 Then let's call the meeting to order at five thirty six. I hope that a few other commissioners will join. The first item on the agenda is the agenda. Does anybody have a motion on that? Move to accept the agenda. Thank you. Second. By commissioners. Seconded by commissioner Hart. Any discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. That passes unanimously. I'm slowly moving to board docs. The second item on the agenda. Is minutes from the March 15th many meeting. I have a motion on that. Move to approve. Moved by commissioner Hart. Seconded by commissioners. Any discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. This is unanimously. And next up we've got. CNA. So I'm not sure. Who wants to speak break me if you're going to be leading. Skylar. But I will just pass it over to you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Skylar. I didn't know if you wanted to make any comments briefly. If not, I can go ahead and get started. No, I know that we're running a little bit behind. So why don't you just get started? Sure. And I think I'm able to share my screen now. Is that correct? Thank you. Is everyone able to see the slides? Yes. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much for having us today. No, I'm not. Oh, just to get started with that. I'm. I'm Kenningham and I am the deputy project director for the assessment of BPB. I am a research scientist with. CNA Center for justice research and innovation, specializing in the use of evidence based approaches to support. The assessment of law enforcement agency operations and promote organizational reform. And again, thanks for adding us this evening. I do have a slide deck to walk through just to walk through what we have begun and what we will do in the next two three months. But before I do that, there are a couple other members on the team here that I'd like to give the opportunity to introduce themselves so maybe we could start with Julie, and then go to Chief Monroe and then chip. Great. Good evening, everyone. My name is Julie Solomon and just very briefly. My background is as a clinician. I've spent a lot of years in the justice and behavioral health world. Namely around CIT training, training law enforcement on how best to respond to individuals in crisis, jail diversion programs, specialty courts, justice involved case management teams, spectrum of programs around sequential intercept modeling. I am also involved currently with the consent decree against the Chicago Police Department, and I'm serving as the associate monitor over the crisis intervention section. I'm also working with your Lando Police Department and Montgomery County Police Department on also alternative responses to to policing. So thank you again for having us tonight and we look forward to working with you. Well, good evening everyone. My name is Roddy Monroe of retired Chief of Police. I started my career with the DC Police Department worked there 22 years retired became the Chief of Police and making Georgia served there for four and a half years before becoming the Chief of Police in Richmond, Virginia. I served there for five years and then became the Chief of Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I served there for eight and a half years. Currently, semi retired. I serve as the deputy monitor for the Chicago Consent Decree. I also have been involved in a number of other projects around the country. I work with police reform bias audits. We're conducting one now in North Charleston, North Carolina, South Carolina. And I look forward to working with the Burlington Police Department and the fine citizens of Burlington, as well as city staff. Thank you. Thank you Rodney. My name is Chip Calderon. I'm going to say that I'm the proud director of the Center for Justice reform and innovation at CNA proud because I get to work with these wonderful people and proud because I get to work on projects like the one we have here today. As a background, I'm a social scientist and a sociologist that's done mostly research and mostly research and applied government and nonprofit settings. I actually spent five years as an advocate. I was the prisoner's advocate for the state of Illinois. So I have advocacy in my background as well. And as others on our team have said, I'm very much looking forward to this work. Thank you. Thanks everybody. There are a couple of things besides introducing you to CNA and a couple of other members of our team that I wanted to walk through today. We want to provide a brief overview of our approach. So the assessment topics or the goals of our assessment data collection, how we'll go about our findings and recommendations and then conclude with a little bit about our reporting and presentation of findings and then leave it open for discussions and any questions you might have for us. Welcome to the team members that just introduced themselves. We also have Mr Steve Rickman, who is a subject expert and community policing as part of our team. We have several analysts who are very experienced and well versed and not only research and data analysis but also racial equity analysis community engagement and public safety operations. And as an advisor on this project is Dr James McCabe, who is an expert and police operations staffing, as well as Mr Mike. I'm going to make sure I pronounce his name right so chip correct me if it's wrong Mr Michael, do not go. I always say it wrong. So he's going to kill me. Okay. Thank you. The DNA is a nonprofit research organization and analysis corporation that pioneered the field of operations research. Our Center for Justice research and innovation which is where this work is housed has assisted over 450 law enforcement agencies nationwide. We are considered a national leader in law enforcement performance, as well as constitutional and equitable practice assessments and development of practical strategies to address shortfalls and gaps. What I have here on the next slide is just a sample of some of our most recent work so work that similar in scope and size more for more than 20 years, we've advised law enforcement agencies through restructuring and organizational change. Most recently and what you see here on the slide is work that we've done on conducting organizational assessments and the areas of racial bias police and police are so I'm sorry policy and practice review and policing for the future. Here on the screen we just have the examples of report covers for the methuen police department, Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Prince George's County Maryland police department, Niskayuna police department. And as Julie and both Rodney and I think Chip mentioned several of the team members are currently working and supporting the Chicago consent decree monitoring monitoring projects. So the goals for our assessment. First and foremost we want to understand BPD operations and interactions with the community. We also want to understand community experiences with an expectations for BPD uncover any evidence of implicit bias, organizational or individual and any implicit bias and policies or practices that result in disparate outcomes among community members. We also have the goal to assess BPD staffing and workload. We do that by looking at a ratio of demand and availability of staff. We also intend to assess how law enforcement operations, policy and procedures impact historically marginalized and discriminated against populations in Burlington. And our number one goal at the end of this is really to provide evidence based findings and recommendations, drawing not only from local best practices but national alternative approaches to policing that are the best fit for the Burlington community. So I like to always show this next slide, just to kind of show our approach to the work and what we're going to bring to Burlington so in our assessment we combine, we will combine objective data driven analysis with subject matter expertise to deliver actionable, transparent, unbiased, incredible recommendations. When I say actionable recommendations, what I mean is recommendations that relate directly to BPD policies and procedures are achievable given financial and organizational constraints, as well as align with community expectations. And we will write them in a way that can be assessed for quality and compliance at future points in time. Our project approach is based on a number of guiding principles, including providing evidence based assistance with an emphasis on research. So that includes academic research, as well as documented lessons learn and best practices from the field. We use multiple forms of