality. I wouldn't want to assume who was retirement age and who wasn't, just based on this chart alone. So that was the genesis of my question. Um, do, do we have any other demographic information about the folks who are separating voluntarily, just in terms of, um, of age, um, of factors that contributed? Do you do exit interviews when people leave so that we have a clearer picture of why folks are choosing to leave MOA employment?

I can get the demographics, so I can pull that together and provide that.

We recently started a program where we reach out to people who are separating and ask them if they would like to have an exit interview. So we have actually started a process like that.

Has that process been in effect? Oh, since this, I think, June or July. So relatively new? Yes. Okay.

And what sort of responses are you seeing from those requests? Um, it's mixed. I mean, not everybody, you know, is interested, but I don't know, probably about maybe a third of the people are getting feedback. And are those folks being— are those exit interviews being done by HR? Are they being done by a supervisor or a department head?

Who's conducting those? Uh, we ask the person, um, if they would like to have an exit interview with their, with their own management, or if they would like to have it done, um, with the Office of Equity and Inclusion. I can't give them a choice. Okay.

Are there, um, even just in the last, I guess, several months, with a third of the respondents, are there any trends that you're noticing in the reasons folks are mentioning for why they're separating? There really hasn't been enough, um, data points to really come up with any trends yet. Thank you.

Thank you. Member Martinez.

Uh, thank you, Chair. Uh, just first of all, thank you for the presentation today. On, on that question with respect to who is not reporting or like, do you have a sense, or do we have a sense Member Martinez, your audio is cutting in and out a little bit. I don't know if it's—. Okay, go ahead.

I have a few thoughts. I'll speak in Swahili.

All right, um, the question is, do we have a sense of who is filling out who's returning those job exit interviews, meaning are they employees, old veterans, are they pretty new employees who have not— we'd love to get a sense of who was that. If I understand, you're asking, uh, like, what's the— what might characterize the types of employees who are actually responding to the request for exit interview?

Yes. It's a mixture, frankly. Sometimes it's, it's people who have been around for a while, and, and then there's also those who haven't been around for very long at all before they left. So that has been a mixture from what I've seen so far. I'd like to get a little more concrete on that moving forward, and then Do we also ask when we are recruiting, what job this is in the potential recruit's job history?

Is this an entry job? Is this their second job or returning to the workforce? We have a sense of what job is it in their work timeline. We want to be a job of the first selection for the first place people move to. But are we also where people are returning to us?

Thank you, Chair.

So if I understand, that's— do we have a sense for whether people are coming to us as it's like entry-level or they mid-career type employees? Is that, is that accurate? Right.

Yes, that's large on their own. That's largely a mixture. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't catch that. Go ahead, answer what you can.

It's largely a mixture. Just the nature of the jobs that we advertise for, there's very few actual entry-level. We are typically seeking employees in all kinds of different jobs who actually have some experience behind them.

Already. I'd like to get, um, those two, uh, areas of inquiry a little more data, more granular on the, uh, the forward-facing next time. I think it, I think it matters to how we think about recruitment and retention, recruiting for a first-time employee Uh, it may be different than recruiting for mid-level learning work. So I just want to get a better sense of the challenges before us when we look at that data. Thank you, Jay.

Great, thank you. Uh, Member Bradley. Uh, yeah, thank you. Um, thanks for this information. Um, this is maybe outside of the scope of your presentation, but I will just ask it anyway.

Um, Is I'm curious in terms of the hiring process itself. I know it's different, depends on the position, depends on the department, all of those things, how many applicants you get. But I'm curious if we have any data on basically the length of time between when a position is advertised and then when it's filled. Because I, you know, anecdotally hear sometimes there's challenges there. And again, it depends on a number of factors.

But I'm curious if there's data on that or that maybe is a follow-up. And if it differs by department or, you know, kind of are there regular choke points in some areas? Just curious about that because I know that also impacts our ability to, as you said, increase that count. So let me start by saying that recruiting is actually doing very well. So to answer your question, so like how long does it take before we post a job and then we get someone to fill the job?

That can vary by different types of jobs. It can vary between different departments. For example, with the police department, since they have a much more elaborate process for vetting and selection, you know, it's, it's 6 months.

