 I have 630 and we do have a quorum. I know that we're waiting on a couple more board members, but they can join us as we get going. So good evening, everybody. Thank you for being here. And this is the Thursday, July 9th, Housing and Human Services Advisory Board meeting. We call the meeting to order. And I at this time invite any public to be heard. I did not have any requests for anybody to have access to the meeting other than our consultants from Root Policy. So no public to be heard at this time. Thank you, Nicole. And thank you for speaking so clearly into your microphone. Okay, then let's go on to the minutes. The minutes were sent out in advance of the meeting. Yes, Dina. I just had a correction to the minutes. And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do that now or the procedure for that. So, should I tell you what I noticed? Yes, go ahead. Okay, so just on my agenda item when I did the presentation on Center for People with Disabilities, it noted that the minutes note that they assisted about 200 people over the last year, over four locations, and that number is really 2,000 people, not 200 people. Okay, thank you. Nicole, it looks like you captured that. Yes, I will correct that. Okay, thank you. Are there any other corrections to the minutes? Okay, then with that, is there a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting? I'll move to approve the minutes. Thank you, Dina, makes the motion. Is there a second? I can go ahead and second. Okay, thank you, Jake. And all in favor of approving the minutes from last month's meeting, please say aye or raise your hand. Are we raising, we're raising hands now, right? Okay, I show everybody approving with, I assume, Ann, with, sorry, I can't think of the word, not voting because you weren't here at the last meeting, correct? Correct. Okay, so you've got all the approvals, any opposed, please raise your hand. And any abstentions, please raise your hand. Well done, Ann, thank you. Okay, the motion passes. We'll move on to the TRG recommendations on Habitat Funding Request. Kathy, are you gonna walk us through that? Yes, I am. All right, you have the floor. Thank you. So Molly provided a memo kind of outlining the TRG meeting, which I listened to while I was driving across Nebraska, so I wasn't very participatory in the meeting, but I didn't hear what was going on. So bottom line is the recommendation. We ended up with one application. We started out with two, but they, that agency wanted a grant and so they decided to wait until the CDBG funding in the next funding cycle is available. That left us with one application for Habitat for Humanities, Chodo Arm, which is a community housing development arm. So they created a separate, it's not a whole separate organization, but a separate arm of Habitat of the St. Rain Valley in order to take advantage of and be eligible for special home funding or special funding under the home program. So the home funds provide Chodo funding to support small housing development organizations with pre-development costs if they need those or a set aside of funding to help support them each year to give them kind of a leg up. And so they're not necessarily competing against all the other folks that might compete for home funds. So they repurposed and started this Chodo and so this is their first application in for funding. They requested 120,000 in Chodo funding. Normally the consortium sets aside, depending on what the allocation is, anywhere from about 120 up to 140 or 160,000 each year. So what we will do if this is recommended to move forward is to get with the city of Boulder and see what might be available in Chodo funding for 2020. If anything, otherwise they would wait until 2021. Home funds are available, which would be in January for this project. So the TRG did recommend full funding for this project from the Chodo funds as a grant. They felt that the fact that they were getting to lower income, providing lower income housing opportunities for sale home ownership opportunities, even beyond the 60% area median income that they agreed to in order for the developer to get their special consideration under the Inclusionary Housing Program. So they're really trying to target 55% AMI units. So that's why the TRG felt, even though we had the discussion should a nonprofit that is providing the affordable housing for a developer be able to receive city funding, should not the developer fully funding that the TRG in this instance felt because they were going even lower than what was required under Inclusionary Housing that it made some sense to go ahead and fund this. So that's their recommendation. And that's pretty much a wrap up of the discussion that they had around that whole issue about the developer versus the city funding, these kinds of projects. At some point, and we can bring it back for a further discussion, they would like some guidance or some thoughts around whether or not we should consider projects like this that's under the Inclusionary Housing or if just getting the fee waivers is sufficient as far as city funding and save the city funding for 100% affordable projects or others that are not providing the affordable housing on behalf of the developer. So I think what we'll do is the staff might, dog's growling at somebody, staff might put together maybe some options for you all to consider and bring that back to the Housing Advisory Board to have a discussion about that is kind of what I was thinking. So we could give some direction to the TRG. So I'd be happy to answer any questions about either the application or that discussion. Thank you, Kathy. Any questions for Kathy, Paulie? Kathy, partly for everybody else's illumination, but partly for me. This is, I would like to say, this development is the first and I profoundly hope the last residential Metro District in Longmont for the last 15 years, which was made illegal and where you are trying to make it illegal again. But so there are three parts of it. Part of it is a Metro District and then part of it is the Veterans Village, which is the 26 tiny homes. And then Habitat has the eight Habitat homes, which are duplexes or they're called shared, something or other now. Anyway, but just what? Paired homes. Paired homes, yes. I think it's the other term. They're duplexes, but anyway, but they're nicer and bigger and better. This is a really good project for Habitat. Could you just clarify that there isn't really any relationship between Habitat and the Veterans Village? In other words, Habitat's not building the Veterans Village tiny homes and not sharing financing. Is that correct? That's totally correct, yeah. The developer donated the land or will donate the land to each of the two entities in a separate transaction, two separate transactions, and then each entity, Veterans Community Project and Habitat are then on their own to build their separate developments. As Paula indicated, Veterans Village is 26 units, tiny homes and Habitat's is eight total homes. So those will become totally separate projects. They're just on continuous parcels once the land gets donated to them. And Kathy, that land is actually going to be property of Habitat on one hand and also on Veterans Village. So they're not leasing it for 100 years. They are actually giving it to them. Yes, very clear, simple title. Yes, Caitlin. First of all, sorry, I'm late. Quick question, I was trying to see this in the documents and I didn't. Do we have a rough estimate of what the value of that land donation to Habitat? We don't have it split out between the two. Totally, I don't think. The application in the sources of funds, I'm trying to find it. Oh, show the, 7.95 maybe for both of them. We think? Actually, that might be just Habitat's portion. Okay. I think it was closer, it was probably double that, I think with both of them together. Okay. I'm asking as a means of thinking about like what is that donation worth that the developer has made to Habitat as compared to the total cost of their development? So thank you. Council Member Christensen. When I'm reading down here at the end of this, it says the advisory board questioned if the 12% inclusionary housing requirement is too high. I would like to point out that we have worked very, very hard to get it up to 12% and it is not too high. And that is something that everybody in the county pledged to do. And Boulder has a 20% requirement and many of the other cities in the county are also have pledged or have made it law that it's a 12% requirement. So that's a county-wide decision based upon the Boulder County Consortium of Cities sponsored summit from about four or five years ago. Council Member Christensen, can you, which page are you seeing that on? I'm not sure I've seen the same thing. So if Brian, this is Karen, I think it might have been a reference in the minutes. Oh, I see. When we were having the discussion at the June meeting and I think it came up as a question, if there's going to future developments might be coming to us for some gap financing, then the question was 12% too high. I think Council Member Christensen, is that where you were referencing is that note in the minutes? Yes, that's right, Karen. It is the minutes from the June 11th, 2020 meeting. Sorry. Yeah, correct. Thank you. Got it. Any other questions for Kathy? Kathy, I have one question. The, if I remember correctly, the home consortium that the funding rotates every three years, is that correct? So the Chodo set aside, does that also rotate with the current holder of those funds? Yeah, it does. Although Longmont until this point has never had a Chodo. So we just put ours back into the consortium white pot. Mostly it has gone to Habitat of Flatirons Habitat, who is the Chodo operating out of Boulder and the rest of the county. So this is kind of exciting that we've got a Chodo again. It's been a couple of years, but yes, it would cycle with the community or if we don't have anything, it goes back to the consortium. And this year it's Boulder, who is? So 2020 is Boulder, yes. So they have control, but they thought there may be something that if their project's not ready to go, we could fund this or partially fund it and then the rest of it would be in 21, when it's our year and or split 2021 funding. So we'll figure that out. That's more of a accounting issue if you guys want to fund this project. Okay, thank you. Okay, if there are no other questions, then I think the question to the board is whether there is a motion to approve the recommendation of the 120 of funding habitat for humanity at 120,000 through the Chodo funds. Is that, Kathy, is that a correct? Yes. Formulation of that, okay. Vice chair, Marsing, is that a question? No, I was gonna make the motion, Mr. Chair, and just acknowledge that the TRG asked a lot of really good questions and kind of had the conversation that had been brought up at the meeting when they were here. And I think what it came down to for the TRG was fundamentally kind of what, as Kathy said, we're talking about low income, permanently affordable for sale units that are very hard to create. And the TRG felt that it's a continuing question that I have about the investments we make in habitat properties because we do very consistently maybe not overinvest, but in terms of on a per unit basis, the amount of money that the city puts into the creation of those units is high, but we get a good product in return. And so the TRG felt confident that it was the right choice and I thought their discussion was reasonable. And so yeah, I will move approval of the TRG's recommendation. I move that. Great, thank you. Is there a second? Karen Phillips seconds. Thank you. Any further discussion? Yes, Graham. I'd like to clarify that the motion is within regards to allocating the money to habitat, your humanity, not whether or not the developer meets the city requirements for affordable housing. That's a separate question, right? That's not, we're not making a vote on that issue. Yeah, that's my understanding is it's simply the funding of 120,000. Thank you. Yep. Any other discussion? Okay, all in favor of funding habitat for humanity, 220,000, please raise your hand. 120,000. Yep. What did I say? 220,000, don't give them more money. 120,000. Just to be clear. Yes, thank you. I got that chair. Thank you. Any opposed, please raise your hand. And any abstentions, please raise your hand. Okay, the motion passes. And before we move on to the next item, I did want to ask because the last meeting, I think was the first time, at least the first time I can recall, that we've had that joint TRG Housing and Human Services advisory board kind of presentation did, Jake, can you speak a little bit to whether the TRG found that to be useful or... You know, we didn't have a discussion on that in TRG specifically that I can recall. I didn't feel that there was any objection to it. I don't think anyone raised any concerns with it. And I think everyone reasonably would understand the reasoning behind it. I can say I certainly found it to be beneficial. I mean, for this group, I guess I would ask the question of this group is having heard from Habitat, do you feel like it was beneficial? I guess that would be the question is, if this group felt more informed about the vote, they just took that would be the ultimate measure of whether it was successful or not. So, Mr. Chair, I would guess that the questions probably is best asked to the rest of the board. Yeah, thank you. Well, I can certainly say that I found it very useful. I feel like, you know, reading through this packet, I had a much better understanding of what was being asked and what some of the considerations were that we were putting into that. So that certainly helps me feel like I'm being a more responsible board member in making these decisions and these kinds of recommendations. I don't know if anybody else has feedback on that. I agree. Thank you, Shakita. Kathy, from your standpoint, was there any staff feedback on that process, whether it was kind of goofy or felt like the right thing to do or? No, I think it seemed like it was beneficial. It's no more difficult or less difficult to structure it that way. I guess the main concern would be if we ever got to the point where we were looking at five or six presentations at once, which the TRG does log through, whether that makes sense or not, or how much time y'all would wanna spend doing that if it gets to be a lot, but to do one or two made that seem like it worked really well. Okay, good point. So we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to agenda item five, which is a loan modification request from Longmont Housing Development Corporation. And Kathy, I think you're gonna lead us to that one as well. I am. So the memo that was included in your packet pretty much outlined what has happened. This was a loan that we made to the Longmont Housing Development Corporation back in 2015. It looks like I did have a blank in there and didn't get that filled out, but it was a 2015, it was a five year loan to purchase two acres in the Hover Crossing Development right across 18th Avenue from the Lodge and Hearthstone. So they intended to be able to develop it probably by now and that their intention was to be able to pay off the loan as they were moving forward with development. Obviously that hasn't happened. So this is doing some cleanup work since the loan was actually due and payable in March and with everything that has happened, it kind of got a little bit lost. And so we're trying to get this corrected. The board chair, LHTC board chair has made a request that this be extended just for a year to March 1st, 2021, which will allow them some time to decide whether to roll it into a more permanent form of financing or if they're ready to move forward with it. There's also a possible option. The city owns some land and wants to put a new fire station out in that area, whether it might be able to do a land swap and put the housing authority in a more prominent position with the land that the city owns doing a swap. I think it's a little bit more land that the city owns and less land. They don't think the fire department needs as much. We haven't fully vetted that as well. That was kind of thrown out at the last minute. So this just allows some time for them to be able to consider options and be able to move forward one way or the other. So the extension would, we would ask the LHTC to go ahead and make their interest payment for this year and then extend the term to March 1st of 2021 and allow them some time to get their plans together for this and come back to us with something else or pay it off. Thank you, Kathy. Any questions for Kathy on this extension request? Just a couple for me, Kathy. They, as you noted, this lapse has not occurred before. They don't have a new executive director, do they? Or do they? It's Karen and me and Harold and a lot of city staff. Oh, I see. Okay. It's a group effort. It's taken three of us to do the job of one person. This one split the defense, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, we do not have anyone in position at this point in time. So we're working through all these issues. Actually, the executive director is our city manager. So he's the executive board member on the Lawman Housing Authority Board and that position holds the same level of responsibility as the executive director. Okay, thank you. It would be Harold. And remind me, if this had been developed, what's the mechanism for repaying that loan? It would have been tied into the development and so we would have gotten at the time that they closed on the construction loan. We would have gotten paid back at that time. Yeah, right. They could also choose to roll it into a more permanent financing situation with the bank as well if they think it's gonna take longer to develop. And is interest accruing on this extension? Yes, yes, it's a 2% interest, yeah, 2% interest. And they've been making interest-only payments for all five years and just slipped on the 2021 when it should have all been due. Okay. Just one other question. In regards to paying interest, you know, when you don't plan on paying interest, it becomes a significant expense, although I haven't done the math to see what the interest on this would be. And that does not pose any kind of financial distress to the organization. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions? Okay, with that, is there a motion to approve the loan modification requests from the Longmont Housing Development Corporation? Motion to approve. Thank you, Graham. Is there a second? Thank you, Shakita. All those in favor of approving the loan modification request from the Longmont Housing Development Corporation, please raise your hand. Any opposed, please raise your hand. Any abstentions, please raise your hand. Okay, the motion passes. Wonderful. Thank you for the background, Kathy. That's really helpful. Sure, thank you. Okay, we're on to the Human Services Needs Assessment Focus Group. I don't know who's gonna lead that discussion. I will tee it up and then I will turn it over to Jen. Great. Thank you. All those who need that. So, as you already have a Human Services Needs Assessment Root Policy has been doing several focus groups and is currently working on residents of this group. We just felt that it was important that this board get to share its point of view on the Human Services Needs Assessment as well. They're also doing some strategic interviews with individuals throughout the community around the Human Services Assessment. And tonight I think we're gonna do, along with the focus group, they're also gonna share some top line findings that they're seeing from the Human Services Needs Assessment. And I think you will find there are some things that are new that we have not talked about before and they're very interesting. So with that, unless Karen has anything she wants to add, I will turn it over to Jen and she will lead us through the focus group. Thanks, Aleberto. I'm Jen Garner with Root Policy. Please give me the high sign if you're having trouble hearing me or anything like that. Thank you so much for having me with you all tonight. And Aleberto, before I dive in, I just wanna confirm that I have about an hour of time. Is that what you all were expecting? Yes. Okay, great. I always like to make sure just in case so that I don't keep you going when you're watching your clocks. But, so as Aleberto said, we are in the process of the community engagement phase of our work with you all for the Human Services Needs Assessment. And not surprisingly, the nature of that has, and the way that we're deploying that has changed quite a bit. But to date, we have conducted four focus groups with stakeholders, including organizations that you all fund, as well as a broader set of community organizations. And those groups have been designed to address the whole range of human service needs, but also focused in on some key topics. We had a discussion that really dug in on self-sufficiency in housing, one on health wellbeing, nutrition and food, one on safety and justice, and one on education and skill building. And as Aleberto mentioned, we've also been doing some more in-depth interviews with some of the city staff and other folks at organizations to give us a more defined look at certain segments of the population, whether that is seniors or the DACA population or other immigrants, and those are ongoing. We are also collaborating with local organizations to conduct some online focus groups, including one with the Center for People with Disabilities. I thought I heard that maybe a member of your board is with that organization. So we're really looking forward to that. It'll be my first closed captioned Google Hangout. So it should be pretty wonderful. Tomorrow I'll be at Community Food Share, dropping off some flyers to invite Longmont residents who are using their services to participate in a focus group. We've got one coming up on a Wednesday night, one on a Saturday afternoon, and all of these will be available in English and Spanish because we do have that capability in-house. And Monday, my colleague, Avilia, is actually moderating a mini phone focus group with monolingual Spanish speakers who have been referred to us by your senior services office there at the City of Longmont. So we're over the next week and a half going to be deploying the rest of the focus groups and have just been so grateful for all of the hard work by Eleberto, in particular, who has really just opened lots of doors for us as all of us in this world try to adapt to the new way of doing things. And as he mentioned, I wanted to share out with you some of just the real top line findings on what the community has been saying so far about housing and human services needs, particularly for these folks, how things have changed since the onset of the COVID pandemic, what they view as ongoing urgent needs that are immediately need to be addressed as well as maybe some structural shifts that they're seeing in the community and how they would recommend moving forward. So I don't think it'll be a surprise to any of you that every single group that we talked about and all of the people we've interviewed so far, their number one priority is doing what they can to keep people stably housed. Depending on where the perspective of the individual or the organization, housing stability wasn't just about preventing homelessness, but really about preventing further mental health difficulties, further employment challenges and really trying to keep people housed in the immediate near-term and then for the longer-term solution, really looking at how can the broad members of the Longmont community work to support households to become more self-sufficient and stably housed over the long haul. And I think that the real takeaway from all of these discussions is a recognition that Longmont has become a leader in trying to produce as much affordable housing as can be done and in being a partner in that work and just the acknowledgement that there's never enough resources, right? So how can we also help increase household stability? Childcare provision was another key issue and much of the discussion related to childcare provision revolves around what will happen to the childcare providers if people don't go back to the office. Even if they only go back to the office part-time, providers work at margins where they can't survive with just part-time kids. And so there's a real concern that there will be a loss of childcare providers in the community and that there are disruptions both happening in the childcare center environment as well as around home-based care. There's the additional attendant difficulties there. And then participants were also quick to point out that childcare was an issue pre-COVID and that for particularly for the lowest income households and even some of those on the cusp of just getting out of benefits or issues with the TANF benefits cliff that the CCAP studies in Longmont covered only half of the households that applied, right? So even before we were more economically constrained, demand was outpacing supply. And one of the participants who talked about Head Start said in a normal year, Head Start applications outpace available spots two to one and that since COVID that's now at four to one for those slots. And in their experience that that's mostly driven by people whose incomes are now Head Start qualified. I think the other real issue that was pervasive across all of our discussions relates to the digital divide. And that as more and more program and service delivery and information delivery is onboarded into online systems, there are issues with lack of internet connections but also lack of devices and facility with devices, right? So this is a critical deed and that there were challenges prior to the pandemic. There were disparities in access again prior to the pandemic by income as well as by race and ethnicity. And some of the folks who participated mentioned that as organizations and partners who've been scrambling to onboard technology solutions there've also been difficulties with language access as well as with people struggling with how to do things in a digital environment and that that will be something to pay a lot of attention to because it touches on so many things, right? Whether that's skill building programs moving into online only formats or what's happening with children's schools or what happens when kids are back in school but a classmate gets sick and people are back home again, how will that work out? So that digital divide was truly at the end of the day almost what people would prioritize as the number one new thing to address was how do we get people connected? At the time of our discussion around education and skill building the extent to which St. Brain Public Schools were going to open was unknown. And so in that environment where schools were perhaps not going to be fully opened or where schools would be open part time the participants really shared a heightened concern about the devastating impacts of continuing to keep children out of schools particularly as that rates to all aspects of the social determinants of health whether that was parent and caregiver job loss that comes with not being able to count on having their kids in school what would happen to the child care center provider environment. The lack of preventative health and dental care so for a lot of kids in public schools the one time they see a dentist is when the dentist comes to their school or same thing with vision care and so forth. So again, something that maybe isn't on the broad radar but that is another service that's delivered in the schools. And then I think the biggest issue that's not related to normal child development and education really is that the folks who work in child abuse and child abuse prevention are seeing vastly more severe cases and they hypothesize that that is because children are not seeing mandatory reporters more quickly or more frequently which is what happens when they're not in schools or not going to doctors and so that was a real, I think they framed it in terms of a clear and present danger to kids and continuing to be locked down. And so we'll just keep hoping that they'll stay reopened but those were the big issues. One other item related to education that falls into the pre-COVID environment is that there were barriers to education access in school district requirements to enroll in January, paperwork and accessing curricula through online portals that are only in English. So even for some of your families who would go to the school district to register that whole polar and environment is in English as is information to help kids with homework and so forth just sort of in the regular days of doing business. So again, another touch point where the digital divide device issues lack of access and language access creates some difficulties to helping support those families with the education and skill building area. I don't think it will surprise any of you to know that the food pantries and other food providers are seeing a huge increase in demand for services as a result of the crisis but there really was a general sense that at this point they are comfortable that people who need food have ways to get food, know how to get food, that organizations have become creative in terms of how to deliver food to isolated seniors for example or other physically vulnerable populations. So the getting food to people and connecting them isn't a real crisis point but I think that there's real concern about budget and capacity because so much, I think one of the organizations had to actually buy food for the first time that their need was outpaced by their available donations. So I put that in the something to monitor but in the good news front at least in many respects that organizational incapacity and funding issues are what they're worrying about. With respect to safety and justice, a lot of the discussion focused on domestic violence and child abuse and then attendant issues associated in the immigrant community where there is a continuing reluctance to involve law enforcement in family matters and with COVID just because there's an eviction moratorium doesn't necessarily mean people are staying in homes that they should stay in and so that there are people who are likely not, who are continuing to stay in unsafe environments because of COVID and are having, which is an additional impediment to getting to a safer place. And so some of that is layered on by mistrust and folks in the kind of family law area are really seeing a rise in divorce and protection orders which has additional complications from a human service perspective. And again, there's mental healthcare and physical healthcare that's all tied into these issues. And then finally I would say that everyone agrees that like until you need a resource, you don't know that a resource is available in the community and so what they and their colleagues and all of your colleagues have likely been seeing is a lot of high volume calls to that once they get an organization who will answer the phone, they get that need addressed and then it's, well, can you help me with all of the rest of these other things? So continued community and outreach to help build awareness of organizations that help people is always useful and the folks that we talked to really emphasize their desire to continue to maintain and strengthen their own connections as organizations to be able to refer the community to the right places and make sure people aren't falling through the cracks. They also acknowledge that again, because we can't go to a building that we think will help us, there can be some additional difficulties that are experienced by people who have less access to the internet or by organizations and information not being put out there in a transparent way, right? So it's both we need to help people understand how to use digital tools to find information but also as the providers of services, being able to look at what we're putting out in terms of information and are we easy to find? Does that what we're putting out there makes sense in those types of things? Alebria, are there any highlights that I missed going over? Totally put you on the spot. No, I think for me the digital divide piece was not that it's not something we've been talking about but the decrease where it's become even, it was always an issue but because of the changing landscape and that to me was a little new. So in terms of our discussion, what I'm hoping that we can do is that you all will come into a conversation as you have something to say if you are feeling like you're not getting a word in edgewise, give me a wave. I think I'm not sure if you all have chat enabled on this as well, but that might be another opportunity but I'd really love to hear just big picture your gut reaction to those top line findings, the extent to which they include what you've been seeing in the community, are there issues or areas that I didn't raise in this discussion and kind of really open it up to you all in terms of what you really are seeing as the greatest human service needs in long month today. Thank you, Jen. So why don't we open it up to the membership and yes, Council Member Christensen. Digital competency. So in a discussion that we're, well, our city manager has said that three of the major problems that people that we have dealing with in this city is mental health, homelessness and substance abuse and I think all those things are exacerbated by the present situation we have. So, and I think you've touched on all of those. I am, well, first of all, I would love to be a member of any of these focus groups. I haven't heard about any of them and I would love to be invited. I'm female, I'm elderly, I'm deaf, I'm low income. I'm kind of, you know, the whole package there. Not quite, daughter of an immigrant. But I'm wondering if you're seeing, and I appreciate the fact that you're talking about the problems with child abuse and domestic abuse, which a third of the people, the people who are homeless are homeless because of domestic abuse. So this just adds to the problems and so I'm glad that you're doing this assessment and doing these focus groups because we need to hear from everybody. I am wondering whether you're hearing many problems about people talking about an increased use of drugs or alcohol. As a big problem, I'm drinking more cocktails than usual, but I just think all of us are a little tired now. We were good with this for a few months, but this is gonna be a long haul and we have to really decide as a community how we're gonna deal with this because childcare especially is a problem. It's, nobody can do anything. I don't think the business community understands how nobody's gonna be able to do anything or get back to work. It's both for people who are hoping to get back to work but also for the essential workers who have no choice at all. They're low income to begin with and then they're forced to figure out how to deal with their children. They can't be home to deal with them and yet the childcare agencies are completely stressed out trying to keep alive. I've been listening to the early childhood listening sessions and they're really, really struggling. So I applaud what you're doing. Well, thank you all. The credit obviously goes to Eleberto and Karen and Kathy for leading all of this on with respect to addiction and alcoholism and increased substance use and abuse. Certainly that has come up in all of the focus groups. I think that providers really feel like their experience thus far is more anecdotal than it is, you know, magnifiable but I will let you know that next week I'm doing a focus group at the recovery cafe. So that will certainly give us a sense of what's happening in that community because obviously in a tight knit recovery community they'll know who's gone out. They'll know what's happening and so we'll get a better flavor of that from people who have actually experienced both addiction and recovery. I guess that's the only bit that I would add to that. And so this is Karen and I think for our chair and actually for Council Member Christensen, you know, so this really is your focus group opportunity. So certainly, yeah, you could be involved in a lot of different focus groups but so Jen gave us, you know, kind of an overview. So that's the additional information you receive but we really are, this is really the opportunity for you all to provide your input about what you're seeing, what you're experiencing, your observations around needs. So this is, you know, one of your opportunities for participating in that focus group effort. So can I just slide, Clark? Thank you. I guess I'd like to say that I kind of keep track of the child abuse cases that come into court for the county that's part of my job. And at the beginning, it was COVID, it was pretty out of control. People were having their babies, not in the hospital. They were having babies all over the place which was really hard to see. But it's kind of leveled out. We haven't had as many cases coming in. I don't think we're having as many successes with getting people sober right now because it's just stressful, the world is stressful. And if you're, you know, fragile at all or not stable in your mental health or with your recovery, this kind of thing, of course, everything going on is gonna sidetrack you. But I've been kind of amazed by how little how few cases we've had recently and how they aren't so difficult like they were right at the beginning. And I think community people still do make reports, family make reports, neighbors make reports. You know, even though it's not teachers, there's still plenty of other people that have contact with kids. So I feel like there's still ways for those kind of families to come to our attention, landlords, you know, many different people. So I don't feel as worried about that as you might think I would, but I don't know. I just think the community does a good job of kind of keeping track of kids. That's great, thank you. What else came to mind as you all kind of were thinking about your own experiences with the organizations you work with, what you're seeing as needs, I think Anne made a great point of kind of how things have changed from the very beginning of the crisis to maybe how things are going more currently. Council member Christian sends up, but before you speak, Paulie, I wanted to ask Nicole, is there any reason why everybody can't just unmute unless there's background noise that's confounding it? Because I feel like the formality of recognition and unmuting and all that really interrupts the flow of conversation on a topic like this. I'll answer on the technical side of it. Everybody can totally unmute themselves when they're ready to talk. I don't think it's a good idea for everybody to be unmuted the entire time just because of background noise, but as far as calling on people and the flow of it, I'll divert to miss Rony for that answer. You were stuck. Let's give it a go, because let's just see if it maybe facilitates the flow here a little bit. Thank you. So you want to start to unmute? Unmute, just let it go. Oh, just unmute. Let your hair down. Go crazy unless you really don't want to. Like Jake, he's just not gonna do it and that's cool. I live right off of Kaufman Street. I get bucks and stuff. Like