 So Jennifer, should we get started? We can do introductions if that's helpful to get you, Tom. And then we can do some, on our agenda, we've got reviewing minutes from two prior meetings. So from April 6th and April 11th in a public comment. And then finalizing our stipend review program. Which will be presented to city council tonight. So we've got like reviewing the feedback, reviewing what Cameron just sent out. And have a couple of questions as part of that. And then talk about the pre-launch survey and getting that out for talking about the city council meeting tonight. It's next week, just for clarity. Next week. Thank you. Yes, the 27th. Today's only the 20th. See, it's not June yet. And then I'm also going to add in just like we like debrief about the meeting. Before going to self education, learning around people's report back from other city committee meetings, etc. So I'm good. Any thing we also want to make sure we can cover. Yeah, I may have to leave if we if we run over nine o'clock because I have to go at nine to so let's let's do it in a clip. But great. Hello Tom Shayna. I'm on Ken Street. Yeah, you share crowds. And I'm sure I'll pass Michael. Michael Sherman. I've been a member of this since we started and I live on College Street. And I've been on a bunch of other committees over the course of my 36 years here. Jeremy. Good morning, Jeremy Bodry live on Elm Street in Montpelier. I've been on the committee. Oh, over a year. I'm not sure how long now, but nice to see you. Cameron. Hi, I'm Cameron Neidermeyer. I'm the assistant city manager and we are neighbors. And Jennifer. My name is Jennifer Moore and I'm a city council member for district three. I live on Cedar Hill Lane. And this is my first meeting with everybody. Happy to be here. I'm Tom McCown. I live on Jory Street. A couple houses down from Cameron. And I'm writing an article for the bridge. Awesome. So folks want to pull up the meeting notes from April 6 and April 11. They're on the calendar. If that's I am. I'm going to make a motion to approve both minutes for any amendments. I can't make the motion because I wrote one of them. Oh, that's right. Okay. I'll make it. Sorry. And I'm like, and I think Jeremy was going for one. Okay. Um, I'm going to make a motion to approve both minutes for any amendments. I can't make the motion because I wrote one of them. Oh, that's right. Okay. I'll make it. Sorry. I think Jeremy was going for one. Okay. Um, I'll make a motion to approve both at some minutes. No amendments. Um, Great. We had two seconds. All in favor. I am opposed. Great. Cool. Um, and then let's talk about the stipend review program or stipend program. Um, So Cameron, um, sent out the email with, you know, a couple of very minor edits to be honest. I did not notice the edits when I looked through them. Um, but then had a couple of like new ideas or questions. If you want to talk to us. So the edits that I sent out, um, and Tom, once they're approved here, I will send them to you. Um, Um, I'll send them to you. Um, I'll send them to you. Um, I'll send them to the pilot program. Mentioning that it's a pilot program. Understanding that has an end. Um, So that was the only edit that I made outside of adding, um, something that came up at your committee chair meeting. About sub. Um, Like submit meetings. Like, um, why can't I think of the word? I'm looking for. Subcommittees. Thank you. Um, So I think that the, um, Um, I think that the, um, Um, I think that the staff and I think it for a pilot program would be, um, uh, hard to manage. Uh, because it's, it's difficult to verify who's meeting when. Uh, if the committee chair isn't there. Because that's sort of what's built into this as far as, as what, um, Supports our audit. Right. Is approval that somebody was there. Um, And subcommittees by their very nature are smaller groups that it's going to be harder for us to verify and keep track of. So, um, Our recommendation for y'all would be to not include subcommittees in your pilot program. And that if that is feedback that you get at the end. Um, we can work with it and work with y'all to come up with a better way to handle that. So, um, That's my recommendation for y'all do whatever you want with that. Um, Uh, and then we could get into some of the success measures. Um, but, uh, that was the edits to the, to the documents. Yeah. What committees do have subcommittees? Or regularly have companies. All any, I don't even know. Yeah. We warned the meetings. That's, they are warned, but here's the thing is that they're supposed to be warned, but that doesn't mean that they get warned. Yeah. Yeah, that. We're not open in that can worms. Um, Um, That makes sense to me. I don't know if there's more discussion. That was held in the meeting or yeah. Okay. So approval for having it just be committees, not subcommittees. Sounds like cool. Um, And then. Yeah, success measures. Should we move to that or any other edits to the, sorry, let's, let's finish one thing at a time. So we've got the stipend policy. We've got the attendance record form and we've got the stipend registration form. Were there any edits to any of those? No, I had none. I think I just, we have the question last week about, or whatever it was two weeks ago about the attendance record. And if that could be made online too, like an addition or emailed in