 Well, maybe should we get started just on some intros, um, knowing that, uh, Julia and Lelitha aren't here yet and that we are being recorded by Orca Media. So not like too, too deep, but just, you know, a little bit more to get to introduce ourselves to Jeremy. And we'll hold on a few minutes to have Jeremy introduce himself just in case Julia and Lelitha can join. But yeah, I'm, I can start. I'm Shayna. I share pronouns. I live on Kent Street, um, up by the College of Fine Arts. I, um, do community organizing work for my jobs. I work with community action works, just I'm logged in with my work account here. And I, um, work with community groups fighting pollution threats in their neighborhoods and facilitate a national coalition of grassroots groups fighting PFAS contamination in their communities. And, um, I, yeah, have been doing a lot of stress baking. Probably could be doing more stress baking. So it's all, it all evens out in the wash, you know, so it's been good. Um, I'll hand it to Michael who's on me then. Hi, um, I'm Michael Sherman. Um, I live, um, also near the Pumat College of College Hill. I've been a resident here about over 30 years. I was the former director of the Vermont Historical Society. I taught at the Vermont College before it became the College of Fine Arts and the Adult Degree Program. I've been a baker at the Mangi's Bakery. I'm currently the editor of Vermont History, the Journal of the Vermont Historical Society. What else am I supposed to say? Um, just got appointed to the police review, uh, committee. Oh, hey, I didn't really think of that. There you go. As the, and I made a point of saying that I was on the, on this committee and that we hadn't made us, and that I was not speaking for the committee, but was going to be our reporting kind of a liaison to the committee. Um, I think that's all I need to say. Welcome, Jeremy. I'm glad you're glad you're with us. I'll introduce myself. My name is Peter Marien. I am the staff liaison for this committee. I am the assistant city manager and sort of help guide the work that needs to be done on the city side for this committee. I can go next if it is OK with Lauren. I'm Pylen Kohn and welcome to Jeremy. I work for Norwich University. My job has recently changed. Now I am full-time lecturer for Norwich University and also leadership. Exciting. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm so happy because I was working part-time before and now I am full-time and also I am, uh, the leadership program coordinator, which is really, you know, but my PhD about and my all professional, you know, experience. So I know to many, to many is not good for most of the people, but it was good for me at least with the, you know, job part. I don't want to be like too happy, but I'm glad. And I moved here three years ago from Turkey. I'm originally Turkish and it is hard to believe that three year pass, the time passes really quickly. Then you count the winter and cold, windy days. It is not very quick, but then you look at generally, yeah, we are in our fourth year living in Montpelier and we are very happy and I'm very happy being part of this committee too. And I can introduce myself. I'm Lauren Hurl and I am the city council representative. So I'm from district one. I live up on Deerfield Drive. So I've been on council just for a year and a half, I guess, and have been on this committee since I joined council and in my day job, I run an advocacy group for Mont Conservation Voters. So I do a lot of environmental advocacy and some electoral work. So I've been really busy this fall and got two kids at Union Elementary and I'm really excited by what's coming up with this group. So, so grateful that you're all here and welcome, Jeremy. So, yes, I think Janelle and Lilipa are joining late. I'm not going to go back from Julia yet. So why do you mind introducing yourself? Well, it's great to be here. It's nice to meet all of you. And I look forward to getting to know you better over the course of the committee's work. So yeah, my name is Jeremy Baudry. You see him pronouns live up on Elm Street, just about right across from the North Branch Nature Center. Here with me and my home are my partner and our three children who are ages five, nine and 11. They do not go to school. They're unschooled. So that means we haven't seen a huge change on the surface with, you know, the pandemic restrictions around schooling, but of course they're impacted pretty deeply and not being able to do the things they normally do with their their friend groups. So I work for the University of Vermont Medical Center and I work for a design and innovation lab that's embedded in the health network by profession. I'm what's called an experience or a service designer and basically the work that we try and do at the UVM health network is to transform health care services for the better for patients and providers and caregivers any number of folks who kind of come together to make health care what it is. Been working remotely like many folks now since March of this year feel very privileged that I am able to work remotely and stay safe doing so in my home. So we're we're hunkered down like a lot of folks, but doing well fairly new to Vermont myself moved up here in 2015 from Philadelphia because of the job change that I made previously was an academic was running and teaching in a grad design program in Philadelphia. So Vermont is still very strange. For me, although we like it quite a bit, we feel grateful to be here grateful to be in Montpelier. I think originally didn't think we would live so far outside of Burlington where I work, but Mount Peters made all the difference in terms of us finding the community of people and feeling settled and really just loving being here. So I think I can just be brief with that. I would say I would love to schedule time with each of you individually over the next few weeks just to get to know you all better and and also really to learn about your experience on the committee just so I can kind of help learn more about the work and and get up to speed and and figure out how I can be of service. So thank you again and it's great to meet you all. Awesome. Thanks so much. Yeah, I'm sorry we didn't get a check in beforehand. It's just, you know, it's been it's been a week. It's been a month. It's been a year. Here's a beer barrette. So OK, um, so all this kind of dive us in. So on our agenda, yeah, we've got introductions and then public comment, which I don't think there is any. We'll review and improve the minutes from our last meeting and that will hopefully get a little bit up to speed for Jeremy. And then our issue check in. So we want to do our check in about our outreach and what's been going on there and our fundraising check in and creative discourses work plan. That's our our. What's it called? Our consultants. Oh my god. Work plan check in and then other business, which I think Michael, I'd love to hear about any update on the police commission if there's anything more than what you just shared. Maybe who else is on it and things like that. I hadn't seen that. And then we'll add this to our agenda for our next meeting and then review action items. And I guess my only other thing about other businesses, do we want to have a conversation about potentially moving this time? I'm just just knowing, Warren, you said it's been really hard for you. And did someone else say that this time doesn't only work too? Or do I think I think Julia was concerned about the time. The last Julia. Yeah, Julie can't make today. But so yeah, maybe we should have that Congress put that on the agenda for next time. Well, she