 I know we normally do more check-ins and learnings and sharing that we've done, and I'm wondering if we should just do quick check-ins of how you're doing with the up-in-your-life before diving in. So what we've got is we've got our minutes reviewing our October 20th minutes that Jeremy sent. Michael, I'm just saying that this email that I sent got bumped back from you, so I will resend it, apologies. What happened is that my internet service provider, Sovranet, was down for three days, and everything was lost. Never see those memos, so, and stuff that I sent, apparently never got to anybody. So anyway, that's my excuse for being completely out of it today. And so is it still down? No, it just opened up this morning, and I expect to see a pile of stuff, but there's just nothing. So I think everything got wiped out. Okay, sorry about that. I mean, we're so reliant on our email, I can't imagine losing my arm or something. Okay, so then we'll go over, yeah, the minutes that Jeremy sent, city committee report backs, public budget survey process, and then creative discourse phase two. And then budget, going over FY 2030 budget requests, including creative discourse work and stipends for the city committee, and then looking at VHIP landlord meetings work. And so since we've got creative discourse, we've got Sue and Nadia from creative discourse here. I am wondering if we should move up the creative discourse phase two agenda item to kind of first thing after our check-ins and minute review. Does that sound okay? Cool. Okay. Well, hi, Nadia, I'm able to do an intro for you. I'm Shayna Casper. I am on Kent Street, Montpelier. And we have moved to this very early hour because I am switching jobs next week from seven years at Community Action Works, where I work with community groups studying pollution threats in our neighborhoods to working for prescription drug pricing reform, which is very exciting. And I, it's been a lot right now. And so thank you all for meeting so early. And I am, it's cold out this morning. I just went for a walk and my glasses all fogged up and everything. That's how I'm doing. Maybe I'll pass to Michael. You're also unmuted. I'm here, excuse me. I'm Michael Sherman, a member of this committee for, I guess I am the only remaining member who's been it from the beginning. So, and I've forgotten how many years that is now. And my other news is that I just was mentioning I've been in a blackout because my computer, my internet service provider was fried somehow. So that's my excuse for not being on top of stuff today. Thanks, Michael. Jeremy, you want to go? Hi, I'm Jeremy Bodry, a member of the committee resident. I'm not here on Elm Street doing okay. A little bit early. That's fine. It's good to get going early. Mostly okay. Just, you know, coded. There you go. That's it. I had a scar in my family. So with my parents and my sister's family. So I'm happy with that. I'm happy with dealing with that. But all as well. Thank you. So I hear that. Alan. Morning, everyone. I'm feeling cool. I'm a member of this committee too. I work for Norwich. I teach leadership courses and I'm also leadership program coordinator there. And I am all well too. So I'm very happy with my, one of my colleagues. We decided to review our course syllabus and make them diversity equity and inclusion based. So we are changing the language. You know, basically everything. So I'm very happy about it. Because when you dive in, you can see how many things you need to change because before that, everything seems kind of, yeah, it seems okay. There is no problem. But now we are noticing so many things. So that's all I have as in like news. So. Happy to be here. Thanks, Helen. Hi, Cameron. Hi, everyone. I'm Cameron. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm the assistant city manager and staff support for this. Thank you for joining us. Sue and Dr. Mitchell. So I don't really have anything exciting to share, although I did find out this morning that they did go live with the website. So if you have kids age five to 11, you can get them vaccinated, which is very exciting. I'm sure anyone who has kids has been waiting with that for like bated breath. Because I don't know if I'm aware and get their kids send up. So it's exciting. That's my news for today. Thanks Cameron. Sue and Nadia. Do you want to take it away? Yeah. Hi, everyone. Hi, Shayna and Cameron. It's so nice to see you again after some time has passed. Cameron, I'm really sorry to hear that you're still. Coughing. And I hope you're not still in recovery. Okay. Yeah, I'm so sorry. It's okay. Thank you. So we, I really was excited for you to meet my my new business partner, Nadia Mitchell. We've, our team went through a year-long kind of a discernment process about what our next step should be and Nadia stepped forward into a partnership with me. So now we are a 50-50 partnership business going forward and Nadia brings so much experience and expertise to the work from her long career. And I'm just so happy that we're in the work together now. And so I wanted you to meet her this morning. So I'm just going to turn it over to Nadia. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Sue. Cameron, I woke up to that email this morning. So it is exciting. It is exciting. And then as a parent, I also feel this responsibility to have the full dialogue with my children about COVID. And when I had that with my daughter who is fully vaccinated, she, it took her a while to make the choice to be vaccinated. Not that long, but it took her a little bit of time to really think through because, you know, there are a lot of things we're learning about COVID and whatnot. So I'm looking forward to having that conversation with my son. He's very diligent about mass querying and people being responsible. So I suspect that he will make his choice really quickly. And we will be trying to get vaccinated right away. But that is exciting. And I appreciate the work that everyone's done. I have been working with Sue for over a year at this point. I guess it's November, but creative discourse and had prior to that been working myself. I had been most recently prior to, to