 Health, Social and Environmental Affairs Committee meeting to order. Very excited for this new committee that will be looking at a wide range of issues affecting the health and well-being of our community. So Madam Clerk, if we can note that all three members are here, we have a full agenda, and I want to be respectful of everyone's time, so we can jump right in. We have the Honorable Will Brennan coming as a member of the public today to talk to us about the Senior Health and Wellness Program and community partnerships with the Lurie Center. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. What a fantastic topic to kick off this committee, this one-of-a-kind committee, senior quality of life here in the Midlands, and especially here in the city of Columbia. I think we all, everybody knows the Lurie Center. If you've never been to the Lurie Center, please go visit. It's a wonderful destination for quality senior programs in the heart of our city. We have the executive director here today, Ms. Sandra Owensby, if you'd like to stand up and say hello. We appreciate you so much being here today. So I asked our city staff about, what was that, six months ago to take a look at possibly bringing the Lurie Center and their programming and operations under the wings of Parks and Rec here at the city of Columbia to add to our senior quality of life programs. The structure of the Lurie Center is, and you can, why don't you come up here and kick me if I'm wrong on a couple of things, all right? It is a nonprofit. You have a board. The city owns the property, but the foundation built the facility. All right, wonderful. I got that right, so no kicking today. So the struggles in the past have been with funding, funding the services, the programs, and you rely on private donations. What are the other revenue sources that come in for you? Memberships, of course, grants the county and the city, of course, and private donations. And then we have an annual fall festival, which is our biggest fundraiser of the year. So we're always trying to get new revenue streams. So recently, the revenue streams have been an issue with the counties pulling back of funding, not just for the Lurie Center, but a lot of nonprofits in the area as line items. So my request to city staff, Mr. Simons and his team at Parks and Rec and Facilities, was to look at what the cost for the operation is, look at the state of the facilities, and come back with some comments on how we might be able to move forward with bringing the operations at the Lurie Center in under Parks and Rec. I believe you have three employees, Sandra, is Sandra, is that right? Three full time. Three full time. And so you have a lot of volunteer coordinators, program directors, and everything like that. So that's the report you're gonna see today. I don't know if, Missy Kaufman, if you just wanna come up and give a couple bullet points about what the financial analysis of the Lurie Center summary is, and then I'll let, who's the facilities, the best facilities person to comment? Yeah, you climbed through the whole building. You come up here after that and just give a couple bullet points on that. And then my hope is that this wonderful committee will pass out to staff to continue the conversation and really digging in on the numbers and the operations to bring the Lurie Center in under the Parks and Rec banner. So Missy, I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Brunnan. As Council Member Brunnan's mentioned, we did provide some information about the financials that we have regarding the Lurie Center, of which was limited based on what we were able to receive both from Ms. Owensby as well as what we've received from our own information that we have from other purposes. And this analysis is just based on the fiscal year 2020 and 21, 2021-22 and then 2022-23. As mentioned, a lot of the revenue streams coming into the Lurie Center for the years that we've referenced, by far the majority that has come from the county and as I understand the county's funding sources have been significantly halted, I believe, because of change in their process. I don't think it's a, I'm not familiar with their process. I can't speak to their process other than the process has changed. I don't know what the expectation is regarding that. But of course, 48% of their entire revenues coming into the Lurie Center based on my information is from the county, which of course, for any organizations that's reliant totally on government support is gonna be faced with challenges of course in their operations. So other than speaking to their opportunities for other fundraising type of activities, such as other types of grant sources or other types of membership functions or programmatic cost, some of those other functions looks like a combination of membership is about 11% and donations are also about 11%. Programmatically, it's about 5%. Based on the information that we know of with regards to nonprofit support and what we know from researching with like the guide star, approximately recommendation is that a range of 15 to 35% from management overhead and 10 to 15% for fundraising and 65 to 85% regarding expenses for operations. I would say based on the expense side of the analysis that we performed only about 6% of their budget is related to fundraising. So a majority of their operation costs are related to programmatic services. Just based on the indication in terms of what- How much is it for like administrative costs? Administrative costs of management is about 36%, but that would be a combination of both administration based on our analysis, administration and operating cost of the facility. Programmatic looks to be about 58%. Fundraising is low compared to what is recommended from guide star and charity navigator with the Better Business Bureau. So management-wise, they're not really that far. Well, again, that's also inclusive of overhead and other operating costs. So this is just a peek into, I mean, this is not a accounting or auditory type of analysis, this is based on the information that's available for recent years. With the funds backing out, with the county backing out of its funded, let's cut right to the chase. What is it going to approximate, not approximately, but at least a capsule of what would it take for us to fund the Lurie Center? What's that amount? That really isn't a part of my analysis. I think that's probably a combination. I think that's next step, Sad. All right, I understand next steps, but it's important for us to understand that if $250,000 is being pushed back by the county. 