 Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Good evening working group. And we are calling this meeting of the community safety working group to order at 533 p.m. on March 3rd. That was almost hard to get out of my mouth when I said March. I mean, I can't believe it's March already. Anyways, March, they're glad you all are here. And thank you for your work. I'm going to take roll now since we do have a quorum. Brianna Owen. Here. Yeah. Let's burn in Jones. Alicia Walker. Here. To Sheena Bowman. Here. Thank you all for being here and welcome again. Thank you. Thank you all for your hard work and. And commitment to this group. It's, it's pretty intense work. And it's broadening and deepening as we go forward. So certainly appreciate all the things that, that you were doing. And for any community members. Who are. Listening or probably will. At some point see the video. We thank you for being in attendance. And we also encourage you to stay in touch with our work. On the Amherst website. For this evening, we are. We're not going to. Approve the minutes of. The February 10th. 2021. Meeting. As they are not available at this particular moment. So I'm just going to go over a quick. Review of our agenda. And this evening we're going to. As we normally do go through a public comment. And. Check in with our membership to see if they have. Any pre-meeting. Information they want to share. Beyond that are action and discussion items are. To discuss the workflow. In particular. Seven generations movement collective. And in that conversation. Since they are not here, we will be talking a bit about. The direction we want to take in the focus. We want to take. With respect to the. Coming on a consultant. Who will be available soon to help us with our work. And we'll have a chance to examine that and discuss those, those matters. We also have our fiscal year 22 recommendations. And we hope to, to bring our recommendations into some focus in our discussion. We have had. Lots of information come into our group. Either by the group members themselves or from outside folks. And we've been educating ourselves to the point we feel. And we did last meeting talk a little bit about where some of our inclinations may be. In terms of some preliminary recommendations. But I think in this case, we'd like to bring some more. Specific focus to this as we have our consultant group coming on soon. So that'll be part of that discussion. And. Then we're going to talk about the. Community safety working groups. Meeting timeframe and deadlines. And that may be a bit of a smorgasbord because we are, have a lot of things. That have to happen in a timely manner. Not the least of which is making recommendations to the town. Thinking about recommend. Thinking about working with our consultant group. And. Could go as far as discussing things about any residual matters about gift cards. Policy writing. It could run the gamut there, but the major theme around that is to. Try to see if we can. Focus on what we need to do. Within the type. Time frame. We have to work as a, as a group. After that, we. We'll. Take a look at upcoming events. Set our next meeting date. And then we'll talk about what we need to do. In the future. We're going to take a look at upcoming events. Set our next meeting date. And welcome any topics that did not reach the, the chair. 48 hours in advance of the meeting. And then we'll adjourn. So again, thank you for being here. Everyone and thank you again for your work. And. Any comments, thoughts or contributions from our community? And Ms. Moyson will recognize you and bring you into the discussion as she sees your hands raised. Okay. Yeah. So good evening, everyone. I am going to be typing the notes in today for the minute so that hopefully that will flow a little faster and we can at least stay current. And then we have missed, so you might not, I'm here, but I'm typing. So also, Mr. Vince O'Connor is here and has some comment to make as well. Hi, Mr. O'Connor. Hi, good evening. Good evening. I just have a brief bit of information. I listened on National Public Radio on their New York station to the to an interview of the mayor of Ithaca, New York, who after having used the services of the center for police equity pursuant to the governor's mandate that of New York his mandate that every entity that employs a police department has to go through a public process of deciding how that police department shall be constituted and configured and so forth. And the mayor put forth a recommendation that the, that there be a community service and public safety department and that it be headed. There would remain some armed officers, but it be headed by a civilian and a non police person. And I basically think that the recommendations, which I don't think have been adopted by the city council of Ithaca, but just been presented would be useful information for the committee for the working group. And as would perhaps the, there may be other efforts of the center for police equity focused on the, the on various political subdivisions of the state of New York that might also give the working group, you know, some sense of where an Ithaca horse is a college town, as is Eugene origin, Oregon, and so there may be some specific recommendations that that pertain to college towns that might be useful for the working group. And that's it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. Are there community members we need to acknowledge at this time, Ms. Moisten. No, it was just Mr. O'Connor. Okay. It was another 10 seconds and then we'll move forward. Thank you to community members who are in attendance and thank you for your input. We don't engage in conversation, but I want to say out, you know, very publicly, we appreciate the time and energy you put into contributing to our work and your interest in our work so we're all very grateful for that. And so, for those who are on on the call right now and at the meeting, I would hope that you would also continue to spread the word about our meetings and encourage people to either attend our meetings or to connect with us on our website, because there is lots of information and an opportunity to extend your comment, offer your comments and extend your commentary in just another venue. So thank you all again. Welcome Ms. Walker and Ms. Ferrara. Thank you for being here. Thank you at the outset so I just wanted to make sure you know I saw you. And also thank you, Mr. Delaney for being here this evening to help us work through some of the matters regarding our new consultation. And as always I want to thank Ms. Moisten. Before we get into the heart of our agenda here. And our working group knows that we are probably the hardest group to keep up with with respect to minutes, etc, because we meet weekly. And it's a pretty dense effort. I think, you know, Ms. Moisten from my conversations and our connection with her, her commitment has been appreciated and everything so as we go forward we'll try to work through issues of the minutes but just to be very upfront and candid about this that this is an unusual situation where we have lots of information having to be turned over on a weekly basis. And so we're doing the best we can. So, things like minutes and things like that we will get to them as we get to them, but we have a lot of work to do on on the meeting date that we have so we will continue to focus on that. Also, I just want to mention and you know Ms. Moisten feel free to chime in on this if you feel needed, need to do so. We are basically for the public. We are here. We hear what's going on we take our own notes I'm sure, and at some moment we also have access to the videos but these minutes are for the public, and the people in the public feel that they need information they can always make a request. And then the town of Amherst, four minutes of a particular meeting and those can can be afforded to you. So that said, Ms. Moisten did I did I cover. Well, yeah, I just to state that I have access to all of the videos so all of our meetings. And so it uploads them but I they are behind in all the boards and committees so if people want access to things like minutes that can be afforded or if people want additional information they can ask for just the entire meeting and I can send that in the link as well. Thank you and we appreciate the work and support you given us to this particular group. So let's just dive right in. Our first agenda item has to do with seven generation movement collective. We're close to engagement. That fair to say, Mr. Delaney. The contract has been sent to seven generations they're reviewing now. Once they sign it. It's it's all electronic it'll get sent to the town attorney the town. Comptroller town manager for their signatures. The town signatures should be very fast but seven generations has to review the contract they I'm guessing they'll probably run it by their attorney. But yeah it's it's in their hands and it's moving and they will be official shortly. Thank you for for for that update and I think related to this we had initially anticipated that we might have an opportunity to engage in conversation with our new consultant group. But because of the logistics of the signature and the review that's not happening this week we will schedule that very soon as quickly as we possibly can. So that's that's our next step for for engagement. And I don't know, Mr. Delaney. If you have any comments or any, anyone has any comments for Mr. Delaney. We've already seen some communications about the process in an email. But before we move forward and maybe allow him to, to move to move on. I just want to give a quick subcommittee report. Basically, last week we followed the same format that we had with Boston mantra. We contacted two references who were available. And one of them was actually from a high school principal Mr. Mac Jackson. And then another reference was from your mass professor. And both references were very good. Excellent. It was like day at night. So for what they gave us, I just wanted to share that. And I want to thank Mr. Delaney. I really enjoy working with you. It's been very fun. And Miss Marston. And of course, I'm passionate. My daughter. It's been fun. Thank you all for your collaboration. I just want to share that. That is certainly a worthwhile sharing and thank you and I'd be remiss in not thanking you, Miss Pat, and others for following through twice on dealing with references and going through this process and getting us to the point where we are at this time. So thank you all again. Miss, Miss Ferrera, I think you had to be in there. Yeah, I'd like to also, you know, say my thanks to the subcommittee. I know it's been, you know, a lot of work. So I thank you so much and Mr. Delaney to for taking the time and to get us to this point because I know it hasn't been easy. I just want a little bit more kind of fine tuning. I saw Miss Boyston's email in terms of contacting seventh generation and and seeing, you know, about scheduling meetings, but I'm assuming we're going to try to get them on for next week. Is that going to be the goal so that we can have our meeting and maybe the vote next week to kind of meeting with them and going through what needs to be done, because obviously time is ticking. I have a couple of comments on that, but maybe I'd like to invite Mr. Laney to maybe give us. And I know we can't commit you to this timeframe but what might be the, the, the timeline on signing and the review by legal counsel, et cetera, for the contract that we have. When might it be become live for us as a group to work with this particular group. And if you don't have that information, please understand this is not a, not refreshing you to do that certainly but if you have some sense of what the timeframe might be, it might give us some help on how to figure out what we do at the next meeting or the following meeting. Thank you. It would be fully my expectation that once seven generations does their signature, the three town signatures would follow within the next one to two business days. So next week is completely achievable. I think I think achievable is the most I can say but yeah we can. It's not an unreasonable expectation that we can have a kickoff next week. With the scheduling of all that I will probably leave to miss moisten or whoever the designated liaison is there that that's usually not my role. Absolutely no and thank you and I hope that wasn't enough to put you on the spot moment but I think for us who are not in the town logistics world I think just hearing something like that helps us frame our work going forward. Mr Vernon Jones. I just wanted to check Anthony maybe you know. Do we need to wait for town signatures to meet with them, or if they're willing and they sign and they're willing to meet with us can we have them at a meeting and be talking about the work. It's not my recommendation, but there's, there's nothing prohibiting it. I mean seven generations has I've seen them in the audience list. Previously there's, there's no reason they couldn't. Before I, you know, it's more risk to them than to us, frankly, if they, if they put in some hours and then. For whatever reason the contract weren't executed that's a. It's it's not zero is that that puts them out more than it causes any material harm to the town. But yeah, they, they could. It's not usually the way we do it. Can I just hop in and say that I am going to keep including them on the agenda until they