this business partnership working in higher education. So like the strongest part of my background is in higher education leadership. And my last role as an equity leader for Champlain College. And I am also teach. So I, so I do some lecturing, though not this semester or next or who knows when again, because we are so busy. And while teaching is my passion, I hope one of my passions, I hope that I'll be able to get back to that. But I have no idea when that will happen, because we've been, we've been lucky enough to have lots of good work, which is great. Seeing our seeing our communities in our community organizations really focusing on being more equitable and providing opportunities for inclusion and focusing on ways that they can be anti-racist and really support their, the orgs that the clients or participants, what not that they serve, but also the greater community has been a great joy. It comes with a lot of work, especially as a black woman doing this work. But I think we've been really successful with some of our partners and it's felt really great. I am, so I think that's about it. I know we have lots to do today. So I won't take up much more time, but I'll just say, you know, it's wonderful to hear about the work that we've done with Montpelier in the past. I think there's so much opportunity for, for continued work. And so looking forward to hearing from you all about, you know, your perspective on that and the direction that you're hoping to go in. Thanks so much. And then Michael, I put in the chat, I tried resending it again, and it still got pushed back. So maybe I'll just share my screen for documents. Does that make sense? Yes, that'll be good. Okay, cool. Okay, so let's just, and then Michael, can you take notes? Can you do minutes for today or, or Jeremy is? Sorry, amazing. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Jeremy. Jeremy and Michael, I must need a sabbatical. Thank you both. Okay, so I will share my screen and go over the minutes real quick. So, because Michael, did you not get these at all then? I'm just really, because I never, I think sent out, sent out all the stuff until last night. And so I didn't, I had nothing, nothing. Gosh, okay. Yeah. Well, here we go. Let's um, some minutes from October 20th meeting. Scroll down. Scroll down again. Scroll down again. All right. Do you want to make a motion to approve? I'll make a motion. Thanks, Michael. Helen, do you want a second? Yeah, I second. All in favor. Hi. Any post? Nice. All right. Motion passes. Okay. Thanks all. And now let's, yeah, I don't know, hand it over to creative discourses, or maybe we can provide a little bit of a context or two. So we had a recently, you know, been in communication with creative discourses for kind of an equity audit program that was kind of going to be in two different phases. So begin to identify elements of like a shared vision for equity and anti-racism in Montpelier, by doing like an equity state, equity assessment of stakeholders by having all these different, like focus group meetings with different key, key groups and providing kind of a summary of report to the city with these key themes to be able to start prioritizing and focusing forward on. And then phase two is going to be on an equity summit in Montpelier to really start, you know, building some of that deep trust, have dialogue and work sessions, kind of while we had these like, like focus groups more siloed of kind of bringing those different folks together and having like recommendations for action plans coming out of that with like a celebration at the end. And so I think, yeah, we're kind of on the, we've wrapped up phase one that has, you know, we released that report earlier this fall or, you know, late summer, I guess, however you want to define it. And then, yeah, kind of looking at how we should be approaching the work and looking at the work for phase two, there's like a bunch of different pieces in it. And so it's kind of what to prioritize where, and just wanted to hear from you about what you're seeing as being the next steps. And let me see if I can put that in the chat button too. That's helpful. Although, Michael, you should have that from, you know, from a couple of months ago as well, the phase one plan. So I think I would love to just acknowledge that when I just look at your agenda for today and read the minutes from your last meeting, it does seem like a lot of what you're focusing on is really well aligned with what we were hearing in our conversations during the focus groups and what we heard from the survey. So that's just incredibly encouraging, that alignment. And I guess one thing I wonder is, you know, how you've been communicating with the broader community about this work, right? So I just had a question about that. Do folks know? Do folks are, have you connected the dots between all this good work you're doing and what you are hearing from the community? I feel like I can speak to that. Since, you know, this committee's work is really to make recommendations to counsel and to staff, right? So y'all came up with a recommended report, like recommendations, and my staff has taken that extremely seriously. We've built all of the recommendations. I think I don't, I can't think of any that we didn't into our departmental work plans. So those are baked in now to what our departments will be doing and prioritizing for the next fiscal year. And the council continues to put money towards this initiative showing, you know, real commitment to that. There's already been some changes on a lot of how we do business here. We're working very hard on getting language access really taken care of. It's really shaped a lot of our conversations around communication and outreach. So I think that was really our, I mean, when I say that, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it's been a ton of work. We've also done multiple staff trainings on equity and diversion or equity diversion. She's, I'm sorry, equity and inclusion did a lot of work around what those words even mean. We can't use them interchangeably. So how do we, how do we actually like learn what we're talking about? You