made. Didn't she say she was going to split her time between the board, the Board of Education's discussion of the SOR. That's what's happening today. And I'm coming here. So we may see her here. Okay. So maybe, maybe we'll see her. That's exciting. That's exciting that that's happening tonight. But maybe we can just have that discussion by email, because that should be fine to do by email. So can I get a motion to approve the agenda? I'll move to approve the agenda. Michael moves. Helen, do you want a second? Yeah, I second. All in favor. Any opposed? All right, we've got our agenda. So I'm seeing no public comment. And folks want to pull up the email that Michael sent. And if it's helpful, I can also show it on my screen, but I always think it's a little bit easier just to. Oh my gosh, this is the minute you're talking about, right? The minutes. Yeah. Okay. And then Michael, actually, do you mind just walking us through the minutes just to kind of catch Lauren and hear me back up? Okay. So with the usual stuff, the the update with with the creative discourse, Keisha did most, I guess Keisha and Tabitha were with this. And they will be the people we're in touch with most. Susan McCormick is going to be mostly involved with working with the Montoya Roxbury School District. But she'll be available mostly to Keisha and Tabitha, but sometimes to us to check in and answer. And I guess also, I think there was something about getting information to us about what's going on with the school district as they that develops, because creative design, this course also has the contract to work with the with the school district. So they will get ready to start in December when they're not ready, but they're planning to start in December and have the they've identified 10 different groups, constituency focus groups, and they'll run those conversations through February. Either on Zoom or some other platform, they will prepare a survey as a result of that, they'll prepare a survey that we have yet to talk about how that's going to be distributed. But the idea is to have it go out widely in the community. And and as they get the results of that, from that and from this, from the community conversations, they will prepare a report, some report of what we are now thinking of as phase one that will come to us and to the city council, and I assume will be widely available also in the committee. So we just we discussed then the composition of those focus groups and and they were going to make some revisions based on that. So our job is mostly responsibility for outreach, including helping the the CD folks identify individuals for each of the groups publicity, securing additional funding. And I just found another typo in my minutes. OK, fun funding for for those group meetings, designing, distributing, analyzing the survey, preparing, distributing and reporting the summary of findings. We are also we we are responsible for the fundraising as well as the outreach. And so we have as of the last meeting, Shayna and Palin reported that they had submitted grant applications to Vermont Community Foundation Spark grant and Ben and Jerry's Foundations Community Action Team grant. Janelle and I are supposed to research and contact. There were two specific ones mentioned cooperative development and local initiative support corporations and I'll report on that later. And Shayna was going to contact the Montpelier alive, I guess, Dan Groberg to discuss their small grant program. Um, contributions from individuals. We are starting to gear up on that. We the first round we had the first part we had sent with a suggested people send contributions to the Montpelier Foundation that turned out to be not a good idea. And so now they're going directly to the city and with C. Jack in the memo line and will go the money will go directly onto our line line line in the city budget. What else? Oh, we have yet to figure out how we're going to thank people for that. And I think that. We'll report back on that in just a minute. Yeah. And then other outreach and then some we have we have a mailing list. We're developing a mailing list of several people signed up. Committee was encouraged to recruit others. Other business I reported that I had submitted an application for appointment to the police review committee and explained in there that I would not be voting speaking for us but but via liaison and that we were still recruiting new board members and welcome, Jeremy, you responded. Thank you. And so we're all we are all on the alert to keep, you know, to keep our eyes out and ears open for other possible new members. And then next next meetings were announced for November 5th today, November 19th, December 3rd, so far to be at 5 30 p.m. And then what the agenda topics for our current is. So that's the that's that's the minutes. If you didn't get chance to read them. Thank you. Yeah. And then does anyone have any questions about what's going on? I'm sure there's only a lot, but any specific things. OK. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I had a quick question about donations. Is there a way for folks to donate online? Yeah, we haven't set up like an official account. I've just been collecting online donations through PayPal and then just, you know, great keeping track of that and then writing a check, which I actually have not done yet. So I do need to do that. Oh, my tool is actually for debt today. Pay a lot of things today did not do that one. So but that's just yeah, through PayPal.me slash Shayna Casper. It's easy. I'm the only one. But yeah, I can send that alone around again too. Perfect. So can I get a motion to approve the minutes? We do it again, Michael. Can you make a motion to? Well, since I wrote them, I shouldn't be the one to make it. That's right. All right. Well, I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Helen, do you want a second? I second. All in favor. I guess all three of us. I and you post. OK, here we go. Um, all right. So outreach check-ins. This is to those 10 group members, which in writing up the notes from the last writing up my email, like to prep for this with the notes from our last meeting and to prep for this one, realize that we still have it. We don't have them. What what are those 10 groups that Creative Discourses is looking for? I don't know, Cameron, if you do. I have. Do you have them in the notes? No, not not in my notes I do, but not not in the minutes, because I thought that was not a little too specific. Yeah. So maybe it's not appropriate for right here then too. But well, no, I think it's OK. Because there was some question about whether they were going to be changed at all. And we didn't we didn't have to take a vote on that. So I didn't go make it into the minutes. But as it was originally proposed, one was Black, Indigenous and people of color. It was group one. And that, I think, was meant to be just internal on city government staff and elected and appointed. Is that correct, Cameron? My list. You can hear me, right? I'm sorry, these are headphones. OK, great. My list for who I was supposed to contact, which is just the staff is a they wanted to include folks that had a connection to the public. So a lot of our front facing staff, they wanted me to identify the folks who identify as people of color that work for us. They want to talk to them privately, not a not a big meeting. And then they wanted to include a separate group of HR police and finance. They kind of they said that was important. So this is on our staff agenda to talk about on Monday. So I will follow up with y'all who has stepped forward for that by our next meeting. So so that's groups