data collection, including interviews, policy and development and statistical analysis, which I'll talk a little bit more about here in a second. So in our approach to this assessment. As I mentioned, we will use several sources of data to meet our goals, including review of BPD policies and procedures interviews with stakeholders and members of BPD, as well as the city, and we'll also look at administrative data. We are going to use multiple sources because that allows us to compare and deconflict data points, as well as minimize bias and remain objective. This will give us a sound understanding of what we like to call the ground truth. So the scientific evidence regarding operations and activities so the ground truth of what we actually are seeing in the data. I'm talking a little bit more about the policies and document review. So we have requested BPD written policies and procedures, including training records and curriculum. We have asked for a sample of internal affairs and use of a force investigations. And the way we analyze this is we look at policy and gaps compared to best practices. And we just do process analysis with those. In regards to administrative data, we have requested call for service data, field context, traffic and pedestrian stops, use of force data, complaint data, as well as everything from hiring, recruiting, promotion and discipline data as available. And this is where we'll do most of our heavy quantitative analysis and where we will look at racial bias, do our staffing analysis and workload analysis to be informed by the policy review and our interviews. So going to our interviews, as I mentioned, interviews with BPD leadership and personnel, interview with community stakeholders, interviews with city personnel, and we have already started to reach out to a number of those folks and have interviews should start later next week. So how we are going to go about developing our findings. So our team will outline key findings and targeted recommendations and what we called and what the RFP calls in a menu of services format. So we're going to recommend alternative approaches to response to calls to support the reduction of racial socioeconomic and mental health bias, while still meeting the needs of the community. We also intend to describe the challenges and benefits to any alternative policing practice that we recommend. And above all else we want to make sure we're meeting the public needs and this is where the work that to letha and the community vision comes in to where we will review their work to see how our recommendations can align with what the community has put together as their community vision. What we plan to deliver. So we do, we will have a final report that we open up for public comment period. We usually do that by posting a draft report after we give it to our client. So in this case, the REIB office, we generally posted on to the city's website. We don't like to post them on to the police department websites just to again remain objective and buy and unbiased. So we post it generally to the website of the city. We leave it open for public comment for about a week to where we set up just a CNA email where anybody and everybody in Burlington has the opportunity to read our draft report, provide us feedback and provide comments. And I think that's where all in today. I'll close by saying thank you again for your time and putting us on the agenda. We do welcome the opportunity to talk with you again very soon about our progress and where we are. And at this time, myself and the team will welcome any questions or comments you might have for us. So thank you very much. Yeah, forgive me if you said this and I was just trying to keep up. One of the slides was about getting internal affairs, some samples. And I'm wondering what, how, how is that request made is, is the decision made by the police department as to what they provide or how do you make that something. So, so what we have asked for is a random sample of a couple of things. So we've asked for two random samples of use of force, including at least one with a person in the community who was an involved in a mental health crisis and one officer involved shooting. We've asked for 12 random internal affairs investigations that are non use of force, and then for critical incident reviews, if BPD conduct such reviews. So we have put in our request through that RIB office and they are working with the police department to get us all of that information, but we have asked them to be randomly selected over a five year period. Okay, five years, thank you. And that's also the data we've requested when I mentioned the calls for service and arrest crime data traffic stop five years. Thank you. Not seeing any other hands immediately I'll jump in with a question or comment as well and then Stephanie is so one of the things that I think was less strong. I remember correctly in your application was the alternatives I think you all have done a lot of really good work and have done a lot of great analysis around policing. And unfortunately, we don't have another another group to do the alternative so I just want to make sure that that is a focus that is going to be a focus in the report. I just want to get a little bit more about your strategy with that with again I could be misremembering but that maybe that's something you all are a little less familiar with Julie would you like to jump in. Sure, I'm happy to and I'm assuming you're referring to alternative responses to policing like co responder programs law enforcement training, those sorts of things. Yeah, just changing policing but also having alternative models to uniform police absolutely. And so there are a lot of different models and you're probably aware of this across the country that are best practice standards and one of the things that is always helpful is looking at specific communities of what's going to sort of meet the best needs of your community. And so one of the things that we look at when we're requesting data is, you know, not only are we looking at for instance use of force data but also use of force data against vulnerable populations including people who are in, you know, behavioral health and mental health crisis. And so we have, when we submitted a very long data request for calls for service. We included a lot of those data components so we'll be able to sort of tease out also not only perhaps if there are disparities in where use of force and arrest data is but also helping to work with your community around what your community is wanting and helping to bring sort of best practice standards in around some of those programs so co response programs you might have a clinician and law enforcement getting out together on certain calls. There are alternative placing programs that don't involve law enforcement at all. Sometimes there's a blend of those. You know there are a whole spectrum of programs that we will be able to utilize the data that we're pulling to analyze and and assess and make some recommendations. I think maybe someone said this but we did, we did listen in on the first to letha report out and heard a lot from the community members that were participating in that that was very helpful to us as we're coming into this project to really hear some of the, you know, the, the strengths and comments around what they're looking for with alternative responses to placing so that helps give us a lens as we're as we're walking through this project so does that help answer your question. It does yes. Okay. And Stephanie. Yes, can you tell me so you said you're going to be requesting data for the last five years. And given that 2020 as an anomaly. How are you going to handle that. Generally what we do is. So sometimes we put like a time variable in so we can look at interactions but the analysis that we're doing, particularly around racial bias is a proportionality index. So what we do is we will look at the proportionality of a particular group and their rest compared to their white peers but it doesn't necessarily all the time depend on the year. It kind of just depends on the way we're going to look at the comparison is just the rate for for each year so what we will actually look at to see if the calls for service went down in 2020. And at this point I don't know. We're just getting the data now. If it looks like there is a huge discrepancy we can put in time variables or we can note that in any report that we do. I mean because there are some things that will be different. You know the propensity for textual stops will likely be lower in 2020 and so I guess my concern would be