ORDER-2020-135 : A request for city council approval of the temporary consolidation of polling locations to the MVMMS Gymnasium for the upcoming elections in September and November of 2020. These changes are being made in an effort to support the health and safety of residents, voters, and elections staff during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Transcript (~39 min @ 33:40)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 33:28 Christopher Cinella: Anybody on mute here? Next order 2020-135, a request City Council approval of a temporary consolidation of polling locations to the Elrose High School gymnasium for the upcoming election September and November of 2020. These changes are being made in an effort to support the health and safety of residents, voters, and election staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe we have the City Clerk to speak to this. Amy, are you here? I am. Can you hear me? Yes.

▶ 34:01 Speaker 5: okay i changed monitors so i'm double checking um all right so thank you all uh i'm here to ask that the city council approve our proposal to consolidate polling locations temporarily for the september and november elections uh related to covid19 concerns we have about multiple polling locations i think you all received my um detailed request this weekend and um but i'll kind of do a quick summary uh we have currently eight locations in the city of melrose uh there's in all of the elementary schools city hall um the bb school which is not really ours anymore it's leased by the scene collaborative and the steel house we are concerned for a number of reasons for using locations some are more obvious than others the steel house and the vegan school both have a very vulnerable set of residents and constituents who use those facilities and we don't want to expose them to increased risk City Hall obviously has its own challenges because we have other members of the public in and out and we don't like to socially distance the line there and we don't have multiple entrances and exits actually same thing for some of the elementary schools and then in addition to that all of the elementary schools use their space that we use for polling for a number of things including cafeteria use to news and based on what we've seen from Jesse's most recent recommendations for the fall most likely they'll be used for overflow teaching space and so obviously that will present some health and safety concerns as well if we use those because then we'll need to disinfect those rooms before school the next day obviously if we move to the middle school we would have to disinfect as well but that's a much easier space it's a single-use space the bleachers push in it can be disinfected very simply whereas the other ones have quite a few different supplies, like including library books, cafeteria supplies, and a number of things that would make that concerning. So that's part of the concern. The other concern is our staffing concerns for elections. I'm sure you've all seen a bunch of news reports about some of the primaries that took place last week and some primaries that took place earlier during the epidemic and our average poll workers age 75 years old. So we've already had 50% of our poll workers choose not to work the polls in September. Most critically that's 10 wardens. So those are the kind of the managers of each precinct. So 10 out of 14 wardens have opted not to work. So we'll have a challenge staffing in general And when we do have new staff who've never worked polls before, if we are able to recruit more, the more control we can have by all being in the same place so that we can field questions and manage any changes to procedures based on health and safety concerns, the better it is for us. Those are kind of the main reasons. There's others, but I think I outlined some of those. I think what we really is the most important thing to pay attention to is that because of the way the state legislation is kind of proposing things coming forward that hopefully will get signed very quickly. Election Day is one of three ways that all the residents of Melrose can vote. And we need to look at it kind of as a whole package. so we don't expect every registered voter in Melrose to actually go to the polls on Election Day. Based on the data we've seen so far, actually probably at most 30% of the registered voters will actually go to the polls on Election Day. In November, it's proposed that we would have two full weeks of early voting, including weekends, and in September it would be one full week. and every registered voter in Melrose will receive an absentee ballot application that they can then fill out, send to our office, we'll mail them a ballot and they can mail it back to us. So it's no excuse absentee, anyone who wishes to take advantage of absentee voting will be able to this go around. Does anyone have specific questions or is there anything else that

▶ 38:50 Robb Stewart: they'd like me to address. Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Camosa, for your well thought out information. I had a chance to read it over the weekend and that was quite helpful. My initial reaction, quite honestly, was I was hesitant to this for the reason that being in the Ward 3 Councilor, I have both the Fuller House and Levi Gould, which as I'm sure you're familiar with there's well over 100 members that do vote on a consistent basis within those two communities and um and the bb school is a very convenient location for them it's a very short walk for them it's a social opportunity um so my my my biggest has a reservation to the whole plan was how to give these folks an opportunity to to effectively vote um and what i would encourage is two things one is to get clarity on what the uh the state rules about the mail-in voting is going to be and i believe they're going to have a call on that tomorrow at the state level uh the second is to your point about the um the the early the absentee balloting since there's a no excuse If we could have some way to communicate that to the folks as well as and I'm sure there's other facilities in and around the city that I may also take advantage of it. So that's my biggest concern. Otherwise, I think it's a, it's a good plan. It looks like it's well thought out and it takes into consideration a lot of areas. So, with that, I would suggest that we may consider holding this in committee to know what's going on at the state level. But that'll be the rule of community. Thank you. Mr. chair.