meet. I don't think that they want to meet until the contract is signed all the way through which was understandable. So, and I also feel just from, from speaking with an interactions that they kind of need to know what they're going to be doing at this first meeting ahead of time so if you guys have if we could kind of plan that a little bit some of that out today. I think that would be very helpful so that when I send them the invite that information's included. So their responses. So they don't feel like they've been invited to something and haven't been told why. Thank you both excuse me I'm switching screens here so I'm going to get back to. Thank you. Sorry Russ. I don't know if I just came back I was moving around here a little bit. I don't know if Miss Walker. Thank you, Mr. Vernon Joe, Miss Walker, please. I was just wondering which portions of the bid we awarded to seven generations was it all portions or just portion A. And B, no, no one was awarded C. And B, okay, thank you. Mr. Vernon Jones. Can we get the folks on the town side to review the contract before seven generations has signed it so we know ahead of time if there are any obstacles. The people on the town side have reviewed it. So I mean, Mr. Backelman had a hand in drafting it. So yeah, there won't be any real review. There certainly won't be any changes requested by the town people afterwards. It's mostly just a matter of getting in three people's hands. Thank you. Before we go further, I want to welcome Mr. Cage. Thank you, Mr. Cage. I see you on the screen, as we all do. Appreciate your work going forward. And we're just in the fuss to talk to you about item A on the agenda. So glad you're here. So let me just, let me say too, there are a couple of things that's coming up in this discussion. And I think it may be segueing a little bit into what we have to do into the deeper discussion around item A is that we're anticipating that the signature will happen very quickly. We're anticipating that we will be engaging in conversation as a group with our consultant group. And I would like to suggest that we begin, we initiate some conversation with the idea of moving toward agreement where we'd like to be as a group with the consultants as they're coming in the door. I think we have to have our platform kind of set in terms of what some of the initial stages of what we have to do are clear to them so that we're putting our matters out there in front of us. And also I want to acknowledge the fact that we do have input already in terms of some recommendations and thoughts and considerations. Excuse that phone ring. It'll go away because I just hung up. Anyway, so yeah, so bringing some focus into ourselves, talking a little bit about a little more deep and a little more focused way about what it is we'd like to see as some of the initial pieces of the work we want the consultants to focus on but certainly we have to come to agreement as a group as to what we feel is important. We started that process, we received, I know some what I call preliminary straw poll kind of suggestions regarding recommendations from I believe Ms. Pat, Mr. Vernon Jones, Mr. Cage. And I don't have it in front of me right now. Was there another? I think both Ms. Owen. I also sent some recommendations. Ms. Ferrer. So I think in appreciation at the same time of those contributions, we do have to focus a little bit. And so I'd like to steer that discussion toward a more focused kind of approach as they're coming in the door. That said, I also want to let the group know that I know that it's very possible, given what Mr. Delaney said a moment ago, that it's possible to meet with our new consultant group possibly as early as next Wednesday. I don't know what they have to do in terms of getting ready for a meeting with us, but that's very possible for next Wednesday. I also want to put in the mix that, and this is maybe crossing a couple of other agenda items, but that I do know that Chief Scott Livingstone is available for a meeting with us, excuse me, on our March 10th meeting, which I think is anticipating that we will have an March 10th meeting already, but, and that we would have to be able to prepare for that as well. So the two major items seem to be right now, the initial conversation with our consulting group and our initial conversation with the Chief of Police of the Amherst Police Department for next week. So those are two possibilities. So that's a little bit of a lengthy prelim, if you will, but I want to put those things out there as possibilities for next agenda items. Most importantly right now, I think is having a conversation amongst us in the group about what it is we'd like to see happen for our, you know, for the consultants coming in. Any opening comments on that, Mr. Vernon Jones? Well, I very much appreciate Mr. Delaney being with us, but I wonder, do we need to ask him to stay with us if he has other things to do? I was going to put Mr. Delaney in time out right now myself. I would just, I just want to make sure we just like clear the decks with him, make sure he don't have any other things we have to talk about. And if we don't have any, you know, certainly Mr. Delaney, we appreciate your- Well, this is Deborah, I just had one question. I just wanted to kind of say one thing before Mr. Delaney leaves is just to kind of obviously, you know, goes without saying, but just to keep us posted, especially if there's any other changes, because, you know, for me, you know, big priority, even before, you know, Chief Livingstone is just really talking to these consultants and getting them going, getting them clear, getting them on the same page in terms of what we need them to do. So obviously if there's any other, you know, updates that are contrary to what we're thinking, which is to meet with them, you know, next meeting, you know, please let us know as soon as you can. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Ferrer. That's an important comment. And the only reason I mentioned too, and I'll go to you Mr. Delaney in a second, the only reason I mentioned both Chief Livingstone and this work is that if our work is going to be more focused on the consultant and in engaging the consultant group coming in, I wanna be sure that we're not compromising ourselves on conversations with either the consultant group or the Chief of Police. So if, you know, I don't wanna say very openly, if one or the other comes first or second, we have to talk about that. I just wanna give the courtesy, especially to the Chief of Police, to say, hey, if it can't be the 10th, then maybe it could be the 17th. But I want us to prepare adequately for Chief Scott Livingstone if he were to be here, and then we have a coherent and deep conversation that informs our practice going forward. So that's the two things I wanted to say. Mr. Delaney? Yeah, if there is nothing else for me, then I probably will leave, but I wanna thank the working group for all the work you put into it. It was not easy on anybody to get this together in the timeframe we did. But I think we're, I'm pretty pleased with the product and I will be, Miss Moisten and I are in contact pretty much daily with updates. So if there are any changes or roadblocks, we'll definitely be in touch with the working group through Miss Moisten. And yeah, until the next consultant, then I look forward to working with you on that. Thank you so much and I appreciate your communications to us all on that. Thank you, Mr. Delaney. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hi, Anthony, thank you. Thank you. So I just, what I did was these are the recommendations that everybody kind of sent in them because there were duplicates. I just broke them up into the three parts. So that you all can see them or add more. And I guess I tried to do it so that we could, what is the word I'm looking for? Put them in order of priority so we could prioritize it by the budget year because the FY22 budget is, still has to be in by April 9th. And so the consulting group will have worked three to four weeks by then, hopefully, like we're hoping that they start on the 10th. And so I don't know if you guys want to have this already in motion so they can kind of pick up where you guys left off or if you're just, I don't really have a sense of direction with the recommendations and what I'm supposed to be doing with them. Let me initiate the conversation if I may to say, first of all, thank you, Miss Moisten, among all the other things you're doing to pull those kinds of things together for us. And one thing I see that is very critical for us to pay attention to is, and we talked about this in the, in terms of meeting timeframes and deadlines, I think that issue of looking at the timelines where our consulting group may have about three weeks to come up with some recommendations, it's an extremely tight timeline. And I'd be disingenuous to say to all of you that I think I'm cool with that, I'm not. I think it's really, it's a tight timeline. It's a lot of work involved. And I think our ability to focus on something that we can probably, as they say, in some cases, a small win, if you will, going forward to get things initiated. I did take a look at a lot of the commentary that was submitted by folks on the working group. And it seems to be, a theme that I'm seeing, and I'd like for your response, and I guess this will launch the conversation. There seems to be a collective energy around what we might call a community responder to situations or calls in our police department. And I'd like to offer that as maybe a launching point to begin our discussion and maybe as a point of focus. And if I could take some liberty to do that, I'd like to do that. It doesn't prohibit you certainly from moving in any other direction, but I think the idea of focusing on something that we can give to the, share with the consultant group and also re-upon as a committee, excuse me, as a working group, would be very powerful statement right off the beginning. So let me stop talking and open up discussion around this. And thank you again, Ms. Moyes. And that's a large body of work you've done there. And I certainly appreciate it. And we'll certainly take a look at it. So let me go there and just open up the floor. And we're on agenda item A. So any comments around that? Relative to the anticipation of our working with the consultant group, Ms. Pat? So first of all, Ms. Moyes, thank you for putting this together for us. I feel that we should prioritize everything and present to the town council. And I don't know about you guys, but when I was working on my proposed recommendation, I kind of felt that it's a link between some of the alternative public safety to reparation, not necessarily in the sense of reparation for Black folks, but with a policy with the youth, for example, like we have to have a center for the youth. And also the cultural center, I was thinking that BIPOC families, we have no place that we feel that is safe for us to gather and do our thing. So I'm just, I don't know other people's thinking that I couldn't help connecting preparation and open it to services. I just wanna put that out to everyone. Other comments, Ms. Farrar? Yeah, so I guess for me, we're gonna be meeting with the consultants next week. I guess for me, I'm kind of putting that out there just also because I need like some clarification in terms of what we're gonna be telling them, right? Because for me also, it's like we had already, we had set a list of things that we needed to get done and that they sent in the bid proposal to us, right? So one would be meeting them next week, it'd be introductory, learning a little bit about ourselves with the strength, right? Getting a sense from them what they wrote in that bid, right? They said they were gonna do XYZ PDQ. So, okay, what are you gonna do? What are your ideas? I would like to hear that from them, right? And then I would like to then go into, okay, these are the things that I want. And so for me, one of the things I understand that obviously we have our recommendations and we need to hone in on those because by April 9th, we need to send those out. But I also thought we were gonna be talking to them about really getting more into the community. I mean, I don't even know what are on those surveys. We haven't even looked at the surveys, you know what I'm saying? So I need them, me, that would be some priorities. Like I want you to look at the surveys, I need you to go out to the marginalized communities and find out because that's going to also inform, make sure that I'm right in terms of the recommendations that I'm thinking about, right? Because all of the recommendations we've done has been preliminary to this point because I still don't think we've gotten a lot, you know, I still think we need to get a lot more from the communities, especially communities that don't speak the language, communities that have been afraid to come in and talk to us, you know, and communities that we haven't heard from, you know, out there. So for me, that's a big part of what I want these consultants to do. As we're also talking about, okay, these are preliminary recommendations. These are the things that we're thinking about right now, but I want to hear more from the community and the marginalized community. That's the part that I'm really worried about. So anyway, those are the things that I'm thinking about in terms of talking with them, but I don't want to just give them much