that that could be given too much weight, or that might skew your results if you're looking at a five year. Yeah. I'd like to say that there are ways to account for that mathematically but there are also ways to account for that, just in terms of the way you analyze the data. So, actually in talking with James McKay, who is our specialist for police staffing analysis, we've already decided to look at data for 2020 and compare it to the current year so we don't have that, you know, that anomaly. I'll tell you also that a year like 2020 gives you some interesting opportunities to look at what some alternatives might look like because the departments across the country are being forced to deal with issues alternative ways. So there is some value in looking at that data as well, but we clearly make a comparison we'll compare the current time to a time in the past that's comfortable, so to speak. Thanks. That was helpful. Thanks. Yep. And then do you all have to hop off at six our time was that the was that the timing. I'm okay to stay on for a little bit if there are more questions I'm happy to answer them. Okay, there is. Well, so yeah, because we're a public committee the way that we do is we also give the public a chance to weigh in and so we don't do back and forth on that but we can collect their questions and then if someone's around to answer. And then the second thing is I do think it would be good if I think Skylar if you're managing the contract if we just get aligned on like what the role of the joint committee will be versus the role of the city of Burlington. The REI be specifically and so clearly if you're around for that that's helpful, but also we'll have time constraints so I don't want to I don't want to infringe on them. It was just a couple members on our team so we just wanted to make sure that they at least have like, I think Chief Monroe had another commitment as well as as Julie but I think Chip and I could probably stay on and I'm happy to stay on, as long as you need us to. So I think we're good. Thank you commissioners have questions before I go to public forum on this specific issue. Hi, this is me little grant I had a couple of questions. The first thing I wanted to just verify our city unfortunately is having to deal with three lawsuits are just want to make sure that you're aware of that. There are a couple of those in the news and I will say we do have a couple of subject matter experts broadly, as well as folks who do have legal backgrounds, if we need to have them see how that may impact any recommendations depending on how quick the lawsuits get settled or go through but but we do have that if we need if we need to. Okay, I just wanted to provide a little bit of feedback as a community member and as a commissioner, and one of my bigger frustrations with regards to partly to the culture of the department, but also something that I recognize is a better term side effect of these lawsuits is that there has not been able to be a Frank and opened discussion about data around use of force incidents on some particular officers and what additional training or what plan can be done to address that there's literally data points that say in particular situations at certain times of the day, this is likely to happen and, you know, asking for a plan for that not being able to get a plan for that. And just having a feeling in the community that even though when you look at the total number versus all of the incidents or calls that the department goes out on it's a fraction of a fraction of the fraction of that fraction. So, the department on a hand just looks at it as a small number, but at the end of that number is a real person. It's a real person who's living in the community as friends and family. There have been consequences to these actions that resonate. Empathy is a huge issue. So I just wanted to mention that. And I appreciate your time and look forward to your work. Thank you. Thank you. So unless we have other commissioner comments and also just wanted to see in a, I generally use first names because that's what we use for the community. But if anybody would prefer to prefer by their proper title please just know and don't mean to be disrespectful. If there's no other commissioner comments then happy to take if anybody in the public wants to raise their hand if you have questions or comments will open up the public forum on this item specifically. And if anybody needs to hop off. Thank you all for being here. It was great to have you and get to know you as we'll be working for the next few months. I have a question in the chat. Do you have a list of community stakeholders that are being interviewed. So we do have a list that's been provided that we have begun to reach out to. We are hopeful that we will get a good response. We are limited to 20, given our budget and our scope of work. But we do have that list. I don't have it up here on the screen but we have a list and I don't know, you know, Skylar or Taisha. We're happy to share what we do not do generally in our reports is name individuals who will be interviewed. We oftentimes will say organizations that individuals are affiliated with but we don't give actual names. Right. And I agree with that assessment. Thank you, Brittany, that we are going to try to be as transparent as possible in this in this process but handing out a list to the public I don't think is appropriate at this time. Great. So just to wrap that up sounds like we will get a list of who like what organizations are being represented and who's being interviewed but not necessarily the people. The other thing that I would ask is if like patients like the one you just gave if you can send it to Chanel beforehand just so we can get them up so that the public can, you know, see it themselves. That would be great. A few other things on the way that we're working together which I did not talk about with Skylar and Taisha beforehand so I apologize for doing this a little bit on the fly, but clearly they will be your day to day points of contact and managers. I have historically been doing, once doing sitting in on some of the check-ins which I think you came at a little bit of an awkward time but by no fault of your own just in terms of where starting a new city council cycle and so it's a little bit where we will be next week although I think it may be a similar configuration. Similarly with the police commissioner some of these folks will be potentially moving on and cycling on in the next couple of months. But so there's some some question of I guess continuity but definitely I think it makes sense for chair and potentially co chair to have offline meetings with you so I just want to be clear to the public that that is a thing that would potentially be happening. We're happy to give updates it's just a little bit more effective than a 10 person committee in terms of managing and knowing what's going on. The other thing is I think it'll just be good to have milestones in terms of like if there's any decision points are like interim deliverables or findings that the joint committee can weigh in on as a more and recognizing it as a 10 person committee so I know that's a big ask. So if there's like milestone dates that we can get in terms of a plan from you all in REIB that would be helpful just because then we can schedule meetings for around that time so that it coincides with when you might be wanting some kind of feedback or input from us or we can all just give them thumbs up for you all to keep going. Does that kind of make sense and I'm looking both to Brittany and to REIB for this. That makes sense for me. We do have a standing meeting with CNA the REIB does every week and so Councilor Hightower I can meet with you and Shareen I believe she's the co-chair offline after this meeting to try to talk about which meetings that you would like to come to and how to make that work out but it makes sense to me to have you in on the loop as far as what we're discussing. Any other commissioners in terms of thoughts on logistics and ways of working. It feels like we've got a pathway forward. I apologize there's so many airplanes I will go inside if it becomes too disruptive. It's just the first nice day in Burlington. Unless there's anything else I'm going to give about 10 more seconds and then other than that I would close this item. I would just offer that you know we we will make a good faith effort to share things as we go along as we learn things. I think I can say that safely. It just occurs to me that this project has a pretty short timeline. So I think we're going to be in a kind of a mad dash