▶ 40:42 Speaker 3: Councilor mcnaught Thank you. Mr. chair. And thank you for being here. I just wanted to ask and I know you answered some of this, but sometimes it helps us. Restate things because the public at home needs to hear them. You referred to 3 different ways of voting. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, it's a little spotty, but I got you. So there's 3 different ways to vote in this upcoming collection. and there's early voting review that a little bit again

▶ 41:10 Speaker 5: so the three ways to vote are early voting uh absentee and or which is synonymous with mail-in voting which is more of the common term now um and then voting on election day so those are your three choices so two would involve voting and casting a ballot in the press after you've checked in and and gone to either the early voting location or going to the polling location on election day and then the absentee would be the state will send uh all registered voters an absentee ballot application um the resident would need to fill that out um and then drop it in the mail our office will receive it and then we'll mail back a ballot to that person's home and then they can cast their ballot that way they'll fill it out and then mail it back to us or we'll also have a secure drop box so people can drop off the ballots um at city hall any day anytime day or

▶ 42:08 Speaker 3: night before the election and and the uh absentee ballots are i think they're called no excuse absentee belts which means you don't have to prove that you're going to be out of town correct okay

▶ 42:21 Speaker 5: so um anybody can get one massachusetts actually was one of the few states that still requires an excuse so we would just kind of be part of the the norm if we once we accept this i think we're one of only seven states that still require an excuse to allow for absentee voting okay and um just i

▶ 42:37 Jeff McNaught: think a lot of people are under the impression that if this uh this one time in november that

▶ 42:44 Speaker 3: we're moving to a new platform is that the case i'm sorry say that one more time are we moving to

▶ 42:48 Speaker 3: a a new platform where this is going to be done for every election cycle or just just due to the

▶ 42:59 Speaker 5: concerns with the pandemic this is um specifically a temporary change for september and november

▶ 43:06 Speaker 3: right um i think that's all i have thank you ms kosa president Grigoraitis

▶ 43:13 Jen Grigoraitis: thank you chairman samella and thank you ms kamosa for being here and i just want to commend you and the election staff for your thoughtful approach to this i know this is something you all have been talking about along with the board of registrars since march when the pandemic first struck and i was um i wanted to just provide the update i know counselor stewart through the chair mentioned this um what's happening at the state level and my understanding from today's events at the state house is that we anticipate the conference committee um releasing its final version of the bill and going for a vote in the house tomorrow and in the senate on wednesday um and i know you struggled with the timing of this order because while we want to wait for everything to be wrapped up on the state level we also want to give the residents of melrose as much of a lead time as possible about what's happening so i recognize the struggle in that um and i was wondering if you could just what is the role of the board of registrars in this process and what how have they weighed in on this as a plan for the city given the fact that

▶ 44:17 Speaker 5: they oversee elections so the board of registrars we've had two meetings in the last six weeks but mostly to discuss this um decision um it's been a unanimous vote um to move forward with this plan uh we're probably all the most aware of how um much the need to control things by putting everyone in the same space is going to make a huge difference in these circumstances where most likely things will change on a daily basis leading up to the election so the more control we can have by being able to communicate to all poll workers at the same time and manage all the absentee and early voting ballots as we process them through the tabulators we understand the critical need for that so it's been a unanimous um decision from the get-go and it was more just the determining how best to execute uh what we would like to do um so the board's been really helpful and um it's nice to have everyone who's collectively looking um to kind of accomplish

▶ 45:31 Shawn M. MacMaster: the same thing. Thank you. Councilor McMaster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Ms. Camosa. Thank you for your comprehensive memo. As good as it is, I still have some reservations about this, so I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to answer questions. Your memo projects significant absentee voting, and you cite data from other states, and it's recent data. if that's the case wouldn't that work against the argument for bringing voters to one centralized location because turnout in person at the various board locations will be significantly lower it just seems to me that we'd be assuming a greater risk of transmitting the virus if we're bringing more people to one