Kaufman's right out my window. So I will stay muted unless I feel the need to talk. Okay. Thank you. I was thinking I've got two little ones who are getting ready for bed and they're like, I'm afraid you're gonna suddenly hear what sounds like a banshee. I'm not actually running through, but this is all really, I think it's interesting to hear the top level information that's coming out right now. None of it seemed terribly surprising to me, unfortunately. Paula, you were gonna say something, I think. Yeah. I'm just, well, for one thing, I'm just wondering what we could do as a group or as city council or something to facilitate the digital stuff. I know that there's a very, there's a huge problem from people who are low income to be able to first of all afford like a smartphone or an iPad or a computer even, much less than to be able to afford to pay for the monthly rate. I know that the school system did something, I thought that they gave away iPads for school-aged kids. I'm not, because I don't have a school-aged kid right now. He's old. The district does give middle and high school students iPads. It's part of the tech, yeah. What about the little kids though? Because that's just as important actually. They don't give them, there's not a one-to-one program in the elementary schools in most of them. I do think that the district had them available for essentially check out. But it was not, in the middle and high school, I think most of the middle and high schools in St. Brain have capacity to do a one-to-one with some kind of either a Chromebook or an iPad or another tablet for every student. And that's part of, they have that when they're even in person in school as they have access to those devices. And so they made it so that kids could use it. But I think they had to be returned at the end of the school year. So even for summer learning, unless they were actually enrolled in quote unquote summer school, they didn't continue to have access to those devices. But it would be really, it would really be very, very useful if we could gather together as a city. People who would, the senior center has some training for those of us who are old and scream, oh my God, I don't know what it, like me. I mean, you know, I'm always yelling, Sam help. But there are whole families. If you can get some of those elementary school kids and also the other kids, get their families to have some training that is free, that is non-intimidating, that is in many languages, not just Spanish, but there are other people who, I mean, we have a lot of Asians in town. We have, anyway, it seems to me that we could provide this service that would be non-intimidating that we could provide as a help during this time of COVID when everybody's having these meetings that are online. And if people don't have access to that, then it's, they're further cut out of any kind of meaningful civic opportunities or just communicating with their workmates or anything else. And it seems to me that we have enough people, either from the city or from the school system that have technical expertise that should be able to be providing some of this. And I also am wondering what we can do to help the child care situation because it's really awful. Speaking as somebody who raised a kid alone, if you're a single mother, you have to work. You have no choice and you cannot abandon your child because you're all that kid has and you are put in such an incredibly stressful position just without COVID. And now people who are single parents and people who are essential workers, they are low income, they're doing service work, they have to leave their children but they have no place to leave their kids. We have got to figure out something as a city to help this child care situation because it's gonna be a continuing crisis. And if we start losing childcare providers, which are already in a very, very vulnerable position, they're very poorly paid. I don't know what we're gonna do to ever get back on track. So I'm just looking to see if we can think of something that either as a group here or as a counting group or as something we can do as a city to help with these issues of childcare and technical assistance for people with the digital divide. Chiquita, it looked like you were gonna, good. I saw you. I know. Okay. Oh, nevermind. Fern, we'll go to you next. Go ahead, Chiquita. There are several things. I agree with Polly about the single parent. Of course, I'm a single mom too, but thank goodness my kids are, my youngest is 19, so I'm very grateful for that. But also to thinking about being a single parent and not having a job and having your kids at home, then we go back to the mental health and trying to think about how you're going to teach your kids when school is in session. There are so many worries as well, not having that income and trying to take care of your kid. So even from that perspective, also within the programs that I work with, we have a coding program where we had to provide laptops for the kids and it was a seven week program. We had to provide laptops because, well, not for the BVSD, but for St. Bering because they did have iPads, but they weren't able to share their screen and participate 100% with the iPad compared to the laptop. So we had that issue. So I end up giving them, not giving but letting them borrow the laptops during the seven week session. And so now we get ready to have summer camp. And so now the kids don't have their iPads at all. So we're going to give out those laptops and also we have to provide hotspots for some parents as well so that they kids can participate with the program. And I also wanna say that a lot of times their siblings will be sitting right there with them and learning and utilizing the laptops as well. The wonderful thing about our program at the YWCA was that if these students participated in the seven week program, we purchased what was funded, we gave them a laptop. So we just, yes, two days ago, those students, we gave them free laptops. So they were really anxious to get that. So now they're ready to do what's next. Now they have a laptop at home. Not only for them, you know their siblings are going to use it. Most likely if their parents need it, they're going to use it, but then we still have the issue of the hotspots. Then I had one of my other programs. We have teenage girls, Latinas, and one of them reached out to me and said and asked for assistance for their parents. This happened through right after COVID. I had a lot of issues. We gave out food, well, not food, we gave out gift cards to the kid, the girls, because of now you're talking about students that are home with their siblings and cousins and extended family members that they weren't used to being home with all day. So how much, like you said, the food banks are experiencing that need of the community. And then the healthcare for those undocumented people that are not receiving healthcare. I had several of the students reach out to me saying that their parents are experiencing issues with they're afraid to be working, but they have to work. They're ailing. I mean, they have health conditions and they're afraid to talk to their supervisors because they don't want to lose their jobs. So those are some of the issues that these young people are bringing. I mean, we're talking teenagers are coming to me with these issues, they're worried about it. And most of these teenagers are also working at Chipotle or fast food places. So they're bringing in an extra income as well. And the childcare, yeah. I mean, that's a situation that's really, really hard. I don't know how we're going to tackle that because for the in-home childcare workers with the virus, what if the virus is in their home? How are we going to make sure that those homes are cleaned properly? And if that in-home childcare worker decide to go back and do the childcare, provide that service, will they have the means to do that? Because of what I hear is very expensive with all of the equipment that they have to have to clean that home, how long do they have to be closed? 14 days, 14 days without having an income. And then you got a parent who's saying, ooh, I don't think I wanna take my kid back there. I mean, some parents are gonna lie and say they wanna expose to it because they have to work. So yeah, we need to make sure that parents have hotspots. That's for me that I've experienced. And are we going to provide these childcare providers the in-home ones, at least the equipment that they need to make sure that they can survive? If someone, if one of their children, one of the kids are exposed or they have it and they have to close down, are they going to be able to have that in-home unit? So that's very, very important in order for them to be able to start back up again. And what's the protocol for that, you know? And how are we providing, how are we helping those families, besides with food, who are afraid to step forward with issues that they're having at home? How are we, I mean, we're talking about families who have a household maybe now at home, 24 hours a day of six people. Whereas when you had kids at school all day, that's totally different than being home all day. They're probably tearing up the house because they're bored, they have nothing else to do. So what other type of programs that we can provide for these kids? I know they're loving the coding program. They're like, let's do this, let's stay on longer. So I think we need to have other programs for the students. And I agree with Polly as well for the parents. Those are the ones who are not at home. Skill building, what can they be doing now if they're not working and they're getting unemployment? What kind of programs we can provide for these parents who are at home where they can learn some skills virtually so that when they go back in the workforce, they can work on their resumes and they can have, take something different to the table. So that's my two cents times a hundred. And I think Karen Phillips has been, wow. Well, I think that we're all very aware of all the problems. And we just need to start working on some solutions. I mean, I think we know that there's everything that's, we all know that. So I mean, we need to start thinking about how can we find some solutions? I mean, maybe neighborhood groups. I mean, you talk about kids and students and all that. Well, there's older people too. And if people got together in their neighborhood more work, you know, I mean, how do you reach everybody anyway? It's just somehow getting that neighborhood thing, you know, or you know, your next door neighbor and are able to communicate with some kind of neighborhood group, you know, and each neighborhood there's many different neighborhoods. I mean, you know, precinct leader for one of the political parties, there's, you know, areas and groups of neighborhoods that people should share because I think a lot of people don't even know who to go to or what program there is or, you know, I just think somehow we can figure out some kind of plan to have neighborhood connection. You know, because in your neighborhood, you have old, young school kids, not school kids, single, you know, everybody. So I don't know, you know, if you have a group, you know, like being in an HOA, you have, of course, nobody ever shows up at the HOA meetings, but, you know, to have meetings or something where you get together and kind of help each other out, you know, and do it locally, real close to each other. So I don't know, but just, we just need to find solutions. And I don't know where you start as far as how do we find a solution for this stuff? Anyway, I think that's ideal, Karen, in all neighborhoods and all communities, but it doesn't work like that. I can say out of the five different states I lived in, this is probably the least active state, maybe because the color of my skin, I don't know, but all the other states I've lived in, people would, the community is very active. So you know who your neighbors are, you know who, not for me since I've lived here. So I agree with you 100%. I think there should be some type of community wealth building where you have people in the community that check on your elderly. How do we get to that point to where you do care about your neighbor, you know? We used to in the old days have welcome, you know, welcome basket. Some of you move in the neighborhood to give them a welcome basket or you go next door and you give them cookies or, you know, and it's, of course that's a societal thing, but you know, somehow we need to be able to help each other out and locally, you know, real close to each other. I don't know how to do that. So absent a burning desire around a need that we haven't talked about, I think this is a really nice segue into the second part of the conversation that I hoped we'd have. Go ahead, Jake. Yeah, I don't, if you're gonna move on, that's totally fine. I just wanted to add a couple of things, thoughts, because I know that the main focus is in thinking about, you know, where the needs exist. And I just wanted to throw out a couple of few words that I think about all the time. The first one generally is affordability and we've talked about it on the education side, but specifically affordability and housing. You know, Lawnmont is a working class community to its core, at least that's the founding, that's how it has existed. I think reflecting that in the human services needs assessment and the understanding that I, at least from my perspective, you know, my great grandparents built a little farm on 66 and then in 1937. And, you know, so I've heard stories about how this community's evolved and grown and changed. And now, as I said here at 25, I see a very different community than where our roots are. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just, I worry a lot about ensuring that whether it's government or whether it's the nonprofit sector, folks who are serving human services needs, recognize affordability and the working class roots of the community mattering. And when I say working class, I, working class has such kind of a white lens to it that bothers me a little bit. So I'll transition to the second phase, which is the idea of diverse representation in community and in spaces in community, right? So organizations that support lifting up voices that aren't necessarily heard from very often and lifting up folks, you know, ensuring that folks who are at risk or especially high risk for, you know, for issues in criminal justice, for issues in all the different spaces that we talk about, ensuring that those organizations, the ones that focus on the diverse nature of what community actually means when we talk about neighborhood, what we actually mean includes all of our residents. That's something that I think about a lot. And then just homelessness generally and how we address that challenge, it's gotten a lot better, I will say. It's not solved, but I think the steps that have been taken, you know, recently have helped in the service sphere quite a bit, but there's still folks that are really struggling and finding gaps in the system where they exist, ensuring that everybody who is experiencing homelessness in Longmont has a path towards exiting homelessness is something I think about a lot. And then the last thing that I'll just mention just for your notes, and I'm sure you're doing this as you go about this process, but, you know, COVID is here and it impacts our life every single day and it makes a big difference, but it won't hopefully knock on wood, hope won't be here forever. And the challenges that we face, especially on some of the core issues, like making sure that everybody who wants to be a part of this community can be a part of this community in a very active, real way, through affordability, diversity, all the things I've talked about, that makes a very big difference to me and those issues are much longer term than COVID. Those problems are much harder to solve, hopefully, than COVID. So I, yeah, I just wanted to say those couple of things before you go. Did anyone else, yes, please, Deanna. I was just gonna add in on the subject of iPads and it seems like maybe access to those iPads for families and for families with children, our elementary school did check them out, but they let everybody keep them over the summer that had them checked out and specifically told them, don't bring them back, keep them over the summer because I think they recognize that people who check them out obviously had a need for them. So it seems like maybe that's inconsistent across the schools and that seems like in some ways an easy fix to give some access to technology, like they'll be lost in some expenses associated with that, but it seems like an easy fix to give everybody access to those iPads over the summer for all of the schools. And then the only other thing I was gonna add, which I thought was interesting, Anne's comments about being in the court system and not seeing a huge increase in terms of kids necessarily, I don't wanna paraphrase you incorrectly Anne, that the kids going into the system for abuse has sort of dovetailed off. As a foster parent, I can only say that there's been a lot of discussion in my foster parent groups about how people aren't given placements right now, and that people are, it is pretty common for placements to go down during the summer months anyway, but that they're just not seeing a lot of kids coming in right now, more like less than they normally see during the summer. So I think there's some concern, at least among foster parents that there's a lot of kids who are being sort of lost in the shuffle. And maybe the community's stepping up more to take care of those kids, and so maybe that's why they're not coming into the system, I don't know. But as a foster parent, I think we're sort of experiencing a law in placements. I'm seeing the, I'm hearing kind of the same things through the CASA program, is that there's more, there's fewer, it may have dovetailed off, but that there's still like, but there's maybe kids that are just being missed altogether, like not hitting the court system at all. Caitlin, I'm sorry, which program was that? With the CASA program, court appointed special advocates. Thank you. Well, I also think we've gotten more creative about, at this time, it's so difficult because we weren't even having parents have face-to-face visits with their children. So they would have newborns and they wouldn't even get to hold them after they left the hospital. And so I think we tried to be really creative to either really track down, which we normally do anyway, family members or put in some really intensive support plans into the family home, which is difficult. It's difficult too when those providers can't actually, but a lot of the providers can't even go into the homes to support like the families. Yeah, so it's just been, I mean, I can't even imagine having a child and not being able to hold the child afterwards, no matter what the problem is. So who? Jen, if I may just add one point on this more generalized discussion. You know, one thing that I worry about is that there, when we talk about making efforts to connect or just making efforts as individuals, I think that's really a challenging ask in a time like this where people are just exhausted emotionally and creatively. And one of the questions that I have is how can we help create space for people to actually be able to carry through on solutions or be in that environment where we can actually think creatively because we don't feel like we're just under this constant oppression of a worldwide pandemic and a federal government that seems to be lost control and all the things that are happening right now. I echo