to get the data analyzed and get their recommendations in draft form get the interviews done. So I wouldn't want to get your hopes up too high in terms of interim reports. But I think you'll find us very forthcoming in terms of talking about our progress and serious issues come to light that we think need to be heard about we'll make sure that they're known. Mike commit to that. Yeah, and my comment was kind of based on your your technical approach so you had kind of sectioned out by sections and I'm not sure if those are consecutive or if they're like miles just so to the extent that there are Milestone. I don't necessarily know what those are. Sure. So the data collection, I broke them out just for presentation wise, but we do them all at the same time. So we'll have to be cohesive and done at the same time given the timeline which is generally how we've approached it before and it works really well. Great. Then thank you all again for the first meeting. This committee know me it's about every three to four weeks, or at least will probably as long as you all are still working so. Yeah, just keep us keep us. And if there is any information that you're sharing with us, just know it will be shared publicly so like that. Thank you so much. Nice. Nice to meet all of you have a good evening. Great. So the next item on our agenda is a general public forum where anybody can speak to anything that being said, usually we do that at the beginning, but we will continue to have public forums for each one of the items so if anyone wants to speak in general, they know other than that. We will continue to just take comment on every item that we discuss. So the next thing that we have as an update from to letha consulting, which I so I will again hand it over to Karima and Skyler. Hi, thank you. So there's a couple of team members that are still listed as attendees and that's David Minke and Tiffany Pertiller if you could add them as panelists, and I believe Karis is joining as well. Great. Thank you. We need us to wait for Karis and skip to another item. I don't know if we gave you all an estimated time in our running ahead of schedule so happy to happy to do that. No worries. Yes, if you want to give Karis just a few minutes, I don't want to start without her. That would be great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And along those lines, if somebody willing to move. Amen. The agenda to move item five before item four. So moved. Moved by commissioner harp. Second. Seconded by. Thank you. Any. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to move item five, which I don't actually have much of a presentation, but I've been giving this a little bit of a thought. In terms of, and actually I did not. But since this is something that I'm bringing up, do you mind sharing this item? Sure. I'm happy to. Sure. Thank you. So I feel like. I'm sorry. I've heard, you know, some frustration in terms of like how independently the council has been working from the police commission on policing issue. And it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of collaboration. It feels like hopefully we've been able to avoid this over the past six months or so, just by virtue of we've had these regular standing meetings. And so. In the resolution, the joint committee was never meant to be a permanent body. It was meant to be a way to work through some of the things that we've worked through and some of the different committees that, that are some of the different. Consultants that we've had. And so I am assuming that the joint committee will at some point. And I also don't think it's the best necessarily way to collaborate. And I also recognize that in terms of public safety, at least there's a commission meeting in terms of the fire commission. Or board or whatever that is. Don't might be giving it the wrong terminology. So one of the things that I'm thinking about is drafting a resolution that takes some members of all of the body to meet on a. Yet to be determined cadence, whether that's monthly or bi-monthly where it's maybe, you know, one person from the. One person from the public safety committee, two people from the police commission, one or two people from the fire commission to meet on a somewhat regular. One person from the fire commission to meet on a somewhat regular basis throughout the year to just discuss things between those bodies. And so. I had to hear. Yeah. I think the police commission thinks of that. What you think that Kaden should be in the membership and any thoughts. Okay. So, Okay. All right. So does anyone want to speak to that? Any question? Commissioner Randall, please. Yeah, thanks. I suppose I'm not entirely clear on what the proposal is yet. So I was, or what the scope of that such a bio be or what the purpose would be to some extent. I think certainly if there's, I'm not exactly sure what the scope would be. A set of questions for the public safety subcommittee. To receive information from various public safety organizations. So I don't have a kind of concern about that. And I don't have concern about how that information might be gathered. The concern that I have in general. Is that. Again, as I've mentioned. To you. There are various people on the council as well. City Council is not particularly clear about what they want. And I'll just talk about the police mission, not what they want the police mission to do. And given that the police, that many of the police missions, powers, responsibilities and duties are granted to them, to us by, by city council. It seems to me that a helpful thing would be for city council to try to establish clearly what it is that they expect this body to do. And so I worry to some extent that's, I mean that first that those powers, responsibilities and duties of police commission should be kind of clearly granted independent of city council. You understand that we are essentially kind of a sub body of city council, but there should be more as independent of city council. And then also those responsibilities, duties power should be clear to members of those bodies without needing to. So the worry is that the public safety subcommittee is kind of continue to have some role in each of those duties and those bodies don't necessarily have a particular purpose, right? That's essentially that the worry would be that public safety subcommittee would continue to accrue the actual responsibilities that ought to be properly speed invested in the police commission or other commissions. So I would just worry that unless there's some clarity given before the formation of such a joint body, then it would just continue, I think, to make unclear exactly what you expect, what you city council expects the police commission to be doing. So I would want that clarified before the adoption of any such joint body with otherwise I would worry about responsibilities being seeped out of these bodies and kind of accumulated and looks at the subcommittee and just finally, I think that given the public safety subcommittee is a three member subcommittee of city council. I'm not sure that it's entirely appropriate for all those responsibilities to be just held by those three members rather than city council at large either. So I'll be my worry about that council. Thanks. So, Zariah, we have the entire to let the team who's planning to be here. Do you want to entertain a motion to go back to to let the end then continue this or what would you like to do? I will leave that up to you. I think that this could be a robust discussion. So I'm, I entertain a motion for us to table this until we hear from to let the end then return to it. If there's a motion. Anyone? I'll bring the motion. Okay. And that's a motion to table this temporarily. Is there a second for that? Second. Okay. Any discussion? Great. Raise your hands or say aye. If you're in favor. Great. Anyone opposed? Okay. Thanks. So we will. I will pass it back to you. Great. Talitha. Great. Great to see you here and I will now pass it back to Talitha and Skylar. Okay. Skylar, you have things you wanted to go first or. No, I think you guys can get into it. I'm, I'm okay. I didn't have anything planned at the outset. So thank you everyone. And I have here. Tiffany joining us from Georgia. David and I are in Washington and Karima and Florida. Tiffany and Karima. And I'm just going to. Tag team a little bit just to share our observation about a town hall that we had on March 30th. And it was a Tuesday. And we had, again, it was not hosted on our zoom. So we don't have the screen shots or anything, but I see that the highest number of participants. And certain screens