180 was their last. Yeah, I see 180. Is that less administrative or all that's inclusive? That's the only source that I have in terms of amount of revenue coming in. What would be an appropriate budget on our side to fund the Lurie Center? Now, if you can't do that, I need to find or at least give some idea of what is going to cost us as a city. We just, so we talked about. Approximately $200,000. That's a question for policy to question. So, Councilman McDowell and Councilman Duvall, I think our question is, do we want to continue exploring bringing this all the way into the city? And that's what I'd like to hear from you all. And I know that there's, for example, this is something I did want to highlight that Charity Navigator and Better Business Bureau suggests a range of 15 to 35% for management and overhead, 10 to 15% for fundraising, and it's only at 6%. And then 65 to 85% of expenses for program-related costs. So that's the question. So Andrew Boosers here from Senior Resources are aging. And he participated in the roundtable discussion. There are alternative revenue sources out there through the State Department aging, other memberships. And like the annual mission functions with the city shelter, I see that as the private contributor, the private donor portion of this. So it's something that we need to build and model if we are to bring this under and really understand the employee and infrastructure costs as well. But like I said, I think that can all be pulled pretty quickly. I know there's a desire by the Lawry Center to continue these conversations to keep the programming for seniors going. Well, I don't want to seem presumptuous at any point. And I certainly don't want to jump ahead, but I'm anxious to go ahead and at least explore that narrative as it relates to the Lawry Center, as it relates to the budgeting process and how effectual that can be within our city. So I want to explore that. Absolutely, I share that angst with you. And of course, if I throw out something that I need immediately, I'm all right to wait and hear that, but I don't want it to be a wait that's going to be over a period of time. Well, Councilman McDowell, it is budget season. So there's a reason that I'm in front of you on this day, putting this important idea forward to the committee. Kelvin, did you want to just come briefly and make some remarks on the state of the facility? Real quick, just my staff and myself, we went through the building, we climbed through, like Councilman Brennan said, looking at all air conditioned components. And what I'd have to say is deferred maintenance comes to mind with the facility. There's a lot of older equipment, HVAC specifically. The boiler is 28 years old, HVAC units are 13. And then a lot of internal painting, carpet, tile, that type of stuff that needs to be addressed just to bring the facility up, okay? So those are the major components I see at the building. And Madam Chairwoman, I mentioned, I'm sorry, just go ahead and Councilman DeVall. Well, Madam Chairman. Yes. I certainly support Ms. McDowell's suggestion that we get all the facts about this thing. We have struggled with the Lurie Center since I've been on Council on a year by year basis. And Sandra knows my email and my phone pretty quickly. And I think that it is a great organization that provides a lot of resources that probably could be expanded if it was part of the Parks and Recreation System. And I would like to get all the numbers together to see what we're talking about. I'd also like to explore with the county not taking away all of that 180,000 but put in some resources so that we'd be able to count on them on a yearly basis. Absolutely. So I'm hearing that. Right, we understand. Yes, ma'am. She commented that we don't know for sure that the county will not continue future funding but has been cutting back with so many different, I guess, places to send money. So the consensus I'm hearing is too for us to move to the next step and get more information about the actual cost to the city in terms of these pieces. All right, thank you for your time. All right, so we will move into our next agenda item which is potential drinking water regulatory limit for perfluorinated substances. Sounds very geeky and exciting. So that will be Mr. Frank Eskridge and Dr. Alejandra Beyer. Okay, perfect, I wanna get that right. Good morning, members of council, Ms. Wilson. That's quite a swing from the Lurie Center to the Florida Nation level. Yes, sir, we are making a big change in subject matter. The committee has a broad resume. We have with us today Dr. Alejandra Beyer who has served as our laboratory manager and is now our interim drinking water compliance manager. And we had some information that we wanted to share with you about the perfluorinated compounds that we believe are about to be regulated by EPA. DHEC had a press event within the last day about this and we wanted to put this in front of you because there's a potential that it will affect how we deal with drinking water here in Columbia. So Alejandra. Thank you, Frank. Thank you for your time. We appreciate the time of the committee. Again, Alejandra Beyer here. I'm gonna be discussing what we are looking at in terms of these perfluorinated compounds known as PFAS. So you'll probably have heard of them in the news or in social media and you'll start seeing them probably more simply because of, as Frank alluded to, the fact that the regulators, EPA is coming up with impending regulation. So what are PFAS? PFAS are a class of compounds known as perfluorinated compounds. They are everywhere for ubiquitous. They are indestructible, if you will. They're hard to remove. They stay in the environment and they bioaccumulate. As you can see from this image, you can see that the cycle of PFAS everywhere, you can see it in groundwater, you can see it in the air, industrial applications. So the problem is that there's thousands of these kinds of compounds and they're found in many industries for many users and they are challenging currently to assess what the link is with health and environmental effects. So is it recent that they've discovered the potential harmful effects of PFAS? Why is it coming up now? So I'll give you a rundown of a history we can push forward to the next part, which is these have been linked to some effects and they've been studied for several years now. And if we go back a little bit in time, when we had what's known as the unregulated contaminant monitoring rule, which was around 2013 through 2015, these are required tests analysis that EPA requires utilities small and large to be part of. And as a result of that, they came up with a provisional health advisory limit, which was in the parts per trillion. As you can see here, I know it's a little bit small, but it was around 600 parts per million. And so that health advisory level was the level at which no known health effects were found. And so that was back then when they had information, preliminary information as a result of that regulation. Fast forward a little bit to 2016 and the threshold, if you will, for the health advisory level came down to 70 parts per trillion. From then on, they did further studies and what we now have, this came out, what you see here on this table came out last June, 2022. And what you can see is a group of four of these