 Yeah, that's a little tough. Is that another meeting? I don't know. Anthony was not available today. Do you know whether he's planning to come to our subcommittee meeting tomorrow? Can I ask him again? Is it tomorrow or Friday? I thought it's tomorrow. I think it's tomorrow, right? It's tomorrow. Yeah. I thought you had said that you didn't think he needed to come, but. Yeah. No, I didn't think we needed him, but I thought you had said he'd be here at this meeting. And I thought he was too, but. Yeah. Okay. It may be that we can relate a question or two through you. We're waiting for, hi everybody. And by the way. We're waiting for one more. Yeah. Okay. If I could just excuse myself for one second. And I'll be right back. This is grandson night. I got a little something to do first. I'm Mr. Ross. I think I called your, your handsome grandson, daughter, a granddaughter. They're both boys. Yeah. And I call, I call one of them granddaughter. No. No offense. No offense taken. Well, you know, it's that. You know, mom is from India. Yes. Beautiful. Special multiracial mix. Yeah. You're having your dinner, Mr. Ross. I'm eating a few chips. I'm eating a few chips. I can hear everything. I'm jealous. I haven't had my dinner yet. You're making me hungry. I'll stop. I'll stop. I'm just joking. I'm not ready. I did. I'm just teasing you. Oh, there's Mr. Sheena. So I'm going to move her over. Well, Mr. Wiley just stepped up. Okay. Good evening, Mr. Sheena. Hi. Hi. Hi. We have a problem now. Yes. All right. Ready to start, Miss. I am, you know, I'm just going to, you can get started. I'm going to turn my camera off because I'm going to move it to my desk, which is a stand up. Okay. So we have Deborah. Hi, Deborah. Hi. Hi. We're live now, right? Yes. Thank you. Great. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. A lovely evening to spend together. Once again. And, uh, Before I take roll, I want to, uh, Set the time for the start of our meeting is 5 34 p.m. on Wednesday, February 10th. Okay. And. Begin our meeting by taking a roll call. And glad you're all here. Um, Miss Owen. Yeah. Miss Pat. Yeah. Mr. Vernon Jones. Here. Ms. Ferrara. Here. Miss Bowman. Here. Thank you. Um, just some quick opening remarks. It's getting, it's getting very busy here with our work. Um, a lot of you are, uh, all of us, I should say, are putting in extra time thinking about, uh, different things and working very diligently. Um, On this, the community is getting more and more involved in our work and paying attention. Thanks to your outreach and what you're doing. So I want to just thank you for that. And I want to welcome, um, Our guests, um, as they come in. Certainly. And welcome their, their comments. And contributions. I also want to say before we start, I want to thank on behalf of the. Community safety working group, Miss Moisten. For her continued efforts to support us with meeting notes. And the collection of input and resources from the community. It's a daunting task. I know. But, uh, and others have expressed this to Miss Moisten to you. So, um, They can all individually speak to that themselves certainly, but we want to thank you and we appreciate everything you're, you're doing. And, uh, You're very good at it by the way, I might add. I thank you. And it's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Glad, glad you're doing it and glad you're with us. Hi, Alicia. Welcome. So with that, a very quick agenda review, we have a, a busy agenda as always. We're going to go into very quickly after, um, We were approved the minutes of the meetings. To our public comment and any member comments. Um, I want to include an update on the bid process. And I, I want to just put together both A and B in our agenda. Um, I don't know, um, Miss Moisten, if you can put that up at some moment. But, uh, this is an update on the bid, uh, contract itself. And then there's some discussion need is certainly on, um, Phase two, Phase two items together and get, get some input from our, our group on, uh, current steps and next steps. We've been receiving in item three. We've been receiving quite a bit of input from our. Community members. And, uh, I'm going to take a look, look at what we're receiving and comment on it because I think it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a great opportunity to come to. Some discussion on how to manage those resources. Because they are very informative in many cases. And, uh, they do, uh, Guide and inform our work. And we also want to acknowledge, which we're doing the receipt of these mess, these, uh, this input. And so some discussion on how to manage that going forward. And then, uh, I'm going to, uh, I'm going to take a look at that as well. Just want to quickly review and this, this may not take the full time allotted to it, but, uh, A question regarding our action review process for the January forums. And then our gift certificate proposal, which is part of the packet, which I'd also like to have the group, uh, discuss at some length. Upcoming events, uh, of other topics that have not, uh, Come to the table before, uh, 48 hours in advance of this meeting and then we'll adjourn. So again, welcome everyone. And thank you for your participation. In this work for the town. Uh, Like to move quickly to the approval of the minutes. And did both sets of minutes get into the packet? No, they did not. Okay. I was wondering if I missed something. That's, that's all. But we have minutes took a minute, a little bit to go through and we're still buried in COVID. Yes. And I understand in our, the, the, you know, one of our meetings lasted quite a bit of time. And so there's a lot of ground to cover in that. So I can understand how that took some time, but thank you for putting the minutes together for the, the, uh, the 28th. So let's, let's go into that. Let's review those and, um, see if folks have any, uh, any comments, corrections, et cetera. Let's see. Let me get my, uh, I didn't get a chance to read it to tell you all the truth. Okay. Yeah, no, I can't imagine that anybody did necessarily. So can we put it for like next week? So we can. We can. Yeah. I will try to have all three, but. Okay. Okay. For all in agreement. We'll, we'll, we'll do that because it is important to go, uh, through those at some point. Um, to be sure we're, we're all on target and on the same page. So, um, let's move that to the next meeting. Uh, please miss moison. We'll look at the January 28th. February 3rd. And today's meeting as well. If we can get all of those in place. And again, thanks for the, uh, the submission of the 28th meeting minutes. I'd like to move now to, um, The, uh, public comment. And let's see. Open up here. And I'd like to welcome. Uh, comments. From the, from the community at this time. So please, uh, I'll speak up if you're so inclined and miss moisten. We'll recognize you and miss moisten. You let me know if there are any. If there's two individuals in attendance and neither of them have their hand raised at the moment. Okay. We'll wait, wait a moment or two. Okay. Nothing yet. Okay. Well, again, the. Thank you. And, uh, we're going to move forward. And go right to our first, um, action and discussion item, which is about the. The, the, the bid contract. That went live recently. And I would just like to say, you want to thank, um, The group again. From us who worked on that. Um, again, I have to remind myself as I'm talking about, there's a lot of different people working on different things, but I know, uh, Russ was involved in that. I think, uh, miss Pat, you were involved in that. And there was one other. Yeah, there she is. Yeah. When I see a little hand raised, it's sitting right on your left eye. That's very cute. A good little fashion statement there. But anyway, uh, thank you all again for your work. And I don't know if at this point, uh, any of you would like to lead us, uh, in the discussion and to see if we have any input. I know you're meeting tomorrow. As well. But, uh, let's dive into that and see, see where it needs to go for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, the first item I, I was hoping to be able to ask Mr. Delaney about this. And I don't know whether we need to talk to him directly or whether Jennifer, this is something you could pass along. But my understanding is that normally when you have a bid opening, it's a public event and people attend and. Uh, when's the bid unless there's some problem when they call references. But in our case, we've laid out some pretty detailed minimum requirements. That I don't think are quickly evaluated. Certainly not just at a glance. Uh, so my question is, can we. Open the references. Uh, in advance of the bid opening. Uh, I think is meets the minimum requirements or can we be very clear that we are not going to announce who wins the bid. Uh, and it will not be the low bidder unless they actually meet the minimum requirements. It just seems like this is needs to be quite different than a normal bid opening. Ms. Walker and Ms. Pat, I wanted to defer to you before we go to the larger committee. Um, and I'm not sure what you're talking about. But my question is that everybody gets to know the lowest bid. On June 23rd. So. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Walker. You had your hand up. Um, yeah, I guess I don't have anything to add to that, but that I was also wondering the same thing. So I do have the understanding that the bid would close and we would see the lowest bid on the 23rd, but I guess I would have the same question as Mr. Vernon Jones in that if we are allowed, allowed to open references before the closing of the bid. I'm, I'm not sure that's something we discussed before. Ms. You have your hand up. Yeah. Ms. And then Mr. Vernon Jones and then Ms. Pat. Yeah, I guess like for me, you know, being totally transparent, I'm not very familiar with the bid process. That wasn't anything I was ever involved in. I'm not sure about how everything happened, like what you would tell talking about Mr. Vernon Jones about, you know, with the bid opening, then you just take the lowest bid and that's that. I mean, I would, I would think that this is going to be a lot more complicated. We got to be very careful about who we're going to be. You know, we got to check, you know, first make sure they meet the minimum requirements and then, you know, check those references to make sure we get someone that's actually going to be helpful as opposed to just, you know, someone that then it's going to be more work to manage than to actually get the work done. So, you know, my thing would be, yeah, it's going to take a little bit more time. So I don't know if, if, if, if, but maybe that's something Delaney could let us know to kind of start checking references now before, you know, we really know who are the kind of folks that meet the minimum. So. So is the minimum requirements. Yeah, but there was rephrase that. Or the reference are part of the minimum requirements, which is part of the bid. Correct. