 Okay. Good evening. It's May 10th, 2023. This is a joint meeting of the Town Council, the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, and the Human Rights Commission. As such, it has been posted as a meeting by all three committees. The open meeting law has been extended. This allows us to continue to hold meetings remotely without a quorum of any of the bodies being physically in the meeting location, but providing the public with adequate alternative access. This meeting is successful in real time by zoom by phone, or as a live broadcast on Amherst media channel nine or on their live stream. I'll first call the Town Council to order and then ask the co-chairs of CSS JC and HRC to call their meetings to order. Given that we have a quorum in the Council present, I'm calling the May 10th 2023 Town Council meeting to order at 634. When I call upon each Council, please make sure that you can hear us and we can hear you, and then mute yourself again. Shallony Balmille. Present. Patty Angeles. Present. Anna Devlin Gopier. Present. Lynn Griesma is present. Mandy Jo-Hannocky is absent. Because of another engagement she could not change. Anika Lokes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Maroney. Here. It is absent this evening. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Todd. Present. Alicia Walker. Not here at this time. Okay. We'll keep an eye out. Allegra or D. You want to go ahead. SSJC to order. It is six 35 and I am calling the C.S. SSJC to order. Do I have to read the same extensions part? No. Just make sure everybody can hear you. Just make sure everybody that is here individually can hear you and you can hear them. Okay, perfect. Miss Pat. Yeah. Phillip. Here. And Deborah. Yeah. I believe D had a conflict. D is in the audience as an attendee. Oh, a leg. Athena will bring her in. Okay. D. Can you hear us? Yes. All right. Thank you. And I don't see Freke's name. But we do have a quorum. And I also, I do see that Alicia has joined us. Right. Alicia, can you hear us? Yes, thank you. Thanks for joining us. And. Phillip, would you please go ahead and. Call HRC to order. Yep. It's six 36 and I called the human rights commission to order. And I will see members. Ronnie. I'm here. Victor. President. Tyler. Yeah. Yeah. Juliana. Present. I believe that is it, including myself, which I can clearly hear and speak. Hey, I'm just, I'm just scanning the whole screen. To make sure that everybody has been called on. I do want to check to see that the town manager can hear us and we can hear him. Yes, president. And. I'm seeing you, Pamela Young. And present. And Earl Miller. Present. Okay. And Athena is. Also with us. All right. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues. Please let me or your chair know. Or Athena. And we're going to use the raised hand button since we're all in different locations. And if we have technical difficulties that causes to have to make a note in the meeting, we will do so at the time. There are no changes to the agenda as it is posted. I'm going to ask each of the committees whether or not they have any announcements. I don't see any hands, but. And let me just say at the end of the joint meeting with the town council CSS JC and HRC are planning to continue their meeting using the same link. Okay, we're going to. I'll just mention also that in preparation for this meeting, Michelle Miller and I representing the council met with the co chairs of CSS JC. We met. So we met with D and Allegra, and we met with Phillip Avila on Monday night, and came up with kind of a plan for how to proceed with this very discussion. We are going to move to general public comment. And we asked, we aren't going to use a timer I'm sorry a panelist has her hand up Allegra. Yes, I just wanted to note that freke has joined us so I just wanted to make sure that we could hear him for CSS JC. Great. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Can you hear us. Yes, I can I'm walking home. Oh, wonderful. All right, thank you. Thanks for letting us join your walk. Okay. Are there any other comments at this point or other people you need to bring in. Okay, then, with that, I'm going to add, we're going to ask that people, you know, try to keep their remarks to three minutes, if at all possible. And, but we are going to go ahead and have public comment now from the standpoint of the joint meeting of HRC CSS JC and the town council. This is the only public comment, the other committees when they continue their meetings may decide they're going to have additional public comment. So, if you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand. I'm not seeing any hands raised at this time. So with the agreement of the other committees will go on. Let me preface this and ask the town clerk, the clerk to the town council to place on the screen, the motion that brings us to this meeting tonight. So on November 14, the town council requested that the town manager work with the department and other staff. And we're going to be discussing each of those tonight with both presentations and then discussion from all three of the committees. At the end of the motion, which all of this was followed, a draft report was provided to the town council to the CSS JC and the human rights commission. And they in return have written their advice back to the town council and the town manager. And that brings us to tonight. But I want to actually recall a bit of our timeline that actually creates this larger meeting. I'll take that down. On May 25, 2020 George Floyd, a 46 year old black man was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That led to several, and I do mean several actions taken by the town council, the town manager, and the hard work of many people who are assembled here tonight, and join us in the audience. First of all, there was a passage of a resolution in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd that was on June 1, 2020. Then there was a resolution on December 7 resolution of affirming the town of Amherst commitment to end structural racism and chief racial equity for black residents. But you know resolutions don't do it. They don't do a thing. They're a nice statement, but what really is important is right after that was the creation of the community safety working group. That group conducted significant research and made recommendations to the town council in two reports issued in May and October of 2021. What they were including in those recommendations was that we create a community safety and social justice committee, which has happened and they're here with us tonight. They also asked that we create a community responder department, and we did. We approved the funding and the creation of the Crest department. We create a department of diversity, equity and inclusion, and we did. And we are joined tonight by the directors of each of those groups. In addition to that, the council, not exactly in the same line, but related, approved the creation of the African heritage reparations assembly, and the creation of a fund for reparations. And the report for which we will hear from soon in terms of the recommendations of how that money would be spent. Following an incident on July 5, 2022, lengthy discussions took place with the town council. And in many instances, members of the CSS JC and the public. Those conversations continued from August into November, November 14. And at that time, the town council passed the motion that appeared on the screen. Our goal tonight is to hear the updates from the town manager and staff regarding these seven items. And the advice from the CSS JC and HRC both items are in your packet. And during the presentations, I've asked Councillor Michelle Miller as a result of our conversation on Monday night as chair of the African heritage reparations committee to facilitate the conversation on each of those items. As we conclude that portion of the discussion, all members of each committee will be asked if they would like to make any final comments. And I will formally request that the town manager include updates on these seven items and any other relevant actions in his monthly town managers report. And I would like to ask town manager Paul Bachmann, Pamela Young, director of diversity, equity and inclusion, and Earl Miller, the head of Cress to proceed with their presentation. Thank you, Lynn. And thank you to everyone who's here tonight. I appreciate your time and being with us and giving us the opportunity to update you on where we are on a number of issues. You can go to the next slide. Lynn's already talked about this. So as the council voted on November 14, this is the bullet points from the motion that Lynn had listed before. And this is our opportunity to report on where we are, the actions that we've taken the progress we have made in addressing these issues. We'll go through them one by one during the course of this presentation. Each is at, there are different stages of progress. Some we've made good progress on some not so good. And we're just going to be laying out everything where we are. And this is a progress report in essence. So next slide please. So working with the director and other staff, we submitted a written report address addressing the council's motion on March 17. Tonight Pam Pamela Nolan young, the town's director of diversity equity inclusion and Earl Miller, the town's director of our crest or community responder program department will summarize the report. I hope this information will provide you and the broader community with an update on the work we are doing. We're very proud of the work and that has been done so far. You know, we don't often get the opportunity to step back and to recognize the hard work that is being done. So tonight, I want to thank Pamela and Earl publicly. First, for their decision to come to work for the town, and also for their dedication to the mission of their jobs. And for the highly professional skill knowledge and social intelligence that they bring to the work. We would not be where we are today. And if we were to not with if we did not have these two visionary leaders leading these two departments. So thank you Pamela and Earl and right up the offset. I think it's really important. We don't get to say that very often. Next slide. So in less than 10 months, the town has created and operationalized to new municipal departments. I can't tell you how unusual this is in the municipal world. That's the world I live in. It's just not done. We recruited and convinced two great leaders Pamela and Earl, that this was the opportunity to that was not to be missed. In turn, they recruited and hired a strong diverse staff to support the two departments. Some we knew, like Jennifer Moisten who brings extraordinary skills and knowledge of the community who is our assistant director. And we hired others who were part of our community, but we're not new to working for the town. So both today today, both of our departments are working actively to meet their respective missions. There's obviously more work to be done more goals to set and more goals to meet. It is important to note in this work there are no check boxes to check and say done. There's no mission accomplished the work is ongoing. And it will be ongoing for a very long time. We all know that. That's why it has been so important for us to step back in times and look at what we have accomplished in a relatively short period of time. And to thank all those who are devoting their time and effort to bettering our community. We're very fortunate to have them all. Next slide. Actually go back one. So I want to take a minute to talk about how we have approached these two departments. And as I mentioned, this is sort of a marathon, not a sprint. We're working to build two departments for the long haul. That's why it's been important to establish these departments as true parts of our town governance structure, and to establish a theory of and model of growth. So as we have as we have formed these departments, we've learned a lot. We've learned from our experiences as we continue to engage with the community. We've created new partnerships and shaped existing partnerships. Well, we may have a vision laid out that vision must be dynamic, not static. We must be willing to listen and to change in these new areas. We're in an ever evolving and changing landscape. One of the things I talk about with Earl. Well, first, I tell him that he should keep good notes because he's going to be writing a book someday and go on some big fancy speaking tour because what he's doing in the Crest department is doing is really remarkable and setting a state setting the standard for communities throughout the country. And as a side note, today, we had our first master's thesis submitted that was done on the Crest program or part of the Crest program. And that just shows that this is groundbreaking work that graduate students are starting to look at and say what can we learn from the what they're developing. So the thing that we talk about is that we need to establish an effective level of service. We work it, we get good at it, we make sure that it can be maintained. And once we got that under our belts, we level up to the next level of service. Each level brings new challenges, complications, negotiations, and we continue to repeat that. We set expectations, we meet them and then exceed them, and we are ready to move on. In short, we need to be building these departments so that they are sustainable financially and operationally so that they will be contributing to the town for years and decades to come. So now I'd like to hand it over to Pamela to get into the specifics of the report and then we'll go to Earl to conclude. Right, but you advanced to the next slide. So, again, good evening and I am pleased to be able to give you the status report on behalf of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. So, next slide please. So, as has already been mentioned before this work really began