▶ 46:16 Speaker 5: location I can see that logic um here's what I'll say the purpose of consolidating the polling locations isn't necessarily just to protect the voters because I think given the low numbers and the incredibly large space of the gymnasium it's 17,000 square feet and we're still separating everyone by ward and also by precinct so every precinct will have its own social distancing line and if you think like at the max you know worst case I'm thinking you know it's actually best case but you know from a maximum voter turnout perspective I was assuming 18,000 voters participating in this in November's election out of a registered voter total of just over 20,000 you know we're still only talking about 5,000 ish you know voters over the course of 13 hours so they'll never be one time or another that will have 10,000 people in the space at any one time so but what we will have is we still have to have staff for creating that social distance line I'm sure you all have been to a grocery store or a Target during the height of the pandemic and you knew when there were limited number of shoppers allowed in a store someone needed to be at that front door saying no one else can come in at this time until someone else exits so we need that we need additional staff to run all the ballots through the machine that we have received from absentee or early voting if you think about it we if we do have say 13,000 ballots cast through earlier absentee we need to be able to feed those ballots through the tabulator at the same time a polling location is open which means you know if the way I did the math it was like non-stop feeding of two hours per precincts tabulator of just feeding those ballots in so the only way we can really make that work is if we can distribute say Ward 5 happens to have a dip at 10 a.m. we can feed some of those ballots through and we can see all that because we'll all be in the same place but most importantly the the consolidated location will allow us to control for a very variable poll worker staffing system that we're just not sure or how it will exactly work yet. If you think about it, each precinct is kind of its own system. And then we have seven, we have 14 precincts, and then we have this system of systems. And at any one time that stuff can break down. So the more we can be there to observe the whole thing in real time, when we have 10 new wardens and five new clerks, which are the two kind of managers of the election,

▶ 49:02 Speaker 3: the better.

▶ 49:03 Speaker 5: So that's kind of why it's like a combination multiple challenges all at once we're gonna have you know we have requirements to have police get guarding ballot boxes if we're all in the same place a police officer could say guard three or four ballot boxes because they have line of sight on all of those and then we could use the subsequent police officers to do that crowds control that we need if we have eight distributed polling locations we would have to double the number of police officers so that we could also have someone doing the crowd control while someone is staying and guarding the ballot and then I think the final piece of it is I think there's certain polling locations that regardless of how many people are entering it's still not the best for us to protect the residents and users of those spaces for example the steel house and the BB so we would have to move a A number of polling locations, regardless of the number of people who are potentially going to vote in those. Think all the elementary schools have just such multiple uses for those spaces. I personally don't feel comfortable putting. A lot of people in there, we would still have to disinfect them and I don't know how many times how much each of you is spent in some of those all purpose rooms. But my. My experience is mostly at the Hoover, you know, that all purpose room is the cafeteria. So there's like the milk refrigerator. There's the table that distributes the food. There's the kitchen. There's a whole reading. Guided reading library on the stage, like, it's there's tables, there's volleyball nets all within this space and all that stuff would have to be cleaned. Before school starts the next day, so it's anyway, it's not 1 thing and I understand from just. that perspective I can understand why it doesn't make perfect sense Council McMaster but I think we also just need to you know we were looking at all the trade-offs of all the different options and we just think that the combination of challenges tips the scales to the single use in the single location and

▶ 51:10 Shawn M. MacMaster: are there any legal requirements that would prohibit us from using high school students or college students any age requirements I'm just wondering if you know with high school students perhaps you know being able to if they're able to do this legally of getting community service hours or college students who aren't going away to school they're going to be learning remotely and might see it as an opportunity to make whatever is it a hundred and twenty

▶ 51:39 Speaker 5: dollars a day is that what it is mr. Mosa oh it'll be 150 there's an

▶ 51:42 Shawn M. MacMaster: opportunity we also the unemployment rate in Melrose is twelve and a half percent right now I expect that to improve but there I think there might be be a pool of people beyond the typical seniors and I'm just wondering what

▶ 51:57 Speaker 5: opportunities might exist there if any. So the high school student piece is a little bit we can use a certain number of high school students and but only a limited number we definitely are aware and considering the use of some college students both or recent college graduates because I know there's quite a few recent college grads who also would be happy to have the work experience and I've looked into it most likely will use them actually early like before the election just to help us with the managing of the early and absentee voting ballots so yes I think we can definitely