that, because I was thinking as well, like we can talk about like individual people getting connected in like neighborhoods, but I think that like what are, we've got a huge, we've got a roster of human services agencies that are doing work in our community. And like what are the supports that those folks need to continue providing the support or to expand? Because I think Jen, you mentioned like, when people can get someone to answer the phone and they need, they're like, oh, you can help me with this, can now you help me with these five other things that are going on? How do we support our like community service agencies in doing that when it's not like sort of their core competencies and making sure that those people aren't like, oh, I got help with one thing, but everything else is falling apart. So this one thing isn't actually gonna, like it might help me for a couple of weeks, but it's not gonna help me get through the next three months. To me, that feels like, like how do we actually make sure that it's a sustained and like holistic effort and not just sort of peppering like one particular solution or like addressing one problem, how do we address sort of like the web of the concerns for our community? Because I think like, I just keep also thinking about like I hear other parents in like my head school who really wanna help with things, but then they're also not in a position to sort of take the place of a social worker or somebody who can help guide a family through the constellation of services or assistance that they might need. And so there's somewhat well-intentioned, but also like how do we make sure we actually get folks to the finish line of this and not just like, I wanna see that we have folks come out of this who have thrived and not just survived. And that goes across like, race, socioeconomic, age, disability, and what does that look like and how can we like help make that happen? So that's the perfect T up to the question that I was going to ask, which was say, it's three or five years from now, we're all together in the same room because COVID is a thing of the past and we're getting together to celebrate the successes and to really celebrate that Longmont has made, Longmont and all your partners have made the right investments so that exactly as Caitlin said, all members of the community have the opportunity to thrive. If we were in that state and in that place, what will have happened? What would be your signals that our community is doing well and we are really supporting and facilitating those social determinants of health? For me, Jen, I feel like if in three to five years I looked out and thought or felt that there was a shift in the way that we think about our neighbors and about people in the community and recognizing, for instance, that sometimes people need help and freely giving that help, rather than retreating into the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality that the US has lived under for so long. That change in attitude to me would be a really clear indicator of something good coming out of all of this distress. I think another, and I think to follow on to that, like if we look at in five years and see that, for example, like people who are arrested or have interactions with the police because of mental health or substance abuse issues has gone down by a significant amount, that is one way that we could see that we have done what Brian just described, that we have changed how we think about these things as not things of people need to earn help or people need to deserve help, but rather that as a community, we do this to take care of one another and to build up our entire community. I think that in terms of a data point, that to me is a fairly big one because that would suggest that people are getting help and it's not creating situations where people are in danger and calling the police or the police are aborted and that sort of thing. What else? I would just say that for me, if in three to five years we're able to confidently say that more people, probably not ever, you probably will never be able to solve it, but more people than today who wanna live in our community are able to afford to live in our community, have a role to play in our community, both, you know, not just, I don't mean civically, I mean, but are able to sustain themselves in our community, live comfortably, have the resources that they need to survive and thrive and feel connected to, kind of like we've talked about tonight, a broader coalition of people in our city who are behind them. Whether that's neighbors or, you know, city government or, et cetera, that they know that Longmont's a place where, you know, they're gonna be able to make it and do well. And that means anybody, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender, identity, class, any of those things, this should be a place, our motto for a long time was you belong in Longmont. This should be a place fundamentally where anybody can make it. If they're willing to, you know, if they want to. Go ahead, Polly. Oh, okay. What I would like to see in the next few years is for us to, we have so many stressful things going on right now. Thank you, Walter. But what I would like to see is within the next few years, if we do not lose this opportunity to actually have meaningful conversations about the marginalization of many, many people in Longmont that have people who have been marginalized and who continue to be marginalized. And I don't want this, you know, I don't want the death of George Floyd and so many others to be just a something we forget, something we talk about for a little while and then we forget and we don't do anything about it. I want people to be able to, whether it's on a neighborhood basis like Karen suggested or as Shakita said, this is a very, it isn't a very outgoing community in many ways. I understand what you mean because coming from the Bay Area, people are yacking all the time. There's a happy balance. But if we don't have these meaningful conversations where people who are the elite in our society, people who are wealthy, white, protestant, listen, then we have missed a great opportunity. This is the moment when we need to be having these conversations and keep having open forums where people who are very, very comfortable, listen to the people who are not comfortable, have not been comfortable and are never going to be comfortable until somebody listens to what they've experienced. And it won't happen unless we set up sort of forums or something where people actually have to listen to the experiences of black people in our society, Latino people in our society, women, single mothers, the elderly, all the people who, and the working class who are the majority of our society but cannot even afford a place to buy and never will be able to afford a place to buy as long as their wages stay flat and the cost of housing goes up and up and up and up and up and we do nothing about it. So I would like us to feel like everybody in this town to feel like they've been heard, not just once but many times they've had the opportunity to speak in an unthreatening way and have their say so that we all listen to each other. That's what I'd like. And I noticed any other one, any other folks wanna jump in there? Madeline has her hand up. Oh, sorry, you're not on my screen, thank you. That's fine. I wanted to go back to what Shakita was talking about and I've been listening to everybody and everybody's great points of view and I can't help but get back to trying to identify and then create something that is actionable now. You know, we can look back and say, you know, this is how it was then, but it's very different today than it was then. And so I heard you talk about neighbors and creating a sense of neighbor, a sense of neighbor and many of us don't know our neighbors. We don't know, I mean, we may see them wave at them but in terms of actually knowing them or knowing what their needs are, I don't think that that's a pretty common thing. So all of that said, what I was thinking about and I know usually we have a lot of services. We provide, we have a lot of services that are available but unless people know about them and feel that that could include them in terms of being somewhere they can get help, I don't think people know that. I don't, as a matter of fact, I know a great number of people don't and to say, yeah, we put it on the website and we've done a great job with that and we've gone beyond that but what I'd like to see us do is come up with something very simple that will connect, that will communicate that information to all levels and all people. I know we had included it in the utility bills, some information but I'm just thinking if we could come up with something and with all these brilliant minds around the table, I'm sure we can. We talked about going through the churches. There are a lot of groups that have come up as a result of the murder of George Floyd and other situations like that. So I'd like to see us come up with something, put our heads together to come up with something that would address the issues that Shakita identified. She listed several things of concern. So if we could somehow formulate a think tank to address just even if we just hit three of those, I think we would be making a world of progress and then we can say, we didn't just come and talk about it, we came and we did something. So I'm willing to do whatever anybody comes up with to help make that happen. Thank you much. And I wanna be respectful of your time. It's eight o'clock and I'm not sure if that was the time you all were hoping to end. I'm willing to stay and talk as long as you all are interested but just wanna, I guess, I'll leave her too if you could give us a time check and let me know how you all usually proceed. I'll leave it to the chair. You manage the meeting. Nice pass off, El Berto. I appreciate that. To my knowledge, so we do have another large topic to discuss which actually is very related to this discussion. And to my knowledge, we don't have any other business that we need to discuss which is after that final agenda item. So why don't we give it 10 more minutes because I think we are on a thread here that we'll tie directly into the next discussion. And I just wanna make sure everybody has had a chance to contribute to this and has been heard and I'm looking at my screen. So Dina, I feel like we haven't really heard a ton. And that's okay. You don't have to speak. If you've already said everything that you want to, I wanna respect that. Graham, anything that you would like to add Ann as well. And you've already contributed. And Shakita, if there's anything that you wanna follow up on since the points that you threw in and some of them responded to. So I guess I'll, may I speak, Mr. Chair? I don't know. Please. Okay. No, everyone else, but not you Graham, sorry. I forgot we're doing the unmute free for all. That's just awesome. You're so disciplined. I love everybody's comments. I, you know, I'd second all of them, I think and make just add three comments that have to do with my own sphere of exposure and in a community. And one is, you know, I work in the construction industry which for some reason was deemed essential and would definitely put that in air quotes. And I know that those workers struggle with childcare. That's a huge problem. Even if the work's there and they're saying, hey, come do the work. They can't, you know, if they're a single parent they can't make it. And so that's, I do experience that as a huge issue. Childcare, digital divide, definitely in the construction industry. And then I happen to teach sometimes at Front Range Community College. And I know they're canceling their in-person classes and doing some online stuff. And they are working on shoring up the digital divide and providing devices to students who would take classes there so that they have access to the online learning platforms which also makes me think that there's a large facility that is going largely unused. You know, this fall should the city desired a partner for some childcare facility usage stuff. And then the third sphere I was thinking of is the addiction sphere and the digital aspect affects that as well. You know, a lot of people rely on 12-step programs and organizations for their continued mental health and challenges with addiction and recovery. And those have gone onto digital platforms which creates the income challenge there as well. So I see in my world the childcare and the digital stuff being the two primary issues. That's what I've got. Graham, just a quick follow-up, sorry. In terms of seeing the digital divide and construction is that, you know, among colleagues that, you know, that's also a segment of the population that maybe doesn't have the same access to devices or facility with devices or how does that play out? So the industry is ever becoming more reliant on technology for information sharing, for producing, you know, schedules and budgets and communicating. You know, who's going to be aware doing what when? And so, you know, you might have a crew of drywallers that kind of gets left out because they don't have smartphones, right? Or maybe they're not fluent in English. And so trying to help that would be good, would help. I think they can do it. Thank you. Deanna? I guess I'm thinking here about sort of our job as a board like bigger picture here in terms of what we should be doing. And there are a lot of services in the community already. So is our job to try and help make sure everybody knows about those services? Should we be taking a larger role? Like, I don't know, figuring out grant writing and forget bridging the technical divide and reaching out to some organizations to get working on that. Like, I don't know how activist we are, I guess is how I'm sort of contemplating this, right? Because, you know, like I know people who are superintendents who work with Apple to get laptops in their classrooms, right? And they get grants all the time. So should we be taking a more active role, you know, to be reaching out and trying to get some guidance from somebody like that? Should we be focusing on how we, like obviously we can't just publish the information on the website and help people find it, right? So I guess that's my thought right now is really focusing on our job as a board and how, what we can do to maximize our impact on the community. I agree, everybody, I agree with all of you. And I think it all boils down to what Karen initially said, that if we know our neighbors, if we know anybody and came back to focus on things, we all, if we are inclusive to everyone, then we would know what the needs are in our community. But we are not. That's the problem. That's one of the problems. And Madeleine said it, you know, we're very, Longmont is very resourceful. But if you don't know that your neighbor is over there in pain and afraid to go to the doctor and their kids as a way of school or whatever, then what happens to that person? Am I my brother's keeper? I mean, if we're gonna say we are community members, then yes, we are. And so how do we make sure that our community members are taken care of? And then it's reciprocated when you take care of someone else who then someone else take care of you. It used to be like that, you know, a village, we used to take care about when a neighbor, I remember as a kid and this was in Chicago, when a neighbor needed someone to look out for, you know, look at their house when it's going out of town, they asked the neighbor to look out for them. Someone needed help with their kids because they had to go to work, guess what? A neighbor did that. We have lost that. I think a lot of us as a community have become very selfish people. And that's why the homeless rate is, you know, that's why we see a huge increase in homelessness. But like Jake said, you know, it seemed like it's gone down a little bit here, but how in the world, I couldn't believe the time when I moved here, I was like, why are there so many homeless people in Colorado? I couldn't believe it, you know? But I mean, we have to care for people again. Where is our compassion? Right. I think we've lost a lot of that, to be honest. And if we decide to be inclusive to all that decide to live here, then I think we will care more about our community brothers and sisters. And then we all would be in the same boat because we would consider each other as one, but we don't because that superiority and the inferiority is still there, no matter what. And so there's some deep rooted stuff that we got to work on ourselves. Very much so. I just, can I say one more thing? Until we start respecting, you know, we have such a divide in this country and it's happened, made it worse lately, but we're gonna have to embrace the conservative and the liberal people. And I don't know how we can come together and respect each other, but to be inclusive for everybody, we're gonna have to embrace that. You got those values, okay, I've got these values, okay. And we still respect each other, but it's not happening. I mean, everybody's just so either this way or that way and they're mean. And I don't know how, you know, we can resolve that, but maybe by trying to be respectful to other people's opinion, not agree with them, but you know, I don't know, it's just a societal thing. And you know, I don't know, Longmont could be a little island in the middle of nowhere, but we could probably find some solution to respect and embrace everybody, you know, and include everybody, but I don't know, that's too much out of the world, but anyway, that's all I gotta say. I think it's important that we remove the labels. We just, that's the start. We start by removing the labels and just address, identify, address the needs and get people comfortable enough. One of the organizations I am associated with is the NAACP Boulder Bridge, Boulder County branch, newly formed, there are over 400 members now. And there is a newsletter that goes out and the audience is pretty extensive, there's just 400 members, but the network is way bigger than that. So I would think that would be, being a member of the executive committee, that would be one way if maybe I could get ideas whatever you can think of, send it to me and it can be as far out as it could be. That's what brainstorming is, brainstorming is, you know. You go from the sublibes to the ridiculous and you bring it on back and you make it real. So I'm thinking that we could, that would be somewhere to start where we can say we actually did something, you know, we're not just talking about it, we're trying to reach the folks. So if you would don't mind sending it to probably, well, I would be the connection to the NAACP, if that's how we could get it out, that would be a start. Anybody that was to send me something, I will include it and see can't we get something that is, like I said actionable and get it in a newsletter for August for the month of August. So I think I've gone 12 minutes from the 10 Brian suggested. I'll check in with the chair. Yeah, let's, I think this is a good time to bring this particular discussion to a close for the moment. So what I would like to suggest is a three minute break, either that or you're gonna have to stare at an empty screen on my end for three minutes. And then act like maybe we should just all take a break. So if we could be back in front of our cameras in three minutes, let's do that. And then we'll move on to our final agenda item. Thank you all so much for your time and contributions. I'm ever grateful. And you'll be seeing a draft from us in the nearest future. We're getting something to staff at the end of the month. And if anything else comes up, please feel free to email, Ella Berto or me directly. If you have one of those, oh, I wish I would have said moments. Thank you. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Jen. Jen, her name's Jen Garner. Jen Garner. Jen Garner. How are you doing there, Polly? I'm old like you. I think she took off her ears, Karen, so she didn't hear yet. I'm in the same boat she is. So yeah, we know all about that stuff, the technology and all that. Hey, I gotta say, I'm super impressed with everybody. Like just in general, you know, in my whole little world, like everybody's doing super well with all this stuff. Like my mother-in-law figured out how to do click lists. Like, wow, that's huge. Great. Yeah, I'm just glad I can do Zoom, you know? Okay. I'll take you out in a little while. You're a good boy. I'm having a pretty chair or is it none of that? The only thing I want is just all of it. I have a chair. Next time I'll put a chair in here. Okay. Yeah. I'm moving you off to the 10th, really, Karen, and of course. Okay. So, you know, we're just all co-operative. This was the cast for Wyoming. You did? Yeah. I was waiting. What was co-operative? To the Western? Um, you know, so I'm not, you never have, it's just wasn't a co-operative. I don't know. I'm just a little like you. That's something that's what it's like. My meeting is more specific. Okay. For those of you who are away from your desk, if you hear my disembodied voice, please return to your computers. Nice. Excuse me. All right. Well done. Thank you. Before we go on Dina, I wanted to ask you because, and I apologize for asking this late in your involvement in the board. Dina or Dianna or Dianna? Dianna, but whatever. Dianna, thank you. Thank you. I will remember, I want to say Dianna, but then I heard Dianna wants, I'm like, oh shoot, I was saying it wrong the whole time. So, Dianna. Well, it's a little bit bother me either way, but I'll correct you in the future. Please do. Everybody else does. Okay. So we are on to our next probably final agenda item, which is the discussion about requesting increased funding. And before we jump in, this is clearly a response to a number of things, one of which is the racism that we've seen and are starting to acknowledge the desire to act as Madeleine had indicated. And Madeleine, I'm glad you could join us. So I did say this last time and I want you to hear it. I know that you've been carrying the water on the issue of racism, at least related to this board by yourself for a long time. And I'm glad that we're seeing a shift here and you will have support and we will carry on. I'll carry water with you on this issue. Awesome. Thank you, Brian. And also, we want to act, right? We don't want to just talk and then forget and do what typically happens when we're faced with really difficult issues. And I also want to ask that we think as well about, given that this is an issue that has been a long time in the making and is going to systems take time to change, which means that in my mind, in addition to acting now, we really need to think about what commitment can we make to persistent and sustained action that will continue to push and result in changes over time. Because it's not a quick fix. And I think that we're going to need to make a commitment to the longterm as well as jumping in rather than, you know, trying to figure out what kind of shoes we need to wear before we jump in. So with that, just kind of as a framework, has everybody, can you raise your hand if you've had a chance to read the letter that Graham put together? Okay, so we have a few that haven't, Madeline, did you have a chance to read that letter? No, I have not, but I will. Okay, so- I apologize, because obviously we, I screwed up and that didn't get that out until five o'clock today. So we can also pull it up, I think maybe if that would be helpful. I was wondering, that would be helpful. Thank you, Karen. And I was wondering, Graham, would you mind, it's not terribly long and I applaud you for writing it. I think it was very well written. And it's concise, and I think it's down to the point. And would you mind just reading it for us and those who haven't had a chance to read it? And so Nicole just shared it on the screen. Let's see it. Yeah, sure. If you would like me to. So it's on the screen and- Hold on. Hold on a minute. Think of yourself like your Charles Kikowski reading one of your poems. Yeah, okay. Dear Longmont City Council, the Housing and Human Service Advisory Board, hereby unanimously recommends that council immediately increase the city's funding of housing and human services by way of transference of 10% of the Longmont Police Department's budget. As a board of community members tasked with advising the city council on housing and human services needs, we believe this is a good first step towards meeting some of the human service needs that have long been underfunded in our community. Moreover, this reallocation unequivocally communicates our city's values in pursuing a thriving community where basic human needs are met with compassion and effective care and not with a show of force. We extended, we extend Typo gratitude and appreciation for our hard-working, well-intentioned and much-needed police force. Simultaneously, we recognize that the police department is unnecessarily burdened with serving many different Longmont residences and they are not equipped to effectively help, including those suffering from mental health issues, drug addiction, homelessness, legal challenges and many other human service deficits. Despite their various beneficial services and necessary presence in our community, the institution of policing is rooted in systemic racism and is in need of dramatic reform. It is the belief of this board that these underserved and valued members of our community may be best supported through increased access to the ready and willing nonprofits that are equipped and educated to meet the needs of these populations in Longmont. Properly funding these services will invariably further the goals of the police department by making our community safer. Thus, we strongly believe that our community will grow in positive ways by this reallocation of funding which may support these underserved Longmont community members through access to qualified services offered by local nonprofits, instead of through involuntary participation in the justice system through the police department. Thank you, HHSAB members. Awesome, thank you, Graham. Well done. Okay, so let's start with, let's just start with this discussion, I'll start this discussion with some reactions to Graham's, the letter of the content, you know, not style and all that, but the suggestion of that funding switch. Holly? Okay, first of all, I think this is an excellent letter. I think it is very clear. It is, it's the moral thing, the moral stance to take. However, I also am on city council and I'm also very familiar with our police force which started off, well, in the 80s as I think we all know, two young men were murdered by the police on Main Street and instead of, they were Latino and instead of tearing that town apart which could very well have happened, the Latino community got together and formed El Comite and has worked with the police and the police have worked back and we are certainly not, you know, certainly our police force is not perfect but our police forces work very, very hard to be responsive. And I sent a letter from Dan Aiman who it's not just our police, it's also the, because we have public safety, it's also the fire department and the emergency services who have to be equitable and just in their response to community services. And we have worked very hard to do that. I would like to read something that Dan Aiman wrote but maybe we should have another, we should have the discussion first but Dan Aiman is head of our emergency services. The thing is that as we all know, the funding of mental health and virtually any other social services has gone down and down and down and down since the 70s and yet the police are always funded. So if you want these services to be provided, you need to keep funding them through the police to some degree because the first time, anytime that there's a downturn, money gets pulled away. Right now what we're facing in this city is at least a $14 million shortfall this year. We have to take money out of all kinds of services and yet the Climate Action Task Force wants us to fund a whole bunch of stuff. We want to include, we want to increase the funding of this agency or this department, Housing and Human Services needs to be funded much more, much more. You're right, absolutely. And what we need instead of taking money away from the police is to fund this agency at a much higher rate. If you want me to read this letter from Dan Aiman, it talks about their main diversion programs are Core Lead and the Angel Initiative. And I would like to read that at some point because it explains how the police force works with these other agencies and how they get grants and get funding from different agencies. So it's not as simple as it may appear. A lot of these programs are funded not by the sound of Longmont but by other grants that the police department gets from other agencies or other government agencies and other private agencies to fund things like their ride-along mental health partner person for issues when they know they have a mental health problem. So while I'm for increasing the funding for all these agencies, I am not necessarily for pulling money out of the police department which is already kind of understaffed and has very difficult time funding working with homeless people, mentally ill people, about 40% of what they're doing is working with mentally ill people. And they are the ones who are gonna respond because that's their job, they have to respond to this. So if you pull money away from them, what you're doing for a good police department is you're making the situation maybe worse. But I would like to hear this discussion and then I would like at some point to be able to read the letter that I asked Karen to forward, but it was like too late in the day for her to do that. Thank you, Polly. We're gonna go to Karen before Karen, just one second, if you would. Polly, how long do you think it'll take to read the letter? Polly, how long do you think it'll take to read the letter? Just hold up your hand. Maybe two minutes. Okay, okay, thank you. So I'll make, I was trying to avoid you having to talk with your mouth full of food. So Karen, and then Anne, did you wanna say something as well? Okay, let's go to Karen, right? I was just thinking, could we ask that 10% of the police budget go toward substance abuse, mental health, and they would have to, because I thought they were trying to get social workers to go with them and that kind of thing where, you know, pull money from them, but 10% of their budget goes to that kind of situation. So instead of pulling money, say, well, you know, why don't you spend 10% of your funding that you get and spend it toward mental health? They do, they do. So what is 10% of the police budget? Does anyone even know what that is? No, I was just- Yes, this letter explains it. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think that is a lot of money. It is a lot of money, but- I don't know if you all realize that, I mean, I feel the same way Polly does. I think we're really fortunate. I'm not, this is a national issue and it's real and it has to be dealt with. As far as long month goes though, my experience and I've worked with these agencies and they are so caring and they do a lot of good work. So I guess I'm really perplexed about if we put this money from the police budget into nonprofits, what nonprofit is gonna take the place of the angel initiative, which is an amazing thing that the long month police department does. Any individual in the city who is struggling with substance abuse and does not have an active warrant can go into the police department and they will set them up with inpatient treatment, even if it's in Arizona. Jake, it's distracting. I just wanna get this out. So anyway, I don't know any agency in the county that does that. We, mental health can't even do that or mental health center can't do that. And so it's really, it's volunteers, it's grants and I've known people that have gone in there and gotten received help from them and it's changed their lives and it's just unbelievable what they can do. Their core program is their crisis outreach and response engagement and that's what Paulie was talking about where they have somebody from the mental health center, they have a therapist go out and ride along with them to de-escalate mental health issues. And you couldn't ask for a better service as far as I'm concerned. And I don't know of a service in the community that would take the place of that. I don't know if any of the nonprofits that we fund would take the place of that. That's therapists basically on the streets helping the police de-escalate these situations which is exactly what we need. And then the third one is the lead which is the law enforcement assisted diversion. And I've known families who work with that program, they have peer mentors, they have case managers and they get into the community, get into people's homes, they'll go to court with them, they meet with them in the parks and they do real social work. And I can't imagine an agency that we could fund that would do that. Right now our mental health center therapists do everything virtually. They don't meet anyone in the park. So I can't tell you if there's anyone on the police department who is racist but I can tell you that what we really want are these programs. And I think 10% is probably a sizable amount of money. And I don't think that taking it from the police department who in my opinion have tried very hard in the last number of years to really address these issues on the street level. I don't think they should be defunded and have that go to agencies that I don't think can do the same work. And I feel really strongly about it. Thank you, Ann. Appreciate that. Jake, we're gonna come to you and first I would like to ask Karen. Karen, do you have a sense of how large a police budget is? Keep going, I'm scrolling. I'm scrolling in the budget. It's like a 700 page document but you keep talking and I'll have an answer for you. Caitlin, do you know? I pulled up the 2020 budget that shows police services total budget of $21.5 million a year. Okay. We need to Dan, public safety is 53 million. That includes emergency services, fire, police, all public safety. And community health is under a separate line item in the budget that I'm looking at from police. So community health and resilience, for comparison, it's 494,000. Okay. So not even into the millions. Okay, thank you. All right, Jake. I would actually, if Madeline or Shakita as folks who worked in spaces of who can speak from a different lens have thoughts ahead of me, I would love to hear them, Mr. Chair. Okay. Before we go there, Madeline and Shakita, because I want to make sure you both have plenty of time, I do want to just as a matter of parsing intention and I would like to give Graham also the opportunity to speak to the attention. There's two separate issues that were addressed. One is race relations and the other one is just kind of the culture of policing. So I think that's something that we'll probably want to tease a little bit to see which end of that. This was really intended to do and what we want to do. So with that, Shakita and Madeline, do you, well, I'm not going to ask you, do you, but would you weigh in? Of course. Go ahead, Shakita. No, no, I was going to say you go ahead and go first. Okay. Well, I absolutely do have some thoughts. First of all, I'd like to commend Graham for an excellent writing, very, very, very well done. My concern is kind of out of left field. We've heard the first thing that was, I think, thrown around and just totally misinterpreted and misrepresented and really put us on a negative path, was this whole thing you heard, let's defund, let's unfund, let's get rid of the police. Let's just take that money and put it elsewhere. Well, so yeah, I think that a lot of damage was done. So I think we have to really be clear on what it is we're asking and we're stating. And for that reason, because it has been grossly, just grossly misrepresented, obviously we can not do without our law enforcement force. So to say we're going to, I said reform, yes, but let's just keep it straight. That's what we're talking about as opposed to just totally defunding the entire division. Secondly, I'd like to say Mike Butler, most recently retired Mike Butler, has done an outstanding job as a leader. And I say that because I don't remember ever meeting him personally, but we've interacted kind of through other people. And so most recently, I think he was on the, he and Glenda, my sister were all on a panel where they addressed, allowed the community to question, ask them last week or the week before. And anyway, what I have heard were things where he, things he requires of his officers, anybody that's hired to become engaged in the community in some way. He himself, I've heard, has walked the streets and he knows he has relationships with people in the community. I mean, he didn't just send them out to do it, he did it, and then they followed. What an example. I mean, that's how you do it. So I would say, other than, yeah, I think we, I can't say I have a perfect answer for you in terms of do we, is the police budget, the one that can best afford it? And if that's the case, then yeah. If there's another source that could do it, and we, or a combination of resources that we could, you know, draw from and accomplish the same objective, then perhaps we might wanna look at that. But I just wanna be clear on, and when this goes out and it goes to whatever level of public it may go, let's just be clear on what it is we're saying and we're supporting. And we're about in any way suggesting that we defund our police force. Thank you. That's all I can think of right now. Thank you, Madeline. Appreciate it. Shakita. I would also like to thank Graham as well. And I agree with Madeline. And I mean, I agree with you all and your passion and everything that you have. And it's really hard, it's really hard for me to, I know this, I don't know if you understand it, but it's really hard for me to listen to people who haven't experienced the things that people of color have experienced. So I get what you're saying. You know, if you never had to deal with that situation, of course, why should you change something that works for you? That's a little, yeah. But when you know that there are issues out there and what Graham has shown, what he's saying is, okay, Jen was here talking about issues that are in this community. We just got through talking about this. Why can't we have some money to go to fulfill those needs and how we can come back three or five years? That is an action that Deanna was saying. What, as this board, what can we do to act? He just gave us an example of what we can do to make sure that kids have access to, for laptops, the internet divide, all of the technical divide, mental health, he just given us that. So you're saying, you know, I get kind of emotional and not like emotional, quiet emotional, but I get passionate about this because just as the way Ann is passionate, and you see those officers, you work with them, you see the things that the wonderful people that they are, and you know those programs. And I totally 200% appreciate that. But I'm coming from the opposite of that. And Longmont is a great place, you know? Is it as inclusive as it should be? What we're