can't walk the talk unless you don't, if you don't know what you're talking about, really try to be mindful of our staff of color and not overtaxing them. We have some new hires coming in that are people of color. And so we're taking time before they are onboarded to train our staff in anti-racism at work so that they are offering a very welcoming environment. It doesn't put stress on the person coming into the job. I feel like we're taking this pretty seriously at the city level. So it's really baked into all of our department's work plans. And there's a lot, those work plans are basically how our department heads are reviewed at the end of the year. So there's a lot of personal responsibility baked into that as well. So there is accountability measures there. I feel like I'm rambling. So I'm sorry. But I think that's sort of where we're at with those recommendations. It's also come up at council multiple times now. So that's really where those like the rubber hit the road when we're making sure that council members are on board. So I'm pretty pleased with what came out of that phase one for us on staff, staff side. So sort of where we're at. Cameron, is your sense that the community knows about all of this good and intentional work that's happening? Probably not. And that gets back to that communication thing, right? So one of the things that has come up multiple times in a lot of the studies that have happened, especially like the police review committee just presented is how are we communicating with the public? Do we catch everything? Like I put work that we're doing about equity and inclusion in our weekly report. But does anyone read that? I don't know. Our council does. Anyone in the community can, but do they? I don't know, to be honest. And so how do we get that message out of something that I think we are that that is a needs improvement sort of statement, I guess I could make about that. So no, probably not. Probably not. No. I was curious because when you when we talk about doing this convening that like Shayna said brings people together across the silos, it's just helpful people feel like the work what they've participated in so far has led to some kind of action, right? And without that, it's a lot harder to gather people together. So that's kind of what was behind the question. And I have one more question then I'll pause and see if Nadia has any questions. You know, we wrote this proposal a while ago, we did a body of work, you're moving forward. Does what we wrote still seem relevant? Do these activities still make sense given you've all been there working on the ground? We're not down there. So we just want to make sure that there's still relevance in how we conceptualize this work now that you're partway through it. I mean, other folks can chime in, but I think so. This is very helpful for us. It provides sort of like a framework to build future future work. It feels very relevant to me. I don't think anything's wildly changed. Michael, yeah. Well, I'll speak also on behalf of the police review committee, which incorporated all the material that you had that you sent to us. And I know that that has gotten the police review committee got a lot of publicity, probably for the wrong reasons. But I do know that we got reports back from Cameron on the police department's response to that. And I know that a lot of the council was enthusiastic about going forward with the least controversial ones. And it has been reported in the press. It got a lot of attention. And now there are things happening. The coffee with the cop is re-established. And it had been, or it was this past weekend at the farmer's market. The farmer's market has now closed down so until January. But I know that they've assigned one member of the staff to be the outreach person for the force. And in that respect, I think there's been a fair amount of attention to what both of those committees, both of these committees, C. Jack and the police review committee have done. And what I've heard in the community is pretty much positive. Yeah, I think we still have like, I think one of the markers that I was thinking about, too, is that we wanted, we were talking about doing a big recruitment drive for C. Jack to build out, bulk out and diversify our membership of our committee. And we decided to not go through with that until going through this process. And I think of just being like, yeah, we still haven't done that because we still so much farther to go in this process. And I think I am looking at this, I'm a little bit of me is like, oh, like phase one took a lot longer than we thought, like these, and this is pushing things out for a lot longer and kind of like, and turning it up a little bit more too, you know, and so I feel I'm looking at the next phases of this plan and being like, whoo, a lot of money, it's a lot of time, it's a lot of commitments that we're like asking of members while, you know, we're, you know, still dealing with a pandemic and still, you know, having other big priorities as a city. And so I think, I'm, I both feel like, yeah, I don't, I don't know what's like to take off or what to like turn down, but I'm those I'm feeling a little bit of that like, low, like anxiety is a very strong word, but like, like low level like, that noise instead of anxiety. Yeah. Adia, do you have any questions that you'd like to ask just based on our conversation so far? I actually really don't have any questions at the moment. I'm still just sort of, yeah, no, I think it's really clear. It was great to see that question that you asked was the one that I had. And I was, I was just thinking about how might the importance of, of really fight, you know, the intentional way that you can report out the work that's being done prior to trying to engage the larger, you know, community in additional work, right? I think momentum is, is, is hard, you know, especially when you slow down somewhere and you have to kind of pick it back up. And I think especially for people who have already engaged, sometimes it can be, can feel exhausting or pointless if people don't see their efforts sort of showing up in, in, in, in