is, and I just, that's, um, Saw the email or mail, but that there's no online form. Is that right? So, um, I was trying to see, I had a meeting with our website host the other day. Yeah, a new website. Yeah. And so they, I don't know about adding new widgets because I don't, I don't know who would maintain that widget. So, um, I think it will be, it will be available online. So people can click it and download the PDF, but I don't know if it'll be fillable online. That's something I've got to work on the back end with. So it'll be available online. I don't know if it'll be fillable, but I'm going to try to work on that. And we can start off like this and then. One, maybe. One thought, kind of a halfway measure might be, and I don't know who has the skills to do this, but to create a PDF document that you can input text into, that is then emailed. It might, it might save some time for folks. That's a template, right? Is what you're saying. I will make a note to make, try to ensure that that's what type of PDF gets uploaded to the website. I'm supposed to figure out how to do that for my work today. I need to have people sign a thing. And so I will, I was looking into Adobe to be able to make an editable PDF. I'm feeling very millennial right now because I'm like, I don't really know. I don't really know how to do that. I'll figure it out. I just don't know. I will say, I will say what's been on my mind. I walk past post office boxes all the time. It's not such a big deal. And then open. Stick it in the mail. Yeah. And we got to support the post office or it'll go away. Um, Okay. Thank our Congress postal service is saved for now. Um, okay. Let me revisit the question. Yeah. Any, any edits to these documents before going into, um, success measures. Okay. Well, so I, I've been doing a lot of back work on this for y'all. Um, I've been doing was making sure that we like, along with your, um, pre-survey or pre-law or wow words, your pre-survey, you're also tracking these, um, measures. And I thought they were pretty good ones. Um, making sure we're tracking the amount of applications in general to make sure to see if they've increased or decreased. I get those directly to my inbox. Um, I think we're going to be doing some of these pre and post stipend implementation. And then something that was brought up. Was adding a demographic form to our online, um, applications. The suggestion would be that this isn't shareable and we hold it ourselves. I think. Well, you know, we'd have to talk to our lawyer about it. I don't know if it would be discussed like public record, but, um, we hold other information, um, private, and we've redacted it before we give it to council, like email addresses and phone numbers because they're not part of a committee yet. Right. They're not like a public entity yet. So, um, we hold that information back. And the idea was that we put an optional demographic for, like a demographic form on the application that people have to fill out online to be part of committee. Um, to be part of committees, but hold that information from people making decisions about including that person or not, but just for tracking purposes. Um, and then even saying in the form, this is because we're trying to, you know, increase diversity. It has no bearing on decision making. We just want to know. And so I didn't know if that would be something that you all would advocate for, but it was an idea that came up and I wanted to discount the idea. So, so to be clear, the city council members would not get that information. That was the recommendation, um, was to not give council that information. That seems like a real concern. Yeah. That seems like legally we would have to, just like from my non legal brain and does like ethically, that seems like they should. Yeah. Keep that separate. Um, before actually, maybe, oh, let's keep it great. Sorry. Oh, I just wanted to know if what was the purpose of collecting the demographic data is for. So hope like the idea would be, and so this is why it's just an idea. Y'all might not like the idea, but, um, so that people can self report their demographics so you can see if it changes pre and. Well, that's the problem is we're asking people to do a survey to tell us what their demographics are now, but then how do we get that information from people who are applying post stipend, right? We'd ask everyone to do the survey during like, when they get on a committee or how would we want to implement that? So I figured. The idea would be this would streamline that for, for this group and streamline that data collection. I think that makes all make sense long term to see the change in trends, right? Like over year, but like, right. It's awesome. Like Michael's been on C. Jack for, I don't even know what seven years now. And so you're only filling that four amount. When you first apply, you don't have to fill it out when you're reappointed, right? Or like, is there any. Right. It would just be on the form that you have to fill out online. And so it would be sort of supporting that survey that you're doing that's asking existing committee members what their demographics are. And then we could collect new ones because there's no mechanism to do that. And it's all optional, right? Yeah, technically any of the form. Lines are optional. No one has to fill out everything. I