in orders. I want them to also, I want to hear from them too. What are their ideas? In terms of performing the job we want them to perform. Thank you, Ms. Ferrerra. And I think Ms. Moisten, you had your hand up after Ms. Ferrerra. And then I have a comment unless someone wants to go before me. Ms. Ferrerra, Ms. Moisten, and then Ms. Owen, and then I'll go. I was just curious, do you have not seen a copy of the revised bed? I have not. Of the contract? Okay, I will send a copy of the contract to everyone. Thank you. May I ask, since you brought that up, is there some language in there that is substantially different in ways that might impact or inform our discussion right now that you know about? I don't know. Not that I'm aware of. It's pretty much similar to what the bid, some things have just been more specified, but I don't know that it would limit us. I appreciate you just sending that to all of us. Ms. Owen? I just want to echo what Ms. Ferrerra said because I felt the same way with my recommendations. This week I took some time to meet with the Holyoke Community College Chair of Language in Latinx Studies because I do feel like a gap in our work is access to translation and interpretation services. So I just wanted to bring that up to the group. And I think that's something that the consultants can work on. Thank you. The comment I wanted to make is, and then I'll go to you, Mr. Vernon Jones, is that it's a blessing and a curse working with a bunch of people who were trying to think systemically about this. The blessing is thank you. That none of these things sit in isolation. I think about Ms. Pat's recommendations and I look at those things. They are talking about the relationship with the police department, but they are talking about systemically how this relates to the issues with youth, in particular, for example. So not ignoring that. And I think so this systemic thinkers think broadly about the connections and the reconnections and the cross connections that are happening in arts. So I appreciate that. I'm just saying that I appreciate it. And I think it informs our work. At the same time, how do we distill some of that down to a point where we can say, you know, let's do this right now and see if we can, you know, catch a small wind and not lose the pieces that we need. That we need to focus on, not lose any of that, but how can we begin? And I think this falls into what Ms. Ferrara is saying. How do we begin to build a relationship with the people who are inviting into this working community? Let's call it, this is a working community. This is a learning room for all of us. How do we invite the seven generation in so that they're working collaboratively, cooperatively and coherently with us? I, we are the focus of this. And we, you know, consultants work for us and with us. I want to say both and with us. And so, you know, making sure we're on the right track, getting to know them, how they work, getting to understand what, how, you know, what they need to do their work, well, those kinds of things. And I think I'm trying to go back a little bit to Ms. Ferrara's work comments to say, but let's get there really quickly so that they can be, you know, a really forceful piece in our work. You know, contributing, a contributing piece of which they, I'm sure they want to be. And, but I think the guidance and direction we can offer them with our prior thinking, which has been going on for three months now, it's going to be useful for them. You know, they're doing their own inventory, I'm sure of us. So let's, let's, let's help them. Let's bring them in, tell them what we know and begin to show them where our interests in focus lie. So, now that I said that, I forgot who's hand is up. Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, I heard Ms. Moyston say that seven generations doesn't want to come to a meeting unless they are prepared and know what we want. I believe I'm concerned about the timeline. So my recommendation is we say to them, listen, this first meeting is first of all, for us to go through some of what is in the bid, in the contract, and for us to clarify for you a little bit about what it is we want. Secondly is to bring them up to date on where we are leaning and what we've already decided, if anything, and then third to set some priorities because the timeline is so short, what do we want them to start on? Now, if they're ready to tell us, here's how we would do this, that's great. But if they're not ready, I still want them to meet with us so that we can lay out some of our expectations and priorities. So I would hope, and Jennifer, I don't know if this falls to you, that that could be communicated to them immediately, that that's what we are proposing for next Wednesday. So the reason why I stated I didn't think that they wanted to come without having a full understanding of what they were coming from is because they clearly wrote that in an email that they were invited to a meeting and they didn't know why, but I had had a conversation with Dee Shabazz before I sent that email inviting them. So I'm just, I don't, I will do my best to ask them to come whether the contract is finished or not, but I can't say you have to attend this meeting, especially if the contract's not signed. So it is a short time period, but I just, I will do my best to encourage them to come to the next meeting. That's all I can do. I guess I would also propose that we authorize our, I mean, in addition to Jennifer's communication, we authorize our chair to speak with them directly so that them getting started doesn't need to wait for a meeting or until another meeting comes around. Is that agreeable to people? I mean, I want them to be with all of us so we can all lay it out, but if the timeline is off, I'd rather we delegate all or two people or whatever to get them started even if they haven't met with us yet. Mr. Wiley, I'd be willing to do that with you. So it could be a two-person job and not a one-person job. Yeah, but again, I think we need to kind of be clear. What do we ask them? I know Mr. Vernon Jones, you've already kind of said some, but we need to make sure. So Paul, I mean, what I'd like to hear is, okay, what are we asking them to do? I want it to be 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4. Cause I think that's what Ms. Moison was saying and I saw their email too and that's what they were asking. So what exactly are we asking them to do? Whether it's you all communicating it to them or us meeting with them, you know what I'm saying? I want us just to be crystal clear because we have to start this communication with them on a clear path. Well, and in terms of the suggestions and comments I just heard, the backdrop of this is that, and I want to reflect a little bit on what Mr. Vernon Jones said and what Ms. Moison said earlier. If we're looking at the timelines that we're dealing with, we have already gone through a couple of weeks of working with the town to secure a consultant and now we're in another week of looking at trying to secure a signature on the contract which is under review by the town which has already done their review and legal counsel. So, you know, already we're into a pattern where they're going to be starting their work, you know, at best, let's just say next Wednesday at our meeting. And if we're looking at, is it April 9th, Ms. Moison? Yes. Well, we're looking at first recommended, it gives them three weeks to do their work. I think without reservation, I would say that's untenable and let's very clear and very focused about what we want them to do. And I think this brings to a point, Ms. Ferrero's question, like, you know, what are we asking you to do? And I think it's a combination of what we're asking you to do and what you signed on as contractually to do. This is a kind of reality check because, you know, honestly, this is a lot of work. This is a lot of work and we have to be very thoughtful about this. So let me stop and go to, I think Ms. Walker and then Ms. Pat, thank you. I think it would be helpful for us to decide if there is certain information or certain tasks we can ask them to complete within those three weeks, that would be helpful for us to get the recommendations out for April 9th and sort of give them like a timeline or an order, because I know that they have the bid that we put out, but that's a very broad list of what we want them to do. So maybe if we can prioritize that for them or if we can decide as a group what's one thing or one piece of information we would need from them by the 9th to be able to feel good about our recommendations. Thank you. And I think this is what I was referencing maybe a bit vaguely but about focus in terms of right now the conversation about our relationship with this consulting group and what we want them to do and what we think we can make happen with them, you know, in a very short period of time. Ms. Pat, I'm sorry, thank you. That's okay. I'm agreeing with everybody's input. And last week I remember commenting that there's no way the group will be ready for us today from business perspective. I know it takes a while to, you know, finalize contract. Yes, my thinking. We've already started brainstorming, you know, what we would like to ask the group. I would like to recommend that we put something together tonight, brainstorm, and then have Ms. Marston or our chair or co-chair communicate with them. However, when they come next week, I think we should let them present, let them tell us what they plan to do. Lost information we've already given them that this is our expectation just to save time. Because if they're coming next week and we start telling them our expectation we've already lost one week. But if we can communicate our expectation through email, then they come next week to present to us and respond to our expectation. That's just my suggestion. Thank you, Ms. Ferrera. Yeah, I agree with Ms. Pat, what she said. So that would be good. But one thing that I wonder just for me because I don't have it in front of me. And Ms. Marston, you said you had that revised bid. I think we had put a timeline in there. I'd just like to know what that timeline was. And then obviously then we could revise it based on the realities, right? But I think back then we didn't know these realities. And then like this we could maybe include it within our expectations. So I can give you guys the timeline. I don't have the final copy after Paul revised it. And it was sent to them. I don't have that copy. I have the copy that was sent to Paul for revisions. And I don't know what those revisions were, but I do have a copy of what the timeline is. So I can verbally read that from off of the list here. And then I just wanted to say a few things. Tashina had to step off for a moment and she'll log on shortly. And I just wanted to make the correction that the town has sent it, first signer has sent the bid, the consultants have the bid and we're waiting for their attorney or their review of it to come back to us. Somebody had mentioned that the town had it. It's not, that's, we have sent it. So, and just one moment. And so the kickoff meeting with CSWG was scheduled for the third. A progress meeting was scheduled for March 19th. A draft timeline for outreach and goals was scheduled for 326, 2021. And then the final plan, a draft, well, let me go back and say this. The part A progress meeting is 319. Part B draft timeline for outreach and goals is 326. Part B final plan is due 142. Part A draft report is due 1423. And part A final report is due 1430. Would you indulge me a bit, please? And just to repeat that one more time. Yeah, absolutely. So the kickoff meeting was scheduled for today. The part A progress meeting was scheduled for 319. The part B draft timeline for outreach and goals is scheduled for 326. The part B final plan is scheduled for 422. And the part A draft report is scheduled to be submitted by 423. And the final report is by 430. And so this, for the most part, it's still the same contract that we sent out for bid. There's just been a few things that have been revised on our end. And then we have to see if they want to make revisions or not, or what they would like to do from there. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Whoever asked that, I wish you could see how many screens I have up on my board right now. You could say like, he's nuts. But anyway, anyway, thank you for that question. Comments in response to what Ms. Moyston had to say. Comments that will move us forward in this discussion. I do want to say, I need to take it. I will call on you, Ms. Ferrera. I do need to take a moment to go off screen to deal with something. But I will, I'll have the audio on so I can listen. I'll be back in a moment. And I apologize for that. But so Ms. Ferrera, you were next and Ms. Owen, do you be so kind if I don't come back in time if someone raises their hand? Would you be calling on them, please? Yeah, of course. Thank you, and I apologize for that. That's okay. Yeah, I guess my question is just in terms of like the dates. So since we need to get something in, in terms of the recommendations by April 9th, how does that configure with some of these dates that we have over here? It doesn't necessarily, but I would suggest that you have a check-in with them and ask them what, you know, what they have done, you know, so I'm sorry, April 9th. So if at the April 7th meeting they come and then you ask them to give you or maybe the week before an update of what they've been doing that can help you finalize your recommendations. There's nothing on there that lists specific April 9th recommendations. Yeah. Mr. Verna Jones. Jennifer, is April 9th the date the town manager has to finish his budget? Yep. Yeah, so the town manager proposes the budget to the council on May 1st. And so typically everybody else has had their stuff and be prior to this April 9th date. So, yes, it's... Okay, so the grant is sort of a deadline for us getting anything that the town manager around the budget for the next year. And part B, their final plan is due to us on the 2nd of April. So that gives us a week to work with it to decide what we wanna give the town manager. So that part B dates our set to give us a week to put things together for the budget. Part A, with the outreach, we gave him an additional month. So they have until the end of April to be working on outreach. And that is the way we set it up when we wrote the bid. Right, but my concern is that people were looking for that outreach information to use for the recommendations. I think whatever outreach we have on the 2nd of April can inform our decisions. But I think many of our budget decisions are not gonna be that dramatically different. I mean, the details of how to do it are gonna come out of the outreach. But what the requests are and what the programs are, I think we're gonna be in a position to put together our budget proposals, put together a recommendation about a program and then fine tune it later when we get more outreach. But at the budgetary level, I don't think what we learn from the outreach is gonna change things that much. I think that they will have some great recommendations for FY23. The ones that come in at the end of April. Ms. Walker. Will we be able to look at at least the responses to the survey that we've gotten so far before that date? Or is that something we can ask the consultant group to do with their first three weeks of time to help inform it a little bit? It gets me every single time. There's not a meeting that goes by that that doesn't happen. I am hesitant to send you guys like the survey results because then that goes public and some people's like, I just have been nervous to send that out to you guys. But the consultants can work off of that. Yes. Ms. Pat. So, I mean, that's a very good point, Alicia, that you raised, but I believe and I'm not speaking for the group, I will think that they will go by whatever the contract that they agreed on to sign. I don't recall on the path A having any consulting form to analyze survey for us. I don't recall us doing that in this bid. I could be wrong. Sorry. Say that again, Ms. Pat. So what I'm saying is that I think it's a great idea if the seven generation can analyze survey results for us. However, I believe that they have to go by whatever contract that they agree with the town. And I'm not remembering us asking for in the bid for whoever gets the contract to analyze the online survey for us. So it would be an additional task. No, it's not. It's a consultant will analyze all results in data qualitative and quantitative received. Is it result that they did? It doesn't specify. So that's ambiguity. So that's what we're not to put down as our expectation to see what their response will be. Yeah. Because the way I read it is survey, all survey results will be the work that they, whoever got the contract did for themselves. You know, it could be interpreted, you know, differently by different people. I don't know. Mm-hmm. Oh, Ms. Ferrara had her hair and up next. Yeah. I mean, I'm agreeing with Ms. Walker. I mean, I think whatever, like the survey results, because that's all part of the outreach and what we had already started. So that's part of, you know, for me, my interpretation, that's part of what they need to focus on. And then whatever else, you know, and I didn't have those dates. So thank you, Mr. Vernon Jones for clarifying in terms of power A, power B, because I was all confused about that. I don't have the bid in front of me, you know. So that wasn't clear. So I think whatever they can do, you know, up until the time when they're giving us that, you know, kind of the preliminary, you know, information with the final, like on 4-2, whatever outreach they can do, whatever survey analysis they can do, the better. Because obviously our recommendations stem from, you know, a lot from obviously the data, as well as what people are saying to us in our community. You know, and that's why I also would want them, you know, if they have time, I know it's obviously short on time, but if they're able to, and hopefully we can get them those expectations so that they can give a presentation, maybe they have ideas in terms of how to get more information out of especially the marginalized folks and stuff. So anyway, whatever they can get, I want them to include it so that then it really kind of supports, it really would give us a lot of credibility for the recommendations that we're making. Mr. Wiley. And back, thank you, Ms. Soan. You can keep doing this if you want to. I'm cool with that. I just thought I'd raise my hands since you were now the chair of the meeting. But I wanted to ask Ms. Moison and I don't have it in front of me right now. But in the language of the contract, usually there's some, maybe not in this case, but in some cases where some of the work is just naturally ambiguous because we don't know what's gonna happen. Is there a place in our contract which allows us to say by mutual agreement, quote unquote, we can modify the language of the contract to accommodate the needs based on new discoveries, based on new information, based on new direction we need to take because if it's very fixed in certain ways, and I don't want us to handcuff ourselves, at the same time, I recognize the willingness and capability of this new consulting group to actually go in different directions pretty flexibly. But I'm just wondering, and that's not something I have to know right now, but maybe that's just something that could enter the conversation because if we do have that flexibility, and I'm using quote unquote a bi-mutual agreement under particular clause or something, we say, hey, can we modify this a little bit based on what we know now, but we didn't know two weeks ago that we need to do, especially long timelines, especially around data collection and analysis, especially around trying to help us bring forth rationales and reasons for why we're making our recommendations. I think those are very important things because it's not enough to make a recommendation. We have to understand the background of it. Why are we making this recommendation? This isn't come out of somebody's head all of a sudden. There's something backing that. It's either data or narrative or concrete data that we're getting, or there's something else that's feeding that process and we feel it's important. So I'm just wondering about that out loud, Ms. Moyston, and Ms. Owen, I'll take over from here unless you wanna keep going. No, you can take over. I thought you were gonna say that. Dad, I was trying to get out of it for a minute. I don't see anything specific in here, but I'm just looking at a glance. Okay, at a glance. And I don't mean as to research right now, but I think the theme of what I'm saying is clear. Mr. Vernon Jones? Well, last week I asked Mr. Delaney whether or not if we wanted as part of the outreach effort, we wanted them to have conversations with people they were outreaching to about envisioning Amherst without white supremacy. Could we specify that? And his comment was that he thought that was well within the notion of doing outreach and what we had described. So I think there is some variety, but I really like this idea of asking them to analyze what we've got from the survey and maybe from the two hearings as well and write that up by the second of April. I mean, that's part of part A that they don't have to finish until the end of April, but we wanted to inform our recommendation. So I think the new outreach can happen later, but the data we already have, I think we should ask them to summarize and analyze and write up by four or two. And then for me, the next priority is, okay, what else are we gonna ask them to do for sure by four or two. And I think we kind of need to go through part B of the bid. You know, this is what, and decide what's most important to us for them to do in the first three weeks. Ms. Pat. Very good point everybody is making. My style is, it's always good to have a plan B, okay? You know, we have not seen the contracts and so if it's outside the contract and we wanna negotiate with them, like Mr. Wally had mentioned, like mutually agreed, I'm all for that, but what if they come back and said we're sticking to the contract? That's what our attorney said. I just want us to prepare for back up plan. What if they say they're not going to analyze something that they didn't conduct? And I, so goodness with you, with the subcommittee that we worked on, I remember that very, very well. And I was thinking of what Ms. Marston had mentioned over several meetings, that there are some people who, you know, did the survey, they don't want to be identified. And for that reason, I assume that is something that will be handled by Ms. Jennifer, like, are people following what I'm saying? So I wasn't thinking when the subcommittee was working on the document, I wasn't thinking that whatever we did, the work that we did would be analyzed by the winning bidder. That was my thinking, maybe, yeah. I mean, if they analyze it, it will make our life a lot easier. And I would love them to agree that they would do it for us. But for us to think about plan B, what if they didn't, what are we going to do? Mr. Vernon Jones and Ms. Ferrara, please. Well, just on the confidentiality, if when people answered the survey, they could put their name on or not. So if they didn't want their name on it, then their name isn't there. So the data should be able to be reviewed by anybody without violating confidentiality. True. Yeah, it wasn't, okay. Excuse me, Ms. McMorsten, Ms. Ferrara, had her hand up and then Ms. Owen. Yeah, so I guess, you know, again, I don't have the bid in front of me. So I guess I'm confused about what it was that we didn't say that would not let them do the survey. I mean, I think in there we did say that they needed to look at the data and qualitative and analyze whatever information we have gone, which would include the form, which would include the survey. I mean, for me, that was definitely something I was thinking about them doing, not us, not Ms. Moisten, but that, you know, because they were the consultants that we were bringing in. Because then what's the point of bringing it in? You know what I'm saying? So I'm confused, you know, as to why it is that they can't look at the surveys and can't look at the forum or any other data that's relevant to what we've already, you know, if we're pointing them towards something, they need to look at it to, in order to meet these timeline and deadlines that we've set here. And we'll take in Ms. Ferrara, Ms. Owen and then Ms. Moisten. I was under the same impression. I think if we were to open the survey and it became public data or information through the town, it could be a double-ended sword because for people who shared information using like officer names and specifics, it puts them at risk to be retaliated against. And maybe they won't feel as open to share things in the future. And the survey was supposed to be anonymous. Yeah, Ms. Moisten, thank you for your patience. Oh no, it's okay. I can, I mean, I can send the link so that you guys can have access to looking at it. I can try to do it that way. I don't know. I mean, I understand. I just, I don't see anything or any reason why the consultant couldn't look at the information and analyze that. But that's what I'm saying. I don't wanna have access to these surveys. I want them to look at it. The consultants need to look at it and then give us a report on it. I don't wanna have access to the survey. I have no interest. They need to do that and bring up a report of, okay, what are some of the patterns that we saw in terms, I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of surveys that are gonna share pretty similar information. And then some of the other ones that are gonna be a little bit different, a little bit unique. That's what I'm looking for. I'm not going to say, I don't have the time to go look at surveys, you know. I'm not so, but I guess the subcommittee can go ahead and hold. Yeah, let me swing back, Ms. Moisten. I don't know if you finish your comment before Ms. Ferrer made her comment. But if you incorporate what she just said in your response as well. Yes, yes, yes. So I'm just looking at it and it says part A, community engagement consultant will assist with the community safety working group with various methods of public outreach, which may include but are not limited to consultant and will analyze all results in data. So the word all to me signifies that it's our stuff, it's their stuff, it's stuff that they obtain later. And honestly, I'm not a data analyst, right? And because these are open-ended questions, the survey monkey cannot perform the same type of analysis as it does when there's like a multiple choice or like yes or no answers, right? So then I'm just, I'm not a data analyst. I would do my best, but I think that the consultants would be able to do this. Don't be too quick to volunteer as a data analysis person. Oh, I'm saying I'm not a data analyst. Because you know how people are, you know? If you're like, oh, good. But let me just, let me try to hold this conversation in the air for a moment and go back to a point to ask just folks, are we leaning toward wanting to meet with our newly contracted consultant group next Wednesday? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I'm preempting, and I'm saying both at the same time, we're meeting next Wednesday and we got to meet with them next Wednesday. I'd like to have to think about, you know, what do we want to, we just wanna send them an invitation to say, hey, come. We wanna have an invitation that maybe says something to the effect that I wrote some notes down there, coming off my little mini break there. That we, well, first of all, we wanna introduce, we want them to introduce themselves to us. We wanna know who they are and not like this long outrageous thing, but you know, just like introduce themselves to us. So we get to know them, get to see them. We get to start building a relationship with them. The second thing would be to say, here are some initial things we'd like to have you engage in on our behalf that launches our work as a committee. And that might include the data analysis of the surveys, for example, it might be reviewing the two community forums that we had. So what can they garner narratively from the forums? What can they garner more objectively from the surveys and narratively? That would be the initial platform from which they work in addition to figuring out who they are. And then also leave us some room to have a conversation with them about all the things we're concerned about, the timelines, the things that, you know, where are your flex points? I'd like to not think that we are so fixed and hardened within a contract. I'd almost like to like to call an agreement, especially with these folks who are, you know, well situated to help us. Can we have that conversation to say, do you see where we are? How can you join us in where we are in terms of our timelines and those kinds of things? I'd just like to know what, how that sits with people here in terms of a next meeting sort of platform, if you will. Ms. Walker. I think it's a great idea for us to invite them to come next week, but I also don't think that we should expect that they would be able to, just because we don't know still that the contract will be finalized by then. And then also like if it was finalized the day before that they would then be prepared to be meeting with us the next day. But I do think that we should extend the invitation and we should put together some sort of like agenda or loose outline for them as to what we would be expecting for our first meeting so that they are prepared for when they are able to meet with us. Were you talking offline with Ms. Pat about contingency planning or something here? Was that going on? Are you trying to keep a secret from us? Yes. Well, I'm joking, but I see what you're saying. I'm not joking. I know, but it's a joke, but it's not. I mean, I hear what you're saying, Ms. Walker, and I thank you for that. At the same time, I think I'm getting back, I don't know if Mr. Vernon Jones made this comment, but I slash the group, we don't want to be handcuffed by or slowed down by the need to launch a conversation with this consultant group to get their work done. I mean, really, so if they don't sign a contract until Monday and then we don't, they don't have enough time to prepare for Wednesday, then we're talking about when, it could be whenever. I'm just saying, look at the following Wednesday. I would hate to see us go down this road where they're preparing, which is great, but I have a feeling too that our conversations with them may help them prepare more quickly if we were just able to have the conversation. And I don't think there's any problem having a conversation with them from what I heard earlier from Mr. Laney and the earlier conversation we had. So let me just stop, Ms. Farera. Well, I mean, I think I wanted to kind of go back to what Ms. Pat has said before and just kind of like, why don't we just set out like what you were just talking about, right? Mr. Wiley, like set out the list of things that we'd want them to kind of do and so that they can already start thinking about it. Send that to them, email it, like you and Ms. Owen can send email that to them, right? If they haven't signed a contract or whatever, if they're not able to meet with us on Wednesday, they have that. That's what they, so that they can already be thinking about it, be preparing for it. And then you could even break it down in terms of, okay, if you are ready to go, let's say they sign a contract on Monday and Tuesday, they're ready to go, but they're not ready to go with a full presentation, they can just come in for like 15 minutes, 20 minutes to introduce themselves to us, right? It's a conversation. Exactly, we can get the ball rolling. So I think in your email to them, you can kind of lay it out like that, right? That what we want to do is at least get things going so it could just be an introduction and then an introduction to us too, because I'm sure they're gonna want to know who we are, right? Introduction conversation, but obviously if there's more time and if they feel more prepared, these are some of the expectations. So that that's already in their mind and they're already working on it, you know, whether it be for next Wednesday or thereafter. So anyway, that's what I would think. I appreciate hearing that. And I think all of us have to understand that there's an urgency about this for all of us in addition to the fact that we have yet to get into the deeper conversations about our timeline, which include things like, is the CSWG going to be an ongoing working group serving the town? Or are we gonna go on some other vein that we have yet to discuss or decide upon? So these kinds of things are going down the line, but I think not to look too far out there, but I'm feeling the inclination to push a meeting. Maybe push is too strong a word, but invite a meeting for a conversation with the group in anticipation of their working with us by next Wednesday. And if that's something that the group would like to do, I'd like to move on that. However we do it, whether it's Ms. Owen and me or Ms. Owen and Ms. Walker, you know, whoever does the work, we're here together, but that we extend this thing to them with a particular framework for how that meeting needs to go. And I would just, I don't, because I do think even in that meeting, we can begin to narrow our focus a little bit with them because we're able to hear from them and what they're thinking. And I think narrowing the focus on what we can get moving quickly and get some traction in terms of our recommendations might be useful for us. So that's my comment. Ms. Pat. Again, I like what everyone is saying. I think we're saying almost the same thing, but very differently. I will imagine this group, they are community members and they wanna work with us. And I will imagine that they'll be flexible with us. I think the stumbling block will probably be timing for them, would they have enough time to do all that? So I'm hoping that they will agree to analyze our surveys and the two forum, the two forum alone will probably take them like five hours or something like that to listen to and analyze. And that's time consuming for them. So what I'm talking about backup plan is if they feel that they can do all the work within the short time frame, what do we do? And again, Mr. Wiley, you raised the issue of how long is this group going to last? If the town is going to disband by September, then what? So there are a lot of issues that play into this just for us to get in mind. I like all of you, I would like them to analyze the work we already done. But if they say they don't have enough time to do it, then what do we do? I'll keep bringing that up just for us to be thinking about backup. Yeah, I know you will. People don't listen to me until- Because I've known you a long time as Pat. How many times I told you so? But let me just say this very quickly and then I'll move to, I don't know, I miss Ms. Moisten or Ms. Ferrer who was, Ms. Moisten was first, let me just say very quickly here. I'd like for them to tell us what they can and cannot do. I don't want to assume that they might not be ready. Let them tell us they won't be ready or they will be ready. And that would be a conversation we could have on Wednesday regardless of what the status of the signing is. Ms. Moisten. I just wanted to make comment on what Ms. Pat had said. There are still things like this group ends June 30th and there's still a whole second end of a bid, right? So there are things that you guys, I can start thinking, I don't know how you guys want to do it, but apparently you can't put a bid out and then not have a group responsible for it afterwards. And so there are still things, and which is why I made the list because all of those items that everybody listed are on that list and you can kind of prioritize them that way, right? So if you feel like it's something that needs to wait for the consultant, then we can wait for it for the consultant. But if you guys aren't here past June 30th, that's a problem, right? Like any way that we look at it and I don't know that we do or don't need the consultant to define that answer there, that's the, yeah. Good point. Yeah, Ms. Ferrara, thank you for waiting. So I guess like just to answer what you, the question you were asking Ms. Moyston, I mean, I think we have that part B in terms of what we need, the other part of the recommendations we need to make. So we need to make those regardless, you know what I'm saying? Whether we do that second part of the bid or not, because right now it doesn't even seem we don't even have money to do that second part of the bid unless the town gets the money from the police or whatever else, that's not gonna happen. So we need to get the other part done. So, you know, that needs to happen and it needs to happen by June 30th. Even if we, one of the recommendations are that there becomes a standing committee that includes members of this group and, you know, moving forward, that could be one of the recommendations that we make, you know, moving forward. But in terms of the consultants, I, you know, I'm just kind of going off of what Mr. Wiley said, I mean, my thing is, listen, they stated a whole bunch of stuff that they said they're gonna be able to do. We need to just make sure we ask them to do what they need to do because we're paying them quite a bit of money, you know what I'm saying? So they understood the timeline in terms of, you know, that it was gonna be very short and everything. And, you know, we got work to do. So, you know, they're a great group. And I think, you know, I think we can't just come up with, well, you know, I think we need to be firm, like, okay, this is what we need you all to do. And like Mr. Wiley said, if they can't do it for what a reason, I need to know why and so on and so forth. But I wanna ask, okay, this is what we need. Let's get this done. Cause we have a timeline we need to meet. And that was very clear in the bid. Mr. Vernon Jones. I've been sitting here looking at this part B of our bid, which I assume is the same language in the contract, you know, where the report is due by April 2nd. Which gives them three weeks to work on it. And I guess I would like to propose, whereas the outreach, their report isn't really due to the end of April. I think what I would like to propose to them is that in exchange for them analyzing the survey results by April 2nd, we would give them an extension on the elements of part B that are really more general about police reform in general and are not specific to creating an alternative community responder program. So, I mean, there's one that says consultant will provide research on how other communities are addressing police reform and eliminating racism and policing. I absolutely want them to do that, but I don't feel like we have to have that by April 2nd. What I want by April 2nd are the things that are really about the alternative community responder thing, including some things about how do you use peer specialists and what are some options for how we might implement it over time? Do we start with a pilot? Do we, you know, how much does it grow in the first year? What are some other towns doing? I think we are holding the contract deadline for that, but the more general research about police reform in a sense really fits more with phase two of our work and it'd be fine to give them a little extension on some of that if they're interested in that. Well, just in response to Mr. Vernejoz, what you're saying too, I think it, what you're saying creates some of the content for the discussion we would have with them on Wednesday. I think this is an appropriate time to bring it up. You know, we do know these folks to some degree in our community, in addition to their proposal. So, you know, reaching out to invite them and let them know these are issues that are important, that that could be part of our agenda. And I think it's an important part because I really firmly believe we can help them prepare more substantially, if you will, by having a conversation with them. Right now, this is a paper exchange and I think we need