mostly studied PFAS compounds. The ones in green are the ones who have, which have a health advisory level that's an interim, meaning that it's still under study. So they're still trying to assess the effects that it has in health, human health. The lower two chemicals that you have here in blue in the table, those have health advisory levels that are basically permanent, so final, they're finalized. And these are based on studies done on animals and the potential that they have on health effects, whether it be liver and other organ organs. And so this is what came up in June, 2022. As a result of this and many studies that EPA has conducted, they are now moving towards further regulation. Before I move into the next step of what might happen, what I wanted to, what we wanted, Frank and Assistant City Manager, Clint Shealy, wanted to show you, oh, go ahead, Councilman. Madam Chair, let me just ask you a consequential question. The adding of those chemicals, how does that affect areas where there's a real issue with piping and leaks and all that sort of stuff? In neighborhoods where there's, lack of a better word, inadequate plumbing, how does that affect that? That's a good question. Or is there any effect at all? So from what we've been able to tell, not only with our utility, but also nationwide data, is that these are found in source water. So they're found where we draw the water to then be treated. And we also find them at certain levels, depending on the source water and finished water. So they would be potentially in many areas. So they would be in drinking water at different levels, but that's kind of the next step of what I'd like to illustrate as far as the levels. Frank might have more to add to this point for clarity. So go ahead, Frank. Councilman, the health effects of the perforated compounds is still very uncertain. There's an enormous amount of research going on at the federal level by all the different health agencies. And they're very diligently looking in to see what kind of effect it would have. One thing I want to make sure all of you understand, we don't put, we don't create any of this, okay? This is in the streams, in the rivers already. DHEC did some testing around the state recently to develop ambient water levels for the PFOS compounds, and they found it almost everywhere, okay? So what happens is we get raw water to treat it to be safely consumed by our customers. These chemicals are in there, and keep in mind, we're not talking about parts per million or parts per billion. We're now talking about parts per trillion, okay? Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir. You're talking 100,000 parts per million is one part per trillion, okay? So. Madam Chair. So it doesn't matter then the infrastructure, the water infrastructure, because it's so small, it would not be factual in large quantities, but right on point because chemicals are so small. Well, that, and they're already. They're already there. In the environment, yes, sir. So to summarize my understanding, we know that this compound exists naturally or in some way. It's man-made. It's man-made from the environment, right? And it's something that's present in where we pull water to then treat for us to be able to drink. And so there's just very preliminary research right now that may suggest in terms of potential harm to human health, we're still learning more. And so today we're here to kind of get ahead of it in terms of understanding what that presence looks like in our water within Columbia water. And so I think, and then the interim and final is, so some of the values have been finalized in terms of we don't wanna go above this, right? And then some of them, they're still being studied in terms of what is the threshold for the number we don't wanna go ahead. Am I understanding that correctly? For health, for the health, correct. The health advisory limit or level does not dictate the compliance side, so the regulation. It's a component that's taken into consideration, but what it allows is to provide guidance for utilities and customers regarding these compounds. And so it's a guideline. I wanna make a point to Dr. Bussells that those two interim health advisory levels are below the detection limit of the analytical methods that we have available. So even if our water was non-detect, we couldn't say we're below those interim health advisory levels. The technology doesn't allow you to detect down that low. So that's kind of a, that was really very interesting for that to roll out in June of this year to go from 70 part per trillion to undetectable was a very fundamental shift in that advisory goal. Yes. How does the perfluorinated compounds compare with the compounds that we were afraid of a year ago, the little small pieces of plastic? Microplastics. What were they called, poly? Microplastics. Microplastics. Yeah. Is this a kissing cousin of the perfluorinated or? I don't think they're linked. The spotlight has shifted. Correct. That might be an emergent contaminant, if you will. So it might come down the line. We've been hearing about it for many years, but it's not as pervasive and as ubiquitous as PFAS. And so again, just to kind of start at the beginning, these have been around since the 40s and they're in many applications. They're in personal care products, industrial applications. So they're everywhere. As you can see from this graphic, they're even found in rain and many places. So that's kind of how they got there. And so if you continue, we continue looking at this, we wanted to inform you so that you know what's coming from the regulators. What we're thinking is that, well, before I get to the next step of what my bill regulation be, I wanted to share what our numbers are. Pardon me, Frank, I don't want to be in front of you. Appreciate it. So from the graphic, you can see that we have two of the major PFAS components. This is the finished water. Finished water. So in blue, we have our canal plant. In orange, we have the lake plant. And the values that you see up at the top are the average of detection for these compounds. These are the major compounds that we found. And so you can see the levels there between 3.1 and 6.2 on the high end as far as the average goes. And so this is just to give you preliminary information what we've been detecting. So what has been in our source water that we have then treated and it has remained in there. The next thing is just to put it kind of in perspective, the next step is as a result of the South Carolina DHEC press briefing that they had yesterday, they further announced that EPA is gonna be coming up with regulation and the speculation has been that they will come up with enforceable limits which are known as maximum contaminant limits or levels rather for PFAS and PFOA individually or combined. So the speculation is that they might be around the four part per trillion level to put it in perspective. These are again, averages. So in some