do think like for the purposes of this pilot, it's not necessarily going to be super helpful because we also, I mean. Right. I think we'll also have to do the survey. Right. It'll be a look at like who knew is joining, but that. Yeah. We'll have to. I feel like we need like a grad student who works on this stuff to like help us out with like this like data collection and analysis, but like we can, we can figure this out. You just have me. Sorry. But you know, to be like, okay, I have all the new people who have joined who have applied and then who have joined what it, what is, what is, what is that demographic? And, and sorry, and the demographic questions would probably be pretty similar to the survey. Right. It would not just look at like race and gender, but also like home ownership and basically. Exactly the questions that y'all are asking on your survey and then plunk them in the application for committees. Cool. I don't know hard time with this one. It rubs me the wrong way. But, you know, I'm, I'm like the white guy who'd never hesitate to fill out demographic information. So it's, I can't. Without having that perspective, I can't say would this like give me pause if I was not me. So I'm really, I have a hard time saying, yeah, this is, this is what we should do. So I asked about the demographic information. I'm Native American and so anytime I'm filling out a form and I'm like, why do they want to know, but then also on the other hand, you know how important certain statistics are and so as an Indigenous person, it's up to me to decide, right? Do I want to tell them this information or not? And hopefully if there are any folks that are in alignment with that process, maybe they'll be able to make their own decision whether or not they want to share those things. It's a, it's a weird kind of slippery slope, right? Like you want to be seen and known and counted, right? But then also it feels a little sketchy, especially for Native people. We're not really into, we're not going to share anything anymore, but I hear what you're saying, Jeremy. Thanks for that. I know for like, I remember like in doing research or whatever, like the demographic questions for like, you know, academic research is supposed to come like at the very, very end and be like a totally optional, like addition on the very end, even if that's like critical to the pieces that you're asking, because if you ask someone their race at the beginning, it like changes how they answer some of the, you know, like other questions, you know, it's like there's all this other stuff around it too. And then I know for like hiring stuff for in my work, like we've done, you do the application and then it's, there's a, like a, and at the end page it's like, and we would love, like we want to make sure that we're hiring from a diverse set, you know, of folks who are applying after you fill out your application. If you want to click this link and take it to a different survey form, we greatly appreciate it, you know, and it's something like 60% of people, I fill out the separate form, but like, so it's totally divorced from the actual application. And so I just want to, I don't, I'm like, I don't, I think that is necessary for hire. I mean, and that's it is like, is this like kind of a version of hiring to be able to, does that make sense to try to divorce the committee application from the survey? So yes, however, like if you want to, if we want, if, if y'all are interested in having the city add demographic questions to the application, we don't have the technical ability to like separate that out. Right. It would need to just be like a little blurb that says you don't have to fill this out. This is why we're asking. It won't be, it won't be given to council. It won't be able to fill this out. What a next step be. And this is for a continued discussion and maybe review. To mock up a version of the committee application form. And that gives us a little bit something more concrete. And also maybe get some feedback from some individuals who we think have a good perspective. Yes, I can do that. Thanks. I don't think you have any discussion. Any discussion on. Dispers too. I don't know what that. I think Shane is. Suggestion though, is it interesting because that. That would presumably not have any name attached to it. Right. So. So the, the information is gathered on a separate form. It is anonymous. which is the demographic information, not having anyone's name on that. That might make it more complicated, but it's a holy separate form. It's just submitting it separately. I mean, I guess I'm not thinking very creatively and I could put maybe, if I don't know, I'd have to play around. Maybe I could put a link to like a survey monkey that says like fill this out for demographic information. It's just like clicks a link. I think I could be creative about it if that's what you all want to see. So just a thought for you, last year I attended some meetings of a school board subcommittee where they were looking at how they, a whole bunch of issues with diversity, equity and inclusion. They were dealing with exactly the same question about how to measure whether they're making progress. And they were dealing with the same issue of confidentiality versus asking people to share information. I don't know what their resolution was, but the