progress. So that was really one question I had. I think I was also going to see that in one of the projects that we are working on currently, we've want a staff member of the organization had worked with us to do a series of connections with community leaders. And there an outcome of that was this person having, having a real reflection moment. And, and they shared this in a, in a, in a write up as part of the sort of the report. And it was, was meaningful in a different way was not the type of outcome that where you write up and you say, you know, I spoke to X many of people and this was a common theme that I saw throughout. And here are some recommendations that come out of that. It was a more personal reflection of the impact of being in dialogue with folks on this individual who happens to be a white man. And I think that we saw great value in that. And I don't even think we fully kind of sorted out other than like making sure that this is part of our has like a significant amount of space in our, you know, final report. And we, in some dialogue, but I don't think we fully even have really thought about, you know, what the impact of folks sharing the stories of their own personal transformations as part of work. And so I think that's one bit that I think that I've been, you know, kind of thinking about more as we, you know, as our creative discourse group, using the model transformed people transform organizations, right, and communities and right, and that means like individual work, right, we have to be doing individual work. So I'm just, I'm reflecting on that as I look through the phase two, phase two plan and thinking about how you might bring forward one, what you've already done to folks that they really have a good understanding of what's how their work is impacting, has impacted you all already and the direction that you might want to go in, and then but also like really digging a little deeper to think about how those individuals who have been working on this project are impacted by the work in individually, and then how do you weave that in as you think about what phase two will look like. So those are some of the, not so much questions, but thoughts that I have as I look at phase two. I think another question I have has to do with timing, and I don't know if you all have thoughts about that. And as the pandemic lingers on, I know we've been trying to get back in person, you know, with people. So I just wondered, you're thinking about timing. I mean, I feel like looking at Cameron, like I know I've on a friend's birthing team and I've made a commitment to not hang out with people in person till after, you know, like, and so it's just like, yeah, we're still, we're still in the thick of it. And I know this that he has, you know, you know, you're in the office every single day. And so, yeah, of having a daylong summit, you know, and this is also to a daylong summit where we're also asking people who are, you know, hardest hit by COVID to be fully participating and wanting to, you know, be mindful of that. So I think the like work session, maybe it's like a less of an ass than like let's hold a big event where we're bringing together, like lots of folks in Montpellier. Yeah, that that that is a very real question. Thanks. Thanks for naming that. When and is there any way to move around some of these things? But I mean, I don't I don't think so. I think it's like, you've got it, you know, it's the summit, then the dialogue, then the draft equity meeting, right? What one thing I wonder about, and, you know, just we, of course, we our plates are full right at the moment. So that's that's a reality. But I also wonder about, you know, what would it would look like if the this phase of the work kind of the summit piece got pushed back until the spring possibly, you know, or even early summer and that in this interim period that you all are just really working on creative ways to get the message out about all that you're doing, right? And just be doing that kind of work leading up to that. So I just wonder about that in terms of timing. And that doesn't necessarily mean we wouldn't work with you until then, but it could be that we're supporting you with a little bit of consulting time around ways to, you know, build some of these bridges and check in with people. This is what we're doing. How does it, you know, how do you think it's working that kind of thing while you're planning to do this kind of convening. So that's one thought that I wonder about. That was going to be my question is really, to me, on the staff side, it seems very much around creative discourses availability, right? We're doing our budgeting process now. And that is going to be quite a bit of our staff capacity when it comes to public communications and really getting people on board with the budget, not to say that that doesn't align. I think that's a good time to start talking about equity within the budget process, that kind of thing. And so early spring, summer makes sense to me that's still within this fiscal year and that's still where the money for this committee lies right now, right? Council had committed at least two years. We're going to be continuing to put ask, to put money for this committee in the budget. That's a commitment of my office to ask for it. So I don't know about fiscal year 23, but right now you do have 10K. So, I mean, whatever timing this committee and, you know, creative discourse wants to embark on, you know, staff capacity will be way freer in the spring and summer. I will say that. After Town Meeting Day. That's the best day ever. That's the new year. It's the best day. So, assuming the vote goes right. Well, I mean, I'd like to think positively, Michael. But this is a good point. Yeah, go ahead, Michael. I was going to say that one of the things that I think the committee is learning is that we have to find out who are the people and where to go to make contacts with the agencies or organizations and people that can help us decide what steps to take. For example, we talked a little bit about language access and we had to figure out where we go to find out where we can get support for