are joined by two people. So it's not the headcount, but people who are joining in. The highest number I saw was 52. On the participants at the bottom. We had. Through Skylar's leadership. We had interpreters. In person interpreter on zoom. And we also had. Present for Lingala Swahili. French and Somali. And we also have computer aided interpretation like simultaneous interpretation service. Where people go on a web link. And they can see transcribed interpretation for Burmese. And so we had a group of people. And we had a group of people. The tech company was very generous. They gave us six languages. And we didn't pay for all of them. They were just very delighted to see a city. Very includes attempting to be very inclusive. And they do work nationwide. And this is their comment. They had never seen a local city. Using their like. The tech support even said that. Let's let's bring that in Washington state. Because they are a Washington state based tech company. With that I also wanted to give an opportunity. To. To my colleagues. Tiffany led one of the breakout groups. Just to share their observation. And so again it's a very subjective observation. But from my and my observation is that yes, it's a very subjective observation. And so it was not flawless at all in terms of the convening or the. I call that it was a pilot convening. It was incredibly humbling to see people speaking their truth. Honestly, across differences. We didn't, we did not have any like, you know, Hey, you yourself moment at all. And people were, you know, You know, They were trying to call on people. They spoke their truth. And then. It was also very effective in that when we jump in and say, Hey, you know what, this is the question. Let's come back in. How would you reframe your statement? In answering this particular question. People were very accepting of that as well. So with that, I'm going to pause and see if either Karima or you can go and share your observations. Yeah. So I'll just jump in first, Tiffany. I, I feel like out of the previous engagements, this one was very rich in comparison. I think that we have crafted the questions and in partnership with Zariah and also Skyler, making sure we're asking the right questions. And so it was really evident from the feedback that we did receive from the community and some of the themes that are coming out about what the community's vision is for a safer and healthier healthier Burlington, but also what they believe we need to do to get there. So I think that part was very productive and Tiffany, you want to add in anything that you have there. Sure. Hi everyone. I was very privileged to facilitate one of the breakout groups. And I think what I learned from, from that time with your community is that there are very passionate people and I'm sure you guys know that already, that there that, that there's not a lack of passion or concern for the topics that we're talking about. I do think that there are a lot of different ideas that bubble up from the community. Some of them are much more doable and maybe palatable than others, but I think that you have a community that is, that is desiring to see effective change in, in their community and in their public safety network. And not only that, but also really wanting to work together as a community to come up with the solutions. And so I think the, the, it was a, it was a beautiful thing to see as they came together and supported one another and, you know, seconded other people's thoughts and comments. I think that because I've been on several of these calls that I'm seeing the same people come to the meetings and say the same things. And so for me and my group at Talitha, I would really like to, and for this group here to really understand how we can get to other groups to make sure that all voices are being heard. Because I think the voices that are being heard are important voices. And I don't, I don't want to silence them at all. I think what they have to say is truly important to the context of what we're doing here. But I think there are still voices, even though we did our best to be as inclusive as possible, still voices that we have not heard. And so I'm, I'm eager to hear those voices as well. And to that, and Skylar, you can speak more about our next town hall that we are tabling. Yeah. No, I was going to say that's a perfect jumping off point. Thank you. So after hearing feedback from this latest town hall, we're planning to have a second one on April 27th, which is going to give us a really an extended period of time to get out the word as much as we can. We now have more functionality on front porch forum and, and in terms of being able to post on every city site, we're going to be able to make sure that it's posted onto the city calendar. It would do time also going to be working with counselors, commissioners, community members, the racial justice alliance, pretty much everybody that can, that can collaborate with us to make sure that we get the word out for these next couple of weeks so that we can have, you know, the voices that continue to come to the table on this issue, but also trying to engage new voices to complete, or to create a more complete picture. That is our update. Any questions? Go ahead. And then Karen. Last time we met, there was a discussion because an individual called in from a church street and we had talked about how businesses were going to be incorporated. And I think that's, you had anticipated maybe there was going to be a separate meeting and I know that's changed, but I think we need to be clear on what's going to happen because you had expressed how important that voices to you that you hadn't heard it. So I just want to make sure that we're being deliberate about, because that it runs the gamut. I don't think we're talking about any one type of business. We're talking about businesses of every size and ownership style, but how, what your plan is in that regard. So Skylar can go and then I will, I will jump into. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that the hope is that with this next town hall, we can engage different groups to have them showing up and bringing their voices to the table collectively, not just the business community, but, you know, all the communities that make up Burlington, but then also not related to the, to lead the process. But I know we didn't really get into this with the CNA team before they left, but that they are as planned of their stakeholder interviews, particularly the downtown businesses are one of the communities that they have picked out as a community stakeholder that they're going to be engaging with for interviews in a little bit more of a direct way. But it's my hope that now that we have a few weeks to really do some serious outreach on this latest town hall that we can engage these different communities and have them all come to the table at once. Thank you. I'm sure I will say that, yes, in our last joint committee meeting after I presented the findings, I was super enthusiastic, right? Because at the time, the information I knew, I didn't know that there are parallel process that had in mind with CNA. And so just like we mentioned in our email, I am open to joining the CNA team. When they separately engage with the business community. I think that that's not ideal right now. I, because it's not happening right now, but I think that just, just pause, just taking a little more time to be methodical. I think that would really pay off to have both CNA and to leave that engaging with businesses. Two questions. Skyler. Do you have a time of day for the town hall? Either Skyler or anybody can answer that. I'm sorry. It's so loud here. It's okay. My thought was that we would host it at night just because in the past I've heard from people when you try to host a midday meeting that that isn't accessible. But I'm also open to suggestions from folks. Okay. And then thank you for that. And then the second question. Yeah. It was, I see Jeff Nick is on the call and it was similar to Shareen's. And I had not heard that there would be maybe some overlap, but one thing I did get when I was trying to help out last town hall was we were trying to communicate with people in the community to get more people on the call. And I did get an email address and I hear CNA talking about that. So I think that's really helpful. And I think that's really helpful. And that's actually really helpful. And a lot of people have responded to that. If we're communicating about this, can we make sure that that email address is, is there just in case. I heard from several folks that they didn't feel