superintendent's office may have information about if they came up with any great ideas and if they did, that might save you some time. And that was the Montpelier school board? Montpelier school board. So the superintendent was one of the people, she was leading the committee, so. Awesome, thank you. You're welcome. So I can bring back more to y'all on that, Shayna. Yeah, and I think, because we can also start getting the word out about the Scythons. Like, I think this is not contingent on the launch of this project, right? So I think my only other question on this though was of just running it by creative discourse, knowing, you know, we have a couple of those, a couple of meetings set up and I assume this is on the docket for them too, right? And so maybe by the next meeting or meeting after running this proposal by them too. Sure, of course, Cole. Yeah. Okay, and then of any concern, question, reaction to the other tracking measures, so just tracking the number of applications last year to this year, looking at the vacancies, pre and post stipends. Oh, so easy. Yeah, thank you, really great work. Thank you. Do we, I should have asked this question before, do we need to vote to approve the three forms, the policies? It didn't hurt. So it's a matter of record that we adopted them. So I'll make that motion. A second. 30 seconds, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Motion passes. Thank you. Yeah, nice work all. Okay, should we talk about the transition to talking about the city council presentation? Good, go ahead. Next Wednesday, the 27th, 630-ish, I'm making that up because it won't actually be 630. We try very hard to get all of y'all who are doing group presentations of external folks first, so. I didn't know that was an intention. That makes a lot of sense. That's great, thank you. Try very hard. Yeah. Camera works really hard in this meeting. Let me tell you what. So yeah, so I, I feel like we are so focused on our presentation to the committee on committees. That I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this. And I guess I'm just like, you know, our goals for the committee on committees was pretty different. You know, it was like to get the word out about it and just solicit feedback and to have people share, you know, their stories and experiences of what they're working on in their committees. And I, even though the goals are pretty different, I think then what the city council goals presentations would be, I think a lot of the content could be pretty similar of like walking through the committee statement project, you know, hearing if there's any feedback, things like that. So yeah, didn't know if folks had, yeah. Or like, that's not me stating my opinion for how we could start having this conversation and didn't know if folks had other facts. Well, you would circulate the forms that we just, the documents we just passed would go ahead of before the council meeting, right? Right, so they would, okay. I mean, it seems pretty straightforward. Yeah. Here's what we've developed for the pilot process and all that. And are we asking for their approval Cameron? Or yeah, okay. Oh, okay. But the money has already been set aside, correct? So we're just asking for the same approval of the documents that we just made, that we just did. Yes, that's my understanding. And, you know, Jennifer can fill out anything that I'm missing, but my understanding was they, you know, you had asked for the money and said, we will come back with how we're gonna manage it. And that's just sort of where you're at. And I think getting saying like, we've already gotten feedback from committee chairs and everyone seemed good with how this is gonna go. So it makes sense to me. And I just want to, this is probably pretty obvious, but I'm just like saying a few sentences at the beginning of this, like, here's who we are and here was our charge. And here's why we became a committee in 2018 as just like a way of grounding the conversation too. That before, yeah, before saying all those things. So we'll share the documents. We will, should we talk about roles or other materials that we would wanna share? Well, the only other one which is not yet a document is how we're going to monitor how we're gonna evaluate. I think that should be included in the report that we have a plan for that. Yeah. But I don't think we have to go any further than that. I think some council members really appreciate a lot of information and some like it wrapped up. So you can find a little hybrid spot where I know maybe one or two folks that may ask a few questions, not because they're not interested, but just because that's how they are. They just like to have as much information as possible if that's helpful. Well, let's really do diligence. I think that's fine. Can't say much now because I'm here. I do like the idea of including something about the evaluation. Just here's how we anticipate evaluating the success of the program. I think probably into four parts of having intro to CJA, why we're doing stipends, about the stipend process, what it's gonna look like, logistics, all of that. Evaluation of the project, what success will look like, how we're gonna measure it, questions. Sound good? Do we wanna have a presentation or just the materials you think is good? I don't think you have to go through all of