instances, we might be slightly over that limit. So then what happens after this? In addition to the regulation that's going to be coming up, what we have is in its ongoing is the unregulated contaminant monitoring rule that we're required to be a part of and participate with sampling. It's already started this year and that's the fifth iteration. So what this allows is for further sampling and studying of these compounds. There are 29 that are under study for this cycle and as a result of that, they'll be able to then form a fuller picture of what the prevalence of these compounds is. So, but at the same time, the regulation will be coming up later this year and so they may announce it this Friday. Go ahead, Councilman. Is the difference between the canal plant and the lake plant, the difference between the Saluda River and the Broad River? The Lake Murray at the Lake Plant, yes. And then the Broad River at the canal. The Saluda is cleaner. So our treatment processes really don't remove this level of compound. Yes, sir. So in general, the testing that we've done, we've been testing for quite a few years and trending this just to learn more about it because it may be regulated and the compounds pass through our treatment as they do most everyone else's treatment in our state and in the region. And so again, to add on to what Assistant City Manager, Clint Shealy, has been saying is that yes, we have been proactive. We've been sampling. We've been sharing information with our customers. We have a page dedicated to PFAS on our site and a few things to point out because these are not easily removed by conventional treatment, the alternative treatment options come at a great investment. So, go ahead, yes, go ahead, Frank. And as you all are explaining that, I think it's especially important to Councilman McDowell's point for the public to understand that living in areas where the infrastructure may not be as invested in or still has a lot of improvement to be done does not increase risk, right? And we need to be very clear that this is something that is present because of many factors in our environment. And I especially liked Dr. Byer's example of this is in your personal care products and we're learning as we go. So I think that messaging will be important for some of our more vulnerable communities. In fact, to get context on this, if we took every bit of it out of the water, if we were at pure zero, 80% of people's exposure would still remain because 80% of people's exposure to these compounds is through personal care products and consumer goods, scotch guard, any type of waterproofing on leather. You know, if you wanna be able to wipe that stain out of your carpet, those are perflornated compounds that allow that, okay? So they've been used widely since the 1940s as Dr. Byer said, the concern we have is that if the levels, if the maximum contaminant level, the enforceable number is set at four parts per trillion, which Clint, I believe, is the minimum detectable amount right now by the technology that we have available. We are at 5.1 and 6.2 on average for some, okay? Yes, and DHEC did some testing at various water utilities around the state a few years ago. We decided to do that twice a year and publish the findings on our website because we wanted to be transparent with our customers so that they would know. Here's the challenge. Granular activated carbon is the most appropriate treatment process to deal with these compounds. If we needed to build an 80 million gallon per day, treatment capacity, like we have at the Cabanao plant, at a dollar a gallon, that's 80 million dollars. We're not producing any more water than we have all along, 80 million. When we go to operate that year after year after year after year at 35 million gallons a day, which would be about the average flow, you're looking at about 33 cents per treated gallon. That's 12 million dollars a year on operating costs. The canal budget last year was eight million dollars. We're talking about possibly having to add 12 million to that. So this is not an exercise in scientific knowledge. This will have real effects on our customers. And when EPA announces what they're going to announce, there'll be a comment period. And it'll be our duty to comment, okay? So circling back to what Alejandro started with, the health effects are still unknown. Yes, they should be investigated and studied. But right this minute, EPA has moved out ahead of their own Science Advisory Board on how to deal with this, which you could see from the numbers going from 600 to 70 to below detection limits, okay? So we'd be happy to answer any questions. So our action is to just be aware that this is happening and then you all will keep us posted after EPA makes that announcement about what you would suggest as to how we can advocate or whatever you'd like us to do. Yes ma'am, we figured after the DHEC announcement yesterday, you folks might start getting some questions. So just a couple of summary comments and thank you all so much for that information. I think it's really good. Not to alarm anyone. We don't know what those levels will be proposed at. We expect that will come out late this week or early next week. We had previously expected that to come out before the end of 2022 and it's been deferred. When that does come out, we'll have a better understanding when they propose this maximum contaminant level, we'll have a better understanding of how that impacts us. We expect it's gonna be pretty low and there could be some impact. That'll be the opportunity for us to comment and to advocate to your point, Dr. Bussells. So we may be asking y'all to help us advocate for patience and understanding of health effects because the potential impact on affordability of water both in Columbia and really nationwide is very, very significant. So that's a concern. Availability of the granular activated carbon to even treat the water nationwide would be very much a concern. So, and the impact on operational costs. So for all those reasons, we wanted to bring it to your attention, we're gonna continue sharing information on our website, on social media as we've been doing every time we test and we've been pushing this out. We've been including this information in our annual water quality report. We'll continue to do that as well. We wanna educate our customers, not alarm them and advocate for patience and understanding. We take public health very, very seriously. It's what we do every day, making sure people have safe drinking water, so we'll continue that. Councilman McDowell and then Councilman Dowell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just two things. It's a natural compound, small amounts. How this effectuates itself in communities with old systems is not a, I don't want to say not a real issue because it's gonna happen regardless. My understanding, of course, is making sure that communities are safe, that communities do understand that there's not a