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I will ask Mr. Delaney tomorrow. He might simply say that it needs to come to him and writing, which I can do on your behalf if you would like. Just because typically any questions. But I'm sure you'll have, I'm sure you'll have questions in mind. So, I'll go ahead and give this one to a bid need to be in writing so that they can be transparent and available for the public. The only thing I want to add is this is on a miss Pat and them, the judge. I think Mr. Ross was ahead of me. Go ahead. Mr. Ross. Well, this pad volunteered to be a member of our committee engaged with And he indicated an openness to having two people do that. And we never, I don't think we officially agreed or appointed Ms. Pat. I think we should appoint Ms. Pat and see if somebody else wants to do that as well. Ms. Tashina also volunteered. Oh, great. Yeah, he did. What did I volunteer for? You volunteered to take a look at references with Ms. Ms. Pat and Mr. Delaney. Do you remember last week? Oh, I, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I remember. I thought it, I, I thought, I also thought we were looking. Sorry. I thought that I volunteered to go over the stuff with the, um, the responses or something from the Amherst police department. That's what I, for some reason had in my head that I had, I had volunteered for, but yeah, sure. I'll go over the references. That's fine. Well, I don't know that it's limited to the references. I believe it's the bids in general. Yeah, that's fine. I, I mean. Yeah, that's fine. I, I, yeah, I thought, I just thought I was. I was inquiring about something else, but okay. Yeah. Sure. I have a comment. I want to make sure that I'm not overstepping someone else, Ms. Farrah. Well, I guess I do have a question about that. So what are we asking Ms. Pat and Ms. Bowman to do? I thought it was references. So, but. Yeah. So what you said is there's something else too. What else are they going to be doing? References. References. Yeah, it's references. Yeah, but we're also looking at the bids themselves. No. No, I thought Mr. Delaney was going to be doing that. Okay. I'm so confused. Yeah. It was references from what I remember from last week was that you are going to be looking at references with him. Yeah, in references. I know a little bit, a little bit about bed. The opening date simply means when. Prospective bidders, the date that it ends. I know the word is very confusing. So the opening date actually means the end. Of when people can actually submit. So the opening date Tuesday. February 23rd. That's when it gets opened. And the criteria for ISP. B is price. And of course references. So I like the, I like the fact that Mr. Ben Jones, I recommended that. In addition to bubble reference that we should get written reference. So that we, you know, it's. Yeah. What we're reviewing the references. I think the comment I was going to make is just. In support of what the subcommittee is talking about too, is that. I believe the community service working group has to have. Be a filter for a lot of the information that's, that's either coming in or going forward. We are a group that's responsible for making recommendations. We're going to be responsible for following through with consultants and other people working on, on our behalf. So on the front end, I think it's important for us to be certainly be looking at references because. The, the, that criteria was created by, by us. And so we, we have an sort of an. We have an opportunity to look at that. So I think that. Inside knowledge and track and feel for whether or not that criteria is being met. So I think that. It's important that the folks who are going to be working with Mr. Mr. Delaney. Do have an opportunity to look at that. Yeah. No. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Um, so. Just so I have this. Straight in my own head. When the, when the bids start coming in. Like me and. Miss Pat, we're going to. We're basically verifying the ref. The references. No. Can I, can I clarify? This is Pat, please. So basically all bids will be sealed. In an envelope. And the bids are now sealed. They are mailed or dropped off at a town hall. So Mr. Delaney will collect all the bids. We'll collect, we'll collect bids as they come in. And then on the 23rd. It's open. I will imagine because we also want. You know, the references. So be really good. Okay. I'm going to ask you something. Our group may want to discuss. Do we want to go to the next lowest bid? I don't know. But, um, Mr. Sheena. It's not coming to us directly. It will go to the town hall. And the requirement is that the document has to be had copy. To be submitted. So it will go to, to the town hall. And then Mr. Delaney will contact us for references at some point. And we'll be able to figure out whether or not those references are accurate. So that's what we're doing. We're figuring out whether those references are accurate. So that's what we're doing. We're figuring out whether those references are accurate. Hey, they're going to be providing us with. Right in references. And Mr. Delaney will be reaching out to us to review those. References. I will imagine. But what are we doing to review them? Are we just looking at them and seeing if they have the, if they match up with our qualifications? Or are we verifying that those references are accurate? Perhaps we can get an answer. A thorough. I'll come back to you, Miss Pat. There's several people that had their hands up before you started speaking. Mr. Vernon Jones and Ms. Farera. Well, I don't think we should spend too long on this without Mr. Delaney. I think some of this we need to get from him. But we wrote very explicit. Minimum requirements. We said the references. Or the bid needed to give evidence of an understanding of racism. An understanding of the history of the impact of policing on BIPOC communities. The ability to work with a community group. So we laid out a whole lot of things. And the first question is, does, does what they submit give evidence. That they meet those requirements. Then the question of whether they're valid and true is, is, you know, verifying them as a separate process. But the first question is. If true, do they meet our requirements? And Mr. Delaney asked for our help doing that because he said, you know, he's not an expert around racism or, or policing either one. Ms. Farera. Yeah, that's, you know, just to kind of add to what Mr. Vernon Jones said, yeah, that's exactly, you know, my understanding too, is first to kind of do that, you know, to look at the reference, since we said it was written, right? To see whether they have all those, you know, similar projects with a job description, summary of the process and outcomes, you know, all of those things like making sure that we're verifying that. And then the only thing that I'm a little bit confused about, because again, the whole big thing, but it, but then I'm assuming, let's say if we do have the lowest bidder, they have the references and their references have everything we want. Then for me, the next level would be though, to still call the references. I don't think we want to do that. I don't think we want to do that. The next level would be though, to still call the references. I don't think we want to just rely on those right now before we do the, the, you know, the kind of, okay, now what this is who we're going with, because they have the lowest bid and they have everything we requested and the minimum requirements is to then call them. And that's where you all can be helpful too. Ms. Pat and this moment is to make the call. Yeah, that's, that's literally one of the, I'm sorry, Ms. Bowman, go ahead. That's literally what I was asking. And I think the, the importance of that follow-up call also gets to some deeper understanding of what the written piece was speaking to. Sometimes people in a written recommendation will say certain things. They'll say something slightly or maybe more, or much differently or put more emphasis on something in a phone call because it's a more into, into personal kind of communication. And that's, that's, that's, that's, you know, that'll be, that'll be, you know, revealing in either very positive or, or not too positive light. So I think what, you know, just reinforcing what Ms. Ferrer is saying and also the whole process of following up, you know, with the written, you know, written and let's just call it an interpersonal call to these folks to sort of narrow the field of, to make sure we're as precise as possible when we're getting to somebody. So any other final comments on that? And we can move forward. There's a comment I want to make about this. I want to go back to Mr. Vernon Jones with something in a minute, Mr. Ms. Pat. Oh, I just wanted to add that my thinking about verifying references is actually when we make the phone call to have, to have it as a phone conference. So have Mr. Delaney's, you know, be on the, on the call and Ms. Tashina when we're verifying so that three people, you know, we make our notes and then compare notes that way, you know, we're doing it very fairly. That's all I want to add. Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, I wasn't sure where you were skipping moving in the agenda. I have some comments that are really about the phase two bid. You're pretty adept at making segues. Mr. Vernon Jones. Maybe this is, this is, that was my cue. But I did, I did want to, the, the, the piece I wanted to say at the end was that I want to go back to what Ms. Moisten said about, you know, Ms. Moisten, your willingness to communicate with Mr. Mr. Delaney about this and to, to say more, and to, to, to, to, to, to the point where we can be on the same level, we really need to have our, our, our needs to connect very solidly with him, you know, going forward, you know, my words, but thank you for that. And, you know, we appreciate it. So Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, first, I think you, you alluded to it, but I wanted to make sure everybody on the working group knew that we have posted a subcommittee meeting. I think we're going to have a meeting. I think we're going to have a meeting at this time. Seven. Yeah. To which you're all welcome to attend, although. And our intention is to work on the text of the. Bid for phase two. And we also wanted to. Invite you to, if you have suggestions either at this meeting or in writing. I would love to have your input as to what. You know, would go in the request for the. Phase two consultant. Now, partly related to that. And partly separate from that. I'm hoping that we can have some community members come in and be in dialogue with our group. And that some of that might inform. Some of our work might lead to some of our work. And that's what goes in that bid request. So I know we all met Barbara Love when she was on the interview committee. And I know I have a sense that she has a. A vision and. Some of what our work might lead to. And has done a lot of thinking about this over time. So I was hoping that Barbara and. I was hoping that she would have some kind of. A little bit of a. A little bit of a little experience. And I'm what I was hoping for was more than just public comment where we are committed to listening and not going back and forth, but a brief opportunity to go back and forth. I got a rare opportunity to chat with. Dr. Love. This week and found out that she is available. If we wanted to invite her to our meeting next week. If we don't take her up on that, who knows when we'll get her up on that. And then at some point tonight, I'd also like to talk if we're, we're trying to think about moving this alternative services thing forward that we probably ought to have a similar kind of discussion, maybe with family outreach and CHD. And maybe be on it can identify some others. That, but we. I think it'd be helpful to be in dialogue and. Get the help from other people in the community. But I am, you know, aware of, of, of this suggestion. And in this continuous from what your first comment was all about. Russ, and I'll comment on it in a minute, but I'd like to hear others responses to what Mr. Vernon Jones is statements on. Miss Pat. So I second word. Mr. Ross said, and thank you for, you know, reaching out to Dr. Love. I think we'll have time next week for how to come in and talk to us. I also want to comment that when we first, you know, at the beginning of our group coming, we had made a list of community members and organizations that we would like to invite. I would like us to revisit that and maybe reach out to those people if they will be available to, to come talk to us. May not be next week. I do agree that, you know, getting more input from the community to inform us as to the, you know, recommending alternative services. So I second. Inviting community members and organizations. Miss moisten. I just want to ask a bit. I'm sorry. Ms. I'll get you in a second. If you don't mind. Miss moisten. I want to be sure I'm, I'm not. I don't know if I'm doing this correctly because there were a couple of times and I apologize. Miss bowman to you. There are a few times you had raised your