that. So that was one research project. We had a meeting with people from Down Street and the question was, where do we, and the question, the issue came up about VHIP. None of us knew about VHIP, so we had to find out where to go to find out, to get information about VHIP. So, we're in a, I think in another phase of self-education in order to be able to implement some of the recommendations that came out of your report and we're slowly accumulating the information, finding out who are the people who we need to talk to next. And then we can use that information to convene smaller groups, for example, on the housing. I have made connection with the guy whose name is Sean Gilpin, who's running the VHIP project for the state. And we talked a little bit about maybe we need to reach out to landlords and have a meeting with landlords and property owners who would be affected by this. So I think that's where we are in preparation for going, for doing something big, which are to collect the contact points. That makes sense. And I think that's part of, that's a good thing also to communicate outright to the community what you're learning. And like Nadia said, not just the logistics and the resources, which is important, but also the internal work as well. And how you're all growing and understanding about what it means to be doing this work. So does that mean for, I'm just like being mindful of time here too, for kind of the next steps of recognizing, and budget-wise, right? So we've got $10,000 to work with unless we do additional fundraising, which as we've established before has been challenging. And especially without having a really clear outcome ask and not a process ask. And so although definitely we have been doing that and would be open to doing that again too, but $10,000 to work with for this until July 1st or June 30th, 2022. And so would that be folk, do you think that, how to split that up between the summit, organizing for the summit and for the consulting and kind of coaching, I should say, coaching support for this committee for getting the word out there and everything else? Yeah, I think this is where Nadia and I, so of course we're a new business now, we have a new business model. And so we do have to rework some of these proposals from before. So I think that Nadia and I have what we need to be able to have a conversation and then come back to you with a proposal and a timeframe. And it sounds like you have $10,000 to work with, so that's what we'll create something with that amount of resource in mind and keeping in mind where you all are and where you're trying to get to. And then the next conversation, that sounds great, thank you so much. And then for the next conversation that we're going into is looking at that FY23 budget, so that'd be, you know, why is it so hard for me? July 1st 2022 to June 30th 2023. And obviously I think we'd want to continue working on the, this project and wanting to continue, you know, pushing forward these proposals too. And so I know that budget conversation, you know, we're going into this right after this. And that those will probably be due, I mean Cameron just left, but they're due soon. And so would that be like just another, I think asking for another additional $10,000 would be like the easiest thing to do, you know, just keeping it consistent. But that would probably be for this next phase of small group dialogues, draft equity plan, community celebration with that additional coaching as well. And so I don't know what pieces of that would make sense for FY23 too. And I don't know if you're ready to have that conversation yet as well. Yeah. I think we, I think Nadia and I need to have that conversation. And then I think that it makes sense. Nadia, I'm just looking to you here, but I was thinking maybe we do a proposal for two years of work. And then knowing that there's, you know, again, we chunk it out in phases. Nadia, does that make sense to you? Yeah, I think it makes sense. I think the clarifying question that I wanted to ask was, when you, when you say, you know, the easiest thing would be to ask for like another 10,000. I mean, when I look at this budget here, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's more, it's more than that. So I'm wondering, are you thinking, because that's what you'll probably be able to ask for and achieve, we should be thinking about how we would phase it and that you, in other words, you wouldn't be able to do all the things here. But that is that what you're asking us to kind of think about what we could do with a 10, with an additional 10 in FY23. Is that what you're saying? Okay. And that's like, I'm glad you're back Cameron. Do you think that makes sense too? Or, or do you, do you think, you know, of, can we ask for additional funding or apply for grants for additional funding to be able to fill in the gaps there? I would say be conservative right now. We're still facing a lot of economic downturn and uncertainty. I think while $10,000 doesn't sound like a lot, most committees have no budget ever, right? So I think that's conservative. And if there's any way to get more that we can try. But I think asking for a continued 10,000 each fiscal year for right now and then try to get grants to build on that, I think is a conservative way and a safe way to continue to get that funding, right? For this work. So yes, it would be, I think it would be advisable to ask, you know, Sue and Nadia to figure out what work can be done within that constraint and then whatever we can build on top of that, we can build on top of that. Okay. And when do you need this? I, you know, I don't know if we can just let's hear your ideal timeframe and then we'll see what's possible. Cameron, for the budget. Oh, well, I'll just be asking for it. You have a phase two already to support that. Obviously, I think that would change a little bit. But I have the backing documents and I don't need anything for that. Sorry, that's why I was quiet. I was like, I guess we're putting it into the FY23 budget. We can just put that in without like a proposal or anything. Yeah. You've already given that proposal. You've already given that