to, you know, gauge them and just the way you are articulating it right now is something they can certainly think about and deliberate over. And I don't think it sends us off a cliff somewhere. But I guess I'm saying, I think this, what you're offering, I agree with and it gives them some flexibility, but also I think we have to, you know, put our stuff out there to them very concretely and quickly so that there's no ambiguous nest about where we're trying to go right now in the timeframe that we have. Mr. Werner-Jones. I would hope that in, before we close tonight that we could go through what we've recommended so far or proposed specifically about the community responder program, which again, we had hoped to get started in the current budget year because there's money there to do it. I think we're close to agreement about a lot of things and have a few questions and we might even want to ask them to help us with the questions. But if we could sort of go through and see where we're in agreement about the community responder, maybe that can move forward faster. I mean, I'd like to get the town manager working on setting it up as soon as we've got things, as soon as we've figured out what we want. Help the comments. Mr. Werner. Well, I guess I'm kind of confused about that. I mean, how can we get the town managers is that isn't that like going to be part of our recommendations? I guess once we talk more about it, don't we have to recommend that in the report first before the town manager can do that? I guess. Yes, yeah, but again, that reports too and. No, I know. I know we're gonna, yeah. No, I know we're gonna, but that's the thing. I mean, I guess we do need to do that. But I guess like what I want is Paul, if you or Mr. Wiley, if you and Ms. Owen are the ones that are gonna send off, where I was gonna send the stuff to the consultants. Can we just get a list of what it is that you are gonna send? Maybe if you could send it to us and we can kind of review it and then, and then, you know, see if there's any tweaks we need to make to it and then you can send it out to the consultants. We could do that now. I'd rather, I want to be sure that, you know, if we're having this conversation now, let's all talk about what is gonna be the content of that invitation. Even in bullet fashion, you know, Ms. Owen. Yeah, we're gonna do it live, you're saying? You'd rather do it live. Well, right now, I mean, if we could just quickly say, like, you know, what are we asking them to come prepared to do in that meeting? And if you're asking, the group is asking Ms. Owen and me to collaborate on that, we can. And we can draft something very quickly. I'm saying we can. I can tomorrow. But it does, you know, and so we can get that in the body of an invitation we could share very quickly with the group. In addition to that, I hope, and I'm leaning a little bit toward back to what Mr. Vernon Jones was talking about, that we have some common interest right now in how the police department responds and using the term community responder mode. And I don't wanna lose sight of that. And if that could possibly be incorporated in some way in the invitation to get them thinking about initially, you know, where we might be going with this to launch their efforts, get them thinking about it, that might serve us well. And it might serve us well. So I'm asking two questions. One is, you know, would you all be able to give Ms. Owen and me right now in like a five minute flurry? Here's what the content of the invitation, here's what we want to say in the invitation. And then we can continue some more conversation about the community responder piece, which I think is a strong feature of any recommendations we're gonna put forward. Is that okay with everybody? If you just like, let me just start right now. I think what I had initially was one, regardless of the status of the signing of the contract, we'd like to have them come and meet us, kind of a meet and greet on the screen next Wednesday to talk a little bit about, you know, their work, our work, whatever, however that we can figure that out. But I'm just going to do some meet and greet because it's, we don't know all the folks on that group. The second thing I heard was that we would be asking them to do some data analysis, one on the surveys. The second on the community forums and we can articulate this somewhere, those two things. And then maybe the fourth, you know, we could talk a little bit about, you know, timelines and where they might be feeling like they're sketchy on some stuff, but we could talk a little bit about timelines. And then in terms of substance, going back to Mr. Vernon Jones, Mr. Vernon Jones's comment about community responder, because I think this is thematically, I've seen it in a couple of instances with the recommendations we've already talked about in preliminary fashion. The ones that come to mind is I'm thinking about Mr. Cage, for example, offered, you know, was talking about youth being over-involved with the police. So how could a community responder maybe in some ways mediate some of that? I think we have homeless issues. I think we have medical issues. We have mental health issues, those kinds of things. And so that seems to cross a number of things that people have talked about. In addition to some other stuff, which is systemic, which I talked about earlier, it's systemic in terms of community programs and other kinds of more discreet kinds of things. But I think to target something would help them. So let me stop there. Are there anything, am I missing anything about the invitation that you wanna add, Ms. Pat? I would recommend that we just send, you know, all our recommendation to them for them to have an idea where we're coming from. Okay, we could do that. Mr. Vernon Jones and then Ms. Ferrara. Well, I think for this invitation, I would strongly say we would like you to come whether you are ready to present or not. So that we can share with you where we are in our thinking and offer some thoughts about priorities and next steps. If you are ready to present, we would love to hear from you your thoughts about how you plan or intend to proceed with the work. But we would like to meet with you regardless of whether you are ready or not for that presentation so that we can share some of our thoughts with you. Thank you, absolutely. Other input on the invitation, which I, I wanted to say again, if I didn't say it already, Ms. Owen, maybe we could work on this tomorrow. And we can throw our draft out to Ms. Moison to get the people to see if we've covered all the bases. Ms. Ferrara. Yeah, but I mean, I would still like though to, to add, you know, like what you said, you know, the list of things there. You know, yeah, you know, regardless of whether you're ready to present or not, yes, we want to, we want to meet with you. We'll talk to you about, you know, where we're at or some expectations, like let's say if they're not going to present. But, you know, I would want them to know, okay, but this is a list of things that we're going to talk. You know, these are the list of expectations in terms of what we want, you know, we want you all, what we want to talk to you all about, right? Which was the list that you said. I think it'll still be good, because it's good for them to have time to think through some of those things, right? And first include that on there. And I do like about having the community responder. I mean, it's fine to add, you know, if you want to give them what are thinking in terms of our recommendations, that's fine, but it'll probably be good to highlight the one that we all have a lot of similarities on, which is the community responder. Okay. Ms. Owen. Could we possibly use the list that Jennifer put together with everything consolidated so they can see where we're kind of at with everything? I haven't had a chance to look at that list myself. It's not private. Sorry. You know, that's okay. Took the words out of my mind. I had, it was a list. Sort of like the list I make for myself when I go to grocery store. I should do it aisle by aisle, but I never do it. And I walk all over the store. But anyway, Mr. Vernon Jones. Could we start with the community responder parts of Jennifer's list and see where we have agreement and where we still have things to work out right now? Sure. And I just want to say I didn't add this to the packet because I knew we would most likely be work. I was hoping that we would work on it and that way I could make the changes live instead of through a PDF. Understood. And again, thank you for taking a minute that I'm sure you didn't have to pull us together. And we can do that. And I think Ms. Owen, and rather than belabor this conversation any longer, I think the group is charging us with putting together a draft of this tomorrow to share with folks. And if that's okay with you, Ms. Owen, I don't mind initiating it. I've got a lot of notes here. Farmer off to you. We can collaborate a little bit tomorrow and then get it in draft form to Ms. Moyston tomorrow. And you can share it with Ms. Moyston. You can share it with the group to see if we've covered all the bases. And then let's get it to seventh generation. Okay. Sound good, everybody? Okay. So you get a chance to look at it too before. Can you see my hand? Ms. Pat, yes. Yeah. So what is the time frame? So you want us to give feedback tomorrow as well? As soon as you get it from Ms. Moyston, as soon as you can get the feedback, it'd be great. If you could get it the same day or Friday morning, that would be fabulous because then we can get it to seventh generation and get them coming on board. That's what I'd like to see happen. All good? Yeah. As they say, are all hearts and minds clear at this moment? Darius is this. Thank you, Darius. How's school? Doing good. Good. I hope so. We got an eye on you. Do you have any comment for us, kid? Not right now, but everything sounds about right as of now. That's what happens, Darius, when you're on a committee with a bunch of old people like me, they're always looking out for their grandkids and their kids. And so we just want to make sure it's cool. But thank you for being here. I know high school with sports and studies and this too. Did we mention about the article last time? Oh, that's right. Yeah, there's an article in the paper of the young folks who are on the town committees. And yeah, that was really a nice feature. So I actually cut it out and put it in my scrapbook. So you have a permanent place, Darius, in my life. It's on the front page. Celebrate it. Yes. So let me let me go back and try that. Okay, so we're at this point, we're good with that Ms. Owen and I are gonna work on that for tomorrow and get it to Ms. Mohsen as great as possible. I think we kind of merged a lot of what was on that agenda and we're at 7.15. So I'm gonna just check in the people where we are because I do want to mention something about Chief Scott Livingstone and his invitation. So Mr. Vernon Jones, you had a comment. I thought we were about to go through Jennifer's list about the CR things and see where we had agreement. We can do that. I missed that then. I'm sorry, yeah. And can you guys see Darius on the screen? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. That was good. Okay, Darius said enough already. My God, thank you. Okay, so yeah, let's do that, Mr. Vernon Jones. I'm sorry if I bypass that. I thought we agreed that we were gonna prioritize the community responder, but more discussion. I thought you all were gonna do that. In the memo, but I think we're being asked to take a look at this list. My question is, do we have agreement on, what do we have agreement on, and what do we still have questions about with regard to the community responder? Yes, thank you. Let me see you, Srini. Comments, anyone? I guess on the grid, the alternate policing is the one that we're gonna be like bumping up. Is that the part that's focused on community responder? Or is it police reform also? I think there's all of the bottom one and some of the middle one. Yeah. Would you scroll up just a bit, Ms. Moisten, if you will. So you can see the bottom? Oh, I think. Is that, or are we at the end there at 27? Yeah, okay, fine. I can add things if you guys have stuff to be added or delete something or rephrase something. Mr. Vernon Jones has his hand raised. I'm sorry I was reading it. I'm sorry, Mr. Vernon Jones, go right ahead. One of the things that a couple of people suggested that I really liked was that, and it's sort of the dispatch part, but that there would be a way that people could, they could call 911, but they also could call the community responders directly and not have to go through 911 and risk having the police sent. And I thought that was a really good idea and maybe we'll want to be explicit about that. Oh, I don't like typing on like live. Ms. Pat had her hand up. Okay, I've got to stop reading here and then I'm just pay attention to this. Pay attention, so I just want to make sure I'm getting this correctly. We are also intending to present the general recommendation, the Youth Cultural Services Center. Also to the Town Council, is that correct? Are we only just focusing on the police reform and alternative policing? I'm assuming we're going to be presenting all these things on the list to the Town Council. I just want to be sure. No, I don't think we're going to present all of it because it's pretty extensive and some of them are community service