hand. In the previous meeting and I didn't see you. I don't want that to happen at this particular time. So. So sort of technically if I go into the panelists list, is that where I would see. You don't see. Do you see Tashina Bowman's name? I do. Do you see the yellow hand in the left hand corner? No. I see a green hand next to her hand next to her name. Okay. I'm going to see if I can make you co-host and then maybe that'll help. Yeah, because just so you know, she has her hand up right now. That's what I'm saying. And I, and I apologize in this moment because I, I, everyone else is. It's there so I can see there. Right. I'm driving right now. So I'm, there's, that's why I'm off the camera. Oh, you raise your hand right now. Be careful. Do you, do you see it now? Mr. Wiley. Hi. It's a yellow hand that's like this. And it's on the left hand side of her screen. Let me take a look again. Thank you. Okay. I see her screen and I see in her screen, I see the hand up now and it says lower hand. Yes. So that's her hand being raised. And then after she speaks, it can be low. Okay. Thank you for your indulgence group. So we're worried before I had that brain freeze. Let's see. Mr. Well, well, I defer to Ms. Bowman first. He still has some. Yeah. And then I can go. Yes, Ms. Bowman. Okay. So, um, when I was going to, um, What I was going to say is that the, I, I do also agree, um, about, um, what Mr. Vernon Jones was saying, uh, Benji, Benji, Benji. You got to be careful for a second. Oh my gosh. Um, I'm going to, I have to, I have to gather my thoughts. I will raise my hand again. Oh yeah. Go ahead. I just want to say that I'm very patient and wait for you. Miss. Thank you. He has to raise his hand too. Uh, so Mr. Vernon Jones, I'll circle back to you. I'm sorry. Ms. Yeah, I mean, um, yeah. I'm in agreement with, you know, bringing in some folks and talking with them. And also what Ms. Pat said. And, you know, to circle back because that was actually on my. Kind of list of things to kind of touch base on if we have time around, um, do that or when are we doing that sort of thing? But I guess my question is more so around what Mr. Vernon Jones said, I guess my thing is this. So what are we talking to Dr. Love about and who else are we bringing in? I guess you said Ms. Custod. I guess what are we talking to them about? Because we had the first bid that I thought the first bid was around the first charge, right? Make recommendations on alternative ways of providing public safety services as a community for that first report. And then the second bid, which is what you all are gonna be meeting about tomorrow is for the other one, right? Make recommendation on reforms to the current organizational oversight structures of the Amherst Police Department. So my question is, what are we gonna be talking to them about? Are we talking to them about that since we are going into phase two? I guess I'm confused. No, for that to give us an answer. Ms. Pat, hang on, please, I have to go by hands because otherwise I'm gonna be cutting people off, I apologize. So state your question just at the end again, Ms. Brown. My question is, what are we bringing Dr. Love and Ms. Mary Custodon to talk to them about? You said I'm saying I'm not clear on that. Are we talking to them about part two of the bid? Are we just talking to them generally about alternatives for, you know? Cause I guess I'm getting all muddled cause I thought we were talking about the bid, the second bid and then we get, I guess we jumped into Dr. Love, so I'm confused. Okay, Ms. Pat, I'm sorry, go ahead. My understanding was when we were forming this group, we talked about reaching out to different groups. And then we had a public forum and some of those people that we specifically suggested, I don't know if we did invite them or not, but I think that's my understanding of what Mr. Ross is trying to, so tell us, is that correct? Yeah, what are you saying, Mr. Ross? Yes, Mr. Brown and Jim. Well, I mean, it's really two things. I think the, my sense is that part of our whole project is about how do we help dismantle white supremacy and Amherst? How do we make this a community which is more inclusive and empowering BIPOC folks? How do we make it so the police aren't favoring white residents over BIPOC? And some of that is very clearly related to how we go about phase two, which is gonna be policies and procedures and citizen oversight. So that's the direct connection. But I thought of Dr. Love as someone who has thought about the whole racial situation in town and might inform our work from that perspective as well. And we haven't done much or heard much explicitly about the connection between the police and the schools and serving particularly how we serve young people with safety services in this town. And I know that was a major interest on many people's part. So that was what made me think of Mary Custer. There may be someone else who could do that as well or better, but I thought Mary would be good. So I thought that one, it would help guide our work generally, but that it might act be very specifically lead us to include some things in the second phase of the bid in terms of what we wanted, how we wanted to get help from the consultant. Thank you, Ms. Bowman. Okay, so I remember what I was gonna ask now. So as part of thinking about all of this stuff and like Mr. Vernon Jones brought up, can you stop this? Mr. Vernon Jones brought up, what organizations were we gonna contact in order to have them to like get them out there and doing outreach with, stop please, with people who like instead of having the police go out, there's a couple of things. One thing, I think that we need to talk about which organizations that we are gonna contact because I can say from experience that there's one organization that's very popular to be contacted that we should not be contacting, they're really not a good organization, they don't have enough resources. The other thing is that, and I mean, we could probably talk about that later, the other thing is I just wanted to put out there that I believe it was Denver has already implemented this in within like a week ago. And so we should be watching what they're doing out there because they're so far so good, like they're saying that it's working really well. So we should definitely be having our eyes on them if we're gonna actually try to implement this kind of service for people. So that's all I had to say. Thank you, Ms. Movin. I have a comment, but I wanted to further the group before I go. Ms. Ferreira? Yeah, I guess, yeah, for me, of course, I think Dr. Love and Ms. Custer have a level of expertise that obviously we wanna tap and wanna hear from, but I guess I just wanna make sure that we utilize their time wisely, we have questions, we're gonna really be able to engage cause I guess that's why I was feeling a little bit frazzled about it. You see, I do want them to come in and talk, but I don't want it to be a wasted opportunity. So I think we need to be clear about what we're talking to them about, what the questions are gonna be about so that it's not all over the place and then we're just getting information, you know? I want it to be targeted, I want it to be focused, I want it to be narrowed and I wanna get some key information if we do indeed bring them in. Understood, Ms. Pat? So my thinking is that we should invite those folks that we identified and organizations for them to come and do a brief presentation to us. Like the women leaders, for example, and other organizations in addition to individuals that we identify for them to share with us what is in their mind. And then perhaps we may have questions for them, but I don't want us to limit them to our own question. Let them come in and share with us what they want to. If I may, that's, I believe, Ms. Pat, in the spirit, and I'll come to you, Ms. Welker, I see your hand. There's, in the spirit of what's being proposed by Mr. Vernon Jones and others here, that begs a dialogue between people who are well-versed in this community and also who are well-versed in the field of social justice and racial equity on and on and on. So I think that there's a reason to do this sooner than later, certainly, but also I want to go back to very early in the start of this group to remind us that we did have a list of groups and even some individuals that we said we wanted to talk to when we got to the community outreach stages of our work. And we're coming to that very rapidly. We're doing a lot of work with the police department. There's going to be in combination with what Mr. Backelman is doing with respect to getting additional data. I was advised to go forward and send another request to the police department to see if we can close the gap in all this information that we need. But where we're trying to launch some effort right now is with the community. And where we're seeing it in the communities responding, by the way, and this is a little down next item actually on the agenda, but they're responding in terms of giving us resources, they're giving us input, they're giving us their thoughts and their ideas and their critiques and whatever. And so we have to look at that more carefully. I do think that for somebody, and I go back to Mr. Vernon Jones and Ms. Herrera and probably others here who know Dr. Barbara Love very well and know Ms. Mary Custer very well, they're not only longstanding members of the community, but they're very grounded in information. So these are also the folks we want to tap into going forward. I want to resonate my question and join Mr. Herrera in the question of like Barbara Love, Dr. Barbara Love and Ms. Mary Custer, notwithstanding, are there other people who fall into that same realm that can help us? And do we not be careful about not picking some over others? But at the same time, what are the guiding questions that are we going to propose to these folks that are going to inform our work in a way that's going to be useful? So I'm all for certainly Dr. Love and certainly Ms. Custer, I know them both and their knowledge is deep and about these particular topics. So that's fine with me. I do want us to be organizing Mr. Herrera said about what's going forward, narrow the field of questions to those kinds of things that inform our work and launch us into the next stage of community outreach. So just my thoughts, Mr. Vernon Jones. Oh, it was Ms. Walker, did you have your hand up? Yeah, thank you. I was going to just agree with what everybody else is saying that I think it would be a good idea to reach out to groups and allow people to come in. I do though like the idea of allowing groups to present to us because I think a lot of these groups are already involved in this sort of thing. And they have been working on these things for maybe even longer than we have. And they probably already have some ideas of what they would like to see in terms of alternative services or what they would like to see in terms of police reform. And their ideas are based off of the data that they already have from this town. So I think allowing them to come and show us what they have or what they're thinking is beneficial for us. But then I do also agree with Debra. Like we also might know what kind of information we want from certain groups. And I think it would be really important to help guide that with certain questions that we have ahead of time so that we can make sure we follow up with those questions if we set it up in a way that that can happen. But I also wouldn't be opposed to inviting Dr. Love to come next week. I think that's a great idea. I think we're a little bit unprepared for that. But I think if she doesn't have any other time coming up in the near future and she has stuff that she wants to share with us, then I wouldn't be opposed to that. Appreciate that comment. And I want to resonate what Mr. Vernon Jones said. And then I see your hand, Mr. Vernon Jones. But maybe this is a little prejudice on my part but I'm just going to go there. If you had a chance to have Dr. Love talk to you next week. It's a good idea to take the