▶ 52:40 Speaker 5: pull from a different pool of residents to to help out with some of our poll worker challenges. I don't think that negates our concern that having such a large percentage of brand new poll workers will be challenging if we're in distributed locations throughout the city

▶ 52:56 Shawn M. MacMaster: though. Thank you for that. In my ward, as you know, Ms. Camosa is the most diverse in Melrose. 24 languages are spoken in the homes of students who attend the Lincoln School. I'm wondering what are the plans if any for educating our immigrant families in terms of you know the potential change here if that change does happen what might that look like in terms of outreach to those families and language access you know so that they fully understand what's happening why and where they would need to go so

▶ 53:32 Speaker 5: that's actually thank you because that's really the most urgent reason why this order came before you now and not, I think the latest this state would allow for just 20 days before the election to make the change is that we want every opportunity to be able to communicate to all residents. So that will be a combination of a variety of approaches that would be postcards to every resident of Melrose. And that can be, you know, depending how we determine it we could look into doing that in a variety of languages um it would be the everbridge reverse 911 system to call all households um uh the mayor would work with us to do his videos with mmtv related to this um and then it's you know social media posts and it'll be a comprehensive communications plan my intention is to have a regular i actually actually, despite my dislike of the platform, I think Twitter is a great opportunity for this because we can give daily updates for where we are with early voting, like when it looks like there might be a lull, if you're really concerned about health and safety, but you do want to cast that ballot in person, that might be the best way for you to know when is the best time to go and early vote, that kind of stuff. So I think it'll be a combination of you know multi-channel we'll do the actual print newspaper as well and I'm happy to hear suggestions from the council for other ways to make sure that we reach all residents but that is the reason for the urgency so that we have as much time as possible to make sure we do reach everyone okay and

▶ 55:17 Shawn M. MacMaster: I have some other questions I'll just ask one more than I'll defer to my colleagues for to ask questions it relates to the health piece and what role if any has the Board of Health played and neither consulting on this or might the board play prospectively in terms of I guess what first offering an opinion on this and to consulting in terms of their expertise to ensure that whatever practices are taken regardless of what direction we go and you know meet their satisfaction as it relates to cleaning and sanitizing both before and

▶ 55:58 Speaker 5: after the voting so I have talked to the health director about this several times and she is in full support of the consolidation she has some suggestions in terms of how best to manage the social distancing you know that her recommendation for example is to make sure that we do have social distancing lines per ward or per precinct and to have radios to make sure we can communicate to everyone to say when, you know, a certain line is kind of hit maximum and someone needs to wait outside, that kind of stuff. She has a lot of logistical suggestions for that, and we will definitely utilize those. But yes, she's in support of the consolidation.

▶ 56:43 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Ms. Camosa. Thank you, Mr. Channon.

▶ 56:51 Mark Garipay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Camoso, for being here. Thank you for all the information over the weekend. I'll be honest, I'm struggling with the idea of consolidating the polling locations into one. Over the last three and a half months, we've been told continually by the governor to practice social distancing and avoid large gatherings. We're being asked vote to do just the opposite on that. The proposal that you had given us earlier says, you know, there are two critical elections that are scheduled during a predicted increase in infection rates. So, you know, I understand there's the safety of the workers and also, you know, I look at the safety of the residents. We're bringing everyone into one location. I know it's a bigger facility um i do have some i'm concerned about uh how would we handle peak voting times um before and after work i'm concerned uh about the social distancing long lines that could occur disc discourage uh actual voters um from voting individuals from voting if they came um i understand that the gymnasium um i've been in there quite a bit but if it does back up where that hallway is not a big hallway um and i'm concerned with um with with the pandemic that we're we're bringing our whole community and i understand that there's going to be um there's three ways three ways for voting and we we do have a prediction that the the um the in-person voting will be down compared to what it has been in the past um but we really don't know what that number is going to be so i do um i do have a lot of of reservations on on bringing everyone to to one location but just a couple items you've mentioned that 50% of the workers have already expressed some concern about coming back knowing that have we have we already started the process to find new workers where the primary is eight weeks away so we have