it. It's all again, if you're there calculating them. Are you gonna put them up on the screen or? I'm gonna call myself attention to that. Straightforward, it's the policy piece so maybe need some discussion. Great. So no need to create any new materials is what I'm hearing, but just be able to have some discussion. Cool. Does anyone wanna take on any of those pieces in particular? Can that Michael and Jeremy? I don't have any preference. And can you guys make it on the 27th? Oh yeah, I think so. I'm happy to help, but don't feel strongly about needing to do that if it's really, if you need some help, Shayna, let me know. Shayna, I can help sort of summarize the evaluation piece of it if you'd like. Great. Yeah, I think that's the only thing that I, because it's not, we don't have it written down yet. I think it would be good to have that. But otherwise, I think one person doing presentation is efficient and it's okay. We can be there here and answer questions if you want, but I don't think it's necessary. Okay, it's all clear I'm doing most of the talking. That's pre-use. No, okay. Oh, we were talking. You're asking. Okay, go ahead, Tom. Great. Yes, I just wanted to ask about process. So this would become a city policy, not simply a committee policy. So in terms of process, what does the council need to do to approve that? Can they vote on it that next Wednesday night? And then it's all, it's in place or does it have to be warned ahead of time or anything else that can be voted at that meeting? Yes. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so just, sorry, Tom, just I shouldn't have done this at the beginning, but we went through kind of a two year process with these consultants creative discourse to come up with these equity assessment recommendations of what things that we could do as a committee. And Siphons is one of those kind of the project that we've been tackling for the last little bit. We've been asking all these, yeah, as we talked about in January, you know, of like getting all these recommendations and have a commitment as part of the budget starting July 1st to be able to implement these Siphons and then, but we're basically given free rein and like making a proposal on how to, you know, so we got the money for the Siphons, but not the process. And so this is a saying, okay, this is how we're planning on spending the funds for Siphons. This is what our process is gonna look like and how we're gonna evaluate this pilot project. Sure, thank you. I understand all that and the background. I just wanted to check on the, sometimes for policies, I don't specifically know how it's always done on my pillar, but sometimes policies have to be posted and they have to be, you know, available to the public for a certain number of days before the council, before a group votes on them. So if that's not the, I just wanna make sure that wasn't the process. Not for this, because it's a council administered thing. It's not impacting staff. It's not impacting like union staff anyway. And it's just a decision that council can make. Yeah. Perfect, thank you. One thing that's coming up for me, Shayna, when we last met with council, you know, we had walked through a few different scenarios for how this pilot might run, which some were quite complicated actually. And I think we got that really helpful feedback from the person in Essex that really shifted our thinking around just a pile of money first come first serve. So it seems like you would want to explain that pretty well because this is the one thing that was kind of a major issue that we resolved. I'm just writing that down for myself, yep. Thanks. Any other ideas, reflections for this council presentation? I think it's a good, thank you, Jeremy, for mentioning that we've worked with other organizations. I think that's important to also mention. I think I was also just like ending it with like an encouragement for everyone to get the word out about these stipends because that's, you know, obviously the most critical part of all, this is saying come be a part of city governance. I think we're depending on Tom for that. Yes, thank you, Tom. A little bit, yes. Actually, if I may say, I think that's probably gonna be much more effective than us putting the word out ourselves. That, you know, it comes through you, Tom, it's in the bridge, which is read by a lot of people. So that's a very important link and thank you for being here and helping us over that. You're welcome. Starting July 1st, we participate in government. Get a stipend, headlines. So, great. Got lots of vacancies. Look out, get lots of participation. Cool. Before diving into the rest of our agenda, real quick, of just any like reactions, feedback, responses from our committee and committees. As I like, you know, when you're like, I have so much time, I'm not gonna be like, I'm not worried about this. And then of course, that's like when you're like, it's canceled. And then I was like, I mean, I was actually ended up only, I thought I was gonna miss it all. So it wasn't that bad. But thank you guys so much for stepping in and making it happen. And I apologize for the chaos that, that caused and it was a pretty small group. But yeah, I'm just like anything, any other reflections, things we wanna say. Yeah. That was my own concern that it was a very small group, not just