safe in the environment that we were offering that. I didn't really think public forum was a place for them to, to talk. So if we could really. Both of those. You know, you know, individual, you know, people will email me or text. So just want to make a big push for that. So folks can give as much feedback and. As they want. Great. And I'll jump in here. And I think part of that is, I mean, I, as I understand, I think we're still planning on doing a survey. So hopefully that'll be a good space for individual. Individual thoughts. Yeah. So what time are we planning on doing the next town hall? As of now, I was thinking that we would do it again at seven o'clock. But like I said, if, if people think that there could be a time that could work better. I was hoping that that would give people time to get off of their jobs and, and settle in a little bit, but I'm open to suggestions on that. Yeah. I think just because we did the first one a little later, maybe doing it a little bit earlier for folks who that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see it. Start maybe at six 30. I think we have a really nice lead time. For this one. So people could really prepare for it. I also like the idea of possibly. Opening it up early so that we can start to get. People like coming in, right? Yeah. So what I would like to see is get. You know, obviously we want to be increasing as we just discussed the turnout. So if we start letting people into the room a little bit earlier, I think that might be helpful because we've had some issues with a lot of people trying to come in at the same time. At the beginning and that would cause a slight delay, but once everything gets going, I think it, it, it goes well. Yeah. So I just wanted to kind of tighten things up in the beginning when, when we're starting and getting people access. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Thank you. Yeah. And I'm sorry. And I think, I think the lead time is really going to help. I don't know if it was Tiffany. That said some of the, or he liked hearing some of the same voices. I think that that is partially just because like everything has been really fast or, you know, very quickly. I think that the, the, the, the, the work that we do in the meetings. Which tends to have people who. Like are really plugged into the process and you know, the more lead time, there is the more advertisement there. Like the more time it has to percolate beyond kind of the inner circle of who's paying attention. So I think, I think it's, I think it's good that it's at the end of. April. Sharin. And I just wanted to just see if we can get folks to agree that we should bump that meeting to another day that week or to the Tuesday before. And I just like a quick show of hands maybe from folks. If that's. They agree that we should move it. I see. Karen and Randall Stephanie and Milo. Any thoughts on that? I'm sorry to take up time with this. Yeah, that sounds fine. I think just the sooner, the better that you get the dates out. Cause. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to agree. Okay. All right. Thanks. I'll talk to. Chabu commissioner. Chair Gommash after this meeting. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. And then the last thought just riffing off of what. I think it was Milo. Had just said in terms of. Like opening and I can always be like a fun space for like a poll, like as you come in as well, that you can then show the results of. Even as. As the meeting starts, we already collected some information or something like that. Yeah, I talked to a, oh, sorry. I was just going to say, I, I think that's a great suggestion. I know that that's something that we're going to have to think about because for instance, with the last town hall, we had opened it early, but just to kind of get all the translators that we had set. And working on that, you know, technology. And so anticipating that this is going to be a pretty big operation because we do want to maintain that level of accessibility. So we'll just plan that in and hopefully, you know, do that 15 minutes or last time. And so we can let people in a little bit earlier. Hopefully have a big crowd. That's great. Sorry. And then I actually had one more question, which is just how you all are thinking about. Based on, you know, like the business meeting. Or the business conversation, like if we're inviting folks and saying, are you hoping to do like affinity groups so that people can like discuss how it applies to them and kind of report out. Are you hoping to do like more cross cutting so that they're, you know, like more of an exchange of how people are feeling about it. Cause clearly both ways have merits. So just curious as to what approach. You're hoping to take. Sorry. I'm on my phone. I can't see if somebody was unmuting to get, getting ready to talk. I know that, you know, we're going to be leaning on the team to facilitate that. And that's their expertise. And so I'm always going to defer to that. I think that from my standpoint, my hope would be that we can cross pollinate, you know, communities a little bit more because I think that's so much through this process. You've had different communities, you know, bringing their voices and having similar viewpoints kind of operating in echo chambers. And so I think that it could be really healthy. If we could get as many different communities and different viewpoints to the table as possible. All while being respectful. Different viewpoints that we may not necessarily agree with or identify with. And hear people out. Karen. Counselor. Are you asking what questions, what different type of questions are we asking to the businesses? No, just because Skylar had said that with the, like that hoping to just invite the business community to the town hall. And that then prompted me to ask if we would be doing affinity groups. So like, are you a business? Are you an activist? Are you like, like, like a resident of this neighborhood? Are we doing affinity groups or are we doing like random selection? I guess. In the, in, I assume if there's a lot of people coming there, we'll be breakout groups, but I could be wrong on that too. We hadn't. Really thought about it. Really. Because most of our questions are there. General for anybody to be able to answer. And, but that's a great suggestion. And while I also want to maintain the understanding of intersectional identities that all of us carry. And so, so for me, depending on the topic and time of the day, I show up as a small business owner or I show up as, you know, different things. So perhaps it's a great idea, which affinity group would you like to show up for this particular topic? While also being open to the fact that public safety applies to. Most, most of us, right? The work public. So thank you for that suggestion, counselor. Great. So. Sorry. And if there's no more commissioner comments and also opening this up to the public to questions or comments. Hi, if I could. This is Mila Grant. If I could just jump in for a moment. I feel. That. We just need to make sure. That the business community. Understands. That we just need to make sure that the business community. Understands. That they're welcome. I mean, I don't know. Sometimes the business owners. Put themselves a little bit too separate from the community. I don't know if that if I'm making sense. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think in Burlington, they are a part of the community, but they're so used to having their discussions amongst themselves and not with the actual rest of the community. It may not occur to them to come to the town hall. Because I think actually a lot of the questions that have been asked. I mean, I think it's important to answer them from the point of view of your business and how public safety affects your business. So I'm not sure we have to ask different questions. It's more of a matter of saying, Hey, you know, we, you're a business. You're a part of this community discussion. So I think that that's a concern. It's a concern. I think that's a concern to the community about the lives of ourselves. Does that make any sense? I mean, I just don't, I'm not trying to be rude or disrespectful to any, any of the business owners. I know like a small business owners, independent business owners of which we have a lot of. Especially in our downtown and the old North end. They just might not think to jump into this conversation because for thought. I think that's something I think that's a good point you're bringing up Milo but I think it's something that can be considered as the outreach process has moved forward and making sure that language is included in the messaging for outreach. I did find in the last few engagements we have that as Karris was mentioning people wear different hats so those different hats did show up in the conversation so but I think it's good to name it and include that in our outreach process and we want that right Prima we want people to show up in wearing their different me even among our group we wear different hats commissioner counselors business owners and so but Commissioner Grant I just want to say this publicly like you participating in the town hall and you know at NPAs and I also want to tell the joint committee your encouragement to different social circles that you associate really makes the difference the testament was with the stakeholder engagement I don't know if you all remember we met the Tuesday night and then on the Wednesday we had a stakeholder meeting and you all got to work and we got 46 like 26 total people showed up for for the state so so all of you have incredible social capital and power to get people participate so as Skyler work on getting the collateral's public publicity materials and also template for social media please share widely any oh we've got Jeff we had a question from Leah Chanel I assume you I don't know if you said something to address that yes the question was about the the way the screen was being viewed great and then we've got Jeff Nick they could be a lot to speak okay Jeff you're unmuted hi I didn't know whether to jump in here or not but I thought I'm listening to the dialogue and I appreciate your thinking about adding the business community to the dialogue or be a little more proactive about that as you know I'm chair of the marketplace commission you know I don't want to speak on behalf of all the business owners but I know this past summer there was a lot of shock when some protesters were leaving so leaflets around town asking people to shut down their businesses in respect to what everybody was protesting about and I think there may be some folks timid about stepping into this dialogue so just keep that in mind I'm even a little skeptical about talking tonight so bear with me here you know we're thinking about really the atmosphere downtown and on church streets specifically but really all of downtown and you know I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how you maintain just a pleasant environment without some law enforcement presence be it a police officer or somebody else but somebody else with authority and I'll just share with you my I had lunch today on church street at the outdoor cafe and we have 36 signs on church street that say no biking no skateboarding I witnessed 10 people on bicycles and one skateboard on the bricks some of the bicyclists at least half of them going at a high rate of speed it doesn't mix well with a pedestrian excuse me pedestrian environment and so we're not talking about big thing but this this could be a big thing I mean there was one kid that was bouncing off the rocks and jumping over fire hydrants on his bicycle and there was a stroller nearby with the baby in it I mean these are the kind of things that I'm worried about and concern and you know we have to figure out a way to maintain a pleasant environment where there's not you know other things going on that shouldn't go on so that's really one of our main concerns so I'll leave it at that thanks thank you Jeff Karen yeah I appreciate this discussion about the business community and Commissioner Grant's offerings I think I do want to say the the other thing that I was hoping and I don't know if this group can help me think about how I've heard from a lot of parents from because Burlington High School is downtown and so that's something that Commissioner is probably here about other than me I'm not the only person with concerns and so thinking about maybe getting I know Stephanie served on the school board but just making sure that those voices show up if there are concerns because I hear again you know concerns that you know I don't want to say it in public you know I don't want to look this way or that way but I think it's a big aggregate it might be a small aggregate but we do need to hear about that for example you know I hear you know we need a presence but I'm not sure you know it's a police presence I mean we're talking about having CSLs and you know folks of that nature supporting you know folks downtown so and then the other thing I wanted to say too is you know we we we live on North Avenue you know my partner owned a business for 10 years on Church Street and they are very much a part of the community and it's it's kind of disconcerting to see you know people think that they can't show up for these these meetings and talk because you know we really want to welcome that so to Jeff and to others that have talked about business community that's our work we need to show up you know I just want to remind folks to I will name it I'll remind white folks that this is hard to do to show up and say you know we need to be heard because of racial disparities we need to be heard because of racial inequity but we're not there at no point did anybody say you can't be part of this conversation and I want to welcome people publicly to the conversation and encourage people if there's someone that you feel comfortable reaching out to let's do it you know the if it's so important then make it important in your life and show up for these conversations and now these folks just want to help facilitate it so hopefully there's public people watching that will will feel like they can do that. Thanks Karen. Anyone else on this great seeing none I will close the item thank you to letha consults for meeting with us again and I hope this next item I think it was I don't know item four item five and just making sure we still have enough commissioners making sure nobody dropped off great so I will pass the gavel back to Shireen. Okay thank you so we had just started a discussion about Zariah's broaching the subject of potentially a standing meeting among the fire department well the fire commission the police commission and the public safety and I think we had left it at Randall had spoken so I don't know Randall if you were done if you had anything to add I'm happy to pass along to her also like to Zariah I saw your hand yeah just to start to respond to Randall which is one yes I think that's something that needs to be done two I think it's gonna be hard to do that quickly because by my I'm not I'm not in the middle of these conversations but it sounds like there was at least some desire to change what the police commission is doing right now in terms of like giving it more authority so I think I think that is a debate that will be had over the next six months the other thing that I'll say I guess like in terms of purpose is that I'm modeling this after a so the on the like zoning side or planning side the development review board and the planning commission have basically a smaller group of people who meet just on like proposing new ordinance changes to the ordinance which then go to the ordinance committee which is a city council committee and so I think having something along those lines that's like if your work well right now I think I think of it as being centered around BPD policy but if something needs to kind of pop out to like an ordinance level or a city policy level having that be a more I guess cohesive process or at least creating a process for that and maybe that's not a committee process maybe that's something else but out there so you did say at the beginning Zaria that you'd be drafting resolution on this to this effect okay all right thank you Randall yeah thanks Ryan I appreciate what you were saying so yeah I mean on the one hand I do think that for questions about ordinance and potential ordinances it is important or you know to have input from the relevant bodies relevant committees whether that's police commission fire commission etc so I think that that is important but I think that's one of the things which is also I think there's been some uncertainty in the past about whether or not for example the police commission is to be understood as having authority to respect to or kind of be the point people with respect to police public policy or not and there was some you know confusion ambiguity about that in the past where you know there are conflicting documents both within the police department which suggests that the police commission is is prime responsible for policy and the city council is primarily responsible for formulating policy and then whether or