potential for quote unquote danger. It sounds like we already have it there. Even if it's running through PVC or whether it's running through metal pipes, it's already there. I would not want to incur any further expenses in terms of water infrastructure in having to dig up all of that for something that's already there. So, Reverend McDowell, to that point, they are man-made, but they are ubiquitous in the environment, and so there's no impact on the concentration of compound at a customer's tap, their faucet, depending on whether their infrastructures, their pipes are old or brand new, that won't make a difference. So, you're spot on there. And I think what we would want to do is, as this regulation has proposed, public meetings, making sure we're getting the information out there, most of the health effects research has occurred so far as chronic exposure, drinking two and a half liters of water a day for 70 years at levels above a threshold of one in 10,000, or maybe one in a million cancer risk. So, it's a chronic issue, we don't understand it to be an acute issue, but again, that health research needs to evolve and we need to be patient so that we truly understand. Madam Chair. We've got an advocate for the city of Columbia who's gonna be down the hall from the president in about 60 days and I would hope that we would get the former mayor in here and give him a briefing like this before he gets up there. So, he will have that in the back of his mind when we do call him about the $80 million a year additional capital costs and $12 million a year O&M cost, he would understand that impact of those type cost increases on the availability of drinking war, at least in the city of Columbia. Yes, sir, absolutely, we'll do. Any other questions? Thank you so much, appreciate it. All right, so we have finished the health effect to seniors, we've talked about environmental effects of water and now we will move into the social of part of our committee and talk about a project that I know Director Heppard has been working very hard on and that is our Rapid Shelter Columbia update and HUD funding. I had asked for this to be put on the agenda as we think about during budget season moving away from using our general fund dollars to support Rapid Shelter and exploring other potential funding opportunities to sustain the great work that's happening at Rapid Shelter. So, I will pass it over to Ms. Kamisha Heppard. So, we started this project on November 1, February 1, we hit our 90-day mark. So, I just had a little information to share about what we have accomplished in those 90 days. I believe you guys had received the overall review and so according to the data, it says that we received 171 referrals to Rapid Shelter Columbia. We accepted 113. The majority of our referrals came from the social workers at the library and then CPD. Some demographic information is that 62% is African-American 37% is white and 1% is other. We have been working with... Kamisha, when you have a moment, could you talk about a reason a referral would be denied? So, we had 58 that were denied, okay. I can answer those. So, the goal of Rapid Shelter Columbia is the chronically unsheltered living in the city limits. And so, we have gotten referrals from individuals who maybe was homeless for two months or coming from Charlotte or different things like that and then they would be denied. You refer to those persons coming in from other areas, say like Charlotte or other places. Do we have data to sort of say how many folk coming in from other places as it relates to those persons who are in Columbia? I can get that for you. I can compile it and tell you what it looks like. I don't have it in front of me. The system that we use, HMIS, we only put the data in there for individuals that become participants. So, we can do a report on that. But if you wanna know how many referrals came in of those individuals that were from out of the city limits, I can get that. Yeah, it would say, I've heard over and over again that there's an exodus of persons coming in from other areas to Columbia. It would certainly be good to know what that data sort of represents. And I know that that population is varied. Even with folk who are in Columbia, I know that population is varied as it relates to coming into Columbia. But it would be good to have that kind of data in front of us if you could. Thank you, ma'am. So, I was getting ready to move on to the population that we serve. So, we all know that it's chronically homeless. And right now we are dealing with 31% with mental health diagnoses and 30% substance use. And the remainder of that is dual diagnoses. So far, since we've been operating, Rapid Shelter Columbia has had five successful permanently housed individuals. That's very exciting. So, I think our first person that we housed, we did that in collaboration with USC Supported Housing. Right. We've been worked well. The case managers have been working with SC Housing in obtaining EHV vouchers, which is emergency housing vouchers that came about during COVID. So, they've been working really closely with SC Housing as the state housing authority, trying to get some of our participants vouchers. Some of, we had a couple of participants that came with those vouchers. Those vouchers are for Lexington County. The challenge with Lexington County is transportation. So, they have housing out there that accepts vouchers, but it's not on the bus line. And then participants wouldn't be able to get to the grocery store, get to the doctor, et cetera. So, we are working on porting those vouchers to Richland County. So, they would be on the bus line. Is there a potential option to use some of our bus ticket dollars to get them to that permanent housing in Lexington? Or is it more so that that housing is so isolated that they couldn't access other? It's so isolated. It's isolated, okay. Just to review, more on the 90-day overview, out of the 113 applicants that we accepted, we had 27 discharges. At the time this report was ran, it was three were housed, seven were negative discharges, and 17 were voluntary discharges. And so, what a voluntary discharge looks like is individuals who came in to try the program out and it didn't work for them for one reason or another. So, we had some participants that have experienced so much trauma that being in a confined place didn't work for them, even if it's the single occupancy pallet. It didn't work for them and they were able to verbalize that. And so, they were discharged. The seven negative discharges, those are individuals who were not compliant with the rules. They weren't willing to work the program. So far, we have been able to help 11 clients gain employment. We've helped initiate the disability process 29 individuals, 32 individuals in the program have been signed up with primary care provider and 23 have non-cash benefits, so like SNAP. This is really impressive in 90 days that y'all been able to do that. Just 90 