one and two because it is what you're talking about. The city employees in general and then specifically the the Black, Indigenous and people of color. Right. And then the group three was the police department and we did talk about whether the fire where the fire department goes and all that. And then group four is leaders of community led organizations. Group five is Black, Indigenous and people of color residents of Montpelier. So outside of the city employees. Group six is the LGBTQ residents in the committee of the community. Group seven is people with disabilities. Group eight is young people. Young not having been defined. Group nine is people experience financial stress, precarious housing, things like that, people at risk, I suppose. And then group 10 is leaders of community service organizations. And that's distinct from the leaders of community led organizations. Oh, there's Julia. Hi, Julia. So that's the that's the 10 groups that we discussed with the question about where the fire department goes to remaining. And I didn't see that addressed in their plan, but their revised plan didn't really talk about these groups at all. They did say that they would help us identify them, right? The members of them, they're not going to. Yes. And we're supposed to and we're supposed to help them identify them as well. But they didn't they didn't elaborate on on those 10, nor did they address the question about the fire department. I'm going to ask them on Monday, see what the chief feels like. OK. So that's that's the answer to that question. But I think you guys brought up a good point last time just to pontificate for a second about like, you know, they do interact with the public in a pretty intimate way. So it would make sense that they were included. Yeah, I think we should. Well, the fire department would include the emergency of the EMS people. Yes, they're one and the same. Yes, right. So I can jump in. Yeah, I just had some calls with BCIL later in the week. The Vermont Center for Independent Living, the last time we met and set up a call with some folks for the next Saturday, which was a no show. And so God set up again for this week. So we'll see for for no, not this Saturday, this Saturday after this Saturday. So we will we'll see how it goes. But that's so I haven't actually met with anyone from BCIL yet. I can report and I think I did report that I had a conversation with Joan Duval, Joan Javier Duval, who's the Minister of the Unitarian Church and who is on the board of Justice for All, the Burlington and she is interested in she's interested in being part of the group of community led organizations. And I recommend that we we put her on the list. She's been very active over the past several years from since she came here in dealing with issues about racial discrimination. And so from and she herself is from a family from that from originally from the Philippines. So Julia, yeah, we're just doing report backs of our of our community outreach over the past two weeks. Are we going to take votes on on admitting people or how is this going to work, Shayna? On admitting people. Well, I mean, I mean, sending names forward to to creative discourse, what happens with this list of people that we recommend or who agree to do this? I think we're just snowballing here, right? And that's what I my understanding was. So we're coming up with our list and well, and they're coming up with their list of, you know, of folks too. And they'll then reach out to other folk, you know, have conversations with them and reach out to other folks. I don't think it's a official, like, focus group type of thing. Was my understanding. I don't think we need to vote on passing these names along. Does anyone want to question that? So I think I would say only if like, if we end up referring too many people to them, we can get into those conversations. If they say this is too big a group, you've got to narrow it down and we can maybe have those conversations. But they haven't given us any indication of what the size of that group is going to be, have they? I think it would be a good problem to have to have too many people. Yeah, bridge them again to us. Yeah. I can share an update, which is that I reached out to three people who I think all would be good people to have included either in the in the focus group of BIPOC folks or I can't remember if there was like one for informal community leaders or if that were slicing or dicing that. Yeah. But they're all people that are engaging in activism within the community that I've worked closely with. Amandha Gar says Beth Nolan and Kaya Santana. Could you send me either spell them out or send me the list so I can get them in the in the minutes? Yeah, I can. How about I? How about I? I'll put it in the chat after I talk. None of them are. I mean, I don't actually, you know what? I don't want that in the minutes yet. Just yet, Michael, actually, because they're just our names in particular, because none of them have said yes, definitely. And I realize work is here. So I I I should I rewind if I could. So sorry, those three. They've all none of none none of them. I haven't spoken directly like in person to any of them. It was all electronic so far. It wasn't like a cheering. Yes, for me so far. And so I'm going to have to sort of talk a little further with them about. What what are the I really want to know like what if there are reservations, what they are. I want to know if there are barriers, what they are. I'm feeling there's like I get the sense that it's a little bit more on the level of reservations than barriers. And so I'm going to dig deeper into that, but that's where that's what I'm working on. And I just want to say hi, Jeremy. Well, yeah, sorry, there you go. Julie, we did a good round of intros at the beginning. Do you want to do it yourself? No. Yeah. Hi. So I'm Julia Shaffetz. I've been on the committee since it started in 2018, August 2018. I think that was. I'm also a parent of a says almost seven year old who's it goes to? Whoa. And my therapist and some of social workroom private practice and have been getting involved in some and a lot of efforts related to the schools like and really like building equity into the school, especially at the parents group level and also looking into the SRO issue as a result of just hearing from while hearing from clients of mine as well as like friends of mine who are experiencing difficulties. So. Yeah. Great, Julia, and I said to the others, I'm hoping to find some time just to chat with people one on one just to learn more about your experience. And I know of you because my partner is Meredith Warner, who has been doing a lot of work with the SRO stuff. So yeah, oh, great. That's right. Now I'd like to thank you for mentioning that because now it all comes together for me. I'll look forward to speaking with you, meeting with you. Great. Well, and this is also just making me think that perhaps for if we get like an enthusiastic yes, someone wants to, you know, participate just to like send them in an email to Julia and me because we're going to be the ones doing that interfacing directly with Keisha. And so then that way we don't like go through our whole list each week, essentially, you know. And and then that way it's not like recorded or being like, oh, we have this really hard cover, you know, like I'm not sure how much of that needs to be on the public record on Orca. But do do does anyone want to like have, you know, other like relationships or are, you know, folks that they want to be reaching out to right now, is there a gap where where we want to, you know, make sure that someone's covering it