proposal to council and they knew it was going to be multi-year. So great. Okay. Well, Nadia and I will look at this because as I was saying, Cameron, I think you may have left the room. But so, you know, we have a new business model now and that is impacting our price structure and everything a little bit. And so I just want to talk with Nadia and make sure this all makes sense. And so we'll have some kind of communication with you about the next phase and then our thoughts about the phase after that, especially if you're thinking that this ask over the next several years is going to be consistently around that certain $10,000 mark. Okay. That would be great. Thank you. And we're also not holding y'all hostage, right? You know, our contract does not need to be if y'all are out and we need to rebid this work that we totally understand that. So thank you for being flexible enough to even consider this sort of work. So appreciate you. Of course. Of course. Well, I'm so pleased that the work that we did and I know the police committee did a tremendous amount of work. And so it's just really great to see that the work is being taken seriously. And Cameron, it sounds like you've done a lot to lead at the municipality level to make sure the work is integrated. So that's a good way to start the day. Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone. We'll be in touch soon. Take care. Bye. Bye. Nice to meet you. You too. Awesome. Okay. Should we dive into the public budget survey process and communications needs kind of as the next? Yeah. I don't have any updates really quickly. That has not been shared. That has not been finished or shared yet. As soon as it is, I think that it would make more sense to talk about it when that's done. I was trying to pull up the budget timeline, but I got distracted. So hold on a second. Oh, no, that's not what it is. Okay. I don't know where it is. Well, no, I think we can circle back on that two weeks. It's not that urgent or yeah, okay. So then should we move into the budget request and including creative discourse work and stipends for city committee. So I think for creative discourse work, it sounds like budget in 10,000. And if they come back with a proposal that's more, we'll renegotiate the work and or apply for grants and or other creative solutions. Does that sound good? Anyone have any concerns with that? And then stipends for city committee. So I'm going to share my screen again. And then Cameron, do you want to talk about it a little bit? Yeah, I can. So there's a lot here. So I'm trying to, I found out, ironically enough, that there's far more committees than even I was aware of, because there's quite a few ad hoc committees that haven't met in the time that I have been here. And so, you know, there's been a lot of digging. So you see a lot in red and that stuff I need to confirm because there wasn't any clear documentation that I could find that said this is how many times are going to meet a year, right? And I want to make sure that this is a pretty accurate accounting of all of the things that people volunteer for. So some of this will maybe move around as I get more information. But on average, it's a lot more than we had anticipated. So on average, I took an annual average amount of meetings that any given committee may have, what their schedule was, how many members are in there, and then budgeted $50 per because that was the recommendation. Now you can see that as well over $100,000 a year. Obviously, some people will not accept a stipend. But the idea is that it should be available to everyone, right? So I also gave some breakdowns of what it would look like at different levels of stipends. Even though I know the recommendation was 50, just to be more realistic with what our budget constraints are right now. So that's really what it is. This would be, I wish Lauren was here today because I really want to know what she thinks about what process we should go through for presenting this or if this would be enough for me to take this to our budget Congress and ask for this to be included. I just don't know what she would want to do. So there's a couple of different steps you all could take. You could take this to Council yourselves. We could write it in a memo to send to Council. I could bring it myself to pitch in a budget Congress and bring it to Council. Maybe just like before going into process real quick, just like any initial reaction. Can we just call it real quick? Yeah, that's done because I did. I looked at this too and I was like, as it was like $30,000 or like $100,000? Is that just because we have more committees or more members on committees? We have a lot of committees. Okay. This is an aggressive amount of committees. You know what's interesting to me, just an initial reaction is, you know, this is the labor that helps our city function. So if you think about just that and all the free labor that has now been involved in doing so much good work in the city, it's just an interesting highlight on how things get done, how a community functions. So in just irrespective of the right number, it's just a really interesting thing to see because so much labor is hidden. And so it's not perfect. It's not like an exact like our value to dollar amount, but it's just I'm really interested in it as a conversation starter for sure. So I want to add something. I was wondering what is the expectation of city from committees to meet because they are meeting like different like quarterly, monthly, twice a month. So if there is a specific time for meeting, maybe you can put that one. And if the committees are meeting extra, and you don't have to offer, I don't know, you know, something like that. Maybe affect the budget positively, but I don't know the rules or anything. So I just want to mention this. Helen, you are looking at a rule list, lawless land. There is not any sort of preconceived schedule for anything, honestly, for when it comes to committees because they're volunteer based, right? So and most of them are council created. So council could say, for instance, with the police review committee, you're going to meet from X time to X