related and some are time related. I'm thinking, and I'd like to hear from other people that we would focus on alternative stuff that are connected to police. And that would be our initial focus right now and that's where the community responder piece comes in. It's not dismissing the other ones, but I think that's sort of, it seems in my way of thinking further down the line in terms of building an entire picture of how the community works to support, especially its youth and other pieces of the community. That's my thought on it. Mr. Vernon Jones? So I'm not, okay. I don't know whether we're going to be prepared with a concrete proposal and a complete budget at all, but I do think our, any report we make to the Town Council should include the notion that Ms. Pat has laid out so clearly that part of preventing racist encounters between police and community is meeting community needs in other ways. And we think the Town Council needs to take that seriously and I like the notion that it's related to reparations in some ways and that we have, I mean, I don't know whether we have to talk some more to see whether we agree, but that we might say we have identified a need for a youth center or we've identified a need for a community center with special access to BIPOC or whatever as things that would make this a safer community. We may not, I mean, the community responder thing, I think we want to have enough detail that it can begin even in this budget year with the two police positions that we already have. The other, I think we want to say clearly that it's part of how we think about this, but I'm not convinced we're going to have all the details worked out before we need to make our first report or I would not leave it out. Ms. Ferreran. So sorry, I have to take all the video because I'm having internet issues, but can you hear me? Yes. Yes. So yeah, I don't think I'm ready to kind of say everything that we're going to be saying to the town council. I thought this conversation was just in terms of what we're going to be sharing as the similarities that we have so far, that's why the community responder, because there's a lot of us that put that on our recommendations. And so we're going to be talking to that as one of the priorities, but obviously all the other things in terms of youth center or cultural center, I mean, I think we still need more discussion because obviously I'm just saying time is of essence even in terms of this meeting, the meeting's about to end. So that's why I want to focus more on the community responder, but Ms. Pat, I'm saying we still have, we still need a lot more discussion before I can say, okay, this is what I'm submitting to the town council. I'm not ready to say that, you know? And second, one of the things that I want to change in terms of the grid is that it says, do not fill APD positions until two staff are hired or whatever, that needs to be changed. Me, my thing is do not fill APD positions, do not fill the two APD positions. I'm not sure if it's just going to be those two positions or if they need to cut the police budget in order to fund this community responder group. So I'm not ready to say that it's just those two salary positions. I don't know that, you know? So I want to leave room for us to just say, do not fill those two staff positions, period. And that's that. And then we need more discussion, at least I need more discussion. I think in some instances, there are, I have to look back, I can't remember the exact city this happened, but again, it's the city versus the town, but in terms of police reform, they were actually increasing the budget, whether they called the police budget or not, they increased it, but the increases in the budget were related to the kinds of things we're talking about. They were related to community responders, they were leading to other, and I have to look it up and I'd be happy to share with folks, but it was bringing on, you know, medical personnel. It was, it had to do with training and clearly first responder issues around mental health and medical issues and the homeless and those. So it wasn't like taking money away from the police department. It was, and again, they actually increased it, but the money was not going into what was traditional policing. It was money that was going into alternative programs that would augment the work of the police department. Yeah, but Mr. Wiley, I still need a lot more conversation on that because for me, I don't want to increase the police department's budget. For me, it would be about having a separate program that works in partnership with the police, but I don't want it to be under the police department and increase their budget, no. And I'm agreeing with you 100% Ms. Freer, I think that to jump to that right now without having a full conversation would be premature. I think we do need more information about that. Mr. Renner-John. Well, I think what Jennifer has on the list came out of something I wrote and I just want to be clear about what I was intending at the time. I don't want them ever to fill the two positions that are currently vacant. And I was proposing, and we still need more discussion, that they also not fill the next two police positions that become vacant until we've expanded the community responder program. John, Ms. Pat. There is my hand. So I hear what everybody is saying and I think we really, really need to think about the unique opportunity that we have to do this work and for us to put everything out there on the table for the town council. We may not have this type of opportunity again. I don't care about whether the town has money or not. Ames is where resourced. And if they really are committed to equity in this town, they will find money from marijuana, sales tax and other reserve. If they really want to make this work, we have to put everything on the table. I just want to question us that we shouldn't have been thinking about, you know, with the town council be able to approve everything. Let's put it out there for them and let them decide on the negotiating terms that I would be very disappointed that we would leave some of the items. For me, I don't know about you guys. I actually made a personal outreach so people like, what would they like to see? I actually have some white folks telling me it would be nice to have like a cultural center in Ames. So I think if we're saying that we want to include people's voices, this is one of the ways to do that. And I will shut up. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Yeah. Other comments about this list and where we might have some sense, some focus of agreement and maybe some questions about priorities. Just taking the last look here. Okay. I'm having a little trouble with my screen right now. I apologize, I'm jumping around. We come back. Mr. Vernon Jones, this is a, we're circling back to the beginning of this conversation and I know this is looking at these priorities. Are we at a point where you and others feel we are at a sense of agreement acknowledging also full acknowledgement of what Ms. Pat was saying about the other necessary supportive programs and initiatives that need to happen in this town in order to have a comprehensive response to the issues that we're faced, being faced with right now. Well, I think I see four areas where we're not, where we need to do more work. One is exactly what is the staffing gonna be? Do we need a medic or not? Two, are we going to equip them to transport people or not? We definitely need a vehicle, but there isn't gonna be a vehicle that can transport. Three, how do we begin to work community peers into the program? Which is something that we recommended from the front, from the beginning and having our bid and we haven't quite figured out how to do. And then three, what's our budget proposal? I mean, I think this is all for a program we can implement this year. What's our budget proposal and how fast do we want to expand it over the next budget year? But those are all things we can work on maybe with some help from our consultants. Thank you. Other comments? Mr. Vernon Jones, did your volume go down a bit? Oh, sorry. I didn't make any changes, but. Well, that sounds better. I don't know if you've, maybe you came closer. I don't know. Maybe. Thank you. Okay. Other comments. Not seeing any hands. I'd like to, since we took a moment to look at this, you know, perhaps what you've offered Mr. Vernon Jones is a, is a bit of closure to this, this item. I, um, I guess. I'm wondering. Is this a will bring to a conversation with the consultants around the. Community responder. Conversation. And I guess that kind of directing that to you, Mr. Vernon Jones, if that's the summary statements you made, is that something we want to use as a. Kind of a, a list, if you will, discussion list for what we want to bring. To the, to the. The consultants. I'm not sure what makes sense there. I think we should tell them that we've, we've decided we want to recommend this kind of program. Right. But whether they need more detail from us right now or not, I don't know. I guess. Sometimes soon I'd like to. Get them working on where our questions are, but I don't know. We'll be in the first meeting or not. Okay. Ms. Owens had a hand. Ms. Owen. I think we should also include the overtime document that Mr. Wackerman sent us. Just so the consulting group has an idea of the budget that's available so they can factor that in when they put the budget proposal for. This type of program together. Okay. I mean, I guess my question would be, yes, and. There are a number of data points that we would probably want the. Consultants to look at. In addition to what we, you know, we talked about in the invitation with respect to community forum. Feedback and. Survey data. But there's a, there's a plethora of. Police data. Two, and we have to figure out how. They, we want them to, or how they're going to maneuver through. That data to inform the work that they're doing and inform our recommendations. So that's why I said the, and this, this is information that we've asked them for. A while back, and now it's, it's coming in more detail. To us. So how do we incorporate this in the work that the consultants are doing with respect to their data analysis. Ms. Walker. Did we come to an agreement as to whether or not we were going to send this to the consultant group in our next meeting? I think that's why we were looking at this initially was to decide whether or not we were just going to attach this document when we send our invite to the consultants for next week. I don't know. If we aren't going to, if we need to continue editing it right now. And if we are, if we want to finish editing it so that we can send it to them. Initially it wasn't my understanding that we were. Sending it to them at the moment we were talking about it, but I think we were looking at to see where we had some consensus. On the categories of where we found agreements on what is, what should be prioritized and not. If I'm mistaken, I certainly can reel that back, but. Yeah. Ms. Walker. Sorry. Prioritized, but for what like, I would, that's where I'm missing the connection here. We were prioritizing it for sending it to the consultant group or prioritizing it for. I think that's where my confusion is right here, because now we're talking about sending stuff to the town council. And I'm just a little bit confused as to what exactly we are even talking about. Exactly. Mr. I guess I would, Mike. I asked us to get started on this. So we had an understanding of where we were in agreement. And I do think it makes sense to communicate that to the consultants, whether that's before our first meeting or after. I don't know. I wasn't thinking we would send this document. I was just, we were using this document to get clear about our agreements, but I wouldn't use this as the way to communicate it to them. Okay. Ms. Brera has her hand up. I'm sorry that, that the sound Mr. I'm leaning really into computer to hear you. I can speak more loudly. That sounds good. Yeah. Who is up next on the, on the queue here. I'm sorry. Mr. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just looking at the time. I think we need to wrap it up. I also was under the impression that I guess we were doing this in order to send it to the. Consultants, but if we're not, I think we just need, we already had the list. I don't know if we need to give them everything in the kitchen thing too right now. You know, I mean, let's just focus on what we had already talked about, which was the list of, you know, of things that they need to focus on. And you know, we need to wrap things up. I don't think we need to give them the next list in terms of, okay, we need to look at the, the transport, blah, blah, blah, and all of that because we'll have another meeting with them. We'll have more conversations with. Let's just kind of, you know, focus in. Yeah. What are we sending them? What are the documents we're sending them? You brought a good point though, in terms of the AP, the APD data that we have. I think that would be something else that we should probably just put there for them to look at is the APD data because we already have it. I agree. Someone else have their hand up. I'm sorry. I want to be sure. Miss Pat, I'm sorry. Yeah. So when we started this discussion, I had suggested that we send along with individual recommendation that we made. And then Miss Owen also suggested to send this list. I think we should send everything to them instead of like picking and choosing so that they know exactly, you know, what the CSWG group came up with. I'm very uncomfortable for us to be prioritizing on what basis. I think we should be mindful of, you know, everybody's contribution and just let's pass it on to the consulting group, you know, for them to know exactly where everybody's input, you know, that's just my opinion. Yeah. I don't want to see anyone's input lost in this conversation. Let me just say that. And what I'm suggesting in terms of how we went through this list of what we're going to say in an invitation to them is that, you know, we just came up with a list of things that are going into a composite of an invitation to them. I think embedded in that is that we have certain bits of information we can share with them and we will share with them. I would hope that in the initial meeting we don't go too far down the road talking about the details, the more discrete details of what we're talking about, but also to let them know, yes, we have recommendations about community services for youth. Yes, we have community services for this and the other. I think initially we have to just, we have to hear from them and we have to see, you know, what, take their temperature too on what, what, what they're thinking about. So I'm all for including everything. I think in terms of the discussion, an initial discussion with them, we don't want to overload them with a lot, a lot of things, but we do want to make them well aware what our palette looks like, you know, we want to focus right now. We're getting to know you. Here's what we want you to do. And here's the, here's the scope and breadth of the work that we're, we're looking at and we want you to pay attention to it. And here it is. And we, and we can send it to them. I have no problem with that. Because there were, there were, I have some things too. I didn't put out there in the list, but I think ultimately they need to learn as much as they can about us and the work we've done for three months. And I think the word Mr. Wiley overload. In that case, I'm almost, I mean, the suggestion for the data on overtime for police, I think it's a very good data, but I don't think it's priority right now. I don't think we should send it next week, but at some point they can still get it so that they're not getting too, too much document from us at the first meeting before the first meeting. So it's a good idea for them to, to have maybe in a couple of weeks. And I think we can come up with, with a plan Ms. Pat to, to get this to them because there's a lot of data that came, came to us in so many different ways that some of it, we haven't had a chance to look at, especially like the surveys in the community forum data, but we're getting information and data that, you know, the police gave her a report. I think it was back in, I believe it was in July or something. They did a PowerPoint before the, the town council, I believe. So there's a lot of stuff that needs to be looked at by, by this, these, these folks, and that's why we hired them. So we can put that all out there and in an addendum to them to say, Hey, and here, here's the other stuff. But right now we want to have an initial conversation with you to launch this thing and given the short timeline we had and get their, their feedback. So I'd like to just go ahead and proceed the, the, you know, acknowledging all of that. And I think Miss Owen and I will try to reflect all of this in our invitation to them and we'll let you, you know, you send it to you and let you look at it to see if you have any comments, additions, edits to it. And we'll try to get that out by ASAP, all capital letters ASAP. But you'll have plenty, you'll have some time to look at it. So, you know, with that, you know, I, I, you know, we, we have a moment. So I'd like to move on. We have a moment with this, this invitation to, to review it. So I'd like to move on to the next thing. If we may, we are over time. Thank you, Miss Ferrera. I forgot to look at my clock. It's quarter to eight already. And again, we have a lot to discuss. Here's my one question. The two things that are looming on our agenda are clearly our interface with, with this new consultant group coming on to work with us. That's our priority right now. We also have a standing invitation. That's about to be made to the chief of police. And I understand he's available. Next Wednesday. Okay. So. And this is related to our, you know, meeting timelines, et cetera. Do we want to, in addition to creating a format and an outline for having an initial discussion with our consultants, but we also want to invite the chief of police next, next Wednesday. And I'm asking this because I know how lengthy these conversations could be. But if, if we want to prioritize with the consultants, we may take up a bulk of the meeting with them. Next time, especially given the, the, the amount of information we have to share. So, my suggestion, if I will, would be to have the consultants as our. Major agenda item. For next week. And respectfully asked if we could reschedule or schedule the chief of police. For possibly the following week. We'll have a full agenda with our consultants. And I'd just like to hear what people think about that. Ms. Farera has had her hand up. I'm not sure if it's from the last question or not. I, I got to shrink the screen again. I was looking at the agenda there. Sorry. Ms. Farera. Yeah. No, I was just going to say, yeah, I don't, I would say move the chief of police because, you know, that's going to be, I mean, at least for me, I need the prep for that. That's going to be a big meeting, an important meeting. I'd rather us prioritize the consultants and then we can put another topic on that, you know, in case they don't show up, but I don't think it should be the chief of police. I mean, for me, that's going to be a very, at least for me, a very serious meeting. I don't want it just to be kind of like, you know, kind of like, well, the consultant didn't show up. So let's meet with you, you know, type of thing. We need to devote a meeting to meeting with the chief. We need to have a meeting with the chief of police. At least the majority of our meeting to meeting with the chief of police. Mr. Wiley, you're muted. Sorry. Thank you, Ms. Walker. I think there's. Yes, not only do we have to prepare. But we want to have him prepared. So that we have a conversation that's going to make sense. It's going to move the, move the needle here a bit. You know, it, anyway, so I guess I'm agreeing with you. That if you want to prioritize the, you know, the consultants next meeting, I think that might serve as well. Especially given the, the context of this meeting right now, we're already 20 minutes over time. And, you know, we're still talking about this, which is good, but I want to not have that happen with our consultants. Other comments. Okay. Seeing none. I think Ms. Miss. Miss Owen and I will go forward with our charge to, to get an invitation letter out. Hopefully we'll get a quick response back from. From our consultant group. And we'll have, we'll have them on our agenda for next Wednesday. And I think that was that's going to serve us all well. Any other final comments or questions? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, I assume part of that is that the police. Police chief will be invited for the next week. I think so. Yes. Thank you. I'd like to see if he can, he can become available. I was working through. Conversations with. Mr. Bachleman, but I'm sure I can. Outreach to him directly. And I think that's a good question. Thank you. And, uh, Miss moist and, um, would you be willing to remind the town manager that we asked him to explore funding for the second bid. Uh, request. For a second invitation for bid. Uh, And also if he is able to identify information he needs from us to find out what's going on. Uh, So, uh, Thank you. Mr. Vernon Jones. So thank you all. Let's just keep moving forward here. This is good work. We're, we're, we're plotting through it moments and then we're speeding through it. Others. So I think we're in good shape. We're, we're, we're getting somewhere. We, we're, I'm grateful that we have a consultant to work with us so that we can move this whole process forward. Um, I'm sorry. Can I, Cause I know sometimes you don't see my hand because I don't in this case. No. Yeah. I'm quick for the agenda so that next time, so we don't forget. We still have those gift. Um, cards or what have you that we need to figure out. I don't want that to kind of leave off. So I think like, let's say the consultant doesn't take the whole time next week. I think we need to add that to a agenda. And also we can't forget that there was that. Apology that we needed to present to the community, which we haven't done yet. And I don't want us to forget that too. Cause when we say, Reminders do it. Okay. Those two things I think need to be put on the agenda in case. Um, The consultants don't take up the entire time next week. Can, um, Pat and Brianna stay on for a few minutes so we can just schedule something to meet this week. Thanks. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Ms. for Ms. Pat. I don't know. Thank everybody for our robust discussion tonight. I feel that this is a very productive meeting that. We're able to discuss. Our recommendations. So. And everybody's commitment to this work. It's not easy to come to meetings every week. So I appreciate everybody's time. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, and I, that's. Around the circle here agreed. I, you know, I think we all are doing the best we can. Um, With the information and time we have. So I, you know, I, I think that's a blessing for the town. So let's just keep staying together and hanging tough. Um, So that said, um, Ms. Moisten, do you have any, um, Upcoming events? I just said that because you usually, I know. Yeah. Not until May. Oh yeah. Not until about May. Okay. Well, let me thank you for all the stuff you did in this past February too. As others did, but you know, For. Featuring a lot of events for our community. Um, anyone else. Okay. You all miss Pat. One more thing. Who has very good voice. Can we sing for Ms. Moisten. What was your birthday again? Was it today or yesterday? Yesterday. Yesterday. Can we sing a belated. Wait, today's pause. Don't tell him I told you, but today's pause. Oh, can we do both? Who wants to lead us in song? Uh, wait a minute. This, this is an agenda item that did not come before me before 48 hours before this meeting started. So I think we're going to have to put that off until item six on the agenda. Okay. Okay. So our next meeting date is. Next week. And we'll be posting the agenda, which we know what it is. And I'm going to also include the two items. Um, Miss forever that you suggested, uh, get those in there as well. The, the gifts cards. And we'll talk. You know, about the letter. As well. So that, uh, other topics. You know, That you have. You want to sing happy birthday to somebody? Yeah. Miss. Not me. Everybody. I can't sing. Whose birthday is it? It's moist. It's Ms. Moistens birthday. All right. Hit it. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Yeah. Happy birthday to you. Yeah. Happy birthday. Get it. Ross. You are a trip. All right, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you. I had a great time. That was totally not synchronized. But that's. That was pretty funny. And we have it on recording. Do that. Anyway. I know. We want cake at the next meeting. Ms. Moistens. Yeah. Send it. Each to some. Motion to adjourn. So moved. Ms. Pat moves. And I get a second. Motion. Ms. Walker seconded. Thank you all very much for your hard work and your attention to all this detail. And look forward to seeing you next Wednesday. Bye. Have a good night. Good night. You stay. Oh, that's right. I'm. No. Not Alicia Brianna. Brianna. I'm sorry. Yeah. Have a good night. Good night. I just wanted to touch base with you guys because we do need to move forward and I don't want us to lose momentum. So I was planning to ask you guys to stay anyway. So can we schedule a time to meet? Cause it's solely my, I can't possibly think anymore. To me. I don't know tomorrow or Friday. Do you have availability preferably Friday? I think my Thursday is pretty booked. I'm flexible. She, you know, she's, she'll be working on a subcommittee with Paul tomorrow. So Friday sounds good. Yeah. Friday sounds good. All right. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. For me to suggest what's a meeting time and then not like, look at the schedule. So, um, 930. Or just the afternoon work better. I also have like the afternoon available. Oh, and noon work, like noon works good for me. If you guys could do like 12 to one. Okay. That sounds good. Okay. I'm Friday, right? Yep. So I'll send you guys a meeting invite again. Okay. But I just think like we need to reach, start reaching out to the different businesses and we have to figure out how we're going to do that and communicate with, um, Claudia over at the bid to see what she needs from us. I know we have to purchase cards. So I have to work on that kind of stuff. So, um, we just, we just need to figure out how we're going to do that. I feel like things are getting lost because so many, there's so many moving parts and. This part I know I've, we've got, so that's it. So Jen, if I have a question for you, is this being recorded? Um,