energy there because the schedule is heavy. Let me just put it that way. Believe it or not, Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, I'm just agreeing with the things other people have said. I think we could invite people to make a presentation to us. I think a few of us could get together or correspond over this coming week and come up with a few questions that so we've given it some thought. And I think each of us may have our own questions. Once we, I don't think we need to only do questions we all agree on, but that would be useful for a few of us to do some thinking together between now and next week. As far as who are all the people we're going to invite, I think we need to get started and invite the people we think will be most useful to us and we may not invite everybody who would be good. You know, I mean, we have finite time but the others could come for a public comment if they want to. I wanna sort of jump in and go to you, Miss Oman. Oman, I know you're listening very carefully there and I don't wanna put you on the spot but I know you've got a lot of investment in working with community groups not only in your profession but in your personal life and I haven't heard from you yet but I wanted to see if you had any thoughts before we move forward with some suggestions on how we might take our next steps in addition to what we've said. Definitely. So, first of all, I wanna say I agree with everyone and I do agree with making questions to give to people as they come and present to us. One thing I wanna be transparent about with the group especially with groups that work with children and families specifically BIPOC families. There's not a lot of resources out in this area that support specifically BIPOC families and a lot of programs like CHD, 18 degrees. I can think of a lot of other ones. They're mostly ran by white people so I just want the group to be aware of that and be aware that just because they're experts in child advocacy doesn't mean they all see the intersectionality in the child welfare system. So I wanted to be sure to learn about that. Thank you. So, I think within that discussion we can kind of move on but I hear some general agreement about a couple of things. One, to consider inviting Dr. Love to be a part of our meeting next Wednesday. It seems that we're gonna try to schedule our meeting next Wednesday on the 17th and possibly and this is kind of to Mr. Byrne Jones, Ms. Custard. I don't know those two. I haven't talked with Mary, I don't know. That's what I wanna say. I'm very careful about this invitation but let's start with Dr. Love and then getting back to what Ms. Ferrera was saying and there were some agreement with that that we understand that we have a responsibility to create some guiding questions for that conversation in addition to leaving room for her certainly to offer her own interpretations and her own guidance in that area because of her level of expertise. Am I correct in that? And that we would get those kinds of questions we're proposing to Ms. Moisten and that maybe back to a subgroup. I'm not sure who would, I don't wanna get lost in the field of people here but that we have those questions collated and ready to go when we have this meeting with Dr. Love. So let me just offer a suggestion that Mr. Byrne Jones if you're willing to do this that we send our guiding questions and thoughts to Ms. Moisten and then Ms. Moisten maybe you can pass those on to Mr. Byrne Jones and maybe even the folks who are working with them on the bid process and leave it to them to work through that and clean it up and have a set of questions ready for us to discuss with Dr. Love on next Wednesday. Does that sound feasible, Mr. Byrne Jones? That all sounds workable to me. I thought I heard Debra say at one point that we might wanna send questions in advance for Dr. Love or anybody else to be thinking about. So if we can, I can put things together. We will, I don't see a process where we can easily sort of achieve consensus but I'd be happy to put things together and forward them to Dr. Love, hopefully a day in advance anyway. That correct, Ms. Forever. And then I'll go to Ms. Pat. Yeah, that would be good. Okay, Ms. Pat. So I just want to validate and agree with what Ms. Owens said about organizations that are led mostly by white folks. However, if some of those organizations work with some marginalized population like homeless folks, then perhaps we might consider inviting them Survival Center. One of the organizations that I am very much asked to think about is the Human Rights Commission for them to come in and talk to us about their role. And I just feel that it's a very good organization. However, they don't have the power to enforce anything. And so it's one of the things I'm looking at when I'm making recommendation for alternative services because it would be nice to have an organization that can actually implement violations for lack of better word to use. I mean, they do a great job, to me it's not enough. I've had personal experience dealing with that and the outcome wasn't that great because they mean well many, many years ago like 20 something years ago of a child that was attending summer school. And I think that the Human Rights Commission should be given more power. If they really want them to be effective is my point. And also I was thinking about Ms. Gwelling in town that deals with people that have housing issues. Yeah, I wasn't much like her to come present to us and talk to us, I'll just stop. Ms. Moistad. So I'm the staff liaison or human rights coordinator. And so what the Human Rights Commission, none of the, all of the boards and committees have the ability to recommend. None of them really have the power to change anything. But typically the town will use the recommendations that are put forward through the committees and boards or sometimes they do. The Human Rights Commission has run into some difficulties over different things because what you end up is, you don't wanna go to the Human Rights Commission with the complaint because you have to do that through open meeting. And so it causes some conflict. So we had to take like the complaint process out and kind of restructure what the Human Rights Commission was going to do based off of the charge that was made in town meeting. But I do highly suggest that this group connect with all of the grass root and town and state organizations that are all working for social justice, right? So there's the core equity team from the co-chair there. Even the chamber has created an equity task force from the chair there, the Human Rights Commission. But it's race, what's the Shabazz? So the Shabazz is in the equity task force, so forth and so forth, D-FUN 413. So because all of us have the same common goal and it just seems like it would be helpful for us all to be working together because we all have different branches of the entire mission, I guess you could say. I agree. I agree. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with that too. The only thing is, I just wanna remind what we had said like several weeks ago when we initially started meeting is that what the organization list that we put out and I guess we should probably just add to that list and kind of prioritize which ones we're gonna be bringing in first for presentation, but we did say we were gonna, we wanted to listen to BIPOC-led organizations first and then the other organizations afterwards. So I just wanted to make that reminder so that when we're putting together our list and scheduling, which I think should be, well, we'll probably should discuss, right, Paul? How to kind of move forward with that. That we keep that in mind. Well, this would be in keeping and then I'll go to Ms. Moison and then Mr. Ferrara, Mr. Vernon Jones. This would be in keeping with the process we had at the, during the community forums where we were featuring our BIPOC community members first in the conversation. So once again, if we're outweaching to BIPOC run or supported agencies, those would be in the upper tier of our list. And so there's probably a good reason, certainly Ms. Ferrara, to go back and take a look at them and say, who are we going to target? As a sort of a first salvo out there to make sure we get that information. And again, that gets back to your point. What are we asking people? We just don't want this to be a random kind of conversation, but we want to ask questions that are going to have, give us some essential meaningful input that's going to guide us in a way to make recommendations that are going to be doable and achievable. And we're fighting for, if you will. I don't think we want to make empty recommendations. So if we don't have that kind of background and then we won't. Ms. Moison, please and then Mr. Ferrara Jones. So I am creating a copy of the list that I have so far and I'm just going to remove the individuals off of it only because again, once I send it to you all then it becomes public record and we just don't want to involve and then you guys can rate them or put them in whatever order that you would like to or add to it and then give it back and then we can move from there with it. So I'm getting ready to do that now. Okay. Thank you. Did you have your hand raised? Well, that's just a thumbs up. Okay, thank you. Thumbs up always encouraging at 6.30 at night for me. I mean, I just, you know. Mr. Ferrara Jones, go ahead. Keep me awake, Mr. Ferrara. Mr. Ferrara Jones. Well, I've been thinking we're only about five weeks from when we need to have at least the outline of a proposal about how we think alternative services should be dealt with. And as I understood Mr. Bachman at our last meeting he's thinking that these two police positions that were held have money in them that could be spent before the next budget year begins. So that as early as spring we might be trying to do something. And, you know, our primary concern may be how BIPOC folks are interacted with but the truth of the matter is if we set something up that's gonna deal with homelessness and substance abuse and, you know, whatever else it's gonna deal with people of all races. Right. And I don't think, I don't have a very good picture of what that situation looks like in town and who the police are encountering and what kind of problems they have and where they get sent. So I'm interested in hearing from some of the social service agencies regardless of whether they're agencies that we would ever contract with or not. You know, we might not, I mean, I'm not sure we won't I mean, that's another discussion I think we need to have soon about do we think we're gonna contract this service or do we think we're gonna create a new division within the town government? I think that's an important discussion to have pretty soon but I'd like to get a better picture of what are the police, you know, running into what are the calls they get and I don't wanna hear that just from the police. I wanna hear it from some of the social service people whether they're people we would want to engage with or not, I wanted their picture of what the needs are out there. So, let me see if I understand, I think I understand certainly but I'm just trying to put this in some kind of visual order of my own mind that we're talking about BIPOC communities but we're also talking about agencies that interact with the police department either on behalf of or with BIPOC community members. Well, or the interact with the, it's sort of like the people that the police are currently interacting with but we think we want non-police to interact with, you know, what does that population look like? What are the needs? What are the services? That kind of thing. Okay, other comments, Ms. Pat. Yes, I just want to add that we should not ignore Chamber of Commerce. That entity has so much influence and power in this town and to university, so the town council, name it all. Some of the business owners call the police all the time on people. So it would be good to have the Chamber of Board or the president or whoever or the directors, every director to come and talk to us, the challenges, quote, unquote, the challenges, the experience of homeless people or whatever, or people with behavioral issues. Okay. Because that's what you're going to get. When we invite them, they're going to tell us problems they're having in downtown Ames. Ms. Moisten. I just wanted to add the business improvement district because they deal with specifically the downtown area and the local businesses. Yes. So that would be Gabrielle Gould and Claudia. Yep, yep, yep. Thank you. Okay, so all that makes sense. And I think in trying to summarize where we are right now, I think it's important for us to sort of keep track of this. Let me just go back a little bit. One, we're going to be getting questions that we think are pertinent and essential for our conversation with Dr. Love. Two, Mr. Vernon Jones through Ms. Moisten. By when? Mr. Vernon Jones ASAP or you said at least a day before. So Monday night, go ahead, Ms. Moisten. I'm sorry, Monday's a holiday. Oh. So you will also need to post the agenda. I will need to post that on Friday. That's president's day. Yep. I mean, that doesn't mean that you can't send me stuff and I forward it, but you know, it's just saying. It's a Monday. Oh, happy much. Can we ask president Biden if he minds if we just do some business on that day for crying out loud? Okay, so we have to get the agenda set to you by Friday. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Vernon Jones. In terms of the questions, I don't think we've, as long as we don't go back and forth, I don't think we violate the open meeting law if people CC me when they send the questions to Ms. Moisten. And if, as long as I get them by Monday night, I'll have time to, you know, do a little putting together and communicating with Dr. Love. And then we don't need to ask Ms. Moisten to engage with them over the weekend or the holiday. Ms. Moisten. Yep, I just wanted to chime in real quick and just say I don't mind doing that over the weekends and stuff, but if you guys could send stuff to me before nine o'clock, if you want it sent to the group that night, because if you send me something on a Sunday night at 10 o'clock, I can't guarantee it's gonna get sent anywhere. Don't. Of the following days. So I just put a little disclaimer out there. I have a prescripted message. You can send to people who send you an email at 10 o'clock on Sunday night. I could be happy to send it to you. Sounds like me. I mean, night woman. Thank you. So we're agreed we're gonna do that. Okay, what Mr. Vernon Jones said, just get that to him in there. So wait, so that's what I needed clarity, Mr. Wiley. So it was just, we can send questions to Ms. Moisten with a CC to Mr. Vernon Jones by Monday night. Or vice versa. Well, what do you mean vice versa? I'm the Russ. I'll just send it straight to Mr. Vernon Jones. Okay, no, no, no, no. Ms. Moisten. Ms. Moisten, okay, I got it back with Ms. Moisten and then Mr. Vernon Jones, yeah. Okay, with a CC to Mr. Vernon Jones. Okay, got it. Okay. And then the other piece before we go too further is that we're, that's for our next meeting. Now we're talking too about meeting with groups and individuals. So Ms. Moisten. I'm so sorry. I just want to chime in there too that I, as from the core equity team here in town, I've been working with, apparently Hadley has its own core equity team now and Belcher Town is working on one. And I'm going to hit the individuals up in self-deerfield that I know the administrators in self-deerfield in Sunderland to see if they can't get one going. Because I just feel like we, it's kind of like the whole plastic bag band, like we have a plastic bag band and Amherst. But if you go to Stop and Shop and Hadley, you're going to get a plastic bag, right? And so I just, there's some level of it, at least from the core equity team perspective where it needs to be more regionalized or more, you know, all the towns be somewhat on the same input, but most of those programs are run by people who are not from the BIPOC community. So that's my, my piece there, but they're allies. So I just thought you should be aware. Thank you, very important. But I'm just trying to get to also, thank you for that information, but our understanding is that you're, you're going to work on revising a list of people now, Ms. Moyston that would include BIPOC individuals, we're trying to prioritize them and... It's not individuals because I don't want to do that. Not individuals, no, organizations. It's organizations and whatever I've been given from everyone is who's on there plus what I knows out there. And then you guys can add or do whatever, just send it back to me. So we all have the same. Okay. Let's see. Hang on a second. I'm going to have to leave. Can I leave the screen for a moment, Ms. Miss Owen? Would you mind taking over? You're on mute. You're on mute. Sorry, I was just wondering where we were on the agenda. We're at where we kind of went from phase two. We're talking a little bit about, I guess we kind of got into with the discussion about Dr. Love, we kind of moved slightly into this input from community members. So we're kind of in that realm. Okay. I'm sorry, I have to just check out for a second. I'll be right back. No problem. So is there any more input for the questions about Dr. Love or do you guys want to move on to the community input? You mean the public form? Oh. I think that's what it is. No? I thought the next though. Yeah, the next one you were saying was the recent input from community members, that one. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. We can go into that, I think it's the next one. Oh, well, I guess just to finish off though, the IFB phase two, so you all are going to get something to us. So the group that's working on it, like the day before the meeting or something, I guess I'm unclear with that. Ms. Pat? Before we leave up. So Ms. Ferrara, we're meeting, our subgroup is meeting tomorrow at 7 p.m. If any of you have any suggestion for us, we encourage you to send it to Ms. Moisten so that she can forward it to us. No, no, no, I get that. I was just saying in terms of once you all have met because before you guys would send it to us at least the day before the meeting so that we have enough time to kind of read it, that's all I was trying to get clarity on. I mean, we have a draft, but not all of us have contributed to it, so it's not quite ready for you guys to review. Yeah, no, no, I get that. That's why I was just saying if it was just going to come like maybe, I don't know, by the 16th or something. Like what do you think, Ms. Alicia and Ms. Garros? I would hope that after our meeting tomorrow, if it's not ready, that it would be ready shortly thereafter because we were able to sort of just compare all of our notes together and we shared, so one of us had our screen shared so we just made live edits last time. And I think we would probably do us some working this time and if not ready the day after maybe one additional day. So by Saturday, is that realistic for us? I'd say that will be our goal. Okay. Yeah, I think so. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm back. Hi, Ms. Owen. I'm back. Okay. So where do we end up, Ms. Owen, right now? On the comment from the community input, I think it was. I'm sorry to hear you. It was the next topic after the IFB on the feedback we've been hearing from the community. Okay. So if I may just launch into this, I want to state the obvious. We've been getting lots of input either by email, mostly by email certainly, but I sometimes get calls myself from people and folks in the community are becoming more interested in supporting our work. They're sending us resources. They're sending us questions. They're involved in looking at safety issues both with the police department and I also want to acknowledge internally we are also generating lots of resources, not the least which was mentioned earlier about, where was it? What city was that? I lost the city there. Denver. What's that? Denver. Denver, yeah, for example. And there are other cities like that that are doing things and implementing things that are working. So a couple of points I want to make. One is that when these comments, when these contributions come in as the working group has asked and I've been doing, I'll respond to folks and let them know the acknowledge that we've received it and try to let them know that in some ways this information informs our work. Certainly it broadens our field of knowledge and we do our best to read and absorb this information and what I'd like to think about is outside of just responding, how to really incorporate some of these things which seem very pertinent and important and essential for us into our conversations and into our work so that people truly know they're being heard. For example, we received a letter recently from a citizen in our community who is very much interested in the bid process and how it works and how it's choreographed and was asking questions about the money itself and how it's managed and how it impacts the work of not only the consultant but the community and I think a fuller conversation around those things would be better held if we had certainly Mr. Delaney here and Mr. Bachleman, but I just want to let folks know that we're getting a lot and you're hearing a lot too. So how do we bring this into the fold and how do we acknowledge and use it to our best advantage? This is an open question and Mr. Vernon Jones. Yeah, I don't have an answer to your larger question but I want to do appreciate your drafting the letter to DW, but I also, as I look back at it it seemed like two of the questions from DW were really very specifically about the bid. Right. And I think she may be at a potential bidder. So I think it's important to respond immediately and I think the only response we can make is you must contact Anthony Delaney to get the particulars about the bid. Anything else about her question two and three anything else we say is maybe a violation of the bid process. So I'd like to suggest that we get that answer to her very quickly about items two and three even if we're not ready to say anything more about item one yet in her letter, in their letter. Certainly appreciate that comment because and I guess I assumed wrongly that because we were talking about the bid process that Mr. Delaney would be on this meeting with us should have taken responsibility to make that clearer but apparently he's not available anyway but I think that that is an appropriate response. So, and if the group would like and is asking me to do so I'd be happy to follow that up with an additional comment both of what we're talking about right now because I think it makes perfect sense. Mr. Vernon Jones. Other comments? Moisten. I just wanna make sure that everybody's very aware that you can't answer any questions in regards to the bid at all. They all have to be routed to Anthony. Right and thank you. And I think I guess what I was saying too I would mention that as based on what our conversation is we don't wanna get into anything like that that for the potential bidder or negotiating anything for the town who are subgroups, who are committee working group like ours. So definitely thank you. We do have and I just wanna say we have lots of resources and if you're like me every once in a while I see something I said, oh my God, this is great. You know, we can do this. This should help us, whatever. And as soon as I do that, I get another one. This just as good, if not better. So I think at some point, not today I and I welcome suggestions from folks on how we wanna manage our resource bank so that we can actually go to it. And Ms. Moisten, I think you mentioned this a while ago but it could be a monumental task. What do we filter in? What do we filter out? Those kinds of things because we don't wanna get inundated with every piece of information that comes into us about the police or safety or homeless or you name it, it's gonna come to us at this point because a lot of the issues that we're dealing with are overlapping into other areas