time, and we expect something at the end of this. So it's kind of up to the members to determine how often they're going to meet to reach that goal for council, right? Most of them schedule their own meetings, like y'all have changed how often you meet or when you meet, you know, the only legal requirement is that they're noticed in a certain amount of time. So people know that the meetings are coming up. So that would be that's why I said sort of schedules like the annual average number of meetings, because some people meet a ton. And then some people meet once or twice a year at most, right? So it would be easier if there was a standard, yeah. Because because there is a kind of standard in the members number, right? So I think no, no standard. Okay, I tell you again, a building code of two members and then the advisory committee is 12. Oh, yeah, I thought the numbers are coming from the city. Okay, got it. And even within this two, I think like, you know, our meetings are like an hour and then just during the community fund board, we're blocking off like a multi hour long meeting to review the grants, you know, like, and then there's also like a huge amount of, I mean, we have time that we do in between the, you know, but like for the reviewing the grants, it's like blocking off, you know, 15 hours to review the grants before going into them. That's not included in this, you know, for, for, because it's just meeting time too, you know. Yeah. And then I also just want to think too, like, this is the max number. And so right, like, this is definitely not going to be the full, you know, this is not like, not all of the numbers will be on it. They won't have all of the meeting, you know, like just for that number stuff too, you know, and then also it's not including all of that other hidden labor that Jeremy was just talking about of, you know, that it's not, yeah. Yeah, those are some of my reactions, I guess, too. But Michael, I feel like you have the most experience on like lots of different types of city committees. Do you have any, like, reactions to? No, I am impressed by seeing the full number, although I every said, every time I go to the, the city's website and I look at that list of committees, I see, oh yeah, there are a lot of committees here. You're right, the committee time commitment varies enormously depending on the committee. And committees that I've been on, unfortunately, only one that I recall required a lot of back, a lot of preparation time. But the rest of them, you know, you need to put in a lot of time. And what are we, and the question is, what are we, what are we, what are we trying to accomplish by doing this? Do we want to be able to give people who might need help, for example, with childcare, some, some extra cash to handle those so that they can attend the meetings? That's, that's one thing. Are we trying to reward participation? That's a whole other thing. And it does, I think it all, I think that erodes the sense of public, the notion that this is public service. And, and I think we have to be careful about that. So that's all I can say about it. It is, it is an impressive number to think that, well, there's a maximum of $102,000 that could be used up. I'm, I'm pretty confident that that would not be anywhere near what was actually asked for. But if our, if one of our goals is to try to pull people in who, who feel that they have not the resources, the financial resources to be able to devote that time, that we need to push forward with something. Yeah, and I think that is like our one and only goal here. You know, like I, I, from, from my perspective, like I think it is about how can we make sure that people who want to be able to participate in committees be able to, right? And so like, yeah, if people want to use that for getting childcare or parent care or what, you know, like, or just, just to be able to take the time away from work or, you know, like whatever, just to make participating excessive, like more accessible, I guess, recognizing this isn't going to solve all the problems by any means, but that it's like one step that, you know, we can do to help try to make committee participation more accessible. But that's, yeah, thanks for naming that. Yeah. I think this is important. I think this is important because one of the the complaints that we're hearing nationally is a little government is too much in our face. And what, when you look at a chart like, chart like this, what you see is government is us. Right. It's, we, we are, we are a self governing society in some ways. And in order to make that stick, I think it's important to have something like this to allow more people to, to join in this effort and take away the barrier of there's government and there's people and then there's the citizens. And I think that that's a very important path to try to follow. One thing I really, this is great conversation. I really appreciate everything you're saying, all of you. So I'm just wondering too, in terms of process, like if we approach this in the spirit of a prototype, something we want to test out as a small scale, it seems palatable to just in terms of the overall budget, the city's trying to do, and also just testing against what we want this program to do for committee participation, making sure folks who maybe wouldn't participate, could participate through a program like this. So I'm wondering if that's where we get into some kind of more constraints around, you know, is it only certain committees? Is it, I don't want to put more hoops to jump through, but for example, is it an income declaration? So there's a cap. I don't know what those parameters are, but in, in the spirit of keeping it small and manageable as a test, a pilot, I wonder what we could propose to council. Okay, so now we're going into the process. Yeah, here we go. Go ahead, Cameron. Well, honestly, that makes sense to me is a pilot program. And then it's very easy to see, does that increase the folks who are applying for it? Does it help increase the diversity of who is applying for the committee seats? Maybe, maybe in the pilot program, you can, or the city can ask, do you want to