days. Yes, sir. Even though this is never a first, that's incredible. So, MACA has been working really hard to build partnerships with community agencies. Yes. So, Mac and Wall is manager of operations and Nyasha Franklin is the program specialist. Without them, this work could not have been accomplished. They've been working really hard to help in all areas, helping with clients, case management, identifying permanent housing, identifying different and unique partners. So, we know the partners out there that are known for Laredak for substance use and Columbia area mental health or mental health, but we are trying to identify different partners that are willing to use different techniques in order to engage clients and get them to a stable place so that they can become permanently housed. And MACA has done a great job with that with bringing in different partners. She's brought in partners and different churches and individuals that come in and provide their services on site. We have individuals and churches that have donated the supplies that we needed. We had 18 Willa pull up yesterday with a pallet of blankets and clothing and hygiene products and different things like that. So, we're doing great things at Wrapper Shop at Columbia and I'm looking forward to us doing some other great things. Does anybody have any questions so far? Yes. Madam Chair. Yes. Let me just express my excitement. And of course your commitment in making all of this. I know it's been a dubious task. And it continues to unfold itself as we move clearly into what we want to do. Being able to distinguish the various, and that's what I was looking for, to distinguish whether it was a denial or whether it was a negative thing. Thank you for clarifying that. Let me ask you this. Let's talk a little bit about staff. Do we have significant staff when I say move forward? Is there a need specifically for certain persons to be a part of staff, whatever that position is? I think right now we are looking for some case managers. We have the outreach staff. So we have that daytime outreach person. We have that evening outreach person started last week. So that evening outreach person is now training, training during the daytime hours just to get a hang of things, see what it looks like. And then they'll be on evenings. We've been working with the yellow shirts. The yellow shirts, they are also bringing on an evening person. Oh, you're not the guy. You're not the guy. They're bringing on an evening person. So we'll have two. Once we get some more case managers on, we'll be good unless we grow and then we'll need more. Hopefully we're gonna grow. Hopefully we're solving the problem. So Madam City Manager or Missy, as we move into the next part of the discussion about potential HUD funding opportunities, could you remind the committee how much it was to operate this over the last? Like what we had budgeted for and what you anticipate. So first, but before the commission brought that up about staff, I was gonna ask to just say a couple of things. I just wanted to tell you all, I frequently stop by independent of the overflow. That's 24 hour operation. I just can't say how wonderful a job that Missy's done. Other than her subject matter expertise coming in and Missy's something that started from scratch. And just the order of this one that I see down there, the behavior of all the places in life these people are at. I mean, it's really remarkable. It just had a very, in order, a lot of calm. It's not the chaos that I think a lot of people would expect. I mean, it's very much in order. And I think staff has been very quick to identify a problem or a problem individual that maybe creates an unsafe environment that would affect other people. And they take very, very quick action. And I've just, from really the outside looking at it, I've been very impressed with what I've seen. From a staffing standpoint, certainly leave that up to her for what she needs. The only thing I would throw out is as we move forward, I think what is effective is really what we refer to as outreach workers, people that can respond to these situations that you all often deal with with constituents that allow us to address their needs at all kinds of different hours. I think as we look to the future on staffing, increasing the ability to have staff that can respond timely would be beneficial to us because we know that we've all experienced now the frustration with mental health clinicians not being able to address, not their individual inability to address, but just the system itself when you introduce drug and alcohol into the mix. And it's just not a mental crisis. They're somewhat limited on what tools they have on their tool belt to address that problem. So I think the co-responder model is very effective for things beyond just homelessness as it was initially set up to be an atlas for us to respond to people in mental crisis. So we know we have mental crisis with our transient population, but we also have incredible addiction and other disorders that I think these outreach workers are very effective at. So I throw that out there and again, commend everybody down there and what you're doing is a really good job, thank you. Thank you Chief. So the budget that we used to start Rapid Shelter Columbia is 3.6 million, which was inclusive of the $1 million already programmed into the general fund. It also includes operations of like I said, Rapid Shelter Columbia, Rapid Shelter overflow, which previously was the inclement weather center as well as the continued support for USC supportive housing and the contract that the city has supported with transitions. Rapid Shelter Columbia to include overflow is shaking out to about 1.9, 1.8 to 1.9 million in terms of the operating cost because of course the 3.6 million was inclusive of the construction and purchase of the actual Rapid Shelter pallets. And there's some initial upfront one time costs that it's not expected to be reoccurring. And I know we've had several conversations, but to keep my colleagues up to date, we have applied for the opioid settlement funding received 480,000 already. That could be applied for this year. So we are still looking for additional funding opportunities, right? Yes, I think Kamish is coming back up to talk about the HUD funding, perfect. It is and our allocation is extremely low. I think there's an opportunity for us to go to our federal delegation and ask for it to be on par with some of the other states. So I believe you guys have the HUD document. If you see, I guess that's what you guys were talking about that we as the city get the least amount of money, the county gets the least amount of money, Lexington gets the majority of it. And so I've just been working trying to figure out what is the formula used by HUD to allocate funds? I have not been able to get an answer of what that is because Richland County and the city's number of unsheltered is higher than what Lexington County