for sure. So any comments, Ms. Pratt? Yes. So one of the things I would like us to consider is some of the resources that we've been getting. I think I can speak for myself sometimes when I talk to some of my very liberal white friends about racism in this town with the police. And sometimes I get the answer, oh, but we're lucky, they don't get shot. MS is pretty much safer. And there are some MS police interaction with some residents in this town that were actually on YouTube that residents sent to us. If we can collect some of those when the chair and the vice president alternative recommendation in April, it would be good to play some of the clips because we still have people who are in denial in this town, very good people with good intention but it's really good to see evidence. You know, I'm really would like us to consider that to present some of the YouTube clips of what BIPOC, some, you know, that experience in this town. That's what I want to put out there. Because one of the ones I saw was really the reaction to me was like very intense. I have, you know, when I used to run my restaurant, I've had, you know, my neighbors call and said back to this, you know, nice complaint just for playing African music in my restaurant. And I politely tell them like, this is not going to change. You know, that my restaurant is a cultural destination and part of it is music, is the food, is they add some craft that I sell there and, you know, some clothing, it's not going to change. So I think folks are still in denial in this town that, you know, it's not too bad. That's the point I'm trying to make. And sort of circling back in, thank you for that, Miss Pat. I think those are important comments. And if I may, Mr. I'm going to you a second. I'm just sort of circling back to a comment made by Mr. Vernon Jones earlier, you know, referencing conversations, for example, with folks like Dr. Love and other people who we may bring in or organizations we bring in, that might be informing some and framing some of our recommendations going forward. Comments like yours, Miss Pat, are helping us to frame some of those recommendations going forward. So we don't want to lose those comments and experiences. And I think that's why we're going out to the community. That's why we're going out to gather information. At some point, I just want to say that at some point, we're going to find that many of these experiences in categories fall into some pretty unique and distinct buckets because there's so many that are similar. And we'll know what to do with that when we see them and how to make recommendations based on that. So just saying, just to be important, I thank you for that, and it's important. Was it Miss Perera or Miss Walker? I've seen on the corner of my eye there. Had to hand up. Miss Perera, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, I definitely agree with Miss Pat in terms of making sure we're getting that information. In terms of what we've been talking about, like getting more input, one of the things that we can't kind of forget in terms of what we're doing with Dr. Love next week is also besides organizations, we do need to think about what other individuals we want to also end up talking to, obviously kind of prioritizing BIPOC individuals first and then the other ones. So I think we need to make sure that we're also, like for me, I think what I'm going to do is besides the organization, I'm going to send Miss Moisten to my list of individuals with contact information. So that then we're already putting together that list so we can bring folks in. Now in terms of like input from the community, that is something though that we need to discuss in terms of so how do we deal with this? I know that we're all kind of looking at it, like for instance, Miss Vera Cage sent a bunch of information, right? Which I reviewed and obviously is critical to our work. But so are we just like individually just kind of reviewing these things and we hold on to it or are we getting feedback in terms of what we're doing? Cause I know obviously when we meet there's so much to do, right? So it's not as if we're going to have enough time to go through everything but I think we need to have a process, I guess. When we do receive this input, I mean, already we already have the process where you, Mr. Wiley, response to the community, which is great, right? So we already know that's happening. But a process for us, when we're reviewing some of these things and responding, also we did get the letter back from the town council, you know, they send that in and so how are we responding to that? You see what I'm saying? And also just to remember, cause when I saw the town council one, I was like, I think that we had said in that response that went out that we were also going to do something to be accountable or something. So- And we are. Yeah. So we need to follow up with that, you know? So anyway, a lot of these different little things here, what are we doing with it and how do we provide the feedback process? Well, I'd like to suggest it. Oh, go ahead, Ms. Moisten, go ahead. So I didn't know, cause it just seems like a good opportunity but I sent last minute out in addition to the packet, a letter of support from the core equity team that I believe I added in. So just wanted to let you guys know that that was there. I got that. Thank you. And you are a member of our community as well and you sent something. Yeah. So I thank you for that. People remember that, you know, we're not only in this group, we're also community members. So, you know, we can do that and thanking Ms. Moisten for that. And I think it brings to light, Ms. Berger, what you're talking about. We're fielding lots of information from very different sources for very different reasons. And it would be incumbent upon us to have a process for dealing with that and thinking about how to deal with that more than simply acknowledging and thanking people for what they've done. But people wanna know, are you listening to me and are you considering what I've said in your work? And so how we go about doing that is something we probably should put on our agenda and talk about. And I actually would like to put that on the agenda if we've made for next meeting, we can devote some time and give people some chance to think through potential ways to receive and process and incorporate information, you know, going forward. So, yes, Ms. Owen. Another question I had was when we were gonna review the answers to the survey and I did make a separate flyer for just the link to the survey. Is there gonna be a cutoff time for when we're accepting those or? Mr. Berger Jones. If we succeed in getting the consultant that our initial invitation is better looking for, I would hope that we would let them be, participate with us in that discussion. Other comments? Do you have a sense, Ms. Moyson, how many respondents we have through that survey? I was trying to pull up Ms. Owen's survey, flyer. I think there's about 45. 45. Okay. Where's the link again to the survey? I can resend it out to everyone. You can also just go to, if you go to our webpage, it's on our webpage. But I will resend it and I just have to stress that regardless what happens, the input from the community should just keep coming in because, you know, the BIPOC community does not feel very included in the policy and the making that as happens here in Amherst and so their input will help us make, will help you guys make your decision and then that is important and that helps build the trust that we need. Yeah. Ms. Farrera. Yeah, and again, like off of what, like Ms. Moyson had sent us, which was really wonderful, a lot of your feedback, Ms. Moyson and recommendations and things. I mean, I liked, you know, obviously we still need to talk about the ambassadors and how to use them wisely because I think we, maybe that's another thing we need to have to do gender because I think we need to be using them even right now. We don't have to wait for the consultant. We can already put them to work type of thing. So I think we need to figure out, you know, how much we're gonna be paying them in terms of the stipend and then, you know, kind of set them out to work in terms of getting that information. And then second, the other one that I liked that Ms. Moyson mentioned was kind of like the language specific, you know, focus groups, you know, so that we are really kind of getting, you know, folks that are on the margin, that are marginalized, that will not, you know, they might not have access to virtual, you know, in terms of our town forums, obviously the languages and impediments, things like that, or other groups, specific kind of focus groups, you know, that we could kind of reach out to. So I think that's another thing that we need to discuss that, you know, I thought Ms. Moyson, that was a great idea. Ms. Moyson. I just want to chime in that there's possibly part of money that we can use to pay the ambassadors. So it's not coming out of the 80,000. We don't have to worry about it on behalf of the, I don't know how that turned out of the consultant, but you know, Paul has looked into it and there might be available funds outside of that. Ms. Pat. I just want to publicly appreciate Ms. Moyson for taking the time to write us. And I was very impressed about your thoughts and your feedback because you know a lot, but you know, you're a very humble woman. So I really appreciate that, that you shared your thoughts with us. Thank you very much. So one other thing I want to talk about is the letter from the town council chair. I think we should read it out here. I think we should read the letter. I don't think I- It's got the record so that people, oh, you didn't include it? I didn't include it because it came in so late. Like I was already trying to send everything out and then it came and I'm like, I keep adding stuff and I need to just get it out. So we can put it on the next agenda. Okay, one more thing- Yeah, go ahead Ms. Pat, I'm sorry. One more thing is that when we are ready to do our apology for our BIPOC community about the incident at the public forum, I think we should include that letter from the chair. I think we should post it in Ms. Bulletin. I think some people have approached me and said, what is that all about? They don't have time to view the YouTube. So we need to be transparent so that people follow what really happened. So combination of our apology to BIPOC community and then the letter that we got from the council through the chair. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pat. And actually it was making some notes on potentially what could happen at our next meeting. I did want to offer the group since I've been taking some notes here on some topics that might need some guidance and some direction. So what I'd like to offer the working group is a draft if I could, Ms. Moyson say, here's a draft of some topics we've discussed and here's some guidance on how we might want to go forward and get your responses to those. So we don't lose them in the phrase, so to speak. But, and then find places to put them in our agenda because it's quite busy when you think about it and we're going in a number of different directions. And I'd be happy to share that earlier than later with the working group and have you all comment on it to see if I've left any gaps or needed to include something else in this guidance just as a way to sort of frame our discussions as well and reminders to people of what we're thinking about doing. For example, like the letter to our own BIPOC community in regard to the community forum. I mean, that's kind of in process. I think they're both thinking about that. So, putting that back out there and keeping these things on the agenda, reviewing the process for how to take in the information from the community and what we do with it. So just offering some thoughts and guidance on it to get your response. And then we can place them strategically in our agendas so we don't lose them or have to revisit them over and over again. So if that's acceptable, I'd like to start that at least and then see what folks think and get some feedback. Thumbs up, okay, my own thumbs up. So, let's see. So we're all good on item C for the moment. I don't think this should take long at all. This thing about the action review was just a question really I had for this. I think when I offered this idea of an action review I simplified it in the document that I sent to you all with the offer at the bottom. This could be part of a meeting where we could just basically answer those questions in a round table kind of thing. And I'd be happy to take that information and put it together and say, here's what we intended to do, here's what actually happened, here's what we learned and how does it inform our stuff going forward? And I didn't know, I didn't want to put extra burden on folks in terms of writing stuff. So that's why I said we could probably do it in a meeting if we gave it some forethought and we just went around and asked those questions. I wanted to see whether a written response would be better or a conversation in our group might be better slash easier for all of us. So that's my question to you and I'd like to hear your response. Ms. Pereira. Yeah, I mean, I think that that could work. My one question would be, because when I looked at it, it seemed kind of like broader questions about the event itself, but also I was interested in kind of like, what were like the key takeaways that each might have learned from just based on the information. So I guess we could do it in a meeting, but I actually was thinking like we would kind of send those in to you or something and you could collate it. That's what I was kind of thinking, but... I can do it either way. And it's not certainly in light of what you're saying. It's the whole idea is actually to expose our learning. What did we actually learn from this? For example, I think we did learn and or was reinforced or relearned, I should say how difficult it is for people to access, make commentary in that kind of a format if you don't have access to personal communication. Also how difficult it is as a BIPOC person to be able to go on screen and say something publicly about that. Those are some learnings. So I think it doesn't have to be extensive, but I think just to walk through back through that to see exactly what those questions are, including what you're saying, Mr. Herrera, about what else did we learn and what could we learn from that? Because we're going to have more conversations with folks going forward. We're going to continually learn more things and we want to make it as strong and as effective as possible. That's the goal of that. It's not a scientific study necessarily, but certainly a way to take pause and look at what we're doing. So I could do it either way. I could take written comments from folks. We could do it at, take 15 minutes at a meeting and do it either way or a combination of both. I think it would be worthwhile for the group. Other thoughts, Ms. Pat? I'm flexible if people feel that they need time to think about it and send in their feedback or if we want to discuss it during the meeting, either way is fine with me. Other folks? Let me ask a different question. Is this something you don't want to do? I want to do it. And it's okay if you don't want to do it. I'm just saying, because this is an idea, Ms. Walker. I just don't feel strongly about it in either direction. So it is something that I want to do and I think we should do, but I don't, I'm not for doing it in person or for sending answers. I think either way could work. Okay. And I'd be willing to do it either way. Ms. Owen? Maybe it would be stronger if we did a letter just because we could respond as a group rather than doing a video, doing it during a meeting where we all are participating. But if we write it out, then we're one voice apologizing for everything that happened and all of our voices are heard. Okay. Wasn't necessarily focusing on the apology as much as the whole process of us listening to people in the community, that whole activity of community forum, how we manage it, how we organize it, those kinds of things about, maybe I didn't make myself clear. I'm sorry. I misunderstood that. That's the case. It could go either way. Yeah. Okay. Any other comments before we move on? Ms. Pat? It looks like we're not ready to do the discussion today. So why don't I propose that we're sending our response through Ms. Meisten? Okay. I will, I'll resend something out that doesn't necessarily go into all the whole thing about action at review, but just post several questions for folks and as you get that back to me, I'll put it together in one document and we'll have it. That's all. I mean, I think it's just an important thing to do. It's not necessary that we do a tomorrow kind of thing for sure, but certainly something we could probably use in the future. So thank you. I'll do that that way. Get back to folks. So give certificate proposal. And that's what we wanted to talk about Ms. Pat. Let's go for it. So do you want to put it up for us? Okay. I'll just give credit. So Ms. Owen, she did most of the work and I did give some input. So I want you guys to review it. If you have any questions for us, then we can respond. So we try to include some input from last week discussion, but we tweaked it a little bit. For example, the raffle, instead of $100 raffle, we are suggesting four raffles, $25 each, for example. And in terms of compensating people, people with lived experiences, we didn't limit it to just BIPOC. Like we have some residents that, you know, talked about the experience, experience having family member with like mental illness. For example, it was a difficult thing for that person to share in writing. So we are recommending that everyone that spoke about their lived experiences at both public forum and people who sent us lived experiences by either email or through the online website, we should compensate them for $25, give certificate. Ms. Owen and myself, we talked about, we identified some BIPOC on businesses and we kind of left like restaurants at this time because of pandemic, we're recommending that you guys consider four and that would be M&M length jewelry. They've been in town for more than 15 years now from Jamaica. They have presence online. They have social media presence on Facebook, sorry. And then Global Cots is owned by BIPOC and he has some BIPOC folks that work for him, that work there. And then Ames Extension and Beauty Salon is the only black owned hair salon in town. And then Gills Auto Repair and Performance is over nine across from Cumberland Farm. He's a BIPOC business owner, Spanish guy. Actually my business, we deal a lot with transportation. So he's in, you know, that's where we send our vehicles for repair. And I'm encouraging people to please support him and other BIPOC businesses. Who else? So that's, if you wanna chime in, Ms. Owen. I don't think I have anything else to add, but I did wanna also give Ms. Pat credit for bringing to light that we should add people who emailed their experiences to us to be eligible for the raffle because the experiences that we're emailed are very valuable. Even though they weren't able to come to the forum, they were still able to be vulnerable to us over email. Yes, Ms. Moisten. So the, I just wanna chime in about the businesses. Are you guys are not gonna include the restaurants? My thought I get it. Okay, so some people are choosing to, you know, eat out and I wanna support restaurants there. And at the same time, hmm, how do I put this? And some people are still waiting before they go out to eat or order food. I know some people are like that. So. Well, so my thought process is first of all, I'm interested to know how do we get a gift card that's gonna relate to all of this? Like the only people that I know that typically do that is the chamber. But I mean, the gift cards don't go bad. That's a good point. Right, and I'm just a little concerned because, you know, like El Camolito deserves to be on there. And, you know, there's crazy noodle. So I don't wanna get into the businesses because I shouldn't do that, but you could probably broaden it a little bit. And, you know, I can send you some more lists of BIPOC businesses. And that are not necessarily restaurants either. Thank you. Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, I appreciate the work of the subcommittee on this. I think this is great. I would include restaurants. People, you know, can wait till the pandemic is over or lots of people are getting takeout food to support them. And if Bakuz was still in business, I certainly wouldn't wanna leave them off. Thank you for sharing. Good point. Other comments. I mean, I wanna echo Mr. Vernon Jones' comments. This is great work to get this off and running. And I think it's an important response to our BIPOC community. I would also support, because I'm noticing, you know, there are a number of BIPOC restaurants who are not on the list, for example. And so if there were a way to make that happen, then that's great. I would like, you know, have the subcommittee think about that, Ms. Walker. I think this is a great draft. And I would support using it with just the addition of whichever other businesses Ms. Moisten can come up with. So if we were just to add those businesses in the section where we have the other ones listed, I think it would be perfect. I don't think it needs any other edits. But then also Ms. Moisten did say she's not sure if we'd be able to have a gift certificate available in this manner. So I'm wondering if that's something we can look into and find out if we can make that happen. Because I think this is a great proposal. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Actually, what we did in our subcommittee with the businesses that were listed, we did an outreach and discuss. And they were very appreciative that we're thinking something along this line. And they were very flexible as to how the payment will go. And one of the discussion was if somebody decided to choose their business, if we send them a gift certificate that we designed to your place and then maybe the town can reimburse your type of thing. And they will care with that. The fact that we thought about them was a big deal. Like nobody has ever done that for them. In town. And I appreciate your sentiment, Mr. Ross, that that's a different story when it comes to town supporting Bakus when I was open. It's a long story. But anyway, in terms of BIPOC owned restaurants, I know them, we know them. And when we include them, that's no problem. It's just we were thinking more during this pandemic than anything else. I would love to include all the BIPOC businesses. I know most of them, so we know most of them. So we will include them, there's no problem. I wish we thought about after pandemic they can still use the certificate. I was thinking of immediate. That's me. If I get a gift certificate or gift card, I want to use it right away. Otherwise I lose it, I forget it. So that was my thinking. Like, so good feedback. Thank you. We will fix it. We all forget those gift certificates, Miss Pat. Don't worry about it. It's okay. Miss Freira has her hand up. Miss Freira. Who? Miss Freira. Where'd she go? Okay, they always went off screen. That's here now. Thank you, Miss Freira. Yeah, sorry. You know, my internet is acting up. So I have to kind of... Oh yeah. Sorry about that. So anyway, yeah, I was basically, I'm in agreement with them. There are other BIPOC restaurants or businesses for us to just expand it and include it so that we can help all of them. So basically no expiration, right? Yes. Say it again, Miss Pat. So basically the certificate will have no expiration. It's what I'm hearing, correct? Right. Right, okay. Yeah. Even after we're disbanded, correct? Right. Okay, okay. Miss Moisten. Yeah, I just, I think the only time is if they put a limit, but you don't have to put that limit. I would actually suggest, or any of us could do it actually, and I can do it as well, to check in with the chamber because they have a gift