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ARIZONA INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMMISSION Thursday, September 22, 2011 9:10 a.m. Location Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino (Ocotillo Conference Room) 5040 Wild Horse Pass Boulevard Chandler, Arizona 85226 Attending Colleen C. Mathis, Chair Jose M. Herrera, Vice Chair Scott Day Freeman, Vice Chair Linda C. McNulty, Commissioner Richard P. Stertz, Commissioner Ray Bladine, Executive Director Buck Forst, Information Technology Specialist Kristina Gomez, Deputy Executive Director Mary O'Grady, Legal Counsel Joe Kanefield, Legal Counsel Reported By: Marty Herder, CCR Certified Court Reporter #50162 © AZ Litigation Support Court Reporters www.CourtReportersAz.com 2 1 Phoenix, Arizona September 15, 2011 2 9:10 a.m. 3 4 5 P R O C E E D I N G S 6 7 (Whereupon, the public session commences.) 8 CHAIRPERSON MATHIS: Good morning. This meeting 9 of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission will now 10 come to order. 11 Today is Thursday, September 22nd. And the time 12 is 9:10 in the morning. 13 Let's start with the pledge of allegiance. 14 (Whereupon, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited.) 15 CHAIRPERSON MATHIS: Well, it's great to be here 16 at the Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino on the Gila Indian -- 17 Gila River Indian Community, where the Texas ranger is in 18 bloom I noticed. Beautiful this morning. 19 Let's do roll call, and then I'll introduce some 20 of the other guests. 21 Vice Chair Freeman. 22 VICE-CHAIR FREEMAN: Here. 23 CHAIRPERSON MATHIS: Vice Chair Herrera. 24 (No oral response.) 25 CHAIRPERSON MATHIS: Commissioner McNulty. © AZ Litigation Support Court Reporters www.CourtReportersAz.com 3 1 COMMISSIONER McNULTY: Here. 2 CHAIRPERSON MATHIS: Commissioner Stertz. 3 COMMISSIONER STERTZ: Here. 4 CHAIRPERSON MATHIS: We have a quorum. 5 And the other guests at the table are mapping 6 consultants. We have Ken Strasma and Willie Desmond down on 7 the end. 8 Our legal counsel, Mary O'Grady and Joe Kanefield. 9 Our trusty court reporter, Marty Herder. 10 And then Buck Forst is our chief technology 11 officer. 12 Our executive director is here, Ray Bladine, along 13 with Kristina Gomez who is our deputy executive director. 14 And Anna Garcia is also here. 15 I think that covers all our staff we have right 16 now. 17 And there might be a little feedback. 18 And I think with that, we can go into the next 19 item on the agenda, which is item number two, map 20 presentations. 21 This is a recurring item on our agenda these days 22 so that folks from the community can actually have 23 substantive time to present maps to us or ideas. 24 And, so I have a few request to speak forms for 25 this portion. © AZ Litigation Support Court Reporters www.CourtReportersAz.com 4 1 Our first speakers are Tommie Martin, Richard 2 Lunt, and Larry Stephenson. They're supervisors from Gila 3 and Greenlee Counties and Eastern Counties executive. So if 4 they could come up to the podium. 5 And I would remind anyone who is speaking to us to 6 be sure to speak directly into the microphone, adjust it up 7 and down so that you're speaking directly in, so that we all 8 hear you very clearly, and to spell your name, your last 9 name, for the record so that our court reporter gets an 10 accurate accounting. 11 RICHARD LUNT: Good morning and thank you. 12 Richard Lunt, L-U-N-T. 13 First of all, I, I appreciate what you folks do, 14 the daunting task. It's one of those tasks you don't make 15 anybody happy, but you'll find that we're very agreeable as 16 long as you agree with us. 17 So, first of all, we do represent the rural 18 counties. 19 And we feel that the rural counties need 20 representation. 21 We've been in situations where if you try to, 22 let's say, take a big piece of the rural counties and then 23 put it into the urban for representation, all that's ever 24 represented is the urban areas. 25 And so what we're proposing, and we have the maps © AZ Litigation Support Court Reporters www.CourtReportersAz.com 5 1 and data to back this, is to make two real rural districts, 2 one on the east side and one on the west side. And then 3 taking the urban areas in the Phoenix area, making up 4 districts, and then taking one in Tucson and then one from 5 Tucson to Phoenix making up another. 