not that you know whether or not the response for policy was delegated to police commission from city council which has been unclear and I don't see much of I've not yet seen much appetite on city council's part to actually resolve that question I see who just kind of was relying on the fact that it has never been clearly established in the past as a way of not resolving the question in the future so so so again so I do think that ordinances the ordinances which are clearly out beyond the purview of the police commission it's helpful to have that sort of input but things that might possibly be using purview the police mission I worry they like to that where there might be some mission creep where okay well we're already doing city ordinances you might as well just do you know work up on police public policy within this body also which again that is ultimately city council's decision but I would like to have that be an intentional decision rather than just support happens as a result of the structure of this newly formed body. Can I ask a clarifying question? Go ahead. Well I didn't know I was under the understanding that the police commission was like completely unholy and without debate and charge of police department policy so if that's not the case I wonder if that should be part of the resolution but so just making sure I understood that correctly that it that it has been up for debate over the past years. It has no there's ambiguity about it because again the city the city charter establishes that that city council is also irresponsible for police department policy but then there are internal documents in the police department which suggests that the police commission is the source of department policy and those two things can be reconciled if it's understood that the city council has delegated that authority to the police commission but in my multiple time asking about this no one on city council has been able to direct me to a document that you know or to a kind of a formal decision that that is in fact what police the police mission is responsible for and that ambiguity about whether or not the police commission is responsible for that has in fact been I want to explain it has it has led to misunderstandings in the past including for example with most recently with the fair and partial policing policy what you know whether or not what role the police mission should have in the formulation or adoption of those policies where again the police commission was pretty much sidelined entirely from from fair and partial policing policy because of that ambiguity about who was ultimately responsible. Bethany. Great my mind I was about I I I like this idea Zariah because we are at a moment of transition and I think this would be an easy easier vehicle for communication between the city council and the police commission so I think in that regard that it might be of actually a very helpful body. Karen. I mean initially just listening to it and I don't want to say anything to I have recently been paying attention to how much the fire department and you know I like the suggestion of because I do feel like there's just so much dialogue that doesn't include the stakeholders and then we'll get to a certain point or spend time on something that's like oh well wow I didn't even realize those those folks needed to be involved. So initially just just hearing it without a resolution to refer to that that part of the idea really really excites me because as we move through current events we see how interconnected different departments are as well so I think that's really important. And miss part of that sorry I'm going to jump in I miss part of that because of my internet but I think I think I heard general support from you. Anyone else I have something to say but I want to give everyone else an opportunity. So Zariah I really appreciate that you're having this dialogue with us and I think if you'd be willing to I would love for us to be able to look at what you have in mind for resolution and go from there but but I am grateful to you that you're bringing this to us. If I can propose a next step is I will draft the resolution I think and then if you let me know when you're postponing your police commission meeting to maybe I'll present it as an item there. Okay. We'll let you know on that certainly anything else before we move on. Do we you don't need a motion for that I don't think in order for you. All right anything else. Great I'm going to hand it back to you. Great then let me get back to board docs I think that oh sorry so the last item on our agenda is equitable sharing. I'm not sure what to do with this item I know that. Either Karen or Milo and I apologize. I know somebody sent me questions but I'm not like I don't feel like we have a process for following up on those questions or a lead. I'm happy to offer up Audrey so folks saying questions to Audrey that she can be the one to follow up. I think that's what I did last time better that I even passed on the question to Audrey or if she was copied on the email. So we have not I guess we have not put forward any kind of course of action with this we have some data and information and I think we had one or two questions that floated in terms of the other things that we wanted to know. So I guess I guess I want to get a sense from the committee of is this something that we really want to dive into that maybe we can get some dedicated resource to doing research on and finding more information and moving us towards a decision. Is this something. Yeah I guess I want to get a sense of where what what folks would generally like to do on this. Go ahead Stephanie. I think there's a lot going on right now so I think tabling it but not putting it away. I think just with the consultancies that are going on right now we want to focus on that and maybe just table it for three or four months. Great. And I'm assuming that if we did table it we would and say the resolution pass for example it might move but we would still be addressing it at a city level in some form. Right I mean I guess if we table it and then the joint committee dissolves but there's a different joint committee or I mean that body can decide whether or not they take it up. But yes which is I mean we're a weird thing to ask but I think I guess part of this is more from the other discussion but like when this joint committee will and should dissolve I was kind of assuming after the CNA contract ends but just throwing that out there. Any so we're going to table the equitable sharing discussion is what I'm hearing. Do I have a motion on that? I'll move to table it until June. Great move to table until June meaning is there a second on that. Durfee any discussion. All those in favor. I say aye. Aye. Any opposed. That passes unanimously. So for other business or an upcoming agenda items then the only two that we have ongoing from this will be both to letha and CNA in terms of what will happen before the next meeting which I'm happy to schedule now but I wonder if I should wait for the city council meeting on Monday. So if people are okay with a doodle poll instead I'll probably go that route so we know who's on it from the city council side. But in between I guess this meeting in the next meeting Skyler should be giving I guess we should get some update back from CNA in terms of my students when they think they would like the joint committee to meet from Skyler just some information on how we can help push out the town hall happening at the end of April. Anything else I think that I'm missing. My partner just pulled out the stairs. You okay. Great. Then unless anybody has any other meeting agenda items I would look for a motion to oh I do want to before we I don't know if this was done at the beginning because I was two or three minutes late but Chanel. Yes. Your name right. Yes. Thank you. So we've got Chanel now we have a staff member again which is so exciting and we're so grateful to you for taking us on because we're a we're a lot of work. Thank you for having me. Glad to have you here and yeah thank you for being already so helpful on your meeting here and if you. It's almost over. You're my exhaust Stephanie. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Then with falling down the stairs and. Well we kept it together for you know an hour and a half. So we're doing good. A motion to adjourn. Would be. Moved. Moved by a Seguino seconded by Commissioner Durfee. Any discussion. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. That passes unanimously and we'll be in touch about our meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.