talking about is Jen said, where do we see ourselves three to five years from now? But Chiquita, I'm not saying, I guess I feel a little, this is a really difficult discussion. It's very difficult, and I'm actually pretty amazed that we're taking it on tonight. And you're right, I have no idea what it's like to be you, just like you don't know what it's like to be me. And I'm not saying that every, I guess for me, it's not so much. I thought that the letter was more about, I think it seems like we're doing a very, there are two issues. There's a letter in what the letter is asking for, and then there's all of our feelings about the situation. And, you know, all I can talk about, I can't talk about what it's like to be you, because I have no idea. I mean, I don't know what I'm trying to say, but what I can address is that, I can't address if the Longmont police are, you know, racist, or you know, what they're doing out there every minute of the day, I have no idea. But I do know that the people that are homeless and substance-abusing and have mental health issues that rise to the level where the police are called are as deserving as these other programs. And they make a huge impact on our community because of the things that they can potentially do. And so I think they've tried their best to come up with creative ways to address it. And so, you know, if we take it in a bigger context, I guess it's hard for me. Like I wanted to go up on Main Street and demonstrate all this time, and I didn't do it because I just felt so strongly about the people in the police department who have worked so hard to actually create change. So I was very divided about it, and I still am, but for me, like defending at a level of 10%, which is a huge amount of money, I just don't think that's gonna get us where we wanna be, which is to really address what's some of the stuff that's going on on the street, is it going to, you know, is it going to address racism? Well, you know. So I guess I'm confused, I guess. Mm-mm. Well, you know, I think that in Madeleine, I'll let you say something, but I know, I understand how you're confused, but you're talking about a police, I know police that you know. And... I don't know them all. Okay, well... I know some of the programs. See, I guess that's what I'm saying. I don't know all the individuals. I don't know what they're doing out there. Right, and that's it. That's key. You don't know what they're doing out there, right? You don't, like you said, you don't know who all is racist. I don't know who all are racist either. I just want the police department to be equitable and be inclusive to all. That's what I want. So for you not marching, and you kind of stuck in between, my decision for me speaking up is a matter of life and death for me and my people. Right. So that's why I'm not being complicit. I have to stand up because I have black men. I have black sons. Who, for me, for their future, I'm worried about. So I understand you love this, or like this police department, that's totally fine. That you have every right to stand up for what you believe in, as we all do in our own opinions. And I have, for me, it's a matter of life and death. It's not just an opinion. So... But how is taking the 10% away going to accomplish... Okay, Jake, you go ahead, because I could keep going. Jake and Kate would like to... Let's just do this. Madeleine, I don't know if you were gonna respond to you. There were some utterances from your little frame that I have. So if you were, go ahead, and then it'll be Caitlin and Jake. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, I like to have a different perspective as well. And it's very, very, very real for me. When June 2nd, 1981, my 21-year-old nephew, senior at Cal State Long Beach, was stopped supposedly for speeding, doing 47 and a 35 on his way to his noonday job, between classes, will stop for speeding. Two hours later, they reported him as having committed suicide. Well, in fact, we knew better than that. The outcome of the case was he was ultimately ruled that he was killed at the hands of others while in the possession of the Signal Hill Police Department. That, and then part of my professional background is private law enforcement. So quite naturally, I understand the good men and women that go out and risk their lives every day for the safety of us. At the same time, in terms of pulling money, do we say, yeah, I think there are two separate issues. And we have to, I mean, both are equally as important, and one is life or death daily. I mean, when my grandson comes home, he's 26, and he says, for the first time I've ever heard him say, in 26 years, I'm afraid, he stands six-eight, weighs about 250, and he's afraid. That's very hard. So I say, yeah, we need to pull, we need money, we need to increase, to get to the core of what the letter was that Graham wrote. I say, we can maybe suggest be creative and take a look at who has funding that could possibly be pulled from and combined to accomplish the amount that we need, and yet it won't adversely impact those organizations so much so that it would declare them ineffective. So, yeah, and it is a hard subject, but it's been a hard subject, you know? It's been a hard subject. The difference is, we're now talking about it. We're now openly talking about it, and I say that it's very easy to me to treat, think about how you would like to be treated if you were me, and how, you know, how would you like to be treated? It's no different. I want to be treated that way as well, and everybody that looks like me. So it's really, while it feels complicated or really hard, it's really very, very simple if we could just, the golden rule, you know? If each of us would do that, I mean, seriously do it. I think it would make all the difference in the world. So my suggestion is that if we could have, I don't know who, some people look at those individual budgets and see where we could pull from maybe more than one, just rather than say the police department. That's just my thoughts. Sorry, didn't mean to take that long, thank you. That's fine, Madeleine, thank you, and I'm really sorry to hear about your nephew. I can't imagine how devastating that would be. Thank you. Okay, so we're gonna go Caitlin, Jake, and then council member Christensen, and then Deanna. Thanks, Brian, and thanks, Madeleine and Shakita, for your comments and for being willing to share what you feel and sort of being, maybe put on the spot a little bit, but I think that the fact that you're able to share your experiences is really powerful. I had a couple of things to add, and I think one of the things that I think about, when I think about sort of the calls for defunding police or reallocating funds or thinking about what we do, is and described a bunch of programs that work for mental health and for people in crisis. And for me, the idea behind reallocating funds is to say, is not to say we shouldn't do those things, but that we shouldn't do them with folks who have guns. Folks who have guns are not the ones who should be doing that. Not that we should not be doing them, that we should not be funding them, but that fundamentally, how do we reimagine providing those services without funding people with guns to do them? And the proposal here was around pushing it to some of our nonprofit partners, but I think that we have other departments in the city that also provide some measure of these. But I think that the idea of, Paulie mentioned that the police are always funded. And to me, we need to change that narrative. And we have to say that cannot be where we put our priorities. That the priorities are taking care of our community and that when there's a downturn, it's not that we continue funneling millions and millions of dollars into police forces that can go and arrest someone who is in mental health crisis, but that we can put millions of dollars into people who can really address those root issues. Because the safety of people in our community, like Madeline's nephew, Madeline Shakita, like my husband, that cannot depend on whether the one person that comes to their door happens to be one of the people who is good and who is not going to react. Like the safety of our community cannot depend on that. And it shouldn't depend on that. Because I think that like, I don't think anyone will tell you that there's not like good people who are police, but it's fundamentally you're putting something where people can cause long-term trauma and death to members of our community under the auspices of safety. And what safety means to different members of our community looks different. I mean, what we heard from Jen and the needs that people are identifying, the needs that our community is identifying is not around we need to lower crime. It's around we need to make sure that our kids can go to school. We need to make sure that people in our community are healthy and redefining the idea of safety to be something that looks like that instead of having more police and more opportunities for danger to members of our community. Thank you, Caitlin, Jake. Thanks, Mr. Chair. And I want to start with an apology for my generations and just sitting here and listening. I'm passionate on this topic, as I know all of us are. And I just want to say I'm very proud to be a member of this board tonight because this discussion is, I'm not gonna say it's out of the scope of what we do, but it is very different from the conversations we have on this board usually. And that's a good thing. It's a good thing that we're stepping outside and asking this question because we do support the human services sector in this community. That's what we spend half the year on is that question. And taking action on that front is really critical for us. So we do have a role to play in this process. I'm gonna speak on this once and that's gonna kind of be my spiel. And I wanna just talk briefly about kind of my evolution on this because I know it's gonna be out publicly. This video will go out and people, if anyone is interested. My dad was a cop in the city for 14 years. And growing up when your dad is a cop and especially when he was undercover for some time and he was, he did really hard things and it was very scary to be the son of a cop and watch him go out the door every day. The job broke his brain. It shattered him mentally. He dealt with post-traumatic stress. He dealt with things that are unspeakable for most folks because what you see in that job every day truly is extraordinarily difficult. It is a hard job but that doesn't mean we can't ask hard questions about it. And we can't as a board sit here and say, I appreciate what Madeline said about the notion of, there was a mistake in the branding on this conversation about defunding police. And for me, as I've come and wrestled with this and kind of tried to contrast my lens of experience being the son of a cop with what I see and what I'm starting to understand, it isn't about defunding police, it's about rethinking policing fundamentally. It's about asking really what is their job and what should we be expecting of police? I recognize Mike Butler in the Longmont Police Department for the last several decades. I've done an exceptional job as police departments go. They have, the programming that exists is good. The things that are happening are good. But I think what our job is as a board is to ask questions and in this conversation is to say, and I took issue with some things I heard about, my take would be no community is exempt from this conversation, no matter how good your police department is because your police department still exists as part of the broader system of policing where I would just ask a question of folks is if a homeless person or a person experiencing homelessness is sitting in a park, not really causing problems, maybe being loud, but because they have nowhere to go, is it really the most equitable solution or the best solution to send someone with a gun to that park to handle that problem? I think the answer is fundamentally no, it's not their job to do those things or it shouldn't be. And I think what we do when we say, if we send this letter to council, what we do is we say as a board, we are committed to asking these hard questions and beginning a conversation about this issue because it is a systemic problem. And these issues are directly connected, funding of policing and these issues of racial equity that we're talking about. In America today, 35% of the prison population are people of color, despite the fact that just 12% of this country is people of color. That's a discrepancy that can be linked directly to the funding of policing and the way that our criminal justice system functions and how it treats people of color. I started grad school this week in education and part of the focus of the program is looking at education through an equity and justice lens and one of the people who talks the most about this is a woman named Dr. Bettina Love and she raises the question of being a co-conspirator, not just being an ally, not just saying, I'm with you, but what am I willing to do to rile things up as a white male? What am I willing to do to challenge systems and to say, yeah, I recognize that this is a problem and what are we doing in our community to address this problem? So I think what we're asking ourselves is are we willing to be co-conspirators? Are we willing to challenge this system that exists that is systemically a problem and say that Longmont has done a better job but we're gonna continue to do a better job because we're gonna take these dollars and we're gonna put them towards nonprofit programs and towards infrastructure programs that support people who need the most rather than this continued systemic growth of law enforcement. And that's roughly where I'm at, is no communities exempt from these questions. I'm very thankful to Graham for writing the letter, very thankful to Shakita and Madeline for sharing their perspective. I would really ask us to say, to think through what the result of sending this would be and I think what it would be is we're gonna challenge council to think about this question and if they take on the issue and they make the change in the budget, that's wonderful and I hope they do. But it's about continuing a conversation. So I'm gonna proudly, if we make a motion here in a minute, I'm gonna proudly support it. One of the proudest things I've done in a long time. So I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council member Christensen and then we'll go to Deanna. I can't. You're good. No, no, no, no, unmute unmute. Nicole, can you unmute? Polly, can you hear me? There you go. Yes, okay. Done. You unmuted me and I muted me again. I would like to hear from Eleberto because I believe he has another unique perspective and he's lived in this community for quite some time and I think we need to certainly hear from somebody who also has another perspective. I've lived in Oakland, California. This was a long time ago, but I doubt that anything's different. Oakland's police department should be completely eliminated. They are a bunch of racist swine, top to bottom, every single one I've ever dealt with. The Denver police department, I don't think and I lived there and that was 30 years ago too. I doubt that that has changed much. I believe that when you have a bad police department you need to eliminate that department and start from scratch because there is no way to reform a department that is corrupt and racist top to bottom. I think we look at the Aurora police and their unbelievable murder of Elijah McCain. And to me, they need to be gone. They need to be gone, but that isn't exactly what we have here. And I think that basically most of the police departments in this country are systematic racism or systemic, I'm sorry. Systemic racism and racist racism and, but there's a difference between our passionate disgust with this, which is really goes back to the beginning of our country. The second amendment and virtually everything that we have done for 400 years, well, the second amendment was 200 years ago, was to maintain slave patrols and to make sure that black people were kept in their place, which was slavery. So this systemic problem of racism is real and this is exactly the kind of conversations we have. And I am quite sure that this letter will pass. And I think that's a good thing. The city council needs to be forced to talk about this, but I would ask you when this comes up to please all of you come and speak because otherwise it won't go on. It needs to be, we need to hear everybody's voice on this. There's a difference between some of the departments that I've mentioned, the police departments, which I would say are the majority of police departments in this country because they hire the wrong people and they never hold them accountable and they don't train them very well. Think of our department, the Longmont Public Safety Department and the work that they have done. We need to be giving more money to all these problems, drug diversion or drug counseling and help and homelessness and mental health. We need to be giving more money to them rather than taking money away from a department that is really struggled to try to do the right thing. And that's my opinion, but I really would like to hear from Eliberto. Thank you. So why don't we go to Deanna and then Eliberto. So I'm just gonna echo what some other people have said in terms of thanking Graham first of all for kicking off this conversation. It's definitely not an easy conversation. It is very challenging for each of us probably for very different reasons. So thank you Graham. I really appreciate that we're having this conversation. And again, to thank Shakita and Madeleine for opening yourselves up in this room of us I think is probably not necessarily an easy thing to do and I appreciate your vulnerability in discussing these topics immensely. I would say that also, part of my problem here is that as a white person, I don't know what it's like to be a person of color in long run. I have no idea, no earthly idea. I don't know, there seems to be a lot of discussion about this police department being a good police department and that the police chief currently has done a great job which is fabulous and I'm happy to hear that. But I have no idea if that's really borne out by people of color and their actual experiences with this police department, nor do I know how people with mental illnesses are experiencing this police department, people with addiction issues, homeless people. I don't know what those experiences are like for those individuals. I think that part of my concern with this letter is that I don't know that it is aggressive enough to be honest. I think that we need to be proposing that we, I think white people have a tendency to overly study things. So I don't, instead of taking action. And so I don't wanna be doing that or being guilty of that because we need to fix this or work on fixing this and do it sooner rather than later. But I also feel like we need to be informed by the experiences of the people that actually experience the police department from groups that I'm not a member of and that several council members are not members of as well. And so I think the letter should also include a request that council does some sort of study to figure out how people of color are impacted in this community by the police department, how people with mental illnesses experience this police department, homeless individuals. I think that my other concern is that I do not want, if we shift funding from the police department, I don't necessarily want things like the angel initiative, et cetera, to disappear. Because let's be