because I feel like that's kind of what I did with like VCL is like, oh, I don't know if there's anyone in our group that like has talked about working in like the disability community before. And so I was like, I want to like I want to do that, you know. And so it's kind of like why I reached out. But if there's like other young people, people experiencing housing, leaders of community service organizations, LGBTQ community members. And yeah, if there's those are just people we haven't explicitly said that we're having meetings with folks yet. But otherwise, I think like, we're all just going to continue doing the outreach and like hold each other accountable. Does that make sense? Yeah, I have a question. These particular individuals that you've been discussing, are these folks who can then help create a discourse start to build their participant list for the focus groups? So there's like a contact for different kind of populations within. So the first phase of having where we can hear you, Michael, can you hear us? Can some I'm having trouble getting my making my computer stay connected. I'm going to have to call in as I did last time. But give me a phone number quickly. It is. Oh, shoot. Hold on. Sorry, Michael, I have to pull it up on my computer. Just write it up and put it in front so I can. I'm trying. I'm sorry. It's not a fast process. I'll put it in the chat, Michael. Yeah, did you get it before I did? I think I've got it. OK. Sorry, I don't know why this is happening. It happened earlier today. Oh, there it is. So the second number is the meeting ID. OK. So, Shayna, I can reach out to the Homeless Youth Program and the Basement Teen Center work closely with them. So I'll reach out for them by next meeting. So the Homeless Youth Center and the which one? So the basement, the Basement Teen Center, there's a teen center in the basement of City Hall. Yep. They're just called the Basement Teen Center and the sort of states Homeless Youth Program. Cool. Great. Awesome. I can also reach out to I think I'll reach out to I have a friend of the guidance counselor at Montpelier High School, see if she's got maybe young people that might be interested in high school students and also the RDA, Racial Justice Alliance at the high school as well. Do we would we? I wonder about like, like would we want any like school staff? Like, you know, would that be like some I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm I'm like, no. And this is this. So let me let me go back and I'll answer Jeremy's question and then go to. Yeah. So we're we're doing a series of focus groups with these 10 community groups to kind of where we're creative discourse is going to like ask a series of questions and try to pull out what are the key topics of conversation as a full city and then have bring together folks from those from those focus groups and probably other community members as well and potentially open it up to like the public at large for like a summit and then potentially from there a series of like of ongoing conversations with a smaller group of like cross sector, right? But these kind of like identity based groups or our you know, key marginalized community groups in particular, you know, having conversations there first to be able to identify like what are the key points of of tension or of concern to dig in on moving forward. And so why and then so simultaneously creative discourses has also been hired by the Montpelier Roxbury School District to be doing a similar type of equity analysis with the school. And so I think because of that, we don't think we need to reach out to the teachers and like superintendents and stuff like that. PTA, but I I that's my understanding. Does that sound right? Yeah, and and they're starting to build their building relationships there. So they might know they might know if there's someone appropriate in as well. And the reason I was late is that I was at their first meeting, they were facilitating about the school safety stuff. So yeah. Also, just this is this is a small community and the people that might be interested in this are going to overlap anyway. So I think I think you'll find that. It's all the same people doing all the things. There's very small pool. Lalitha's here. Yeah. Hi, do you welcome? Do you want to say hi and settle in and introduce yourself to our new member, Jeremy here? Hi, everybody. My name is Lalitha, my logarithm. I live in Montpellier, Vermont. I've been in the committee since what, two, three years? I'm not sure. Thanks. OK. Yeah. And Jeremy's our newest member and we're going to try to set Jeremy up with, yeah, one to one with all members. Be great. Cool. And then Lalitha, we are just going through all of the people, all of the focus group folks that we are going to do outreach for for creative discourses to be able to have the focus groups. And so if you've had any of these conversations, have any people who are like, awesome, we're ready to go. Feel free to email them to Julia and me or if there's any like organizations that you want to reach out to would love to, you know, divide and conquer here. But otherwise, yeah, anything else to say on this outreach? Oh, newsletter. That is the other thing. Anything else about reporting back on meetings with community leaders or organizations? Cool. So the new Michael, you back. I can't even get a telephone connection. Is there some other way to? I mean, you you you sort of drop I lose you and then sort of come back. But the telephone is not working. So I'll just I'll do my best to keep up with you. But. Oh, no, it's all right. That's so weird. Yes. Totally, totally unexplainable. All right. So keep going. I'm sorry. Well, no. I yeah, I don't I guess the only other solution that I can offer is what I've done sometimes before is like you call me and I put you on speakerphone and like hold you up next to the camera. But if your phone's not working, that's not going to. That's not going to work. I'm I'm only hearing fragments of what you're saying. So if there's another telephone number that you that you know I can use. Yeah, there's another one. Let me pull up the call list again. You can call from this number. Try this one. Hold on. You see the one that Cameron just put in the chat. Michael. What? And also try that one. All right, I'll try that one. Thank you, Cameron. So the only other thing, too, is the newsletter check in. Michael is the one who emailed me that he had heard back from some folks saying what like why is this newsletter like coming from Action Network? Like that's weird. And so I don't think there was like a solution offered here, but like just to name that we're we're sending people to this like third party site in order to keep, you know, track of everyone who gets the newsletter, how many people open it, if people like click any links in it, all of that type of stuff that it's like a party that can do that. But and they can do it for free and everything else. But does has anyone else been hearing any of these concerns? Should we move it to just like an email spreadsheet that we can be CC? I just I feel like I feel more comfortable being on an email list where there's like an unsubscribed button at the bottom. But I don't know if anyone else had concerns. Yay, you're back, Michael. Yeah, OK. I would just say I saw that and thought it was spam and didn't do it. So I don't know if it discourages some people from. I'm like, I'm not signing up for one more list. I'm literally on this committee. So they're and you might scare off some people from having to subscribe to something that they don't know what they're signing up for. But I see the advantages of doing it that way, too. And another option if that's like so if it doesn't let you it doesn't let you change who who it's from if it's from Action Network. I thought I set it up. So it's I guess it says it's from me from Shayna and the Montpelier Social Network Justice Advisory Committee. But the email is like through Action Network. Got it. Is I guess how it works. Well, and it was like I don't I mean, I see you all saw it. I mean, it comes in. It's like all designed in a way that it looks like it doesn't look like a like a regular email from us that just happens to be managed through a program. It looks like a kind of spammy email, I thought. But. OK. So hearing this from Lauren and for Michael, maybe like what did it make sense to if we have people sign up and then before I send the newsletter update, like just download the email list and just send it out in a BCC. Is that the way to do this? Or another any other ideas of solutions? Another option. I've used MailChimp a bit recently. And oh, you said they sell your data, though, right? Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of MailChimp. Because they OK. Because that one, it looks like it comes from you. Yeah, right. But that's about it. I looked at the homepage for the Action Network and they and they can you hear me? Yeah. OK. And they say that they they promise not to share the mailing list. So this all came about because I was I tried out on a few people a sample letter that I was going to send out more widely. And one of them went ahead and signed up and was surprised to get this thing from the Action Network. So I revised my invitation letter to say that they were working and haven't set it out yet, working as a under a contract or an agreement with the city. Which word should I use, Cameron? Definitely not a contract. You can say you're you know, you are a committee, a city committee working, you know. OK. But the action, but the the action network is just an arrangement with us. It's not it's not any formal arrangement with the city. No, no, it's just an online service that manages your mailing list. So you can say, you know, we're using Action Network to manage our newsletter. That's sort of what I said in my second draft. But I will I will put that into my final version. Well, and again, our goal here was just to keep people updated, recruit people to be part of these focus groups and for the work later on, recruit people to donate all, you know, keep people informed about this work. And so I think we're at the school of doing it like every two weeks. So for the next one, probably this weekend, all this download the list and send it out at the DCC. So it'll come from me. We'll be able to reply to me. I think that makes sense. So I'm good to folks. How many people are on the list right now? Like we're getting close to 40. I don't know. Yeah. Look, that's more than showed up to your information sessions. Things are growing like you said earlier, snowballing. And that's the important part. Couldn't have gotten a much smaller and still exist. All right, well, that moves us along nicely to our fundraising check in. But as we said, pellet, let's let's do a high five through the Internet. Well, we got our first grant in. Yeah. And Lalitha, we're going to get another granted in January. Right. High five. Well, that's not working. OK. Yeah. OK. Um, so we're getting some granted grants in, which is great. Haven't heard back from any and probably won't hear back from them for a while. Um, I think it was Julia and Michael were going to do some research on some other grants for for funding this work. There's one last one about that. So the co-op, the co-operative co-operative, whatever that was, that was really just for co-op to not for us. And the other one, the initiative is not we're not eligible because we're not a 501 degree to the agency. So, um, and the A.J. Musty Foundation, which was very promising, they're not accepting any grants from for a while. And it looks like we didn't we don't qualify in any case because we get some city funding. So I'll just keep going through that list that I that I assembled and I sent that information to Janelle. She has that big, thick volume that I use and we'll keep mining the lists that I put together and any that she comes up with. And if we find one that looks promising, we'll we'll put together a grant proposal. But so far, I haven't found anything that we're qualified for under under their guidelines. Oh, there was the Thompson Foundation, which is in Brattleboro, but they only make grants to Wyndham County and Dutchess County, New York. So go figure. I don't have it. Um, and so you said initiatives was not for us because we're not a C3. I do. I think we are a C3 through the city, right? Because the city of Montpeliers not so the Montpeliers not a C3. I think she said no. OK, cool. Sometimes those we have been we as the city, some of our other committees have been successful in just giving those groups a phone call. Sometimes they'll wave that requirement because you are a sort of an unfunded branch of a municipality. And a municipality is technically not for profit. So but we don't have the same like tax clearance. It's not the same. We're a different sort of entity under tax law. So sometimes they'll be willing to change the rules for it be, especially the smaller foundations might bend a little bit, but it's up to you to determine if it's worth a phone call. Any other fundraising updates? Seconds, ideas? I got the ball. I haven't reached out to people I was going to reach out to this past these past two weeks. I I looked at the Awesome Foundation. I think it's kind of a long shot, but it's a pretty easy application. So I'm just going to submit it. It's basically like tell us your awesome idea. And then there's like local chapters and the closest local chapter is in Boston. So I have to like figure out how to pitch it as an awesome idea. Like, I don't know, just like fit to fit the vibe, but I'll try it. We hire consultants. That's very awesome. No, it's like it's an awesome. Well, I mean, I was thinking, oh, actually, this is a question that I had was that like, I was thinking it's it's an awesome idea to like offer stipends for people to participate. So I wasn't sure if it's if it's like a bad idea to kind of like pigeonhole the funding that way. It's it's only a thousand dollars. So I imagine we can find a way to use it pretty easily. So I I figured that's how I would pitch it to them. But I wanted to run that by you all. I love that idea. OK. Now I'm not really your voting member here, but I think that's a really cool idea. You know, that's something that the city is really going to have a hard time budgeting for. And that's where support would really be. I would broaden it and not not just make it stipends because that might drive them away. But just to say we when you talked about it the last time you said trying to remove barriers to participation and you included stipends, childcare, food, whatever. And I think if you can if you can put it in removing barriers, that might make it more awesome. OK, that's a good idea. I will. I have a question. Is this fundraising to support the work that is under the purview of creative discourse? Yeah, to support their work like facilitating this project. Yeah. So that and the history is that we so we get we issued an RFP. The city is OK, $10,000 this year and hopefully $10,000 next year. That we put out an RFP. They came back with one for $52,000 that would be a two year process. And so it's important that we finish that process that we not. So we have we basically have enough money to start that process that we need to finish