with the community safety working group. And whenever Jennifer and I are talking about the office she always insists that we began with acknowledging that the work was done by the community safety working group and so I also want to acknowledge that a lot of the work that we're doing in our, in our office finds its root with a community safety working group. Next slide please. So, as you know, our office has been in existence for just 10 months, Jen and I were sworn in on July 5, and we're looking forward to our one year anniversary. Next slide please. Although you know Jennifer, one of the things that we've done as we've introduced our office is to reintroduce people to the work that she's done in the community. So she's almost a lifelong resident of Amherst. She's been a town employee for 10 years. In fact, her 10 year anniversary was on May 6. She's a community participation officer so she, along with Angela Mills and Brianna Cedrin are responsible for outreach to the community, in addition to her work with the DEI office. And as you know she's the driving force behind a lot of the DEI efforts that the town has engaged in. And she's soon to be president of the Amherst survival center. Next slide please. I am new to Amherst but not new to Western Mass. I have over 20 years experience in DEI. I'm certified as an NCPEI and bystander trainer. And I'm a founding member of the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center. So while Amherst is new to me as far as employment is concerned, I've been a resident of Western Mass off and on since 1988. So I'm pleased to be back in Western Mass and pleased to be a part of what I consider to be the revolutionary work that the town has decided to take on. So Jennifer and I are an office of two. And I really see that she is the connector. If you're familiar with Malcolm Gladwell. She is the person who knows this community well and helps to make the connections that are really necessary and needed for our for our office. Next slide please. The town adopted a diversity equity and inclusion statement, and it is summarized here. Jennifer and I have used this to form the strategies and our vision for the office, a dedication to education and programming, a commitment to provide inclusive and equitable access to all the municipal services and programs. To an accountability for advancing DI efforts, establishing partnership, and the recognition of all aspect of human differences so our work is not limited to, to only work around race or gender, but really all human differences. Next slide please. Actually, if you'll advance until the slide is complete. Oh, go back one slide but there should be additional information on this slide so you may need to, or something's missing. All right, well, not sure what happened with that slide but I'll just continue on. When I describe the work of the office, I generally say that our work is falls into what I would say three broad categories. Internally, we're working with the town council of departments, boards and committees in fact Jennifer and I support for board boards, the human rights commission, the CSSJC, the DAAC, and I missing one, which I can't recall right at this moment. Human rights DAC. Oh, after heritage and reparations commission. So our work has an internal focus to it. In addition to the internal focus of working with all of those departments, boards, the town council and staff. We also have an external focus, and that external focus is our work with the community to foster relationships with nonprofits with businesses with community members and organizations. And then the third category, and one that personally really attracted me to the position is our work around racial reconciliation and dealing. All right, next slide please. So, there were seven, I guess, parts of the resolution at the town past, and I'll be addressing six of them, and Earl will address the seventh one when he does his presentation. So, one of the resolutions was to propose the town council plan for community visioning with a focus on public safety and social justice. So the off this began supporting this work in January by offering opportunities for community engagement. To answer the national day of racial healing, which was an opportunity for members of the community to gather together to talk about racial healing and racial reconciliation. And we did that both as an event for staff only and as an event for community members. Since that time, we have been continuing to have opportunities to engage the community around topics around DEI and in fact on May 20, we'll have another community event on allyship. In addition, we've start to have some initial conversations with the consultant to a vision what this work would look like on an ongoing sense, and our hope is to have an agreement process where we would be able to hire that consultant who has outlined a plan for community and vision that for community vision that includes five separate parts. So the first is to meet with the department to talk about the structure and protocols that we would use for community vision. The third part would be to train members of the town staff and community members to act as facilitators for these conversations. The third part would be to engage in those conversations broadly with select community members as well as different groups and organizations I should say targeted. And then to envision that that those groups would then put together a list of strategies and priorities. There would be a large gathering for all of the various groups to come together to discuss their work. And then the consultant has envisioned working with us to synthesize the work of the community to develop a strategic plan. You know, there was a belief some confusion about the description of community vision as it was reported in the report. And the confusion, I think, lied around whether only members of the staff would be engaged in this work. And that's obviously not the case in discussions with the consultant. Our prospective consultant, I asked if it would be permissible to have members of the staff trained as part of the train the trainer and my eyes that seat that serves a dual purpose. It allows the town to get the benefit of having town staff trained and d I principles and values. And then that staff is also able to act as facilitators. For the larger community conversations that are proposed. Next slide please. So, the second part of the resolution was to propose to the town council and plan for the creation of a resident oversight board with a possible assistance from and hire an appropriate consultant to help with the development of that plan. The RFP for the resident oversight board was published on May 1 and proposals are due on May 16. So, a great amount of work has gone into pushing this initiative forward. It was probably December and January I spoke with a number of different consultants to get a greater understanding about what would be needed for if we were to hire someone to guide us through this work. And then based on those conversations based on my review of the work of the community safety working group drafted according to town protocols, an RFP that was published in May. And as I mentioned, those proposals are due on May 16. So I think that we will very shortly be gathering a group of individuals to review those proposals. And this part of the plan for the group to review the proposals we propose that the members of that review team include the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the finance department, a member from press, a member from the police department and members from the Human Rights Commission, as well as a member from the CSS JC. The third request was to organize a review of the public safety protocols for responding to and handling public safety calls involving all residents including minors in order to recommend changes to those protocols if appropriate. This request has been included in the request for the RFP for the resident oversight board. I and other staff believed that it was premature to begin public safety protocols in advance of having the resident oversight board. And at the same time that the town was in the midst of a search for a new police chief. My hope that during the RFP, during the creation of the resident oversight board and my expectation that there will be a complete review of the public safety protocols and I hope at the time that this is happening we will have hired hopefully a new chief and so there will be an opportunity for law enforcement to weigh in as well as for the community to weigh in on the public safety protocols. Next slide please. The work already begun and exploring options for youth environment center. So the Office of Diversity equity inclusion and crests has agreed to hire an AmeriCorps member to spearhead the development of youth programming and services and both departments. So, Roland I have partnered to bring in an AmeriCorps volunteer the volunteer will work two days with our office and two days with press on the fifth day Friday there required to do work with AmeriCorps. So, it is our hope that this individual who will begin in August will be able to work with both offices as well as to collaborate with other community department partners about the workshops activities and presentations. That will foster the work of youth empowerment center. And I know that the town manager is also forming a working group to look at other initiatives around this area. Next slide please provide training regarding racial equity rights and other options for training to employees and members of the public. So the office has already conducted a number of workshops for community members as well as staff and as well and has hosted on numerous cultural events. The most recent one was cultural event was this past Sunday for API. We have partnered with the human resources department to provide workshops during the, what will be likely the first quarterly professional development day for town staff. And we've also provided workshops to the DPW and the Amherst police department. The fire department is scheduled for later this month, and in June, the departments that are housed in bangs, which are health senior center, the veteran center and crest will all be engaging in staff workshops around DEI and equity initiatives on May 20 will host the second of our community workshops on allyship. That will also be be in the bank center. And many of you are, of course, very familiar with the ongoing cultural events that the office has sponsored the human rights. Commission. Next slide. So the communication plan is one that's being developed by the communication director and the office of diversity equity and inclusion. The town has some earmarked funds from representative dub that that will allow for translation services, the town recently purchased three translations devices that it's going to test and pilot. The funds, the earmarked funds have already been used for translation services for some applications and for some other events that the town has engaged in. The communications director and I along with other department has will be trying to formulate a long term communications plan that looks at language access and translation in a more broader sense. I think there might be one last slide for me. And so the, this is just an overview of the town's communication landscape. So the websites with Google have translation plugs ends. There's a dedicated built in online engagement plan platform for informing members of the community about town events that's engage Amherst. There are newsletters calendar alerts on the town website for both town events and community events. Weekly press meetings, a robust collection of public records so we are engaged and trying to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to be engaged in the, in the community and to utilize the numerous efforts for learning about efforts of the diversity equity inclusion, as well as Crest and other offices on town. And I think that's my final slot. So, Earl, do you want to set up your slide deck and then you can start. Perfect. Hi everyone. I can be wordy I'm going to try to keep it to a minimum. So if I start to go too long someone give me a look. I'm incredibly grateful I think it's important for me to start there. I took this job because of the depth of the conversations this community had had, and a feeling that folks meant what they said. And, you know, my, my one year was March 21, and I still feel like you mean what you say. I don't know if there's a perfect path to to the kind of big goals we have but I have felt happy to spend my time working towards it. So I really wanted to start with our mission statement. This is taken from the edicts of the town council, as well as from looking at the CSWG videos to really understand the philosophy of some of those things. And these are the core values that we think about every day. Everybody in this town is worthy of redemption is worthy of hope is worthy of not being represented by their worst day. And we often meet people on their worst day so this is an important one for us to remember trauma informed care. It's important for me to say that I was supposed to be at Amherst and we're right now for a trauma informed Hampshire County film screening. Rome Cabrera is there doing probably a much more succinct job than I would. And it's important to us that to understand that the way that trauma impacts people's abilities to move through the world matters, and that it's worthy of being kind of honored and respected is as we think about our work anti racism. Obviously, you'll see as we go through our training, we really infused all of our training period with anti racism trainings. So the idea of, you know, to understand the ways in which systems have historically worked to oppress people and understanding that we are an institution in its infancy. And that means that we can avoid some of those things getting into the roots of our work. So