certificate that includes multiple businesses. And you can take that gift certificate card and go anywhere, and they just subtract the balance off, the total off the balance. And I don't know how they reimburse the restaurants or how that piece happens, but I like, cause I don't know anything about this. And perhaps you do, I just, I don't know anything about how that works. They could do it the very same way that you have suggested that we do it is that you just get the reimbursement. Yeah. Miss Pat. So in our subcommittee, we did discuss if we give a blank gift card or gift certificate, people can use it to purchase things elsewhere beside BIPOC. So it will be very critical that we have a, we have blank gift certificate where somebody indicate where they would like to spend the money, then we can just fill in the business they choose rather than giving people the certificate, I can use it to buy from, you know what? Miss Moistad. I'm not. I just, I think that you can keep it limited so that the people have the choice and they can bring that gift card to any of the businesses that we list and only those businesses. That's what the chamber does, like they give out these gifts or cards and they have a list of businesses and you can only go to those businesses with the gift card, because it's part of a program. So this would be part of a program. We could make our own list. Right, it would be the community safety working group, you know, we make our own list. Humanity members supporting business, local BIPOC businesses or however you would like to name it, but it's just a list and you can go and they just subtract the balance. Yeah, Miss Walker and then Miss Pat. So just a clarifying question for Miss Moistad. So basically they can tailor it to the places that we choose. Okay. Miss Pat. So I'm not opposed to that. I think that's an option. My preference, and I mean, it's good to collaborate with Chamber of Commerce that I would rather have us handle that, our committee, CSWUG, is that what you're... I am, I'm just curious about the process that they use so that the card can be applicable to the multiple businesses at one time without being able to go to another business outside of that branch, right? And how that money exchange happens, that's all. I wasn't saying that we should involve them. This should be completely community safety working group, community members supporting, you know, our local businesses. So that's all, there was nothing else to that. I mean... Miss Bowman, you have your hand up. So we have a list of BIPOC restaurants, businesses. We take that list to the Chamber of Commerce, right? Chamber, yeah. No. Oh, um... So Mike, I wouldn't take it to the Chamber. We don't want to do that. And not only that, but the Chamber has, they're not connected with some of these businesses or they have to have their own bridge connection fixed. And so we just want to take their... Maybe they don't have to, but maybe take their process and see if we can use that for... Right. Okay. So now I'm more clear about it. Yes. We should... I agree that we shouldn't necessarily put them, like have nothing to do with them but use their process because it doesn't make sense. It's too... We have so much work to do. We don't need to be adding, oh, who's going to fill out the gift certificate for such and such. We just need to be able to hand out the gift certificate. They're already... We already have the businesses on there named. These are the only people who take this gift certificate. So it's already the BIPOC businesses. We already have them outlined. They don't have a choice. They have to use it at one of those locations. Am I correct in that understanding? Ms. Pat. Yes. So I guess Ms. Moystein question is how is CSWG going to reimburse these businesses? And I'm repeating myself. When I spoke with them, they said they're going to do this on a trust that they will provide the service. I didn't talk to any restaurant. They didn't have a problem with that, but you're saying... You're asking about the process. I just want... I mean, I can just do it tomorrow. And then I can send an email out to you and Ms. Owen and or whomever else would like to know, but just to understand how their process works and how they reimburse. I'm a little skeptical of having too many gift cards out there. But I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that because of having too many gift cards out there and not having an actual cash amount. Or somehow having a transparent function through that. Right? Like the one thing that I don't want to have happen is we say we're going to give global cuts $25 for this person going to get, but I just, I don't want to do anything on, like I want to make sure that it's, we have everything covered. It's a lot of work to follow up and keep up with at the same time. So I, you know, I just want to make sure we have considered all the different ways that we can do that because then I, somebody's got to track it, right? And that's, that part becomes tedious. I'll track it. I'm a business woman. I'll track it. I don't have a problem with that. Okay. Yeah. I'd like to suggest we just, we move forward with this. I don't think we have to belabor this too much longer and Ms. Owen and Ms. Pat can work with Ms. Moisten to, to refine the process. And, you know, whatever you come up with a final recommendation for us, I think we're in good shape with that. I think there'll be enough guardianship over it to make sure it works right. So we'll entrust you to make that happen. And, you know, just thank you for doing it. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a great initiative. And I think it shows us a lot of integrity too for the process we're trying to promote. It's a 732 and we're almost done. I'd like to just move right now to upcoming events. If there are any that people want to, no. Ms. Moisten, you seem to always have an upcoming event. Save the day for us every time. I've had to change the date of Black History Month, but it is set for the 16th, which is next Tuesday at 5 30 PM. And Ms. Pat's gracious, beautiful family and Ms. Tashina Bowman's beautiful family. And Alicia Walker, send me some photos. We'll be all nicely plastered in a video, Mr. Wiley, you as well, Ms. Ferrera. And, and so it'll be very nice. No, no, Ms. Owen and Mr. Vernon Jones. What time on Tuesday? 5 30 PM. Thank you so much. Wait, what's the date again? I'm sorry, what's the date again in time? It's February 16th at 5 30 PM. And I can send you guys all the Zoom link. Great. And we did celebrate our first lunar new year. It was fabulous. I mean, I had a Zoom issue because I always have a Zoom issue, but besides that, it was fabulous. I missed it. Congratulations. I missed it too. Glad it went well. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. So our next meeting, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Ms. Owen, I didn't realize you had something. No, it's okay. Before we move on, I just wanted to bring to the community the CSWG. Safe Passages is coming to do an in-service for some of the mentors that I work with at my job. One thing that really struck me looking over the information from the Amherst Department was that since 2017, the domestic violence in Amherst has almost doubled. Safe Passages is coming to talk about prevention, supporting people who are experiencing domestic violence and other community resources. If any of you guys are interested in attending, I can send you a link. I think this will be helpful to inform our work with alternative safety and also getting more connected with other providers in the community. Yeah. Would you please send that to all of us? Yeah. Great. Yeah. Thank you for that. Okay. Next meeting date, next week, the 17th and we're getting our agenda items to Ms. Moisten by Friday. Is it noon, Ms. Moisten? Or one? One o'clock, it's okay. Okay. Agenda items to Ms. Moisten by one o'clock Friday. And we'll move forward. I think we all have our stuff to do, Mr. Vernon Jones. I wondered if I could suggest an agenda item now. Sure. I was thinking that Tashina brought our attention to the article about the Denver program. And I thought it might be useful for us to look at that article together, hopefully read it ahead of time and kind of go through and say, is this sort of what we're talking about? Are there things here we definitely want to do? Are there some things we don't want to do? Are there some things we need to learn a lot more about? It just seemed like it would give us a little advanced picture of the territory we're heading into. Let's put it on. That's one. Among others that we're going to have certain. Yeah. So, Faith. So you heard that one, Ms. Moisten already? I have it down. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Pat. So, yeah, I FB phase two and also the gift certificate. Final draft. Thank you, Ms. Walker. And then I just wanted to clarify because I was unsure if we came to a consensus on this earlier, but are we going to be inviting Mrs. Dr. Love? I couldn't remember her title to our next meeting. Yes. Yes. Okay. And do we know, like, are we going to just be like allotting a certain amount of time that we allow to engage with her? Or how is that going to work with our also abundance of agenda items for next week? Well, what I, go ahead. I'll defer to you, Ms. Moisten, then I'll go ahead. I mean, I would just suggest to put Ms. Love at the top of our agenda. Yes, I was going to say. And then, you know, if you guys have a preference of how you want the following items that were just mentioned to be so that you make sure we get to a certain one, then let me know and we can order them as so moving forward or for the meeting, if that makes sense, right? So she, Ms. Dr. Love would be A, and then if you guys felt like the gift card really needed to be discussed and that would be item B. But you guys didn't care so much about the Denver program, then that would be the last item on the agenda. Can I also, while we're on this, and then we'll go to end this quickly. I've noticed at several meetings we've had that there's an item on our agenda, sort of like a members report. And I've also noticed that over the last several meetings we've had virtually no public comment. While we do have to have public comment, I'm wondering if we'd have any issue of leaving off the other, the member report, as we are very capable of talking about what we're doing and what we're experiencing in the course of our conversation as a way to just, you know, free up more time in planning our schedule for the meeting. Don't know how you all feel about that. See, one thumbs up from Ms. Pat. I'm good with that. I'm okay. Sound good? You can try it? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You want to eliminate the community. Just to see the WG member report. Yeah, just and see if, you know, because people will say, we've already heard some things today about their experiences, you know, our experiences. So we don't have to relegate that to a particular part. Maybe you can incorporate it in our discussion. Mr. Vernon Jones. Do we really need the gift card to come back? I'd be happy to trust our subcommittee and Ms. Moyston to take that forward without any more attention from us. We can take that off. Okay. Yeah, who put it on? I did. Oh, could it be just something in the packet? Mr. Ross is trusting folks with business background. Thank you. Ha ha. Good idea. Let's do that then. Okay. Are all hearts and minds good? Okay. I am asking, but assuming there are no other items that we need to bring up that of the ones we brought up already that we're going to move forward that didn't come to me before 48 hours. Are we good there? And I'd like to take a motion to adjourn. So move. Mr. Vernon Jones moved seconded. Ms. Pat. Okay. All in favor thumbs up. Meeting is adjourned at 740. Not bad folks. Not bad. Not bad. Kiss those kids, Ms. Walker. Good night. Okay. Have a good week everybody. Ms. Bowman. Bye-bye. Go watch impeachment. What's that? Go watch impeachment. Oh God. You know. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.