 United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Chairman today is missing because her daughter just had an operation yesterday. So I'd like to move forward and ask our secretary, Abby, to call the roll for the meeting. So if you're muted, please unmute so you can respond. Pull the mic down, Abby. Sorry, I just need one second. It's not pulling up my agenda for some reason. I had it up and I accidentally closed it. Apologies, I don't understand. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, apologies about that. Michelle Gentine, Lisa Merrick, Lisa. Okay, Karen Houston. Here. Michelle Warner. Here. Betty Ackley is absent. Bill Bussert, Nicole Bredesen. Nicole, Mike Heimbach. Here. Kate Hodges. Kate. Here. And Christine Potter. Christine? She waived. Okay, thank you. Okay, we should note that Gretchen Houston has joined our group. Gretchen is filling in for Caring Houston today. And we look forward to having her added to our group. Next is to a motion to approve the minutes of the July 29th meeting. Wanna move? I'll move to approve the minutes. Is there a second to that motion? I need a second. You wanna sit up here by microphone? Okay, very good. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Now, because our chairman isn't here, we put a note here to elect a vice chairman for the group. Just wondering if anybody would like to volunteer for that role. I'll volunteer. Mike Heimbach. Mike, thank you very much. Would someone like to make a motion to approve Mike Heimbach as the vice chair of the organization? Okay, I have a motion to approve. Is there a second? Thank you, Michelle. All those in favor of approving Mike Heimbach as vice chairperson, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Mike, I'll turn over the microphone to you for the rest of the meeting. Thank you, Mayor. The next item on our agenda is the update from the survey subcommittee. Is somebody ready to report on that? Okay, then we'll table that for now. All right, well, let's move on to the next item then and that was an update from the online assessment subcommittee. Kate, do you wanna go ahead? Joe, you wanna hit the button in front of your sheet there, just push the button. These are my birds in the background, but I believe Gabby and I met and we had gone through the Better Cities for PES assessment. And one thing we did find is that we do need a little bit more survey information to proceed with some of the answers. Are you just looking for a general, are we a Better City for PES or what information would you like? How about that first piece that you mentioned? The whole idea, are we a good city for PES? As a whole, I feel like we're moving in the correct direction. I think one of the biggest obstacles that we found is obviously in housing, also in how well our city works with our shelter. Our shelter has a lot of programs in place and ready to go, but when it asks, does your city have certain things? The answer has been no quite often. So I think partnering the shelter in a city would be incredibly beneficial for everyone, especially our PES and PED owners. I think an outreach program that the city backed to help people be more educated would be a wonderful idea. I think that one of the things we were looking over were are our businesses, especially downtown, where there are more people, are they pet friendly? And we do have a ton of information about that, but we did notice that quite a few of the newer developments are increasing in pet friendliness in that area. So I think we're moving in the right direction, but I think there's definitely some things that we could work on, and we have a little list going of that, too. And then I would just add, so as part of the survey committee, if we could work with you and putting together some of the questions that maybe we don't have the easiest access to those answers, that would be really helpful. Trying to think if there's anything else. Can you send those proposed questions on to that committee then? That'd be great. Any other insights you'd like to share about the assessment so far? I think it'll be interesting to see what people come back with in terms of what businesses are you able to bring your pets to work with you, what establishments allow you to bring your pets in. I think some of that anecdotally we know, but I think a lot of that'll come from the community. So I'm curious to see what I don't know about in terms of pet friendliness. Reaching out to other stakeholders, other shelters, other rescues. Yeah, it should be interesting. Thank you, Abby. Anyone else have any other insights they'd like to share? Yes, go ahead. It's when you were talking about businesses, what businesses allow pets. You're talking about bringing your pets to work businesses, are you talking about businesses where you would go to do retail businesses, where you would go to do shopping and bring your pets in with you? I'm not clear on that. All of you both. So one of the pages is estimated number of pet focused businesses in your area. So like do we have pet daycares, we have pet stores, and then it's local restaurants that are pet friendly, and then local restaurants or retailers that are pet friendly, and then hotels that are pet friendly. Like how many hotels do we have that allow pets? We don't actually have that answer. I mean, workplaces that allow pets at the office. That's a big one, I think. I think when some people are dealing with like separation anxiety, and that's the big reason that we see a lot of animals at the shelter is they're turned in because they can't spend that much time away from their owner, towards a really long process to get used to. So I think that one thing that we could kind of like, and there's a question about do you have incentives for workplaces allowing pets in the area? So, and I know that there are some businesses that don't even allow pets on the property. Like when we have events or to get an okay to bring them there in person. So I think it's a wide range of who allows pets and who doesn't. Okay. Good question. Good question, Christine. Thank you for the information, Kate. Well, if you're ready, let's move on to the next item on the agenda, and that's the review of pet ordinances. I'll take that one, Mike. I think that part of the process that we're going through, we should take a look at all the ordinances that have been passed and are active right now and the city ordinances that deal with pets. So I'll be preparing a file with all of those ordinances for you to review. And then we may want to have a separate subcommittee or schedule some discussion on these and see if there's any changes that we feel we need to bring to the council for approval to again, meet our goals to be a pet friendly community. So that's something that'll be coming up at a future meeting. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I'm looking at our agenda and that's the last item that I see for today's meeting. I'm looking that our next meeting is on September 30th. And if there are no other questions, first I'd like to thank you all for attending. This is a wonderful thing that we're doing. And I'm saying that from a selfish perspective because I have two corgis at home and as of this Saturday, we're gonna have number three. So we'll have three corgis. All right. God help us all. Well, at this time, I guess let's move for adjournment. I wanna make a motion. One of you, please make a motion to adjourn. Abby. So moved. A second. Our meeting will be adjourned then. Thank you very much for attending and hope to see you in person soon.