we think about that and talk about that often being unarmed. I'll take one of the things we say is being unarmed doesn't mean unskilled or untrained or unprepared or ill equipped. We show up with the tools to harm anyone. And we find that to be a large advantage that should not be taken as a critique of any other public safety department. We are as different from everyone else as the police and fire department are from each other. We have a different set of responsibilities and scopes and we stick to those person centered. Our approach looks different for everyone who's in front of us their needs are different, the way that they envision the world their hopes and dreams or goals and aspirations are different. So we don't, we don't subscribe to any kind of one size fits all approach. We've worked with a fair amount of folks and each of them have needed a little bit different things. And in collaboration, we are glad and excited to collaborate with anybody who wants us to collaborate with them. We've gone to some adventures, but I think we've learned something from all of those things. And there's still nobody we're unwilling to partner with so hopefully that doesn't change. We really this this mission statement, I just want to say first off is not ordered by importance. All of these matter, and depending on the situation in the thought process, they may, they may be looked at in a different order, but all of them are equally important to the work we do every day. And we're glad to do it. Next slide. I like not having to hit the slide button. All right, sorry. So introducing you to the department. That's me. Sorry, I don't take a good picture but that's me I promise. Scott Newman who ran the ambassador program in town, bring such a profound understanding of engaging communities of how you need to show up for communities, so that you're not just kind of taking their time and attention but but really understanding their needs and and learning how to communicate with folks. Kavan Lord, who played basketball at the high school graduated from the middle school. Nick Yaffet Wildwood has a picture of his kindergarten class on his desk as a child of this town continues to every day work, particularly with young men in the town doing some mentorship work that's, that's really one of a kind. Brittany Haughton, who attended UMass was an RA there here that's a tricky job. He has a great education or a whole career and has provided some valuable insights on working with students and the supports that they may or may not have to Vanessa Phillips, who's lived in this town most of her life, and brings a real savviness to working with seniors, which is a large part of our work is working with seniors and we'll get into that more later. Kenneth Miko who you probably know is Q, who is just one of the most engaging people you'll ever meet he does a presence that follows a really well designed path through downtown that allows us to engage with folks who who might not be on the kind of be in path who might be dealing with some things and to provide a kind of warm face and a friendly support and connection to resources. So, Rome Cabrera, who is a political science major again is talking at Amherst Cinema right now I'm sure he's doing wonderful and and I'm certainly will watch this. I watched him the other day engage with a couple who was undocumented around health insurance, and the thought I had was that if my family was in that situation I sure would hope Rome would be there. And those folks the thoughtfulness the warmth was was it was heartwarming. Tim DeRosher, one of my favorite folks in the world, a young man who is still a UMass student from the Berkshires brings a real understanding of what it's like to live in a rural community, lack of access to resources, and is so committed me and him to a common school this weekend, supporting an event there and he's, I hope you all get to meet him. Chalo. Chalo just came back from Kenya visiting some family. Chalo's been doing some wonderful work over at Crocker Farm engaging with the community there. And Tia Atwell is our newest responder and is just come out of training and continues to really do good work particularly at the library engaging with the folks over there which has been helpful for us. And that's the whole team. I'm sorry, there's a lot of less, but each of them warranted a few words so. Next slide. So, I wanted to talk about our training. I read in the response really wanting to understand kind of how we thought about anti racism and training around community things. We did nine weeks of training. We were at the months in library, working with outside agencies, we benefited from every department in town. Folks came down and explained what their operations were the sorts of folks they interacted with what their barriers were and how we might be supportive and helping folks to engage with those departments in a way that might feel supported and meaningful. Next slide please. So these are the sorts of modalities we went through and I don't expect you to read all of them or memorize them. The real piece I want to just note through all of this is that every line of this there were conversations about historically underrepresented communities and how they engaged with those services. Some of these trainings came from folks at Amherst College or UMass we engaged with social workers from Amherst. We were able to get really fortunate to get trainings on OCD and autism from two folks who live with those experiences in town, which really has shaped the way we've engaged with those communities. And a thing that you won't see here that was a part of my personal training was Jennifer Moisten. As soon as I came into town she really made it her mission to make sure that I saw where everyone was. I saw where the affordable housing was. I saw the barbecues at most of those spaces. And one of the most important lessons I learned through that time was at Village Park. We were doing a barbecue there. And, you know, I love crests. It is kind of the thing I get to do with most of my waking days so I sure am lucky to like it. You know, understanding that being in communities is important, but people understanding why you're there. That there was not an appetite for us to be like observing folks that when we were places we really needed to engage with people. You know, this person really explained to me that sometimes when when there were police in the neighborhood it felt like she had done something even though she had it. It was really important as we've gone through the work to think about that of how we engage with communities and how we do that in a way that doesn't make them feel like they've done something inappropriate. All right, next slide. These are examples of some of our kind of framing things. You're going to hear me towards the end talk about some of the work we're doing with other departments and other parts of the country that that conversation has started since the first day I got here. And I hope we'll continue as long as the department exists. We learned so much from other communities motivational interviewing is a framework that I had not considered for the department. Until I talked to the folks in Akron, Ohio, who had piloted a team with motivational interviewing and found that not only were they able to engage with people in kind of more fluent ways, but they engage with folks of color in ways that were more meaningful and juxtapose their own suppositions about how that person should end up or where they should be that the modality allowed them to be more flexible with that. And as we brought that on we have found that to be true. We brought in things on bias institutional bias. And all of these things were really important for us as we move through. I just want to note to vicarious trauma for us it's really important we see folks on really hard days so making sure that responders have the tools to process the things they see, and not let it impact their lives. There's a lot of harm that help happens to people who are trying to be helpful who aren't able to help themselves so you'll see here kind of the framework of how we wanted the work to look. Next slide please. So, again, I know we've already talked about models of growth but I wanted to talk about the one I think about the most, which is grow. It's setting a goal, looking at your current reality, your options are your obstacles, and then finding a will forward for us. Crest is the fastest department in the country to operations. Well, it is fast. It doesn't feel, it doesn't feel careless to me. We set a goal we set an achievable goal and we achieve it when we started the goal was to hire a team. You'll note from other areas where people try to do this hiring is hard. Hiring is really really hard. We, we were able to get all of our responders out of one round of interviews. That was because of the engagement that we had done with Jennifer moist and before Pamela came on. Half of our responders were recruited from events that happened in town, the old and young basketball game, the legal women voters event on a very hot summer day. We met folks in those spaces so they were committed to the work. When we started training the goal was to get out of training. There are some departments that struggled to get out of training. We, I knew that I was one person, and so I reached out to folks and received support from every level of the town, not just town staff but town residents. People let me sit at their kitchen table and tell me about their, their challenges, and what crest would need to look like to address those challenges. And I'm, I'm incredibly grateful for the, the warm welcome I receive, and the really honest talk I received from people in this community that did not, did not hide what they needed and that made us better at the beginning. When we came out of training the goal was to find some work. We were able to do that pretty quickly. And now our next goal is to begin taking 911 calls and I think just the way we achieved every other goal. We have set an achievable goal we are engaged with our partners we are doing the things we need to do that. The most important thing is there, we are unanimous in our department that there is a will to do this, and that we will be successful and I don't, I don't think there's any reason for me to believe we won't. Yeah, sorry. It's hard to feel a little emotional about that. Alright, next slide. The highlights have completed in ongoing cases. Volunteers have been huge for us. Gene Hartman, who is a town resident came to us through the tax write off program as a veteran, and he was supposed to work with us for, I don't know, maybe 20 hours. He's been with us for four months, we're building out a whole veterans support program and, and really he came to us with a challenge he was willing to put the work in and is helping us to address that in a meaningful way. During the cold snap that kind of started our very expedited winter this year. We were able to help nine folks find shelter placements with the assistance of Craig's door. And the skill responders engaging with them in meaningful ways where they were, and understanding that the solution that they envisioned for themselves might not be the vision we had and so being willing to change gears as folks needed. Reporting other town activities, we've been lucky enough to be just about everywhere if you've gone to a town event you're probably a little sick of CNS but you'll you'll see us there in an ongoing way for a long time. Meeting families, things like community safety day. Those things have really mattered. We're safe responsibilities when folks call us with challenges showing up, people being able to see a predictable outcome that we work to deescalate situations, we are able to resolve them ourselves, and often provide some follow up so that the people who called us there can feel confident that that's not the end of us supporting a person that the crisis doesn't mean that the problems have been solved so. We're next to the senior center. So we have a nice group of seniors we engage with. One of our responders has been walking a senior home every day, which that may not feel like a big public safety thing but not everybody has someone in their life to walk them home. And if you don't, that's a really big thing. And so we often talk about doing the small things right. And if you've been to our office you've met Brady and he's the sweetest dog in the world and he's cat Newman service animal. What the greatest feedback I've ever gotten from a person we were a government agency that's helping them. And they meant that. And then working with families navigating challenges, we are fortunate enough that some families have trusted us with their challenges and just come into the office and we've been able to support them. Everything from parenting classes. Sorry, that's my dog. Everything from parenting classes to understanding where to get food and things for their, their family, being a meaningful part of their lives. Sorry, next slide. So this is, this is not all of our data. So since we've started we've generated 570 reports. The engagements that we had with a person in which we were called and deployed out and able to support them. This does not include every engagement activity we've done with folks this doesn't involve every phone call. These are, we were called, we responded, we did an activity, we were able to become to some conclusion on it. I'm sorry if you can't read the data on the right side. I will, I will make sure folks get the PowerPoint. This is 27 cases that we sent to you mess down a few institutes our first round of data we shared with them. So this is our most representative data comes from 20 from April. And what you'll see there, I know it's a little trickier read is that are the communities we're working with are pretty varied. We're receiving calls from different communities. The types of calls we're taking are often assist citizen, which