experienced. And just to be honest, I think Lexington County is just now recognizing they're unsheltered in Lexington County about three years ago. And so we experienced the unsheltered from Lexington County coming to the city. So I'm not sure of the formula in which they use. And I understand that those conversations with HUD have begun. So the goal is that we as the city will help to increase the allocation to MOP but also look for HUD to allocate the city and put funds separately. So that's what we are working towards. I've also been looking at other grants that the city could apply for. A lot of the grants that come out are geared towards non-profit. So we've been having the conversation about Rapid Shelter Columbia becoming its own non-profit up under the city. So I see. Alicia, do you have the number, Lexington County got 1.5 million? The city of Columbia got 300,000. Do you have the number for Richland County? Yes. Richland County is 504,000. It seems like it makes sense considering most of the services are here. Yeah, that's still less than, yeah. We need to get some of our political people on this chart, right? Yeah. Just to be present in the conversations. So we are a part of MOP. We are looking to assign staff to different committees so that we're present and be a part of the conversation. We can do what needs to be done to increase the funding. So I wanna confirm, Kamisha, that there are two pathways in terms of the continuum of care funding that you're suggesting. One is, of course, increasing the overall formula for the Midlands Area Coalition of Homelessness that we will be a part of, and then asking for a direct allocation to the city. And that is a possibility. So I think to my colleagues, the question is, is that something that we wanna move forward with recommending? Yes, okay. Is the 300,000 in this page a direct allocation or is that just how much we get out of the pot? That goes to Mock. We need to study this more intently and break it up into who we're gonna contact to see if we can change these moves. You get 1.5,000. And then the burden that we take on, yeah. Connecticut gets 28,000 per sheltered homeless. You could just give them the $28,000 check. Yeah, for lack of a better word. Keep up a good work. Thank you, sir. And get the money. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Last but not least, we'll move into the proposed meal sharing ordinance. Councilman McDowell and I served on the task force to prevent an unhomelessness. This was something that came out of that. It is now at a point where this committee needs to make a recommendation as to whether we'd like to move it forward to the larger council. And this was an ordinance that was created in response to the identified duplication and feeding programs that exist around the city, as well as some of the increased concerns around litter and upkeep that the city had to take on during COVID as single use containers increased. And there was just a lot more services that may not have been coordinated. So I will pass it over to Ms. Jacqueline to talk to us about the ordinance and give us an overview of what we're looking at. Yes, please join us at the table. No need to stand. It is a pleasure to sit amongst you today in this committee meeting. Today before you is with the goal of sharing food, beverages, items, services, whatever, so that we can create a mechanism for well-intentioned organizers to come and hold those events at locations that are actually suitable for those events. Some of you may have heard anecdotes about somebody pulling up in a car with a whole bunch of food containers in their trunk and then passing out mystery meats to a vulnerable population. And the havoc that that causes. And so we wanna make sure that when things like this are happening on our premises that we're exercising control, but at the same time, we wanna provide a mechanism that helps to facilitate events like this without overburdening our system. And so this builds on our existing group use permit. The same type of permit you would get if you wanted to book a pavilion or a soccer field or something to that effect. And it allows our Sunny Manager with the advice from all of the departments to determine a handful of locations that have got parking, access to public transportation, right? They're held at location, maybe held at locations near where the target populations tend to congregate or are at. And it gives us an administrative mechanism to better regulate those organizers who are not handling their events responsibly. Yes, sir. How do you regulate, in your words now, how do you regulate mystery meets? Well, there are... And I say that from the health standpoint. How do you regulate that? Somebody's given a permit. How do you regulate that piece of chicken or that poultry? How do we do that? What we're trying to do is in the application process establish a framework whereby organizers can indicate all of the nuances of their particular event. If they're serving perishable food, perishable products, particularly a chicken or something of that effect, they have to set forth in their application details concerning their plans as it pertains to food handling. Is that for food preparation? Or food handling? And these events would not be happening in a parking lot that doesn't have restroom or hand washing locations, right? We also have the added challenge of Finlay Park. That is soon going to be coming offline and has been for a very long time a common destination for events like this. And so this draft ordinance, not only does it help to address some of the challenges that Dr. Bussell's put forth. It also helps us to funnel people away from Finlay to suitable locations so that we can treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve as human people. And so that when somebody would get a permit such like this, it's not as burdensome, right? When we apply for a group permit, we've got to pay fees, deposits, security expenses. We have to apply for that permit at least I believe 15 days in advance. Sometimes people get a haul of items or food or something like that, and it's only got a certain shelf life. And so this type of a permit allows us to be more proactive. It allows, it's got a shorter timeline so that we can be responsive in the event of issues. Conceptualize the flood, for instance. All of the millions of people who all want to help, this gives us the opportunity, if the manager needs to designate another location, a temporary location for something like this, it can provide us with that mechanism. So you may have just a brief memo from me that was just kind of a bullet point of. I don't think we have that, but to confirm, this again would only apply to city-owned spaces. It would. So one, we don't do pop-up feedings in the middle of the street, right? There are laws and ordinances that address that. There are also laws and ordinances that address blocking of sidewalks. So we're not gonna have a pop-up