6 And we thought we had a thumb drive and we would 7 be able to prevent all this to you, but we will get that 8 information to you. 9 Second of all, the reason why we feel that the 10 rural areas, they represent one fifth of the population. 11 And so we believe we deserve two truly rural districts. 12 Because we look at things different. When you -- 13 when the urban people look at water, they look at a 14 commodity. 15 We look at it as a resource. 16 When they look at land, the urbanites, let's call 17 them, look at land as a place to play. 18 We look at it as a resource, a way of life, 19 something that must be managed and protected. 20 And we just conflict in lots of things. 21 I know during the Rodeo-Chediski fire the 22 difference between urban people and rural people is rural 23 people take care of themselves. 24 Yes, they'll accept their help. But when the 25 Red Cross came to help in the Rodeo-Chediski fire, the rural © AZ Litigation Support Court Reporters www.CourtReportersAz.com 6 1 people had already set up places to feed their people. And 2 that just doesn't happen in urban. 3 We've also through consultants have made sure that 4 a lot of the same laws that you have, competitiveness, you 5 know, minority representation, are met. 6 We've done that. We've done a lot of the homework 7 for you. 8 And I say it's a little embarrassing that that's 9 not here, but we'll make sure you get it. 10 You know, as far as competitiveness -- oh, we do. 11 Okay. Thank you. 12 We do have it now. 13 As you can see, we have a district, a rural 14 district on the west side and we have a rural district on 15 the east side. 16 And then as I explained in the urban populations, 17 we've made up the other seven districts. 18 And we -- our consultants have made sure that all 19 those districts meet the criteria that each of you must look 20 at. 21 And, like I say, you have a daunting task, and I 22 realize that. 23 My thoughts. 24 I thought, you know, maybe, maybe somebody 25 upstairs was saying, hey. © AZ Litigation Support Court Reporters www.CourtReportersAz.com 7 1 Anyway, isn't technology wonderful? 2 Okay. 3 But, you know what, life happens, and we just 4 smile about it, don't we? 5 I mean, I think that's the way we need to look at 6 it. 7 Anyway, we, we believe that, like I say, we make 8 up a fifth of the population. 9 We've been there before without rural districts. 10 We don't feel we'll have a voice. 11 And I think that's one of your main objectives, is 12 make sure that people are heard. 13 And with that, I'll turn time over to 14 Supervisor Tommie Martin from Gila County. 15 LARRY STEPHENSON: Good morning. My name is Larry 16 Stephenson, S-T-E-P-H-E-N-S-O-N, is the way my dad spelled 17 the last name. 18 I think I'm one of those consultants that Mr. Lunt 19 was talking about. 20 I'm executive director of the Eastern Arizona 21 Counties Organization, a group of rural counties. 22 And the supervisors I report to gave me a 23 challenge. They said, we want one rural district, real 24 rural district, kind of what they have now. 25 So I accepted the challenge and tried to build © AZ Litigation Support Court Reporters www.CourtReportersAz.com 8 1 one, the one that's labeled CD No. 9 on this map. 2 And then we looked, could we get another. 3 And we found out by looking at the western part 4 of the state and wrapping around toward Tucson, yes, you 5 could. 6 And that left the challenge of the other seven 7 districts. 8 As you know, Arizona is a very urbanized state, 9 very concentrated urbanized state. 10 Most of the population is concentrated in the 11 two metro areas of Phoenix and Tucson and in between. 12 So we took the remaining population and -- I'm not 13 sure these are exact boundaries. 14 They're not meant to be exact boundaries, but 15 rather conceptual boundaries that show that you can have 16 seven districts in, in the metro areas. 17 Not that these are where the boundaries should be, 18 but rather it's possible to have districts that meet the 19 population requirements and other requirements, you know, 20 contiguousness and that sort of thing. 21 So we tried to be respectful, but, again, these 22 are inexact and we took no, no pride in these, no pride of 23 authorship.