is really what we're looking for it means a person or a family member or a community member called us to support a person. Often these are defined by the person who makes the call. But there are opportunities for us to come out and be supportive to folks. We've gone to places like the survival center businesses in town. You know places where people are to provide that support. All right, next slide. This is what I'm really proud of is that more often than not when we engage with the person we do have follow up. There is another appointment set we are going to come back and provide more resources. We think about the work is upstream. I know that nine will one is an important duty for us to get to and we are speeding towards that. But for us, a nine will one call represents a crisis in someone's life it represents a kind of failing of the preventative things so we really do try to do our work upstream as much as possible. So understanding that if people can't get their immediate resources needs met that's more likely to put them into a situation in which they may need to do things that are not how they would want to behave or might get them into some trouble. The fact that our responders are from the community, eight of our 10 responders lived work or grew up here has been really meaningful because they often know the people we're working with. They have long relationships with them that we're able to understand they also understand the unique challenges of Amherst and I think it's important to know that being poor in a place where other people aren't is a particular type of trauma. It's a particular type of trauma when you're paying is is you see it. When I don't have anything and I see that you have so much it really does magnify how unfair life can be. And there are lots of research that that is a unique traumatic experience. So having responders who sat on multiple sides of that equation really allows us to understand where folks are coming from. Next slide. Okay, that's all my slides. You'll know when we do these things we always put Rome up there. If people have a question and they speak Spanish they can reach directly out to Rome, or myself and, and I think we'll take questions. Sorry if that's yeah, I'm not going to say sorry I'm sorry we're practicing that. Thank you. As we agreed in our Monday planning meeting, we're going to go move right on to the advice from the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee and the Human Rights Commission. And so I'm going to turn to whoever is going to do that on their behalf. Allegra. I think I will be making remarks and, if anybody else has anything to add please feel free. So, thank you to Earl and Pamela for your presentations and for all the hard work that you put into all this can you hear me. Yes. Okay. And I just also wanted to acknowledge the members of the CSWG who are here both as now representative members on CSS JC miss Pat and Deborah, as well as the co chairs Alicia Walker our fine town counselor at large. And I do see that Brianna Owen is in the audience. She was also co chair of the CSWG so I would like to thank them for all the work that they do that we stand on. So, as I didn't prepare any slides. So, I'm going to talk, and hopefully you can follow along the packet if you need to. So, when our committees met and we're reviewing the report that was prepared in March we wanted to reiterate the importance that all of this November 17th motion came out of the July 5th incident and what we saw as a failure to properly address the problem that had been caused to the youth that were involved in that incident. So, we had multiple meetings as Council President Grace Mer did allude to in August, October and November of 2022 to determine how we could best find justice for the youth and move forward as a town. And so in our response we did discuss directly the seven things that had been outlined by the town council but we also addressed what we felt was missing so I'm going to discuss both our response to what is presented and what was not presented. I think a main agreement that we had on many of the points was that a lot of work that had already been done was being replicated or being reintroduced with new consultants and if we look back at the CSWG's reports both Part A and Part B, as well as the LEAP reports and the seven gen movement collective reports, we see a lot of the bones of what needs to happen in order to Part A have a community visioning, B have a resident oversight board and C organize a review of public safety protocols. So, in terms of the community visioning, there is an extensive outline that was presented by CSWG and work with a consultant in the community. And we hope that there will be intensive participation of community members in moving that visioning forward. In terms of the resident oversight board. Again, in the CSWG report Part B, there is extensive research that is presented. And from our perspective, Phase 1A through 1C that was outlined in the report presented by Miss Young and the town, have already been completed so work should really start with 2A to 2C and implementing the board. In terms of the review of ongoing public safety protocols, the LEAP report, which was then incorporated into the Part B CSWG report does outline some very easy shifts in policing that would not cost any money and that would reduce the frequency of contact between the public and the police in terms of consent searches, pretext traffic stops and those are the two of the main things but then also in terms of just making sure that racial data is collected so that we're really understanding what is happening when police are stopping people. So, again, I think that was something that doesn't need to be reviewed it needs to be implemented. And I think that there are again additional things that we can work on but I think the committee's had significant concerns about waiting until the resident oversight board is seated to even start some of this work when a lot of it has already been outlined. In terms of the Cress department, the most important, well, everything is important, but you know I think there were a few things that we really wanted to stress. One is that Cress cannot only depend on fundraising through grants there should be increased funding through the town operating budget to meet the needs of the Cress department, and that Cress needs to be fully funded and fully staffed 24-7 based on the recommendations of the CSWG. We, you know, we understand and appreciate that Earl has taken a very measured implementation strategy. And we've also heard from community members that they needed services in the middle of the night and Cress, you know, isn't available at that time right now. So looking at the LEAP report again there was also an analysis of when police calls happen and and many of them are coming in after Cress is already closed for the evening. So that was a concern that we wanted to highlight. In terms of the youth empowerment center, I'm going to make a little editorial note so I think the July 5th incident showed us that the youth in this town aren't being kept safe by the institutions that we believe are supposed to protect and serve them, mainly the police department. And there was a very disturbing report that came out yesterday in the graphic which is the high school newspaper about staff at the middle school, being transphobic and homophobic to youth and there is an investigation happening, but this is another instance of an institution that's supposed to keep our youth safe and protected, failing them. And so I think that speaks even more to the need for a youth empowerment center that is separate from the schools separate, you know, from the recreational department that's really led by the youth. So, again, I think CSWG with seven gen did some very strong research into the need for youth empowerment center. And we should be implementing that in terms of the training regarding racial equity and rights. Just making sure that there's ongoing required anti racism training for all aspects of town in the community in general. And the training the trainers model, especially with marginalized committee committees and communities within town to to broaden engagement in the process would be important. And then the major point that we had around the communication plan was to include translation services as part of the plan so that we are reaching populations that we might not have reached in the past and I am grateful to see that that was highlighted in the in the presentation tonight. So, those are the seven issues that were in the motion that passed on November 14, but there was an additional motion and variations that did not pass that directly spoke to the July 5 instance. The families of the BIPOC youth involved in that instance in that incident have sent a open letter to the town government. And I'm just going to read a few pieces of it because I think that it's important that we hear it. So, centering our black and Latino youth and holding the town accountable. Much has been discussed and written about the nine youth the Amherst police detained on July 5, 2022. It has not been enough. The experiences of the six BIPOC youth identifying collectively as Amherst six and their families are experiencing profound grief, sorrow and despair to this day from being repeatedly and relentlessly targeted by Amherst police. How the police have disrupted these young people's lives must be acknowledged and rectified after the Human Rights Commission filed a complaint with the town and CSS JC called for a joint meeting with the town council. As stated, town officials finally address the injustice. The complaint led to a probe by the new director of the newly established office of diversity equity and inclusion Pamela young who acknowledged she had no investigative or authority over the police. The police investigated themselves and quotes from the parents, the action of town leadership concerning the July 5 incident has been disappointing overly sympathetic and pro police. We're building a series of private meetings with the police signals to the youth that blue lives matter more than black and brown lives. Our children face deep lasting and permanent harm. Financial compensation is acknowledgement and accountability to these youth whose childhoods have been mired by over policing and racial profiling. No one deserves to grow up in a community where they understand their lives are at risk with the police. Another parent says the town of Amherst must be held accountable by way of financial compensation to our BIPOC youth. This action is a necessary and important step toward making meaningful progress to build trust with BIPOC communities. Another family says the MR six families will continue to speak with anonymity and through miss Anani Baku to protect against harm and retaliation. We know when BIPOC residents speak against police abuse the stakes are greater. Ananimity is essential to protecting the safety of our families in the future of our BIPOC children and an age of internet Google searches and the harmful unfair and racist presumption of guilt lawlessness and dangerousness. Another parent says the consequences of the extremely delayed meager and paltry response from local government and the attempts to bury and defuse the violations of its officers translate to perpetuating trauma and a sustained assault on the dignity and humanity of our children. There is no resolution. We are telling our story again to underscore what justice looks like for us and to demand it. Justice is not last month's announcement of the police chief retiring from his post at the end of May, who offered pizza to make peace. Justice is not the private meetings organized by town council President Griezmer and the police justice is not town manager Bachmann's apology that went to everyone. And finally, the dominant culture dictates where our money goes. We demand the town value the lives of BIPOC youth and their experiences. The town council ignored the pain of BIPOC youth and held secret meetings with police to perpetuate racism. So, lastly, I'd like to read the recap of the event, as told by the families to armed and uniformed Amherst police officers Lindsay Carol and Tyler Martins pulled into a low income apartment complex parking lot and ordered nine teenagers in total to the ground. They exited from their park cars while others were coming from their apartment to check out what was going on. The teens were treated like criminals, worse even suspects and criminals have rights. Police that night told these teens they had no rights they lost their rights. The police found nothing to issue them a citation or a warning. Despite their innocence and despite no legal basis to keep them in custody police continue to restrict the movements of the youth. The police will be retiring in the weeks to come has said it was his duty his conscious and more obligation to only release the youth to an adult, even though they had every right to be freed from detention regardless of adult accompaniment. So, again, from the perspective of CSS JC and HRC and from this perspective of the youth involved in the families involved in the July 5th instant. We need resolution to what happened and we hope that that will come. We are going to move on to a discussion of the items. And, like where you had asked whether other committee members wanted to add anything. Did you want to proceed with that. Yes, if there's anyone from the committees who would like to add anything to what was said, please go ahead and call on your committee members that have hands. Oh, Deborah. Great, thank you. Can everyone hear me. Yes. Thank you Allegra for, you know, obviously going into what we have come up with in terms of as CSC as JC and too many too many letters CSWG, in terms of, you know, I'm one of the members from CSWG and HRC. You know, and I want to thank obviously Earl and Pamela for the report. You know, I'm putting all the time into it. But