But when you pull out like fire department, police departments that have more elaborate processes and kind of just look at sort of standard jobs, it averages out to about 60 days, plus or minus 10. I study that stuff too. Thanks. Yeah, I know that's another area where, I guess, just going forward, I would be interested if there are any areas for improvement or areas where, like, there's, like you said, there's outliers of police and fire, but beyond that, if there's there's other areas to tighten that up. Thanks.

Great, thank you. I'm a very problem day.

Thank you. Um, coming back to, um, coming back to this last page, uh, I noticed that the top 4 departments that are listed as having the highest rates of separation, or percentages of separation rather, comprise almost half of the separations that we've noted here, and I'm wondering if these are, for example, Anchorage Health Department topping the list, do we have a sense that these are the same positions that become like a revolving door? Are these a variety of different positions? Do you have any insight into whether this is sort of a department-wide, you know, this is distributed across all of the very many service areas that the health department provides versus being very specific to a department, a job, Um, for the health department, um, nurses were a large piece of that during this time period. So they have a number of nurse positions and there's been a good deal of turnover there.

Um, the— probably the balance of it are, uh, supportive staff, uh, in, in various areas.

And is this— is the same true for public transportation? Is that, you know, concentrated to, say, bus drivers, or is it more nuanced than that? For public transportation, it's concentrated at bus operators. Okay. Um, have there— I recognize this is relatively recent data that's been pulled together.

Can you share a little bit about what the plan is for interfacing with these— I would think these 4 departments in particular— to understand a bit more deeply what might be happening that would be creating such churn? Uh, I just finished this data pull and analysis just about 2 days ago. I haven't had a chance to share it out much beyond this. However, I have been working with the police department Um, prior to doing this analysis, I had done an analysis of.

Their police academies and the retention that they have with police academies. And I fed that information back to them and give them some, some advice on what may improve retention, uh, because they go through a lot of effort to hire, you know, uh, police academy entrance. And whatever can be done, uh, to improve retention and graduation and so forth is a benefit to the city. Yeah, of course. Um, so do you expect that there will be what do you expect the follow-up will be to this information?

What will we do with the data that's here, and what does HR— or is there a plan within HR to do something substantive to address what is really fairly troubling in terms of retention numbers? There's not specific plans yet. Again, I just pulled hold all this, this together. But what I try to do personally in the role that I fill is to get data and information into the hands of decision makers so that they're equipped to be able to address, you know, difficult situations and that are confronting them.

And one last follow-up question, uh, so are those decision makers Do those decision makers, or do departmental decision makers have this data just yet, or are we the first to see it? You're the first to see it. Okay. Great, thank you. Okay, thank you.

All right, any other discussion, comments, questions on this one?

I don't see anything coming from folks on the phone. Okay. Great. Well, thank you so much for, um, giving us the first opportunity to look at this data. Much appreciated.

Thank you. All right, third, um, item of new business is our update regarding scanning, adjudication, and tabulation election equipment vendor.

Liz Edwards, Election Administrator, I will be speaking on behalf of the clerk today. So we really just wanted to bring this up because it was in the news. I'm sure most of you saw, but Dominion Voting Systems was purchased by Liberty Vote around October 9th of this year. So Liberty Vote is a new entity that is 100% American-owned, and even though it's a newish entity, Scott Lindecker, who is the founder and chairman, he was— he has 25 years of experience in elections. He was the former St. Louis City Election Director, and for the past 15 years Scott has been the CEO of Know Inc., which is a federally certified electronic poll book provider and is used in about 2,000 jurisdictions across 37 states.

We on our end kind of felt that the name Dominion was never going to survive after the 2020 election and all the lawsuits that came from it. But with that said, our customer and technical support team at Dominion has stayed on with Liberty Vote, so there has been no change in that relationship. And they will continue to have an excellent relationship moving forward, um, and we'll be watching the company's actions very closely over the next few years. But at least from our end, the technical support team is the same as well as the customer service team, so there will be no change or disruption with that. Great, thank you.

Member Gromley. Yeah, thanks, and thanks for looking into this. I did see that news and wondered how that would impact us. What is our— because I know we've re-upped it over the years— what is our current contract length with this company? When would it be renewed?

You know, like, what is our commitment right now, essentially? So we've been with Dominion for several years. The current equipment was in place for the 2018 election, and I believe we just had a renewal, but I will have to confirm. With Ursula. Thanks.