support financially when you spend time in the committee? Some people will say no. So it should be optional, right? Because as Michael said, I always think that it's a public service. So doing it voluntarily is like make, makes me feel better about myself because I feel I'm contributing to my community. So maybe they will say, no, I'm, I'm okay to do it. And some people, yeah, I want to do, but I need for like, as we mentioned, childcare or other reasons. So maybe it will be also good for us to see who needs and who doesn't. Well, I do have a meeting with committee chairs on Monday. Shayna, you got that invite, right? No. Okay. Well, I don't know why not. So I'll figure that out. But it's to remind everyone about open meeting laws. So I'll mention it then as well. Great. That would be awesome. Okay. So I reckon I'm just also recognizing we're getting close on time here. But does that, do we feel like we have a good right next steps here? Like what is, what is the timeline that we would need to make this decision is another question? Okay. I was not like, well, I guess when is, when is the budget? Can you remind us on when the budget process is for FY23? Right now. Okay. So I think this is something I can certainly start floating in the conversation. I would need, it would need to, we would need to make that a priority of our next meeting with y'all to sort of figure out what you'd want to put forward to stay within the timelines if we want to change it other than like wholesale. Here's what the recommendation is, right? Yeah. If this is useful, I would be willing to kind of draft some, just guidelines for how we might like present a pilot sized program around this that we could have something at least to just start with the conversation. Hey, Lauren's here. Sorry. I just stopped sharing my screen and I saw that. Didn't hear you join. Sorry about that. Sorry, I just popped on. Sorry, I'm running late. Um, Jeremy, I think that would be great. And I think just like, do we want to have just a second of like, do you think like, sticking with like a $30,000, like working backwards from a cap or you, you will think about that or maybe like and present like some ideas or proposals. Maybe it's just, I mean, a few different options with the goal, of course, of being to like having a budget number that is, you know, feasible. And I don't know, maybe Cameron, you do have a ballpark number that could be a target. No, I'm sorry. Yeah. So some options would be, yeah, Michael. We were using the $50 per meeting because that's what Essex did. Do we know if Essex has the same number of committees as we do? That's what Cameron was saying as they have a lot less. Yeah. So I mean, I think we, I think it would be wise to, to retreat from the $50 goal because it's, it's infeasible, I think, with, with the number of committees that we have. Maybe it's a more modest figure that would allow, allow people at least to offset some portion of, of what they spend in, have to spend in cash to attend. And just, just looking at the reality of what we've got here, of this large number of, of committees, large number of people, and obvious limitations on that. You guys started to like jump in late on this, like from some experience with like committees that have started doing this more and more, like we found like not many people actually do take it. Right. I'm like, like, obviously we would need to budget a maximum in case everybody all of a sudden decided to, but I don't think most people would. So like, I would rather make it feasible for people to attend with something that actually like works. And then, and see, like, are we getting massive uptake or not? Like, we had like a huge fight about this for the climate council that the state's running and like got all this money allocated and then like, almost nobody's actually using it, which is fine, but it's there for anyone who does want it and like the way it's offered matters and stuff. But like, so how about how about sending a survey to the active members and ask their opinion? Can give us some kind of feedback? How many people will want this or think that it's a good idea? The issue that I have with that is I feel like the goal of it is to bring new members on who hadn't been able to participate. And so by just working backwards from the members who we currently have, we're not going to be getting that good data, you know, of like what would be the most helpful. Okay. So I need to leave. Sorry. Thank you. It is nine o'clock and we didn't even start looking at all of that. Michael's really important work on VHIP and the landlord meeting follow up. Michael, is it okay if we just if we punt this to the 17th? Is that okay? I mean, the last, I don't know what got from me because I don't, my email stuff is always messed up. But I had suggested that the next meeting, the 17th, he would be here, but I'll contact him and say we have to push that off. He's okay with that because he thinks that actually looking a little bit better, longer down the road would give him more information. So I'll just let him know that we're not going to do that on the 17th, but we will get back to him as soon as we have some dates to offer. Cool. So let's look at the 17th, we will circle back on the stipends. We will look at the public budget survey process and communications needs and dig into VHIP landlord meetings follow up. And then on December 1st, we will have hope, we'll circle back too, but of having VHIP folks come to give us a report back. That sound good? Awesome. Thank you all so much. Did you you got the documents that I sent to the two about what the law is? And is that circulated to everybody? Yes. I did just send it last night though. It's like I feel like over every year, like the day that I send out the, you know, I like gets, you know, now it's like eight hours before the meeting I send it out. So I apologize for that. And I don't know what to say. It's like I'm going to work on it. So thank you for sending it, Michael. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thanks all. Yeah. Thanks so much for all of your work. This was a good meeting. Feeling fired up. Okay. Bye. Bye.