it. And so a lot of that what we're hoping to do is fund the beyond $10,000 that we have now. OK, great. The other I heard I was listening to a podcast today and there was a I didn't write anything down because I'm walking but there was a Casey Foundation that was like a new Casey Foundation. I haven't normally heard advertised on on podcasts. It's like there's not the Annie Casey Foundation. It's like a new one. And it was all about like civic engagement and like so I haven't looked into it at all. I just heard heard the advertisement today. And I think it was like Casey Foundation dot org or something like that. So that's probably worth looking into if anybody has the. Yeah, Marguerite Casey Foundation for economic justice. There you go. Well done. Interesting. I'll send it. But I'll put a link in the chat. Very cool. I'm. And then Julia and Cameron do you want to share your thank you notes? I don't know. I wrote to thank you notes. Michael, the other one was to your dad. I don't know if they've arrived yet. I think I sent them on Thursday. Michael, do you get a thank you note yet? What? I was just going to ask if he had gotten his yet. I haven't talked to him. Yeah, my dad donated. That was one of the. That's really sweet. It's really sweet. OK. And then I need to get on by getting the money out of my PayPal account. So I will I will do that. Um, all right. And then the last like big thing on our agenda here is the creative discourse work plan update, which just Keech had sent just kind of right after our last meeting. So I just wanted to I think we just want to check in on that. I don't know if there's anything else like significant to share. So that was on the attachment of the email that I had sent earlier today. Yeah, I guess. What are our goals of going over this section? I'm not sure if there was anything in particular that we wanted to talk about. And Lisa, if you're talking, we can't hear you muted. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was like looking at my phone looking for the attachment. That's so sorry. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, we can share a stream, but I'm worried that'll mess us up. I think, you know, listening to y'all's conversation last time and the changes that she made feels like it adopted a lot of those. She didn't make a note where they changed, but I think it adopted a lot of what you talked about last time, but especially with the timeline. A little bit more realistic. I mean, I guess it's just we also have other things besides outreach on the list of what we're responsible for here. So creating flyers and social media messages, you know, reaching out to community partners who can help spread the word as well as the list of people to invite and starting to have these conversations of identifying people and CJAC or trusted community members to extend invitations to. And then I. And I'm thinking we're not going to start the survey conversation until we check back in, right? OK, great. So I think, yeah. So go ahead. Sorry, I hate interrupting Zoom. This is the worst. Inevitable. I apologize. I really wanted to sort of under reiterate my understanding of the survey timeline just so I'm on the same page as y'all. They wanted to talk to some of our focus groups first so that they could form with the question you're nodding. OK, I'm getting it. All right, thank you. Also, certainly it says CJAC is responsible for things like flyers and social media, but that's something that the city staff is totally able to help with. That's not you're on your own on that one. So would we want to do that broad outreach of saying like sign up for our get on our list with all the problems that's come with that? And if you're part of your like what a member of these communities and maybe like. I really have not thought this way when I'm sorry. I'm the cure. And so I just get to talk until someone tells me to shut up. But if there like should we put like checkboxes on the newsletter list of being like I am a member of like these communities, you know, like of or is that does that get into weird sticky areas? If you're asking people to disclose that they have a disability or if they're in as long as it's not required. Yeah. Yeah. You mean when they sign up for the mailing list? Yeah. Maybe it's maybe it should be more like we're looking for a phone like email us if you want to be part of the conversation. You know, so there's a little bit more a little less like we're going to get we'll invite you if you give us this information and it's a little bit more like hey we really want you to be part of the conversation, especially people who are you know, I mean and I think listing out some examples of the of the areas in which we're recruiting like organizations and folks from marginalized populations and again that list is not at the top of my head, but like I think maybe sharing that with people and saying if you are if you are a member of any of these groups we really want to make sure that we're contacting you or if you have suggestions about folks we should reach out to please let us know. Yeah, I agree. I think once we have clarification from CD about the the names or the or the identifying the 10 answer maybe going to be more groups then we can we in a newsletter you can say here are the 10 groups that we have that we're working with if you are interested in one or another of those letters no or you can put a checkbox next to each one and say you know check those that might interest you or you would be of hope before. So then they can just sort of respond to that as part of the plan. Do you know do you know if created this for us will be doing any kind of kind of free focus for free interview screening of the participant list? I think it's more like that's what they're asking us to do. A little bit like I don't know that they're doing any I don't I don't know that they have to I don't it doesn't to me seem like they've got time built in to do that. It's more I think they're sort of and they haven't really given us criteria necessarily other than the like categories of groups. Yeah. But am I misremembering that I thought they at one point somebody said that they had connections to and that they would be looking around for people in our community that they might know. Yes. Yeah. I guess I was the more thing and be like they would reach out to the person they know and we'd be like OK and here's our list of people to participate and they'd be like do you feel comfortable and safe to be able to have like a real conversation with these other people and you know like that level of screening but not like a Googling. Yeah, let me also explain some really good questions. So when when I do research interviews, which is a big part of my work, you know, we'll put out a more general call for people who might be interested in participating in research interviews or workshops. And then we might do a kind of screening with folks that could be like a 15 minute conversation just to make sure we're getting the right people in the room. And I didn't know if that was part of creative discourses process when they do these kinds of research activities. I definitely don't think they're going for statistical like greatness here. I think it's just trying to get people in the room to have frank conversations. So probably not. But Julie and I can check in with them when we connect. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I think let me explain my reason for wanting to know that is how specific do we make our call for participation so that because I think some people might say, well, that's not me or that's not me or they don't want to self identify in a particular way. And so what are the what's the kind of least amount of effort we can put on people to kind of express a willingness to participate in this kind of activity versus just being more kind of defined in making sure we check off each individual box within those 10 categories. So I'm just trying to understand that, I guess. Yeah, I know we'll check in on that. But so do we want to start making like social media or other like outreach materials or, you know, does someone want to commit to posting up from Fort Form this week or something like that just to continue to do that broad outreach as well as this deep outreach. If you give me stuff to share, I will share it wherever you need me to, you know, I, you know, I'll create fires, I'll create whatever some I would love to have the the written part doesn't have to be final draft. But what you the draft of what you want to say, and I will share it on all of the things. Can the city of Montpelier Facebook page share our. Um. Yeah, can we do that? That'd be good. And all of our other associated pages if they want to. And at this point, we're just saying, hey, these are coming if you're interested. Let us like get in touch with us. Right, we're not because that's all we they're coming in January ish, right? Well, they said December, but probably. The start in December, right? They wanted to get started in December, recognizing that there would be a long pause for the holidays and then pick it up again in January. Right. The plan is to be done with those in February. I do see on the work plan that under focus groups, there is a bullet for distributing stipends. Steps are available for participants. That's on us. So we do have some donations to be able to come. That's what yeah, part that we're responsible for. We have some individual contributions to be able to cover some folks so far. And and then Montpelier Life has committed to getting some like gift cards and stuff for for participants as needed as well. You know, we haven't talked about the specifics of it yet, but the general commitment is there. OK. Yeah. You know, supporting local businesses and. Oh, let's feel good things and important things. Sorry, this is all yeah. Oh, great. OK, other business, Michael, do you want to share about? Oh, Julia, we're going to do it. Did we identify somebody to do a to do a from porch firm post this point or flyers or anything like that? I think Cameron said that she could post on from for me and then Facebook. And yeah, I did. So I was thinking you were wanting us to send you something to post, but you're willing to write it up. That's fine. Shane, if you want dust verbal vomit on an email and I will get it out there. Hopefully it'll be a little bit better than verbal vomit. You know what I mean? I'm sorry, you know, like sometimes that's what's going to come out in a week. OK, I mean that in the best possible way. Yeah, no. OK, so then Michael, do you want to share a little bit about the police commission and then have Julia share about the school meeting and anything else? Other business report back stuff. Maybe a warm city council just update too. That's OK. OK, great. OK, Michael, no. So you can find this. There's an article about this in Vermont Digger. Oh, no, Times, August was November 3rd with the with the report. The city appointed two members of the council, Lauren and Jack McCaw. And then six of the people who applied. There was some discussion about how large in the open part about how large the committee should be. They couldn't they couldn't make a decision on that. And when they went into executive session, they selected one, two, three, four, five, five of us, me, Jen, Duggan, Alissa, Sharon, Dan, towel and who they did another guy. We haven't obviously have not met yet. And Cameron, you're needed. Sorry, it's Daniel, towel. Toal. Toal, all right. I think it's told. Oh, then we have 60 days to go back to the council and suggest either to to expand the number and to give some idea of what what criteria with the council should use in trying to get any unrepresented groups or backgrounds that would be of help. So we'll hear soon from, I guess, the the city manager's staff about when when they were going to convene for the first time. And once we that happens, well, I guess our discussions will initially be how much how much larger should the committee be and who's missing. And the rest as for the rest of it, I don't know if you saw the advertisement that was that the city put out, which gave the six areas that the committee is supposed to be looking at. I can circulate this to you if you haven't already seen it. And I'll do that. And I'm just now, you know, I have the police chief's preliminary report based on his. On his first, you know, first couple of months, his initial organization assessment and strategic plan, which he published in August. And I've read to that a couple of times. And I've read through the report of the president's commission on policing, the new year of public safety. And I've been collecting articles and reading, reading and collecting articles on policing and the history of police. And we'll see. I mean, I think everybody who was briefly, briefly had two minutes to introduce each of ourselves. And it sounds to me like it's a group of people who are well informed and sort of focused on some of the some of the questions that are we are supposed to address and discharge. That's all I can tell you at this point, because we haven't, you know, we haven't met yet. Thanks. And I did just find it. Sorry, I had not read it yet. So much going on. Um, Julia, do you want to share about the SNRO? Yeah, what would be helpful to share? I don't know. What it was. Because this is the one that's intersecting with the creative discourse is doing, right? Yeah. So I left early so I could come here. I was splitting, splitting the difference a little. But so they started with some group agreements. It's a big group. There's 14 people on the committee. And then there were like a handful, I would say five between five and 10 guest members of the public. Sue and Keisha didn't I thought did a nice job of like including members of the public. It wasn't one of it wasn't a typical school board meeting where you can talk at the beginning and then you have to just watch the rest of the time. It was more participatory than that. They talked about think one of the things that they're hoping to do, one of the biggest things they're hoping to do is identify some shared values around safety and justice in the schools. I don't know how much you want me to do an editorial side. But I don't know. I mean, they talked about some group agreements they talked about. They were they were asking people I left right as they were breaking out into breakout groups to ask people to share like a little bit more sort of individual or in like on a more personal level their experiences. Yeah. And Lauren, do you want to just care like a city council update? We haven't seen you in the final. Yeah, if there's just anything you want to share. No, I mean, I think of most relevance to this group. I mean, obviously the police committee, Michael described really well. I mean, I think the other thing that could be important for this group is, you know, we're looking at a massive budget shortfall like one point seven million dollar of our fourteen million dollar budget or something. So in both in terms of how that conversation goes in terms of what's the city is setting as priorities and what is going to be on the chopping block, you know, how equity and the values of this committee get rolled into that. I think I mean, that's that's a statement of