And then just out of curiosity, um, and I know you're not here to advertise other vendors, but, but are— what are— how many generally options are there for that type of— because I know it's a very specialized set of equipment and software. So if, if in future we were to contemplate going with someone else, um, I imagine there's a process for that, but, um, is there a wide variety of these, or is there really just, you know, one or two companies out there? I just don't know. Yeah, I don't know the figure off the top of my hand, but it would go through the whole RFP process, which— that's how we became— came with Dominion to begin with. It was— we went through the whole purchasing process.

Okay, great. Thank you for that update. Are there any other questions or discussion?

Sounds like our elections continue to be in good hands, and we appreciate you all stewarding that.

All right, not seeing any other discussion. That is it for our business for today's meeting. We'll go ahead and move on to audience participation. So if there's anyone who wants— from the public who wants to participate, we'll start with in person and then we'll go to the phone because I think we do have a few members of the public, um, on the phone. Is there anyone in person who'd like to participate?

3 Minutes. Okay. Not seeing anyone. Um, then we'll go ahead. I'm just slow.

Oh, okay, great. Um, you can come on up over here, take one of these mics, and then you just need to press the button. It'll turn green when it's on.

And then, um, can we go ahead and put the 3-minute timer on the screen, please? Hi, my name is Katie Nolan, and I'm the—. Actually, could you, could you wait? I just want to make sure it's practice that. I want to make sure everyone knows how much time that they have.

Chair, I'm going to do it from my phone because it's glitching too. I'm sorry we're having so many issues. I promise— Today's the day of technical difficulties. That's okay. I'm Rob Law.

Go ahead. All right, I've started. Thank you. My name is Katie Nolan, and I'm chair of the Election Commission. Um, we've been working this year on several things that I wanted to make you aware of, and the first, the most important to me, is we end up tossing a lot of ballots, and to me that's just tragic that we have close to 1,000 people every election whose ballots are tossed because of mistakes.

And we're working on advertising and information sharing to try to eliminate as many of those as possible, because if somebody makes the decision to actually fill out a ballot and mail it in, we'd like to count it, you know. That's kind important. Um, has nothing to do with, with anything but the fact that people are not following the rules that are laid down. It's a very specific set of instructions, and if they're not 100% accurate, we can't count the ballot. And so we're working on that.

We're going to hope for this committee's— and there's some of this assistance in getting that information out, attacking some of these major issues that we're seeing. So that we can reduce these numbers. It's very important to us. The other thing is I wanted you and this body to understand that we are here to assist anytime we're dealing with anything that has to do with elections. Part of our responsibility is intensely studying how election law fits with state and federal laws.

And the understanding that, that we are gaining is very detailed. Um, not me per se, but we have some absolutely brilliant minds on this committee, and I'd like you to understand that you can take use of them and use them to assist the process and make sure that we have good, solid elections that everyone is comfortable with. And with that, I'm easy. I don't really think need 3 minutes, but I thank you for your time. If you have any questions, you know how to reach us, you know how to reach me, unfortunately, right?

But, um, let me know, let us know how we can help make better elections and better representation for our public in making their choices. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much, and thank you for your service to the municipality.

Yes, go ahead. Thank you for being here, Ms. Mullin. Um, are there, are there sort of repeat errors that you see with these ballots? Is there a trend that you notice? Yes.

What kinds? Oh my goodness, yes. Okay, okay. Can I, can I— it's going to take more than a couple of minutes here, so there goes the time. That's okay, I think I interrupted you one time.

Okay. When we're doing an in-person election, we catch ID at the very front, so we have solved that issue right off the bat. When a person fills out their ballot, it's going into the machine that catches every error right off the bat. So except for the absentee in-person voting, we don't have errors. None.

Because we've solved the issue either at the front desk or at the vote counting tabulation machine. So at the end of the night, we know exactly what's happening, what our vote totals are, what our people totals are. And I've been a precinct chair for a long time, but we don't leave the precinct until everything is 100% right. If you don't balance We're there to tell we do. You don't get that in a mail-in election.

If people don't sign the right way, if their signature has changed over the years and our mechanics haven't caught up with it, which happens as people age, their, their signature changes. It's kind of like the idea of writing your name on a When we used to have to do it on the checkout stand, you know, I mean, some of us put smiley faces up there and it worked. That doesn't work when we're doing a mail-in election. The other major challenge that we have is that ballot errors aren't caught. So they can't feed through the machine if there's two choices for an— and somebody's marked down both of them.