▶ 59:04 Speaker 5: once we have a better sense of what our options are I will do a heavier recruit part of that is if we're in a single location then we actually for once can open up the option for split shifts or like multiple shifts throughout the day most town clerks that I speak with who have a single polling location which is quite a few Wakefield Stoneham Linfield they have multiple shifts of whole workers, like up to three separate shifts throughout the 13-hour day. I think it will be a much easier ask for a younger population who may have small children at home to give a third of their day to poll worker activities rather than the full, what ends up being a 15-hour day. But when you have a bunch of brand-new wardens in the separate locations, they have their own job to do. That's very complicated and time-consuming so it's really difficult for them to manage that kind of shift change but if we're all in one place it's easier for us and to address your concern about the space again it's 17,000 square feet with pathways for multiple entrances and exits depending on what ward you're in it still gives about a thousand square feet just for voting space per precinct Um, and we'll have data before election day in November about how many people have already exercised early voting or absentee voting. If we determine not as many people as we planned for, we'll, we'll be actually exercise that. And we think the turnout on election day will be higher than anticipated. We have the mark who Jim next door to the middle school gym that we can expand into, and that would provide us additional spacing and additional entrance so that we can even spread out the voters even more.

▶ 1:01:05 Mark Garipay: One other question, if this plan was to move forward, what would be the plan for individuals who go to their old polling locations and find it to be locked?

▶ 1:01:20 Speaker 5: So we will have the large, as much as possible, we will have large, the signage that the DPW to kind of direct people but we'll definitely have signage on all the doors of the existing polling locations to direct people where they need to go and

▶ 1:01:43 Mark Garipay: I know some of the surrounding communities have have one consolidated voting location but it's a little bit different changing moving to that in the middle of a a pandemic where we're worried about potential infections and yeah so I do have some concerns on this so I'll uh I'll uh concede my time to

▶ 1:02:16 Cory Thomas: some of the other councils thank you mr. chairman madam clerk thank you for being here a lot of my concerns have already been asked I do have some of my own as well just coming out of the budget season and we are in appropriations how is this gonna be funded and how is this gonna be different you know what are the costs surrounding a typical election at the 14 polling places and and and will that amount be more or less than this one polling location I think we have to

▶ 1:02:44 Speaker 5: look at it slightly differently because I think what a typical election would cost is probably not what's gonna cost this year um regardless of where we choose polling locations the average state or federal election cost us about $30,000 for this particular situation given the additional supplies we will need it's definitely going to be more but it may be counterintuitive it's actually going to be less costly to do the consolidated location by quite a bit in terms of labor cost of I think I already mentioned the police details if If we go to 8 locations, we will need to double our police costs because we'll need 1 for a crowd control and 1 to get out the ballot box. And then if we move to the single location, we could keep that cost steady state, the disinfecting cost of using DPW staff overnight. I actually don't have a quote on that, but it would be. obviously significant if at all possible if even possible to do the disinfection of eight different locations so there's that and then just the additional staffing to kind of again manage crowds make sure social distancing is contained and organized and keep to keep people moving through and to facilitate the entire set of activities we plan I think we'll have if we have eight different locations we would need eight additional staff just to facilitate that with the police officer if not double whereas I think we can cut to about half of those numbers if we're in one location because we can monitor one you know shoot one kind of path of per precinct you know we can manage maybe three at once as one crowd control

▶ 1:04:42 Cory Thomas: and is this already in your fiscal year 2021 budget or you know would you be looking for

▶ 1:04:50 Speaker 5: additional money to fund um so for the fiscal 21 budget we just budgeted a standard election because at the time of preparing those budgets even though we knew it would be more it was none of the legislation was clear and it would be too hard to kind of predict um some of that extra cost can be we can use COVID-19 funding to cover some of the costs and then typically we cover the rest through a free cash allocation if there's a balance left but obviously we're still I mean we want to make sure that the election regardless of cost is you know handled freely and fairly and everyone has the ability to vote as they choose but obviously we always Keep an eye on the budget so that, you know, that's why it will help to be all in 1 location to keep those costs reasonable as much as possible.