our city values is what we fund. So I would just hope and, you know, I think I don't know, Cameron would have more details on like when we'll start seeing like different scenarios and what we would get. And, you know, I mean, the conversation so far, you know, it's going to be this like balance of not wanting to raise people's taxes too much when they are struggling right now. But then what services do we cut and what's the right balance there. So anyway, I would love some conversation of this group of, you know, what's what that risk or what are the different things or what would we want to maybe push for some things to, you know, obviously, there's our own like project budget, but I think it's broader than that. So that's the big thing I see coming up. Don't have an exact timeline. We're aiming for our budget meetings to start into December. So we're having our internal budget meetings in a couple weeks. We're working on it now. We're just going to hash it out to a more final presentation for council in a couple of weeks. So I'll have more information then. I don't have any other insight other than Lauren just shared other than it is a really rough year. We're facing almost a $2 million deficit going into the next fiscal year. Yeah, I almost want to name I don't know if the next meeting is like I don't yeah, of doing some sort of, you know, exercise as a committee to just like think through how we want to bring this to city council and to our community and or how to how to have these conversations to to, you know, not come up with like a proposal. Here's the policy that we should be it should look like, but of potentially like what values are or align how to align our values into that process could be cool. Should we do that? Should we plan on doing that at our next meeting? November 19th, because does that make sense to, you know, start this maybe before the the actual nuts and bolts get discussed? Yeah, I'll think through what that facilitation would actually look like. But if anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear it. With the caveat that I'm very new and I don't know anything, I could I'd be happy to work with you to talk through how that conversation might be told and what the location of it might look like. I would love that, Jeremy. Thank you so much. I often think the very new people are the those are the ones who are like least your least like, uh, exactly. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to bring my ignorance to the table. Excellent. Thank you. But which we're all in the dark. Yeah. But I think the Lauren's suggestion that we look beyond our own project is is important and powerful because that I think that's what the city really wants. What meant for this committee to be advisory and not and not just sort of, you know, waving our own flag but really trying to sort of help them out with some direction to go. And we have no we'll have more, of course, once we get started with this. But I think anything that we can bring to the table at this point is useful. I also think, you know, like you said, I just want to underscore the way you said, Shayna about like sort of helping I think our role to some extent, too, rather than saying, you know, I don't think we are going to get to a point where we can make recommendations of what budgets how the budget should look. But just to really help city council members remember their values and act on them and, you know, kind of keep it at that at that level. And if we can find a way to communicate that well with them, that would be and support them and and and support and support them if we can with community voices so that so that they're they're backed up on those values. When would the when would it be most important Cameron for us to be able to pass along information that we've gathered? How long can we wait before we're out of the out of the realm of, you know, out of the discussion? Well, you're not out of the discussion until it all goes to vote, right? So but I would recommend if you want to bring this to city staff's attention and council's attention sooner rather than later. We have our budget hearings not the next meeting, but the following meetings. So the first meeting in December, we're going to start getting into the budget. So probably the first meeting in December would be when I recommend coming to council. You know, we won't have any results in the focus groups by that point, which is unfortunate. No, but I think, you know, you've done a lot and you can talk about, you know, the value ad and, you know, the commitment that council made. No, there's I mean, no promises from anybody on anything. But I I think that would be important and powerful. So yeah, so it sounds like our homework for our next meeting is. Yeah, Jeremy and I will discuss this this facilitation. We'll all be doing our outreach conversations and postings and emailing the any, you know, committed, committed yeses to get on the list. We'll do our fundraising work, either individual or grant writing or research or any whatever the fundraising work that we've got committed. We I'll send out the newsletter will all have a conversation with Jeremy will be such a great. Yeah, check in. And then Julia and I are having a conversation with Keisha anything else for like next steps here. OK, and then on our next agenda, we'll start off as we normally do, you know, all the intros and agendas and everything else. And then it looks like how to bring our committee values to the budget and city council conversations. Conversation, a little meta, have a conversation about a conversation about a conversation. And then we'll do the outreach check in and fundraising check in. And I think those are really it because it'll all be kind of related to to these focus groups that are coming up. Yeah, Lauren. One thought. I don't know how easy it would be Cameron for you or I could dig around. I'm thinking for anyone who has capacity to watch the chunk of the council discussion about budget, the meeting that we had this week was just last night. Yeah, like everybody was just kind of sharing their perspective on, you know, how do we deal with this really unprecedented massive budget cut and it might just be instructive as we try to think about how do we engage council productively just to see where people's starting points are for anyone who's able to watch that was probably a, I don't know, 20 minute discussion. Yeah, Orca wasn't actually there last night because of our schedule change. They were at the school board. So it's no, it's recorded. I recorded it on our Zoom. Though I have a link, I've got to make it public. So I will that was on my list today did not get checked off. So I will have that on our social media and I'll make sure to email it to y'all tomorrow. Do you have a sense of what time in the meeting and that was? Oh, we went pretty quick through the meeting yesterday. So probably right after an hour, I would say. Yeah, it was the last budget or the last item. So probably if you go to like the last half hour or something, you'd find. Yeah, it was not a long one last night for for the first time in a while. Yeah. Well, yeah. And if you want, I can figure out where it is and then send out that time with the notes or not with the notes, because I don't like to know with the next steps. OK, anything else? Yeah, Pella and Alitha. Jeremy. Right. Well, thank you guys all so much. My roommate made some really delicious smelling food and I'm very eager to pick the pan. So yeah, guys, we can we can get through these next couple of days. I'm telling this for myself. Deep breaths. But OK, great to see you all. I know. Take care. Bye.