feeding event or a place where we're passing out clothing donations or what-a-have-you on the sidewalk. But we can provide the appropriate location for events like this to be handled so that they are being a part of the solution and doing their fair share. And for my own personal interest, we have a number of employees that have to clean up after events like this. We have organizers that really do hold these events with just the best of intentions. And then they pick up their stuff and they leave. And we're left cleaning up styrofoam containers, strewn all about our parks, sidewalks, streets, adjoining properties. We have employees that are part of their job includes cleaning up human waste because events like this are held at locations that do not have functioning or suitable restrooms. And so this allows us to really think about these events, not only from the organizer's perspective, from that of those of the participants. These are humans. They deserve to be treated with dignity. And those organizers that hold their events in a responsible manner can have a little less of the burden. One important thing that we did add in this that I just wanted to bring your attention to, there was some question at the task force meetings in terms of how a burden summit could potentially be. And so I wanted to highlight that to just clarify for you. Part of the requirements would for food distribution events or beverages would require the organizers to label the disposable containers with their name and the date that it's been distributed. Now, why do we want that? Why do we want that? Well, one, it lets the people who are receiving this food know who it came from and when it was received or donated. But it also gives us the opportunity when we have staff picking up a park or sidewalks or streets. And if we're finding a whole lot of this refuse, we can go back to the organizer and hold them accountable. So it's very, I feel like the ordinance itself is styled much more so as a carrot approach than a stick approach. And we can't have it just being free for all. We need to establish some reasonable time, place and manner limitations on this so that we can make sure that the organizations who want to do this have an opportunity to participate. There are a number of organizations that have essentially cornered the market on feeding at a particular location. And this gives all of the well-intentioned people an opportunity to participate. And I think also I'm thinking from a coordination perspective, of course, we would love to see more of our meal sharing and volunteers come and work with Rapid Shelter. What I'm particularly interested in in this is that it helps us build out a calendar or schedule of some kind to even understand kind of like Councilman Duvall, you and I talked about prior to COVID of where and when there are going to be potential meal opportunities across the city. So any questions from the both of you about the ordinance? There's no fee for the permit. No fee. Right now it's currently drafted as a $150 refundable deposit. And that was very early on in the drafting process. I believe that there was a suggestion that we had received when the task came to us in terms of put something up on the table and then it helps us to recoup the deposit if that organizer does not do the same. And at the discretion of the city manager, that fee could be? It could be waived entirely. Additionally, any organization that partners with the city doesn't even have to deal with the whole permitting stuff. And so our administration has got a wide flexibility to collaborate with organizations that wanna do this. And especially those organizations that would like to do this on their own property. So that is done at the very beginning of that conversation. Let me ask you this. Finlay Park will be taken off of the cuff if for lack of a better word. Identifying those places, of course, if approved falls into the banner of city property and what we do. We've identified those places. There are a number of locations that I thought the management had been looking at. And I know that before they got too far into it in terms of the number of locations, maybe that council was interested in entertaining. And some of the more nitty-gritty details before they started ironing out all of that. But I think to Councilman McDowell's point, I think staff has heard us loud and clear about if we're investing, the amount we're investing in the revitalization of Finlay Park, we wanna find more suitable locations for potential meal sharing. And it may be that a portion of Finlay Park may be suitable for that. It really just depends. It just depends. And I'd like to see, given how much we spend on Salvation Army and providing meals at Rapid Shelter for people to start coming and providing those meals there, because then they could bypass this altogether. Yeah, which would be great. So I would love to hear from you all. I am supportive of bringing this to full council sometime late March, if possible, but would like to hear from you all if you are in agreement. I'm ready to bring it to council whenever you can get it on the schedule. I still have some questions about it. I have a friend that feeds every Tuesday night across from the bus station and he uses the church slot over there. Doesn't charge anything and he cracked a pretty big crowd. Would that be a possibility that the city could find a more suitable place for him? Well, I mean, we don't regulate that the church's property in terms of what they do. I think we want to regulate this feeding. He's willing to move anywhere we want him to move. Well, I guess if there were a better location or something, there's so many great organizations in Columbia that really strive to partner with us. And so I wouldn't, I'm not going to make any assumptions about that particular individual, but... Ice fella. I mean, I don't want to deregulate anything. I think it's needed. I think the Rapid Shelter Center, of course, could perhaps be a part of that in social terms of feeding there. So it's more about coordination as opposed to anything else, okay. So I'm hearing that we are comfortable with moving this forward. So I think we'll make that recommendation to bring it to council whenever we can get it on the agenda. Maybe the second meeting in March would be great. Any other questions about the proposed sharing ordinance? All right, thank you so much. If you're interested in kind of conceptualizing this a little bit more, I took this and modified it from the city of Miami's ordinance. They had a really interesting platform. It looks like they've really utilized a lot of technology to help with reserving locations and managing the application process. That would be, yeah, that'd be helpful. I think... That's just a brief memorandum, sir. Yes, yes. And Madam Clerk, if we could share the memo with all of council, I think this is very helpful. Okay, so I guess Councilman Duvall, entertain a motion to adjourn.