honest, where are they gonna cut the funding? They're gonna take it from the social services provisions, right? So if we're taking it from there, we have to figure out how to replace those in an effective manner, or the council does, and maybe that's not our job. But I am concerned about just saying take the money. I think we need to communicate to them that they need to take the money from non supportive services like the angel initiative. That seems to me something like people coming in, that seems to me something that the police are uniquely involved in being able to provide that service to people. On the other hand, obviously I don't necessarily want the police showing up with guns to interview a homeless guy at the park because he's loud. But we also have to figure out a way that there are agencies that are able to respond as quickly as the police are able to respond because practically speaking, that's who gets called when there are problems. So it's a huge topic that needs to be addressed. And I do think that I am very much in favor of getting this conversation rolling with the city council and moving it forward. But I do wanna communicate that to the city council, I would like to, I mean, for what that's worth, communicate to them that I also would like to see them taking a more comprehensive approach to figuring out what's going on in this community and how people are experiencing policing in this community. And that's all. Thank you, Diana. Eliberto. Thank you, chair. So I have to be, I'm a liaison, I'm a staff member and not a member of this board, per se. So I have to take that into account. Also the staff, and I work closely with our Public Safety Department on several projects, including homelessness and how we address some of the needs that we are seeing in that area. So with that said, my experience, with Madeleine said earlier about Mike Butler and the work that he's done in trying to, even before I was with the city and I was still running the circles program, Mike invited me in and said, "'Hey, we love circles and what it's doing "'and we'd like to replicate that with homelessness.'" And I told Mike, you know how hard circles is to run and all the things that need to happen for it to work well. And I said, but I'd be happy to talk to you. And Mike was very receptive to listening to my experience with that program. So I think, you know, I also agree that this is not a single issue. It's not just the letter. I think it's broader. It is the policing issue. It is life and death. And it's also, you know, going back earlier to Jen's thing, you know, I remember when there was a letter sent to a Latino family saying, "'We don't wanna see your brown kids in our neighborhood.'" And I thought about, you know, my boys out there riding their bikes and what people might think of them. So it's both societal, it's cultural, it's huge. And I'm happy that we're having the conversation. And I think we need to be very thoughtful about what we're asking. If the goal is to push the conversation and ask counsel to have it and push the city to have that. I can tell you that within the city, I'm part of a racial inequity group that Harold has started. We went through a training through Gaer. And I'm blanking what Gaer means right now. Karen, if you remember, I think it's government accountability, race, I don't know. It's an equity. So governmental, I don't remember the A, for race inequity. Right. And so even in the city, internally in the city, we are working on creating, I can tell you that we're working on creating- Governmental action. Governmental action on race inequity. So we are already having those conversations. And then, you know, even before I was with Circles, when I was working with Intercambio, I was part of Elmack. And I'm not sure if you were there yet, Marilyn, and maybe it was before you joined, but, you know, the first time I worked with Karen was we were working on this project on how do we help people, you know, continue to, we had this thing called lifelonwantlearning.com. And it was really about how do we help bridge that digital divide and give people the opportunity to thrive in this community. And Elmack has been doing, you know, for a long time, a lot of good work. So again, I think that if the goal of this board is to promote this conversation, this very, very important life and death conversation, that while it includes policing is much broader, then I think that we should do that. I think the board should say we want to do this. And at the same time, I'm not sure if asking for 10% of the police budget, it's the best way to go forward with that. But I think the conversation is important. And one last thing, you know, we have been talking for a long time as a board around how do we push diversity and inclusion in the agencies that we fund? And we've had a chart that we asked people to fill out. Madeleine did amazing work last year, reaching out personally to nonprofits, saying that she is willing to walk with them and help them. So, you know, how do we take that work to the next level on helping, you know, our nonprofits become? Is it something like putting an equity question in the application and really, you know, taking that seriously? Like how are nonprofits being equitable as they support? And I honestly think that many of them want to be, but what does it look like? So, lots of issues, lots of different perspectives and I honor and respect all of them. And I do agree that this is an important conversation to have and we need to have it. And I, that's just my perspective. Thank you. I look better too. We're 15 minutes after nine. And so I just want to throw a few things out there. One is, as I indicated earlier, I think this is going to be, and I hope it's going to be something that will be regularly in our discussions in our work. When I hear everybody's comments, so first of all, not first of all, I already did the first of all. Second of all, I hear the passion in people's opinions. And I know that some of that passion is born of pain and fatigue and a sense of urgency. You know, when I hear you talking Shakita about your boys, I can only imagine the sense of urgency you must feel to do everything you can right away to make them safe. And I really appreciate you sharing that because I think it's hard for me to imagine that. So there's also in this discussion, there's a lot of different things that we touch on. So one is how do we fund the human services we know are so essential? Another one is related to how do we address issues of racism in our culture? Another one is related to the police department. How do we address issues of racism in our police department? Which has a sense of urgency because there is in any police department one mistake can have a tragic outcome as Madeleine I think gave a very personal example of. So, you know, that has a certain weight to it. Then there's the idea of what is our role, right? So Graham, you put together a letter that I think very effectively puts the board in the role of being a provocateur. And I'm in favor of provoking, right? And I think it serves the sense of urgency. And I also believe that whatever this board does in relation to being a provocateur, let's say this letter, that will serve as a framework for the discussion moving forward. And what I would ask is that that framework be as precise as we can possibly make it without losing a sense of urgency. So that's to say, I think that I'm not sure that the language is exactly what would be the most productive language going forward to provoke the kind of change that we want because, you know, it's just there's a few points that are it's a little bit of we want to, well, I think a fair amount of it that speaks to the police force has money. Well, essentially we need funding for these other critical services and it's not logical that police force is providing them, which I tend to agree with. The other part of it is that the police force is systemically a racist organization. I think both of those are true, but we need to be real careful about what provocation we actually, what's gonna be the stimulus relative to our outcome. So that's my own thought. I'm, I would like the letter to be the language to be something we are really solid behind and use what Graham put together as that foundation. So my suggestion, and it's just a suggestion as a board member, although I'm going to, I don't know if there's any chair authority I can pull to figure out how this is a possibility. But my suggestion would be that Madeleine, Shakita, Graham and Jake work together to write that, use the draft and specifically write that letter for us to forward to city council and make sure that it is the right point of stimulus. And so what I'm concerned about is something that can be dismissed is not the best thing. So if somebody says, well, this is just about defunding the police, then it'll be dismissed. We want to make sure that it cannot be dismissed and has to be considered and will provoke that change. That's my only feedback on it. And my suggestion is that the four of you work together on finalizing that language and then if we, it doesn't need to wait a month. If we can call a special meeting with enough time to notice it appropriately, then let's do it in a week. Does, I mean, I don't, a week still feels relatively urgent to me. I don't know if that's satisfying the urgency with which we're looking at the situation for everybody. But I feel like in a week, we could come together and re-engage the discussion, look at the new language and move forward. Jake. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate my name being included in your thought process. I think there may be other folks on the board who have a different perspective and not just on this issue generally, because I mean, I think I was, I understand the concerns about it, but I was fairly comfortable with it. And I feel like perhaps, Deanna, if you would be interested potentially or anyone else on the board who has a driving need to, you know, who feels that there are issues with the letter more strongly, perhaps, not that I, I mean, I could make changes and, you know, do different things to it. But I feel like my, additionally, I'm very conscious of my lens on this issue. So I'm, there are other folks. Deanna would be my thought, Mr. Chair. I don't have a problem helping out. I'm jumping, sorry, jumped over some people who had their hands up. But I guess I'll just continue doing it since we were informally exchanging ideas. If you wanna cut me off, Mr. Chair, feel free. I'm happy to jump in and help out. I also don't want any other people on this board to feel like we're asking them to, as you said in the beginning, carry the water for the rest of us, right? So it's a hard balance between giving people voice and asking people to do work that maybe they don't necessarily wanna volunteer for. So I guess I'm just expressing my thoughts that, yeah, that I just wanna make sure that everybody who's roped into this really wants to do it. And I'm happy to help out with that. Thank you. And so I'm gonna go to Council Member Christensen and just very quickly say, mine was a suggestion. So everybody can say, that's all yes and we move down a different path, right, as a board. So Council Member Christensen. Let me just mention a few things that are happening in the City Council. Susie Hidalgo, the letter that, I didn't get Karen's letter until later in today. And then when I sent her Dan Eamon's letter, which was an answer to Susie Hidalgo-Farn's question about the police funding, that didn't get sent out. So that would be helpful maybe for people to look at this. I think this is a really powerful letter. I don't necessarily think you need to tinker with it. I may not agree with the conclusion, but it's a very powerful letter. It's very well written. And there's an advantage to putting it out soon because Susie Hidalgo-Farn is talking about this now and we're all talking about this and all of us need to keep the momentum going. The other thing is though, I want this to get publicity and to have people come and talk. Right now we're doing everything on Zoom, but I have been told that we're going to be back in City Council Chambers after six months of being away at the beginning of July. There might be an advantage of just making this a public meeting and having people actually show up in person to talk, but we've been told this so many times. I don't know that that's worth it, but I do want people to actually call in to City Council when this comes up and talk about it because we need to keep talking. And as one woman said recently, she was African-American, she said, yeah, this is exhausting, but think about how exhausting it is to live the way I've had to live. So you can exhaust yourselves a little bit. Anyway, it's a very important issue. We can't lose momentum on this and we don't need to tinker around with the letter so much, I don't think because it's powerful, it's very clear and if you want to tinker around with it, go ahead. But just don't lose momentum. Okay. Thank you. Graham? In motion, we submit the letter to Council. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Yeah, so I have a question. So are we saying submitting it without any revisions or submitting it as is? That's correct, Madeline, it's submitting it as is. Okay. Someone mentioned earlier about, maybe it was you, Brian, about being a little less politically correct. Let's be a little bit stronger in our verbal stance. And I think while I think it is well written and I can appreciate what Polly is saying that we don't want to lose the momentum and we definitely wanted to have a bullet-like effect. Just like we just shot a gun or something. So we don't want it to be passed over as something like, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we want it to have an effect. Now, if you feel that it does that, then yeah, let's go with it. But I would say if it needs to be a little bit stronger in a couple of the sentences, then let's do that. I see it, this is our only shot. We get one shot at this, because after that, you fail, it's watered down and you're just not gonna have the same effect. So that's just those are my thoughts. Thank you, Madeline. Karen? So, you know, I'm in that same position as Eliberto. And I think that I would be disappointed if we moved forward with the letter as is. I have heard the conversation, we do not have, and I don't know if we will ever get to a unanimous, you know, opinions, but it seems like there are points that were discussed tonight that I think if we didn't at least take an attempt, make an attempt to try to address those, resolve those so that as an entire board that it would feel comfortable in submitting the letter. I just think that's a lost opportunity and it creates a division within our advisory board. And I think, Brian, to your point about being a provocateur, but also being one that doesn't lead to just dismissal. I am worried about the, you know, let's defund police 10% and move it to human services. I just am concerned that that is going to create, lead to that dismissal of what that letter says and the great conversation and the important work that we want to do. I would be really concerned that that's what's going to happen. And to Madeline's point, we don't have many shots of that. So I think to be more thoughtful, to take in the input that we heard tonight and take another stab, we don't have to take forever, we can do a special meeting. I just think that that's a lost opportunity and that would be hard for me to see that happen, but I don't have standing. I realize that I'm a staff member. So, so I wanted to throw in. Thank you for your comments, Karen. Yes, council member Christensen. This one, thank you. Karen, would you please forward that letter from Dan Aiman to everyone so that they're, that they have a better foundation for understanding how things work with the public safety. It doesn't have to be right this moment, but you know. Well, you did ask for two minutes to read it. Do you want your two minutes? You know, I think it would be better for everybody to be able to read it because it's, for me, it's very hard to listen to what somebody says and then think, oh, I need, this is something that's a complicated issue. And it's better to actually have it so you can read it several times rather than me reading it. Yeah, I got you. Okay. Any other discussion? So we have Shakita and then Deanna. In one second. So Polly, I don't see that in my inbox. I'll send it again. With this FYI, all right, sorry. Okay, that's okay. I'll send it. First of all, I want to say thank you, Ellie Berthel, for entertaining me tonight with waving and dancing in the air when your lights go off. I really appreciate that. That was a lot of fun. Second of all, I want to say I appreciate this conversation. And as Jake has mentioned, if nothing else, having this conversation is more important than anything. And that's why it's important to have different perspectives on boards and diverse boards for this reason. This conversation may not have been had. I appreciate everything and brought to the table. And I mean, I really believe we should have this conversation, all of us together because I'm learning from it's not like she's opposed of it, but that's her perspective. So I need to have a more, a better understanding of where she's coming from. And she's wanting to know where I'm coming from. And that's why we're here and we need to learn from one another. And so I think if we all can come back to, learning from each other perspectives and get something that's more impactful to where counsel can see that we understand both sides, me personally, because I do understand a little bit but I think it goes deeper. So, and I think, and of course my situation goes deeper for Anne. So she doesn't understand and maybe many of you. So we have this one shot and I think it's important for us to understand one another and before we take that shot. And so that we can represent our, this board can be very representative of this community. And can I just- My opinion. On the Chiquita, I'm sorry, Deanna. I just want to tell you, I appreciate you saying that and it really affected me when you said that you didn't have the, you know, that here I can just say, well, I don't want to demonstrate because I think the police do a lot of things that are positive and you said that you didn't have that luxury. And that really made me think about the differences and it was really impactful to me. And it just lets me know how much we all have to learn. So I really appreciate you saying that it really helped me tonight. Sorry, Deanna. No, no problem at all. So I was just going to add in that two things really. First thing is that if we're going to vote on sending this letter, there are a couple typos in it that should be corrected. So we don't want to send it as is without fixing those. So the second paragraph council is spelled C-O-U-N-S-E-L. So that should be fixed. And then the third paragraph says community were and it should be community where. And I didn't catch anything else, but if we're going to vote on approving it and it carries then obviously it would like those things to be corrected. I also think that we got one shot and I want to make it as effective as possible in terms of getting this out there. And I'm serious about trying to propose some additional things without watering the letter down that council needs to do. Like have this discussion. I think we need to really encourage them to have this discussion, to get community and to figure out what's going on. And so that's why I think we should tweak it a little bit. But I also would be okay with sending it too, just to get the ball