▶ 1:05:41 Cory Thomas: Sure, I used to hold signs for Alderman Bill Forbes, Alderman and City Councilor Scott Forbes up at Hoover. So I see a lot of people that are coming in and out of the Hoover School polling place in Ward 7. A lot of the people that are going up there are the most vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our senior citizens, people over 65 years old, a number of them walk to Hoover. How are we going to handle transportation if they cannot walk to

▶ 1:06:12 Speaker 5: the middle school or the high school complex? So I've talked to Stacey Montello, the Director of the Council on Aging, and the Council on Aging is already kind of on it. They're actually quite supportive of the consolidation because what they run into when they provide rides to the polls is they need to kind of coordinate what polling position a resident needs to go to and they need to build that into the schedule. If they have it so every senior is going to the middle school, that's much easier for them to actually offer more frequent rides throughout the day because it's a single you know and as you know there's a nice loop to kind of drop residents off right at a curb cut it's level for them to get in unassisted and uh it so that's i think will be um a reasonable solution for residents do we know how many rides

▶ 1:07:07 Cory Thomas: on average per election the council on aging are currently giving to a neighborhood polling place

▶ 1:07:15 Speaker 5: I do not. Not off the top of my head. I'm not sure if we have that data.

▶ 1:07:19 Cory Thomas: That number would surely seem to be on the rise if we're going to one centralized location. Right now, say they're giving X amount of rides to the individual neighborhood polling areas. You can only assume that that's going to increase multiple fold if you're going to one location. Ward 7 is one of the furthest locations from the high school complex in the middle school. you know so you know people that don't drive you know are going to be reliant on these rides with council on aging i know a number of candidates um in a local election might offer rides but this is these are going to be um you know congressional um elections and national elections you know i don't know if we can count on on those level of people giving rides in the community so we really will be relying on the council on aging um how many how many vehicles do the council and agent have uh two two and those those um you know the the school bus

▶ 1:08:20 Cory Thomas: the smaller school bus sizes yes okay um you you did mention earlier about the communication uh that will go well uh i assume you know it'll it'll be you know reverse 911 like you said um mayor broder is doing a great job with communication uh to the general public with the broadcast he's doing. Again, a lot of these people are over 65. They might not all have computers or access to computers. I'd really be concerned about getting that message out to people as early and often as possible. Maybe reverting to the Melrose Helps call line to call these people directly at their homes and letting them know what these changes might be. That could be another way of communication. September might not be concerned with weather, but November, May. If there are long lines, like Council Gareth, they said before work and after work hours, have they been in consideration, you know, if the line goes out into the rear parking lot during climate weather, you know, is that a concern that you guys are ready to deal with as well?

▶ 1:09:23 Speaker 5: Yes. So we've talked about that. Again, you have the Marcoux gym next door. So for example, if we decide that we still have the right number of voters who will most likely turn out at the polls, we can keep the voting in the middle school gym, but we could open up the side door to the Marcoux so the line goes through the Marcoux, for example. If it looks like a severe inclement weather situation, both of those elections are on a day that school is closed. It wouldn't be ideal, but again, if we're talking like a hurricane in September or something, we can also set it up so that you maybe enter through a different door. We can kind of flip it around and enter through the front middle school door. You can line up down that long ramp that has a portico, and then you have the entire central lobby of the middle school to wait in line if it came to that. I think that's a very worst case scenario because I'd prefer not to do that, but it does, the school does provide us with a number of options if we need to use them.

▶ 1:10:33 Cory Thomas: But the more options open us to more areas of potential contamination, more areas to clean, more hours for DPW overtime.

▶ 1:10:42 Speaker 5: Correct, but not as much as eight different locations would, so we still have the options.

▶ 1:10:48 Cory Thomas: Sure, no, I understand that, you know, I'm very familiar with all of our elementary schools in the polling places. There are a great amount of people, students in the middle school in the high school complex. Hopefully some sports will be back into. Activity when we're back in school during these elections times, you know, we'll have girls volleyball going on in the gymnasium, the middle school gym, gym classes for the middle school in the high school. So there are concerns all over. Um, I was doing, you know, do some homework today. The CDC has a page that's dedicated to this. It was an article called communities, schools, workplaces and events. And it talks specifically about a variety of voting options, including those that reduce the number of voters who congregate imports at polling locations and how to keep whole workers safe. So, you know, maybe it's on, you know, from your office and take a look at that, you know, the CDC community schools, workplaces and events.

▶ 1:11:50 Speaker 1: That might be a source of information to help people work or save.

▶ 1:11:57 Christopher Cinella: We have a, we have to gavel in city council and we do have a few more people in the queue.

▶ 1:12:03 Cory Thomas: I really appreciate appreciate you guys being so proactive on this and, you know, humoring a lot of these questions for me. It's going to be a tough decision, but at least we are looking at it proactively, so thank you very much.

▶ 1:12:18 Speaker 5: Thank you. President Rodriguez, did you want to gavel in now?