I guess for me what I want to talk about really is, you know, because, you know, I've been at numerous all of those meetings that you talked about Allegra that we met with the town council since the July 5th incident. I've been at all those meetings I've talked about it at nauseam. And really, it's about trust. Right. And right now. There's community residents in Amherst that really don't feel like Amherst really cares about them. Right. And how can the town build this trust back. You know, and we've been talking about that and really, you know, crafting a way blueprint in terms of how to do it. And it started with the CSWG. Right. And which I'm a, I was a member of where we did all of that work all of that research shared all of that information that basically had the how to in order to put these things in place to avoid this, like July 5th, where young people were mistreated, and their families have gotten no, no type of resolution, besides an apology from the town manager months down the road. Right. No apology from the police chief no apology from those two who are involved, the police were involved the armed police who showed up there. So no, no, no type of anything. Right. And so CSWG had that blueprint to avoid that, and it didn't. And then we had the incident, and then, you know, just how it was dealt with was botched. Now we're still dealing with the repercussions and now we have this report right and Allegra thank you for for going over this report, the report, and also Pamela I know you gave some updates so I have, I have some questions. Right. I know Pamela you talked about a consultant, I would like to know who it is that that you are thinking about hiring in terms of the consultant because I will make a very big difference in terms of community visioning right, which is the first part that you are talking about. And you know really being transparent. I think it's about communicating right in terms of building trust you need to communicate need to be transparent with the Amherst residents but those who are marginalized right those that are being impacted, which we know are the BIPOC folks, the ones the youth that were there that were majority use BIPOC youth, right low income, and, and, and being mistreated. Right. So, there needs to be transparency in terms of community visioning the only way you're going to do a community vision for healing is that is if you're participating, you're sharing that information multiple languages, you're going out into the community, it can be just sharing it on websites and newsletters and so on so forth where people don't have access to that. Right, there's a lot of people that don't have access to that technology. So how are you going to build trust you have to go out to the people I know seven generation D Shabazz they did it when they were doing their research. They really went into the community and got the feedback from the community. That's what we need. We don't need the same old same old people at the community vision, the ones that usually show up. We want to hear from folks that we don't hear from all the time want to hear from the marginalized voices, the ones that are silent and are silenced. Right. So, that's one we need to kind of, you know, get more information in terms of truly how is that that going to take place. For the resident oversight board. I know, Pamela you stated that that you already put an RFP to hire a consultant that went out May 1, and it goes up until May 16. I mean again that needs to be, you know, more transparent. Maybe you just share it with CSS JC. Maybe I missed the meeting or something like that, but I need to know what that is because, again, as Allegra stated, if we're going to go back to recreating the wheel about the resident oversight board things that would that CSWG had already put in their report. Then we're wasting time. What we need to do is really put the board together. That needs to happen yesterday. So we need to go to the CSWG portion that really talks about the structure and what needs to be put in place. If we're going to stop talking about the wise and things like that. That really is not going to get us to where we need to be. So I'd really be interested in seeing what the, the proposal looks like for this RFP, because we need to hit the ground running in regards to the resident oversight board. I mean, in terms of the public safety protocols, I mean I'm flabbergasted that, that, you know, that the town is waiting until there's a resident oversight boards to begin looking at the public safety protocols. Again, I'm talking about trust. Why wouldn't we begin to look at that beforehand. Right. And I'm posing this question. I want a response. Right. Because we saw what happened with July 5th, right, the botched this handling of the public safety protocols. And so now we're going to wait until the Rob is put in place, where's an oversight board short, you know, Rob is put in place, so that we can continue to have more incidents so that we can continue to have, you know, more people hurt and young people and so on so forth her. No, we need to start looking at the these these safety protocols and we need to really look at how we handle when incidents happen right because if they had been an apology early on, a lot of this would have been, short circuited, as opposed to going through this long, arduous, stressful, really hurtful process for the young people and their families who are impacted on July 5th. Right. And, and all other BIPOC folks right myself included that that feel afraid, right, because of the process that occurred. Right. And then, you know, someone mentioned the fact that there's going to be a new chief of police process. I mean that needs to be transparent. That needs to be transparent. Again, building trust with the community. How are you going to build trust with the community, when we don't even know what's going on. We need to know and hire someone quickly, you know, pivotal position like a chief of police, without making sure that everyone is involved in the process, if not you're only going to be creating more problems. Then we move on to workshops, you know, well use empowerment, the use empowerment. Again, CSWG put a whole lot of research, whole lot of information which none of it has been really looked at. But also the only people that really need to be consulted I saw that there was going to be staff and so on so forth and all these adults from different committees know it's the young people that need to be consulted. There are ones that I need you all to consult with in terms of the youth empowerment. This needs to be a youth empowerment youth led with adults, yes support and structure, but youth led youth focused, and the youth should be the ones talking about what they need for the youth empowerment center, as opposed to a bunch of adults from a bunch of agencies that, you know, really make no sense. Okay. And then, you know, I know we talked about workshops and cultural events, Pamela was talking about that in her report out. I just want to know, you know, what have the police attended in terms of anti racism, you know, anti bias, I know they go through, you know, state mandated trainings that they check off, I get that. But I am talking about the extra train right, especially since what what transpired July fifth. What else has happened that are mandated for the police and their entire staff to attend as a result of what transpired in July fifth question. That's a question that's another question hopefully people are taken down the questions and I'm asking. And then lastly, no not lastly, two more points crests. As Allegra stated, 24 seven and the funding needs to be from the town, it needs to be long term. And I really want to know, you know, whether at this point the police are not responding to non violent behavior to not violent behavior because that's what CSWG put in the report. Right, is for the police not to respond to anything that was non violent. Again, if that had happened right in terms of the July fifth would have wouldn't have occurred. So I want to know, you know, what's occurring there. And then lastly, is what we've talked about which is really the young people in the families. What has been done to make them whole. What has been done to rectify what they've been through, which really is the crux right of this whole thing is to avoid amherst residents, right which BIPOC people are part of the Amherst residents from being impacted in this way. And I want to hear a question. Right. How are the young people and their families going to be made whole. And like Allegra stated, not by going to pizza with the police chief, but actually made whole. Thank you. Michelle and I have decided that at this point we are going to take a five minute recess. And when we come back, we'll go back through the seven items endeavor at that point will be an opportunity as we come to each of the items to get responses from Earl, Paul, whoever, Pamela, to each of the questions you have raised. So we'll have an opportunity for other people to raise questions and also ask for those. So, it's 754 we're going to reconvene at eight. Okay, as you return, please turn on your video. So at this point, Michelle Miller is going to facilitate the conversation and the listening and responses. So Michelle, I'm turning that over to you. And as Lynn said, when we got started in our joint planning meeting, we agreed that we would go through each of the seven items one by one, and we'll open it up for comments, questions, discussion. And then we'll begin by taking members of the CSS JC and HRC first until for each of the items. And then we'll go to counselor comments and questions. So, starting with community visioning I wanted to come back to Deb. I know Deb had a couple of questions in there. And then we'll start with comments about community visioning so we could start with you Deb and then we're going to go to miss Pat. So right now we're in the community visioning recommendation. Do you want me to like restate what I had said before. Yeah, if you'd like to restate the questions that you had for Pamela, Paul or and or Earl and then they'll have the opportunity to respond and then we'll go from there. Okay, sure. So for me, the question I have around that is Pamela US stated that there's, you know, a consultant or maybe someone that you are thinking about. So I wanted to know who that was to get an idea because like I said one of the main things is really transparency with the community so that the community knows what's going on. And then my other points around the community visioning is really making sure that we are outreaching to those who are marginalized. You know, we need to go into the neighborhoods and really making sure that we're communicating in the different languages and really truly doing the outreach because if not we're going to get the same people that always come to these communities. And then really we're not getting, you know, the true voices of those who are, you know, who are being impacted, who a lot of those communities are the communities like the ones from the young people who are in the July fifth incident. So, you know, I really want to know what are the steps that we've, you know that the town so the town manager, whomever can can can respond to this to really outreach and I also made the point that seven generations when we hired them to do the research that they did for our, you know, work with the CSWG, you know, they were able to go into the community. And so they would be a resource in terms of how to do that work. We can't just be on the periphery, you know, on the exterior you have to go in and really get the voices that have been silenced and and are not heard on the daily basis. Thank you, Deb. So yeah, Paul and Pam, Pamela, if you wanted to respond to Deb's questions and comments. Yeah, so I think the first thing that I have to say is that we're have not begun the procurement process. So I can't state publicly the identity of, you know, who the consultant is but in the report that was provided to the town council, the CSJC and to the HRC, I do state that we have had some preliminary conversations with Dr. Barbara Love. So the office in the town is mindful of the desires of the community safety working group and we envision having a consultant that would meet with the needs of the community and also would follow the visioning that was outlined in the work that Dr. Love did for the CSWG. And then what about the other, can anyone respond to how you all are going to do that? I'll reach to actually get people to come to these visioning sessions. People who are from the marginalized communities and voices that we don't hear on a day to day. Right, so once we've selected a consultant and that person has been identified, it is our expectation and goal that we will be reaching out to marginalized communities, targeted communities to the community members through a number of different avenues. And the goal and expectation is that there will be an attempt to have broad representation at these events. Thank you Pamela Paul. Did you want to add anything to that before we go to Ms. Pat? No, I think Pamela hit all the major points and I just, it's important to note that when we expend public funds, we have to follow procurement and that's why Pamela is talking about putting the RFP together. We have had conversations with Dr. Love, but again it has to be a procurement process that we follow and that's the next step for this. Yeah, and I understand that Paul, so thank you. I do get that. And I was asking that question because yeah, because during Pamela's presentation she has said that you all had some conversations with a consultant. So, you know, for me, like I said, it's about building trust so you might as well just put it out there. And even though you all have a process to go through which we all understand, it's better to just be right up front about it. And I'm saying because that is only going to build more trust