rolling, so. Thank you, Deanna. Anybody else, any other discussion before we- Just real quick, just real quick. I, you know, I just, I hear everything and there's all different sides to this, but I just don't want them to get defensive about the way, you know, transferring 10% of Longmont Police Department's budget. I just think that that's just gonna turn people mad and they're gonna, you know, I just don't think that that is gonna, I think people are gonna get on the defense and be defensive about it without a discussion. And that's the only thing I would worry about. Thank you, Karen. A question, Brian. Someone, Polly mentioned earlier that whenever this is presented, that we should all be there. So I think that's really, really important. So if they get defensive, that's fine. That's just fine. Now on the other hand, I was thinking, Graham did such a good job initially, I don't know where in the process we are exactly in terms of the rules, the rules, voting rules. But I was thinking he's heard everybody's different points of view. I feel strongly that he, if he would, take the lead on just revising it to include some of the things that we've said if he would be willing to do that, that's my thought. Thank you, Madeleine. Just quickly, since I seconded the motion, I just wanted to express, you know, my commitment here is in, you know, challenging us to think about these questions. And I think Graham's thought of sending the motion as is and making the motion is the most challenging thought that we have. So I wanted the discussion, certainly. I'm gonna vote for the motion. I understand that just my day is working in the legislature counting heads. I understand kind of where this group is at. So I might have a substitute motion if this motion doesn't pass. But I would, you know, I think for us right now thinking about, I really appreciate all the conversation, especially Shakita, what you said mentioning, you know, we do have one shot at this. And I think that there are challenges that we have to address. We have to get it right. And I would, yeah, I don't have much else. Thank you, Jake. Okay, if there's no further discussion, we'll go ahead and take a vote. So for all in favor of sending the letter to council with the current content and the corrected typos, please raise your hand. Okay, Nicole, did you get that? Okay. We can't see Madeleine. Madeleine, do you wanna give a verbal yes if you're in favor of sending it as is? I am not, not as is. Okay, all of those opposed, please raise your hand. Okay, and any abstentions. I almost felt like I should abstain because I have a little bit of a conflict because I'm not very smart. But I thought I just had something, but first before Jake and then council member Christensen, I just wanna say, Graham, you have much more courage than I do. I tend to be a people pleaser. And so I really appreciate you putting it out there to Jake's point of really challenging us. It was needed. And I appreciate you having us. Absolutely. All right, Jake. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move the task for individuals. And I'm gonna say Graham, and either Ann or Dan, because I heard some good thoughts on that, to serve on somewhat of a semi-task force, a subcommittee, if you will, to examine this letter over the course of the next week, refine it, evaluate it, come up with something that works, that we can bring back at a special meeting to discuss just this issue, review the letter and prepare to submit it. I have a point of information about that. My understanding is that if more than, if three or more folks from the board are getting together, it has to be publicly, we have some requirements around it being made public. And so to the extent that we can keep it moving forward without needing to go through those hoops, that would be preferable. So if that means that one or two people work on it and a draft is sent, and then there is actually email correspondence that would meet our public duties around that, that might be a better way to do it rather than trying to coordinate with people that might then have to do something as far as public meetings. Just a clarification is that we can't do, we can't have email communications about the letter, it has to happen in a public meeting. So that's really why we couldn't send out Graham's initial letter, because we can't do our business via email. Karen, what is the noticing requirement at all? Is it 24 hours? Yeah, so it's really just a 24 hour notice. And then I think it's, we can certainly do some clarification if it's, because I think it's, is it three? We don't, we've had task forces before with our advisory board, but I think it's, so we can clarify the number that, and I think it's three, right? I believe any more than two needs to be noticed. It needs to be noticed. Yeah. So, but I mean, that's, but we can notice it. I mean, that's, that's. And we'll probably draw the same public crowd this, this one. So, so we can certainly, we can, we want to, you know, certainly can comply with the law. And yeah, it probably wouldn't be beating your doors down to try to get in, get involved. But, you know, so I think- My goal was not to say we shouldn't do it publicly, but more so of like- Yeah, you got it. You got it. So I think, you know, however you want to put that together, we'll make sure that it's in compliance and we would need to come back with a, with a special meeting to actually look at it. Okay. Anne? I won't take much time. I just feel really strongly that if we're going to send something like this, it needs to be organized. And I know, I would like to know how much the money is that we're asking for and what we're going to do with it. If we're going to look at other options like more community work, whatever, but I think we need to say how much the money is and where we want to put it. Because otherwise it just doesn't seem as, I don't know what I even want to say. I just, I think we need to do that. It runs the risk potentially of just sounding punitive versus solution oriented, I think is Jake. Just point of order, Mr. Chair. Did my motion get a second or not? It has not yet received a second. So is there a second for Jake's motion? I'll second. Thank you, Graham. Okay, now we can finish with the discussion part of it. Deanna? I was just going to speak to who's serving on that sort of subcommittee that I'm happy to do it, but I know Anne also has some concerns about making sure everything is organized and that we're including everything we need to include in it without being overly verbose. So I'm also happy to not be on it. So I don't, and I don't know if you have any particular feelings about whether you would like to assist with the redraft or amendments. I'm happy to do it. I just want to put my name on it. I guess I want it to be more organized and have a plan. Can I follow up with a question for that? If we're sending it out as a board, if it passes as a board, are individual names on it or are they going on as the board signs off on it as being passed? Or is it being, I mean, I guess if we're doing it as subcommittee, we're on the subcommittee and that would be reported too. Caitlin and then Jake. Well, it was drafted as a unanimous thing, but I mean, which I think actually has more power to say that like the board unanimously and then listing our names, I would say that like I've seen places where like a subgroup of like a board or committee has said, like as members of whatever we encourage this, and it's been, you know, three out of eight or something like that, which is totally something that people could do. But I do think that there's power and it being something that is unanimous without using that as a reason to water it down to the point that it's not actually calling for traction now. I think to Deanna, your point earlier, like as a white person, I know that I am like, let's research and make sure we get it exactly perfect. And I think that some of the things that have come up here have suggested like there's an urgency to this and it's meant to start a conversation and not to be the end of a conversation. And so we don't have to get it perfect to do that, but we also recognize that we have, I think to Matt, we have one shot at this. And so I think thinking through like, what does it look like to start that conversation in a way that is, for me, I think about like, one reason like the 10% is impactful is because it's big. It is not like, it's not just asking for crumbs of something, it's saying like, let's have a big vision of where this can go and not in a way of like punishment, but in terms of like, how can we expand our imagination and the imagination of our community to do something here? And so thinking about how, what that looks like, I think even to the extent that we had Jen here earlier talking about the human needs assessment and updating that right now, that to Ann's point, like if we could redirect funds, where would it go? It would be, how do we take that human needs assessment of what people in our community are saying they need and actually direct enough funds to address those needs? That I think is one way we can do it without being overly specific, but to really start the conversation to say, if it comes in that the digital divide is a high need, which wasn't a high need, I think in our last human needs assessment, that's a big way to think about where the money could be directed is really relying on that research that's already being done versus us saying, we know where it should go versus this concerted effort that has been done to say where funds and resources are needed in our community. Yeah, thank you. Jake. And then. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can I just, can I ask a question just by show of hands, just as I look at this? Who would want, who wants to do this? Who wants to sit on this? No, on one. Who is willing to, perhaps, to do this revision? You mean the subcommittee, like revision, right? Not who wants to send a letter. Write the letter, the next draft. Yeah, because I'm looking at this hearing, why would I be exclusionary if folks are willing to? Okay. And I don't see your hand. Does your hand up and turn? I don't know, I feel very conflicted. I feel very strongly that I wanna hear Madeleine's voice on this, because I think she is wise. I really want her to be part of it. I'm afraid that I won't have the same feelings or the same, I'm afraid that I could be a little like, that I could make things more complicated and because of my desire to have it organized and present something that's not just as it is right now. So I'm conflicted, because I'm afraid if I do it, that I will slow everyone down. And anything that I'm gonna be a part of, it's gonna be completely organized and it's not gonna be half-copped in any way. We're gonna dot all the I's and cross all the T's. That's where I stand. And from what I know about the other people. The other people that are involved, I would imagine from what I've experienced, it's gonna be as picture perfect as it can be. We do wanna add some more teeth to it. Yeah, yeah, I'm good with that. Jake? So, Mr. Chair. Sorry, Polly. I'm sorry, Council Member Christensen was next in the queue and then we'll come back to you, Jake. And then we'll go to Karen. Turn around. So, when you send a letter to Council, this is just protocol, nothing will happen unless somebody makes it happen. So what I'm going to do is this Tuesday, I'm going to say a letter is coming to Council regarding police funding and I would like to have a formal discussion of that. That puts it on the agenda. If I can get the votes to put it on the agenda. Last week I called for a presentation by the police on the use of force because even though of course this is on the website, but you know, people don't, nobody goes to the website. Okay, stuff. The people of this town need to know that the state of Colorado banned chokeholds and what the actual policy is, the police department needs to tell us publicly what the police use of force in Longmont is. And that's why I asked for a presentation because it was big for the state of Colorado to ban the use of chokeholds. We should have done that like 20 years ago or hundreds of years ago, but anyway. So I will make a statement on Tuesday that this letter is coming and that I would like to have it on the agenda for a discussion. Okay, any objections to that? Well, as soon as possible. Because would that give us all time to look at the letter again and kind of sign off? Yeah, but do it quickly, you know, do it in the next couple of weeks. Yeah, it's just a heads up to Council. Mr. Vice Chair. I actually was gonna say, I am at thing, Mr. Chair, I was gonna say Karen probably has something more, just procedurally that probably matters more. So if you wanna go ahead. Go ahead, Jake. Okay. So my only thought on this is we're gonna take this approach as opposed to the approach I respect very much, which is Graham's, let's rabble rouse approach, which I'm all for. Since we're gonna take this approach, I think that it behooves us to try and make this letter as close to get it to a place where everybody on this board feels comfortable getting behind it. And everybody on this board feels comfortable putting their name on it, which means it's gonna be challenging. So I'm gonna, but and I appreciate Anne, you know what you said about Madeleine, I agree completely. So I'm gonna refine my motion, insert Deanna's name kind of formally into that. So the group we'd be talking about would be Shakita, Madeleine, Graham, and Deanna are the four, I think, which is, we have nine on our task force or on our board. Is that right? Nine. So that's a subcommittee. You know, and that's enough to make a decision, I think. If you have too many voices, then it becomes editing by committee, which nobody wants to do. So that'll- And I don't need to be on there. Madeleine's on there and she's awesome. So- Are you sure you don't- Absolutely. I mean, that's good and that's great for me. Okay. Then I'll go ahead and refine it again and we'll make it a three person team of Graham, Madeleine, and Deanna to take the lead on that. And that'll be the committee. And I think the addendum I'll make on the motion is the goal of the committee of the task force should be to try and get us something that we can all get behind. And I'll leave it at that. Okay. Karen. So what I would love is that you also throw in a consultant like Eli Berto. So I think it's important to just make, you know, not that he's gonna steer it necessarily, but you know, there is information we wanna make sure we get correct. There is, we just want it to be correct. So I would say you invite a city staff member and if you're good with Eli Berto doing that, that would be great. And then I think we then wanna be clear on what, so Polly if you're gonna bring this up on Tuesday, then I think we need to be clear about what you're gonna be saying if it's about a letter about police funding, that might not be what it ends up looking like. So I think how, you know, maybe just a letter from the advisory board, you know, and just not really go into what that's gonna be about because we don't know what it's about yet. So I just don't wanna, I just want us to be clear or at least vague until we know what that clarity is gonna be. How's that for? Double talk, fork a tongue. So I think just, you know, that we wanna, that the advisory board wants to, is preparing a letter to submit to city council. So maybe we just talk about it in that way since we don't have the final letter yet. Okay, thank you. Jake. So I'll accept, I'll add that, if I can add that as a friendly, if that's how Robert Schruel's worked, Mr. Chair, to say that Ella Berto, I don't know either, to say that Ella Berto should assist in that process of refining and editing to bring us back a product. And I'm gonna say a week we've talked about, right? That's the timeline, roughly, that we've discussed. So that's maybe not formally put that in, but that's kind of the timeline. So yeah, I will, I'll say that all sounds good and makes sense to me if it's all okay with that video. Nicole, would you mind reading what you have as the motion back, have you cobbled something together? Well, so I have motion to ask three members to serve on subcommittee, along with staff member Ella Berto Mendoza, refine it, obviously this isn't typo'd perfectly, refine it, evaluate it and bring it back for a special meeting. Graham seconded. With it, can you add within a week to 10 days, a week to 10 days of this meeting? So whatever that those dates would be. Okay. Should we decide that tonight? I'm sorry, Ann. Should we decide that date tonight? Let's, I think the most important part is that there's a sense of urgency behind it. And I think the group can probably act on that sense knowing that we, Ann, are you comfortable if we just flag it 10 days from today? Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's do that. Okay. Or if you want to set a, you know, to bring back for a special meeting, it could be sometimes, you know, the week of July 20th. So that would be 10 days, two weeks, you know. Yeah. I'm more comfortable with that. Let's be exact or more exact than, yeah. Okay. All right. 10 point, yeah. So let's, let's say to bring back for a special meeting of the HHSAB the week of July 20th. Yeah. And then we'll work on what the best date would be. Okay. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. All in favor, please raise your hand. Alan even gave the spirit fingers, that was good. Any opposed, raise your hand. Any abstentions, raise your hand. Okay. The motion passes. Right. So that was- Awesome work. Yeah. That was good work. Congratulations everybody. We've got a long ways to go, but that was a robust start. And my only request in the letter is let's, to the greatest extent possible, let's make it something that, you know, we can agree on and really support, but I also ask that I think it's good for some of us to be uncomfortable. Yeah. So, push the envelope. Let's see it. Council Member Christensen. I'm not going to bring it up then next week because I can't make a motion that says, we're going to get a letter from the Housing and Human Services Board. I can't tell you what it is, but I think we need to discuss it. Can we take it? Can I have a second on that? So, I'll put it off for a week because- When we're ready, yeah. I already look like enough of an idiot that I- I think it makes- More of an idiot. When we know it, when we have the letter, when we know what it says, then that's the time to- Yes. Okay. Yeah. I just don't want us to lose momentum. I think that- Right. And I did send out, I did forward the email that Polly sent. So, you should have that in your inbox. Okay. Thank you. Well, it's late. Thank you for all of the hard work you've put in and I want you to know it's my privilege to serve with each and every one of you. So, thank you. And let's see, I think the only other thing is somebody needs to communicate with staff on noticing the meeting that's going to happen, the discussion. So, is there a specific individual who would like to take that on at this sub- So, can I make a suggestion that- Yes. Ellie Berto, that why don't you- Who will take the lead in calling the meeting, setting that up and we'll make sure that everything is focused appropriately. Thank you. You okay with that? PM? Yeah, I will do that. Thank you. Thank you. Finally, you have some work to do, Ellie Berto. Yeah, it's about time that I put myself here on here. Thank you. Set maybe my arms. I'm good at that. All right. Thank you, everybody. You have a- Get some good rest. Yes, thanks, everybody. Thank you. Good night, everybody. Thank you. Good night. Bye, everyone. Thank you.