Or make incorrect marks on both of them, it's not gonna feed. So neither vote gets counted. We have minor issues in that occasionally we'll have a family member sign for the kids that are in college, or do stupid things. We have like 2 errors a year where an authority signs incorrectly. A legal authority signs incorrectly for someone, and that can't be done.

But most of these errors are solvable if we could educate the public on them. And hitting our top reasons for errors and saying, if you don't do this right, your vote's not gonna count, and we want to count your vote.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your work and also for your passion for having really wonder— really like solid and thoughtful elections. Thank you. Sure.

Member Bradley. Yeah, thank you. And I know this is a conversation to continue. I was just trying to look up in our last report, because I know one of the issues you described is errors on the ballot and there is an opportunity to cure. And I know, I believe in the last couple elections that, well, that was a known issue and there was a lot of work to both get the word out to folks so that they can do that ballot curing and then to, as you said, reduce the number of errors in general.

So I think I appreciate the outreach. I'm curious just if, if in your guys' experience in the last couple years, if you have seen a reduction in, or basically increase in folks curing ballots, and then any kind of reduction in number of ballots with errors that are not cured. Okay, I'm, I'm not good at numbers, so forgive me right off the bat. The percentages of errors seem to flow with the election turnout, not with changing with each election, per se. Does that make sense?

Not with an education program, but with the number of actual voters. I would not be surprised if the, if the percentages were just about identical. But when you speak of the curing process, and just so we're all on the page, the same page, the voter gets an opportunity to cure their ballot, which would mean resolving whatever where the issue is. There's several problems with that. Um, our contact method for people doesn't always work.

Um, for example, we have tried to get a dedicated phone line that's— that where the caller ID on it says Election Central or something to that general effect. We can't get that. That means that people, especially people with cell phones, do not answer anonymous phone numbers, period. So you're not getting through to people in the first place. And because we're not certain who we're talking to at the end of the phone without IDing them, we don't leave a real detailed message.

The second problem with that is that because of budgeting issues, we can only do those calls during the daytime business hours when many people do— are not available, simply not available, like by cell phone. Um, they're not at home, they're not— they're working. Whatever phone number they've given us is not correct. Um, so we can't call them at night or on weekends because we don't have staff to call them on weekends and evenings. And I understand the financial reason behind that, but it does make it more difficult.

The other thing is that Not everybody puts down their email address. If they don't have an email address, and it's their option to write it down, they don't have to write down either a phone number or an email address. We don't have to have either one of those for some people. We have a snail mail address, but then you're also talking a time delay. So, and then there's the point of, by the time a person gets the CURE letter, In many cases, the election's already been decided, so why bother?

And I understand that too, because we all lead hectic lives. I get it. The challenge with that is that if they don't get the cure in, especially if it's a cure that could be easily fixed, we are not going to solve it for the next election either. It's going to be so long. Yeah, yeah, thanks.

I'll just begin by saying that it's definitely an issue, and so I appreciate the focus on outreach and really reminding folks of their responsibility, right? I know it's challenging, but at some point you have to help folks to do what they need to do. So thank you. Is the elections work session rescheduled yet? Yeah, it's on the books, or not on the calendar yet.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Would anyone else like to participate? We'll go ahead. I didn't see any other, any other raised hands in person. Um, do we have members of the public on the phone? We have one member of the public.

Okay, um, then, um, yeah, I always forget, is it star 6 to unmute for folks on the phone? I can just unmute them right now. Okay, sure. So if there's any members of the, on the, uh, of the public who want to participate And now is your opportunity.

My name is Ann Courtney.

Go ahead, go ahead, Miss Courtney.

I'm also on the Election Commission. There's a horrible echo, so I'll be really brief. I would simply like to thank Jeff for being so willing to add us, the Commission members, to your mailings and to your notices of meetings, et cetera. I think that we may have been missing a real good opportunity for communication between our two entities, and I think together we can solve— hopefully solve some of the issues that you're concerned about, as well as the Commission. So thank you very much, Jeff, for including us on your communications.

Great. Yeah, thank you so much. And it was— I was just reminded that just for the edification of the record and the public that a couple of these meetings the last, uh, 2 months were canceled. So we haven't met in a couple of months. We didn't have any big agenda items.

So, um, yeah, appreciate, uh, the need for additional communication and invitation, uh, when we do have topics related to elections on this committee agenda. We'll make sure that that is shared in the future. Um, okay, thank you.

All right, I'm not seeing any other members of the public, so we will go ahead and adjourn. Thank you.