with the community. So the last thing that I have to say in terms of the responses that, you know, you and Pamela gave is just that, you know, please, you know, let CSSJC know what's going on in terms of the outreach and the consultant process, you know, every step of the way, you know, so that we are able to chime in, we are able to help out in terms of the outreach because, again, if at the end of the day, we end up showing up because you know, you know, I'm not going to go into these visioning sessions if I'm available and I know about it, I'll be there. And then if I end up seeing the same people that go to everything else. I'm not going to be a happy camper at that point. So, so let's, let's work together on this. Thank you Deb. Okay, we're going to go to Miss Pat and we're still staying with visioning here. So good evening. Can people hear me. Yes. Good evening everyone. First of all, I had no idea the format of this meeting tonight. So I will not be speaking on visioning if that's okay with you, Michelle. Miss Pat, you're free to speak. If you're speaking absolutely in expansion of Allegra's remarks, please go ahead. So first I want to thank everyone who have made presentation tonight and folks who are in the audience. I want to speak to the elephant in the room and that's on racism and retaliation and power control. This is the reason why we're meeting multiple times. If what happened to in July fifth incident. If there were all white kids, middle class, this issue would have been resolved long time ago. And so our town government leadership have decided to disrespect the youth and their families because they are people of color. Some of them are low income. They don't matter. Let's, let's look at what is making decision in our town. Why powerful people. And if you're not white, if you want to, you know, get things done to benefit you. You have to be a status quo. And here where we are, as much as we're doing great things in our town, but I miss is a town of two tells. We have people who are really suffering because of the actions of our town government. When people speak up, you get retaliation, you get targeted, you get disparaged, you get silenced. And we're talking about visioning, we're talking about peace, we're talking about community engagement. A group of six BIPOC families approached me to be their spokesperson. They were not being disregarded by the town government leadership. Why? Because I'm a black woman. That's the only reason ignore and ignore it will go away. This is not going to go away. Why haven't we resolved kids who have been targeted multiple times. This isn't just the July 5 incident. Some of this case have been targeted since when they are in middle school. And it's easy for our town government leadership to make this families kids whole. Our town is like a corporation, a company. And each company has insurance for liability. When your staff screws up, that's what you do insurance for. But the town manager and the town council president decided not to approach me. And yet every time at the town council, people talk about community engagement reaching out. Who are you guys reaching out to? People who go along with your status quo, or people who are afraid to speak up, or people who are afraid to get retaliated. This is not just about me. This is about what is happening to BIPOC community in our town. If we're really, really serious about making progress, we need to think about some of you. I don't want to mention your name that are serving on town council right now. I will, you know, I hope you will reflect whether you are representing everyone. I know last year when I said the town, the police chief to think about resigning, I was silenced. And what happened now? What is happening in our school system is the same internal promotion. Nothing has changed. Somebody moves on, another status quo goes in, and kids are hurting in our youth are hurting in the school system. We can't be just meeting every time I'm talking. It's not sustainable. People look at the budget for 2024. It will tell you a lot about what the powerful people in this town value. Crest program was only given additional 20K. And the DEI, like $6,000, and that is called fully funding. And yet we have the same budget for two police vehicles for police officers being trained. What are we doing? Are we really, really serious about change in our town? I don't know what to make of this meeting, except to call it another show. Each time we have this type of joint meeting is shown to me. I'm going to stop. I hope I have a chance to speak again. But I hope that these kids and their families will be made whole. Otherwise, the next step will be litigation. I am the spokesperson for the group. I'm not going anywhere. You guys have to make it whole, or there will be no peace in our town. There will be no unity in our town because you can have all that when some segments of our community are hurting. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Pat. And I just I wanted to say that it is our intention. And when when Lynn and I talked about this meeting and others that we really want to be in listening mode here. I also want to acknowledge that the town council was unable to meet to discuss Pamela and Paul's report. So I understand that we have counselors who may have questions. But before we go to council ruining counselor Pam, I do want to ask if there are any members of the CSS JC, or the HRC who would like to make comments about the community visioning portion. Councillor Miller, I apologize for interrupting but counselor Walker is in the audience. Oh, okay. I am not seeing, let me see, you know what I'm going to thank you so much. I'm going to do something different so I can see. All right, I think we're moving counselor Walker back over. Excellent. Okay, so with that I'm going to go to Ronnie Ronnie. Shelly. Yeah, okay. Great. Philip, Philip, did you want to go first. No, I just wanted to make sure that you got acknowledged sorry. Okay, thanks. So about the visioning thing. And in some respect to this whole thing. When I started reading all of this, mostly to educate myself because I'm fairly new in town even newer to the HRC. One of the things that was really striking to me is how all these documents are, you know they've been these studies have been going on for a long time. And I have to say, you know, like to refer to the back to the question of trust. Why isn't there trust, because you all the town council somebody in authority selected the CSWG selected appointed whatever the CSS JC. They are selected because they're experts, and they did their work and when I looked at the seven general report. I was astounded. It's an excellent report. It's like one of the best qualitative studies that I've seen. And in this, these reports is a lot of data so when I look at the visioning proposal. The question was, why aren't some of these experts part of the core visioning team, like by that I mean the team that decides, what is the framework that is going to be used to do the visioning. Why aren't some of these experts part of it so I'm also wondering, why isn't all that work that's already been done incorporated and I think that's where the trust comes in. Anyway, it's sort of like, there's all this work that was commissioned but it seems that it's being ignored. And there's, it's just a waste of our money to start over, as I speak as a taxpayer here. I wish that this when they sit down the kind of the consultant and the D I sit down to talk about how are we going to approach visioning. I really don't think it's realistic for the D I to suggest that somehow they're going to go out to all these marginal communities. And these other groups have done that so I think that some I would really like to see that core team, not just the consultant and the D I the core team sit down and think strategically about what added value is required for visioning. You know, building on what's already been done. Maybe there's a feeling that something new needs to be done. Okay, what is that extra, instead of doing the whole thing so I really like to see that the other point I want to make about trust. What is this RFP process. I know there's an RFP process, but it sounds to me like the RFP was already written and in fact made public without drawing on all this expertise because these people are the ones are going to tell you like what should go in the RFP. It's not about town procedures, but if you come in after the RFP is written then there's no point almost and we all know that who do contracts like I do as a business person. So I really I don't obviously you cannot recall the RS RFP now but I just heard about it and I'm sort of thinking, well how do you put the content to the RFP if you don't have these experts that have the information that will tell you what should go in an RFP. So I think I'm coming back to why I'm starting to understand why there's a lack of trust and an explanation from the town council about, why don't we build on what's been done would really help me a lot and maybe it would help others. Thanks. Thanks Ronnie and so I heard a question in there that maybe Pamela and or Paul would like to respond to. The question was whether there would be folks in the CSS JC who would be part of the core work on the visioning. And I also wanted to clarify and Paul please correct me if I'm wrong, the RFP that has gone out has been for the resident oversight board, and not for the visioning, just to clarify that piece Ronnie. So I don't know Pamela or Paul if you wanted to respond. I don't need that but I guess it would, it would apply when we get to discussing the resident oversight board as well because they gave very detailed guidance on what that should constitute. Absolutely. So I think my response is the same that I, that I gave which is that we are at the very beginning of the procurement process for the community visioning there, it has not started yet. There has been preliminary conversations with Dr Barbara love, who was the individual who was identified by those groups as the ideal candidate to lead the community through the community visioning and whose model was the model that was promoted in those documents so all of that advice has been taken into account. And if I can add something Michelle. Yeah. So and just so people may, many, most people in the room know who Dr love is but I've relied on Dr love. Dr love was the key, along with Sid Ferrara was the key person who interviewed the candidates to serve on the CSWG. She also served as the interview team for the CSS JC, and as a sense that they had a better handle on how these committees could best represent the community. So throughout this engagement, Barbara, Dr love has been donating her time in terms of helping us to form these groups. I feel like she has a lot of credibility. She has been supporting, you know, much of the RFP that was developed came from the work that was already done. And so that's how those RFPs get built and consultation with people in the field. Thank you, Paul. Okay, is I see a hand from Deb and then if anyone else on the visioning from the CSS JC or HRC would like to comment or ask questions please also raise your hand and then we will go to counsel Rooney and counselor Pam Deb. I just have a quick quick point. I mean I think you know Ronnie you made such incredible points and what you said, but I think it doesn't. I know that you can make those points again for for the Rob RFP. What you stated is applicable to before you do the RFP for the visioning consultant right that you go and consult right and you are transparent about what it is that you're going to be putting in there, so that it captures everything that the community is. You know as Ronnie stated, you have people like us right in CSS JC and HRC and the reparations group that isn't tuned with the community. So you go to these groups to get an idea right of what it is that should be in this so that you can get to as close as possible what the community is looking for, and then you put it out there as opposed to just putting out an RFP and letting the snow afterwards and then you know it's it becomes very confusing. And again, you know in terms of building trust, we feel like the trust hasn't been good. I'm sorry, we need to ask somebody to mute their background, because there is a enormous amount of other noise. Maybe that did. Okay, I'm sorry Deborah just people couldn't even hear you. Yeah, sorry. No I was just saying that in terms of that like with the RFP just quickly just to say that what Ronnie said really is applicable and just make sure to, you know contact HRC, CSS JC as well as reparations to make sure that whatever it's going to be in that RFP is what the community is looking for as opposed to putting out the RFP, and then it becomes it becomes something that we really, you know, didn't, you know we weren't looking at you know unless you went and look and took verbatim what CSWG put in their reports right. So, so I think that that's those steps if you're taking those steps, it can start to little by little, create some of the trust that that we're talking about. Yes, thank you Deb. Okay anyone else from the CSS JC or HRC. All right, so Council Rooney. I think I'm now going to be a little bit of a broken record but my initial reaction when I heard the discussion about the RFPs is that in fact it is vital to go to stakeholders to make sure that it has been scoped properly. And so I'm, I'm, I'm delighted that we are moving forward on the resident oversight board. And I think it's great that you have a good, a good entrusted source of information for something like that. But it doesn't make sense to me that an RFP for something of these natures for the different for the different services that we're looking for. So I don't get double checked by all of these engaged and and critical stakeholders. So you've heard it now four times. Thank you. Thank you, Council Pam. Okay. So I do want to speak I have some very detailed