a pretty small group, it was a very small group. That's very small, yeah. And us, I mean, we outnumbered, we pretty much outnumbered our audience. And I wonder what that means. Does that mean that the committee chairs are just not interested in doing this on any kind of regular basis because we had talked about doing it again, should we have twice a year or, and I think we need to get some handle on whether this is something that they think is important enough for us to continue doing it. Cause we put more time into planning it than we did actually during the presentation. So there's a real imbalance here. And so I think we should really decide what we're gonna do if we wanna do this again. Can I reach out to the folks who weren't there and like that's not a problem, yeah, okay. You know, you could ask us at the time, when we did it, was that inconvenient? Are you just attending too many meetings and you don't have time for any more? Or, you know, what was it? Offer some options and then, let me do that and circle back next, I mean, or maybe probably in a couple of weeks, not next evening, but to get a chance to hear back from folks. Cool. We like to have on our agenda, although I feel like we haven't been very good at holding it recently because of other things, having a self-education and learning round table of being able to share other learnings or participations or books or media content or anything else that has to do with social, racial, economic justice to be able to share with, share amongst ourselves. And so, yeah, we have that and just any, let's combine that with any report backs from any other related city committee meetings and other things happening in the city that we should know about. Here's popcorn if anyone wants to go. Well, just so you know, at the next council meeting, council will be talking about the Gert and Gizebo again. And so if y'all want to participate in that conversation that is happening that night as well. I can just share two things. One is that Montpelier has been included in different, this like municipal equity index on municipal equality index. I don't remember which one it is from the human rights campaign where they look at how the city, you know, kind of is evaluated for LGBTQ plus folks. And, you know, they can just like fill out the survey and kind of get evaluated on different policies and they do it for all of the city capitals as well as a bunch of other cities. And so Montpelier has been a part of that for a couple of years and they just got noticed that will be part of it again. I mean, obviously because we're still a city capitol and all of that. So just FYI that that is coming out. And that that also just, you know, dovetails with the, you know, recent murder of a trans woman in the middle of sex who's very closely connected to a lot of folks in Montpelier and, you know, lived and worked in Montpelier for, you know, a long time and all of that. And so I think that was recognized. That was the first I'd heard about it was at the last city council meeting. And obviously just like a lot of, the more like coming off of the heels of a lot of trans sentiment happening nationally is really concerning for a lot of reasons. And so just wanting to kind of hold that in our hearts as well. And of course, if, you know, folks know or feel, just to say, I'm sorry to bring back real sadness at the end of this meeting and of just if there's anyone wants to say any words of memory or remembrance or, or to transition, transition out like a few minutes there. I just, I'll say that I just want to thank all of y'all for taking on these sort of harder conversations and being real thought leaders for the city. This will be a very exciting program. And I'm just, I'm excited to see it get launched. You all have been working really hard for a really long time. And I'm glad to be part of it. So thank you. Thanks for your hard work on it, Cameron. You really did the legwork on it. This is, this is a rewarding legwork. Okay. This is rewarding. This is something good is coming out of this. So, it's exciting. I understand. But thank you in any case. Thank you, Michael. Well, I, as a member of a BIPOC community and somebody who is, you know, I got a family that I'm trying to raise and I have a new job that makes, that I make more money at, but historically I've not made very much money. And so offering a stipend to folks is a lot. It's huge because we're taking time out of our personal life, right? And so to honor that, I think is wonderful. And I don't know whose idea it was, but Chimi Gwetch from the bottom of my heart for that because I think it will make a difference for a lot of, especially working family people, single parents, college students, just people that want to help, want to be involved in our city, but just are struggling financially. So thank you so much for spearheading this, y'all. Yeah, let's make it happen. Cool. Well, see you all next Wednesday night. And I think that's it. And then after that, we can, once we get this happening, then we can move on to some of the other things that we've got on our upcoming agenda items like proactive educational events, outreach to immigrant refugee communities, and for Elk club, property discussions, other things too, but let's get through this. Yeah, it's gonna be great. So thanks all. Awesome. See y'all.