things to speak about the youth empowerment center but I believe this is not the time. I have a couple very quick points. Number one, is Alicia supposed to be in this meeting because I can't see her. I was told that we were told she was in the audience, she was going to be brought in but if she is she's on the second page for me right now. Good, thank you. I feel a lot better. Okay, so there were two points of clarification I wanted from Allegra. I heard them correctly. Okay. And I may have misheard you, Allegra. So one of them was, did you say that the police told the young people to get on the ground, because I hadn't heard on the ground before that presents a different picture than sitting down on a curb to me. Yes, I. So this again, part of the letter that was written did involve more of the families understanding of what happened that night so it does say, pull the officers pulled into a low income apartment complex parking lot and ordered 19 years in total to the ground. The ground because that if that's true. Okay, really puts a very strong light on things. And the other thing I thought you said was that some of the students had been continued were targeted after this incident by the police. And again, I want clarification on that, because I hadn't heard that before. Did I respond? Yes, please do. 100% I heard directly from some of the kids. This has been happening for several years. So the July 5 incident isn't an isolated incident. And after the incident, the APD continue to harass these kids. Yes, 100% The kids were the kids were also asked to stay on the ground. I heard it from the kids directly. Yes. All right, so right now, I say I have some very detailed things I want to say about the youth empowerment center, which I think could go a lot towards creating some new trust. But right now I just want to point out that Miss Pat was asked by parents to represent them. They asked her to do that. I'm assuming because they trusted her because she's strong because she will speak to power. So it doesn't mean she'll always be the sweetest woman in the room. Okay, so if I wanted somebody to speak for me and my kids, I would go to a strong woman. Well, I understand that sometimes people don't like strong women, but I think we just have to get over it. Okay, because they went to her. They are not here. We don't see them. They're not in the audience. They asked her to please do something to redress what happened to my kid, which has made my life and their life very, very difficult because they've now feel not safe in their own town. So I think that we have to give her the respect they asked her to represent them. There is nobody else that says they're representing them. So I have to believe that when she says that she's telling me the truth, because I've heard nothing to the contrary. So I just think that we need to have a little more respect for the wishes of the parents and for the person they chose to be their spokesperson. I have not seen that. I have not seen that these many months. I have seen just ignoring her just completely ignoring her. And that is very upsetting to me. That's it for now. Thank you, Dorothy. Okay, is there anyone else that would like to make comments or questions right now on the community visioning. If not, we'll move on to number two, which is the resident oversight board. We have had some comments already. Comments and questions now again first from the CSS JC, and then from the HRC and then from members of the council, and I see Deb's hand, please Deb. Yeah, I don't know. Can you all hear me because I think I'm freezing a little bit so that's why I took out my video. Can you all hear me. Yes, you're so good. Yep. So, you know, just to restate because again, me too, like, like, like miss Pat, I wasn't sure what the, the, how everything was going to run that's why I gave my whole recap in the beginning. But I really am interested in finding out more about what is the RFP that went out for the resident oversight board that went out on May 1, because like I said, if it included a lot of the work that CSWG did, which was in the report that that the town manager has sent out, which was basically phase one a through phase one C, then we're really wasting our time because that was all included in what CSWG had done already. And really we need to go to the phase to a which was in that report which is oversight implementation. We need to just put the oversight the resident oversight board in place. I'm really interested in knowing what that that RFP had in there, and why it is, and maybe, like I said, maybe I missed the meeting. Why it is that CSSJC HRC or other groups weren't tapped to really looked at the RFP, so that then we could put put that together and put that in place. In terms of building trust with the community. We need to have a board that the community is going to see as unbiased objective, separate from the police that they can go to, and that the complaint is going to actually be heard, and we need to have that and investigated, you know, objectively, without there being, you know, any type of pressure, or, you know, influence from the town, in terms of decisions being made by this board. You know there needs to be stipends for the board members everything that we had put in CSWG report. So, I'm really interested in finding out what this RFP stated, because, you know, it will be a problem if we're starting back to ground zero. We have to ground zero when we spent all this money when the town spent all this money, and we put all this, all this information together for the board in the CSWG report. Thank you, Jeff. Pamela would you like to respond to that. So I can begin the response. So, once again, I followed the protocol for the RFP process that is utilized from the town but the very first part of the scope of services in the RFP which is quoted in the report that was provided to town council and to both boards that the very first bullet point says, acknowledge and expand the work of the community safety working group so that is the basis of the, of the work for the RFP. And in addition to that, in the development of the RFP, they spoke with experts in the field who are from, I'm going to mispronounce the name of the group but it's Nakali it's a national association of civilian law enforcement oversight or something along that nature, which was also cited in the CSWG report as the expert on this area. So for, for those experts, I had conversations with them about the technical aspects of creating the resident oversight board. I wouldn't even begin to try to summarize everything that's in the RFP. You know it's a pretty complex document. And this was my first time going through the process that took actually quite a bit more time than I expected, but it explicitly states that it's built upon the work of the community safety working group. And I can add that document the RFP is on the town's website is publicly noticed at the state level and wherever it anybody can pick it up and it's available for your review. When it goes, it goes on to the town procurement bulletin board. So it's available to anyone who'd like to review it. I think Pamela did a terrific job in pulling that together and recognizing also that the world was a little bit different than the report in the sense that the post commission is now in existence, which it's a peace officer, something fairly exactly stands for but this will be the first resident oversight board that is will be formulated after that has been created. So we think that our experts need to really play our oversight with the state's oversight that they have instituted. So can I can I follow up. I mean, I get, I get all that. However, I'm still not convinced in terms of why it was that this wasn't brought to us before the RFP went out. You know, I get it that you talk to, you know, some experts and oversight creation oversight board creation, as well as you have that overarching sentence that it's going to expand on CSWG. Well, that the, you know, and I am I'm going to look, Paul, I am going to look at what the RFP actually looks at because like I said I hadn't looked at it before I didn't even know it was was it had gone out. And so, you know, our groups are there for reason, right, for us to be utilized so that then you don't get backlash. So if you had come to us beforehand, and kind of run things by us, you know, would actually go a lot more smoother than now I'm going to look at it. And then if it if it doesn't have the things that I think there should be. Now it's going to be the backlash and then here, here we go. Debra is the bad person Debra is the, you know, the, you know, as, as, you know, as Dorothy Pam was talking about, you know, the angry black woman's talking again and so on so forth, you know what I'm saying. And it's just like it doesn't have to be that way, you know, we're talking about trust we're talking about transparency. Come to us before, you know, and be transparent, even if you're going to not like what you hear right, but it's better you hear our feedback beforehand, and then hear the feedback afterwards, and then you try to put us in a category to try to like the legitimize this right and so it just doesn't need to happen and then the community sees that right in the community and then how is community going to trust. So yeah, now post post RFP being being looked at, I'm going to look at it, and we're going to discuss it and then you'll be getting our feedback. To clarify, Paul, I did take a look on the town's website, and it does ask for some information in order to see the RFP. Is it true that anyone can go ahead. I'm just so for the folks here and for the public can put the information in there and then it's a become it's a publicly available document. Yes, any anybody can request a document. Great. Thank you. That's that's good clarification. Miss Pat. So, for me, for the resident oversight board, my struggle is transparency. I know that is I don't know if it's this year last year, like the police union negotiation. I don't know what the outcome is. CSWG, we did point out some concerns around the some of police policies and we were told that you know, it's police union negotiation is coming up. I understand that the DEI director wasn't involved in that negotiation because she was getting on board. So I don't know how all this fits into creating resident oversight board without the public knowing if there are any progress made with the police union. So I like the town manager to respond to that is somewhere on the town website I can go to to look at any changes compromised with police union. All please. So we do not have a success or agreement with the police union. So that those that's still in negotiation. What is the DEI director would be, would she be involved in the negotiation she's since she's going to be involved with a resident oversight at some point in the in the development of resident oversight board. The HR director and the town attorney conducts the negotiations on behalf of the town. Thank you. Thank you miss Pat, and I'm going to go to Elizabeth and then to Allegra. So first I need to apologize. I've had a really long day and I'm fading fast and I want to say this before I fade off and you don't get to hear from me. We're talking about a lot of initiatives here, some that are being put in place and some that we're considering putting in place or should have put in place in the past. Anybody who knows me knows, I'm all about the youth. So, given that at the high school, there's a principal advisories committee, the youth get to meet with the principal and the lens of the students is spoken to him or her about things that are going on and what affects them and how some changes can be made. And the human rights committee, we have two youth. I'm not mistaken the CSWG, there was a youth. So when we're considering some of these things and Deborah spoke about it before when she was talking about the youth empowerment center. But how come we don't have somebody, oh wait, the school committee. There's a youth on the school committee they don't have voting power but they get to be in an under discussions. Right. So what, why can't we have our youth involved with every one of these steps, especially since a lot of this come from the youth feeling a different way, or some kind of way about our town right. So how come we don't have a youth leader on the town council they get to sit on a town council meetings, maybe when you have a discussion, they get to weigh in from the youth perspective before decisions made. And I just want you to be thinking about that, because we need to be uplifting our youth we need to uplift each other. I'm so happy that Miss Pam said what she said about women, especially those that look like me, when we have, because when we're soft spoken, you don't hear me. And when I get loud, then I'm that be word, right. So I want us to consider when we're doing some of these initiatives, when we're looking at some of these things we want to put in place, making sure that our youth are counted. And not just because we are making decisions for them, but because one two or five of them was involved in the entire process. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you Elizabeth. Allegra. I didn't follow what was just said. But I second everything that was just said and also in terms of the oversight board I just wanted to point out on the response to the original report point eight. This was a point that there was a lot of negotiation around but it says the oversight board must be empowered to ensure accountability of the PD through effectual enforcement and investigative mechanisms. And I mean, I think this is what gives it teeth. And that's really important and going back through seven gen and CSWG reports. They stress the importance of subpoena power and I think that's something that has continued as part of the conversation with our committees so I just wanted to highlight that point. Allegra. Are there any other members of the CSS JC or HRC that would like to ask questions or comment on the resident oversight. Okay, and any counselors that would like to ask questions on the resident oversight or comment. Okay. So I'm not seeing any just double checking over here. Okay. So we are going to then move on to areas one hand. Oh, thank you Pat. Thank you, Lynn. Pat, please. Sorry, I got it up late I just want to say how important it has been to add youth and Elizabeth Heywood statement about youth and other people. I think it is critical. And I would like to see them involved in a resident oversight committee as a as a member, and as a voting member if possible. Thank you Pat. Okay. All right, so we are going to move on to number three, which is the public safety protocols. If there are any comments or questions or discussion for this. And yes, Deb, I see. Oh, can you all hear me. So, yeah, again, I just want to restate this one because like I said, and I'll use the word again I'm flabbergasted about the fact that with the report from the town. It is just a holding pattern. It just says that it's going to wait for the resident oversight board to be in place in order to address the public public safety protocols. You know, this should really be, you know, one of the first things that we should be addressing, given what happened, July 5, and given what's happened because it's not just July 5, right, prior to July 5, we had had town. You know, when CSWG was doing the work we had done all these like town forums and gazillion people. Well, I'm not going to say a lot of people talked about their interactions with the police, and especially BIPOC people and how they've had negative interactions, and then the seventh generation report documented right, all of the different negative interactions that BIPOC people have had with APD. And so we can't wait. You know, again, in terms of building trust, you know, and transparency, this work needs to be started, you know, now you can't wait for the resident oversight board to happen. The police can't continue to interact, especially given what happened July 5, the way that they did and continues to interact like that until a resident oversight board is put in place. The review needs to begin, you know, now, again, tap the groups that you have in place like CSWGC and others to kind of, if you don't know how to do it, then tap us, right, so that we can help you to know how to do it. Because you can't wait, you know, any longer for this to happen, and really kind of map out how you respond to incidents through because as we saw, you know, the response to the July 5 incident was, you know, there's my opinion was problematic. You know, at least and terrible at best, you know, so, so, you know, we need to look at these things. It cannot wait. And the fact that that, you know, that that's happening is really troubling to me. I'm really, you know, frightened by this fact that it is just this little holding thing saying that we're going to wait for resident oversight board to be in place. I mean, you know, for me, it's really a slap in the face to the community and those that have suffered at the hands of APD. Thank you, Deb. Before we go to Ms. Pat, I just wanted to look to Paul or Pamela to see if they had any response to that. I'm here to hear what Ms. Pat has to add. Sure. So I'm coming from business perspective. When I read that particular safety protocol. I'm like, our town doesn't have safety protocol. I don't know what to make of that, except to say this is another practice, delayed tactics. There's nothing I can think of, and a way to avoid accountability of MS police officers misconduct. This is one of the ways less way until resident oversight board, then we create this. Honestly, it's about trust. I believe that APD doesn't have safety protocol. And if they don't, I think BIPOC community should be very scared because it means that police officers will just do whatever they want. And that's what they've been doing. What else can I say? I'm disappointed that our town doesn't have a safety protocol. Paul or Pamela. So the reason we put it into the resident oversight board is because we were going to bring in and a consultant was going to look at the entire operations of how we were going to implement the resident oversight board. And that included some of the review of these policies that were identified. And I think we thought that was the best way to make sure that it had the complete evaluation that had to include the review of the police department's policies. I know that's not as fast as everybody would like. But again, as I have been saying throughout, when we make changes, we want to make sure that they stick and that they last for long periods of time. That's why we've been very methodical about every step that we have taken. I believe that this approach will be the way that we're able to institute new protocols that will meet the approval of the town and also be able to be implemented at the police department. Paul. Okay, I'm going to go to Deb and then come back to Councilor Baumann and Council Rooney and Councilor Tov. So, I just have a follow up for the town manager for Paul. So what do we do in the meantime, right? Because, you know, I'm assuming that APD does have a public safety protocols. But whatever protocols they had in place did not work, right? And hasn't been working for a number of our residents and those residents are BIPOC residents and residents of a low income, you know, stats, right? A lower class status. Don't get the same treatment. Don't get treated the way that they should respect and dignity. And so what happens in the meantime though, right? Because we can't have another July 5th incident happen again, yet again, right? And we're seeing how treatment of BIPOC people and Black people in specific happening on the national stage, right? When things aren't changed, it happens again and it continues to happen. So my question to you as a BIPOC person is, what am I supposed to do in the meantime, right? Just wait for resident oversight boards to be put in place. One, we, you know, we still need to look at that RFP. I don't even know if we're even going to be happy with what the RFP has to say. So I don't even know what kind of board you all are going to put together and, you know, whether it's even going to be something that I'm going to be okay with. And then you're telling me that that board is the one that's going to review the safety protocols. What am I supposed to do up until that point? What's the plan up until that point? You know, town in terms of and also the response to the incident was, like I said, terrible. So what's the changes? So, you know, you can't just wait and think that nothing's going to happen between now and the resident oversight board. What's the plan? I guess I want to know what's the plan from now until the resident oversight board is in place. Existing policies are what they are today. And I know that's not not that does not meet what the expectations are. But until we can make a change that's going to meet the approval of the resident oversight board with the consultant's help will help develop these new protocols. You know, I don't have a whole lot else to add than what I've already reported. Thank you, Paul. And thank you, Deb. I see Phillips hand is raised. Yeah, I think that Deb is bringing up a good point, Paul, and I know that policies are what policies are policies for sure need to be reviewed in this town and as far as there are part goes in response to it is cross cultural. Policy should definitely be looked at because I feel like, as we know, black and brown people are police different than white people and in that matter, a policy and a practice may not go hand in hand and I'll bring up again. If it doesn't work, it happened not too long ago, maybe three weeks ago to where the alarm went off. Three individuals were at the front. My colleagues, I myself am a person of color there was another person of color and there was a white person of color white person, and we went and said what happened. Both people of color where I did, and the white person was not ID at all. We have brought this attention to the police chief, and he has said, there's no way that could have happened. So be literally what has actually happened in. It was there. I lived it. So how did it not happen. So the policy is, as he states, everybody will be ID. The practice to people where I did that were people of color. The person that was white was not ID. So policy and practice needs to be addressed in a way that does not affect marginalized communities and in my every time I'm with Crest at the Amherst Survival Center. I've never been asked for an ID. So we need to really look at our policies in a way that does not keep marginalizing communities that have suffered at the hands of police that are not happening that again can avoid incidents where racism at a higher level can be stopped. May respond to that. That's a, that's a really important distinction which I appreciate that direct experience where you differentiate between policy and practice. And the practice is also what we have to be addressing at the same at this time. Now, and so I hear that and I will double check on that one for you. I just say that Chalini and Jennifer have had their hand up for a long time. And can somebody please call on them. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. Yeah, we're, we're just, I'm going to go to miss Pat and Deb and then I'm going to come back to counselors. So I just want to appreciate your willingness to share your personal experience. I think that is really helpful for us to better understand. So thank you. So miss Pat, and then Deb, and then we'll go to Councilor Baum, Milne and Rooney and So, Councilor Michelle, I just want to thank you the way you're running this meeting, recognizing BIPOC people in this meeting to go first. So I appreciate you. It makes a huge difference. This is the first time I've ever felt being recognized to speak first. So thank you for that. So I have a question for our time manager. So with this safety protocol that is going to be looked at, revised, updated, is there any provision to when these protocols are violated, you know, what would be the remedies for the victims. And specifically, what is the plan for the MS6 and their families? What is the plan so that the public knows? Where are they going to get home? Thank you. So if you're specifically talking about compensation to the MS6, I think that's what I'm reading. Yes. So the town can't issue checks to people. The best path forward for the MS6 is through a, is unfortunately through litigation that a court may order the town to compensate people. And that's, and you also mentioned insurance. A lawsuit is where insurance gets triggered. And I don't really want to encourage a lawsuit, but I think that you should know that that is your right. And that those are the families' rights to file a lawsuit against the town. And that changes everything. That's when the insurance company gets triggered. It's also when a court orders the town to do something. I can't order the town to issue a check. That's not within my ability, not within my power. It's not with any municipal officials' power to do that. Except that I'm a businesswoman and I'm aware of litigation process, insurance, how they work. Companies can also, leadership can also negotiate to save, you know, taxpayers money. They can negotiate if complainants bring forward litigation. So I know how it works, but none, I have not gotten the outreach and respect. I expect that to get this going. So I know the options already. Okay. And I've been talking to the families to like, is there other way to do this? Since when, you know, the community is working towards peace, quote unquote, unity and peace. When things go to litigation, that's never going to be unity in our town. I can guarantee you that. Go ahead. So the town, you know, again, a company is different than a municipal government. So I can't on my own, send a check to someone in a situation like this. It has to be through a litigation measure. Thank you, Paul. And thank you, Miss Pat. Deb. Well, thank you. And I want to thank, like, like Miss Pat said, I want to thank Michelle and the town council obviously for putting this process together where we from CS as JC and HRC get recognized first because all the other town council meetings we were always recognized last. So I'm really appreciating this, and that after we speak then the town council speak, I'm really, you know, thankful that you all are using this process. But really quickly one, you know, in terms of what Phil said and I know Phil that that was really difficult for you to share, you know, a story like that. Again, and I have to say this to you, Paul, I mean, like I said, and you I think at some of those town meetings, I mean, there's been countless stories like that. So for you to just say, well, okay, you know, thank you for making that difference between policy and practice. I mean, again, it just, I'm trying to focus on trust here. And it doesn't, you know, you know, kind of creating me some confidence in the town, right, to say that, okay, all the other countless stories and what happened to the youth on July 5 is going to be taking the consideration because now, yet again, now you acknowledge, okay, yes, thank you Phil, you know, Philip. So, you know, I just want you all the time to think about all of the stories right and all of the people that are being impacted on a daily basis and what are we going to do and that's why we said things need to happen now. And then second, Paul, the response that you had to miss Pat about the Amherst youth and their families being made whole and now you said, you know, for them to just go to litigation. I mean, again, I'm very saddened and disappointed by that response, because I'm like, so, as we stated it beforehand, so you're not even willing to engage with miss Pat, as the representative of the family, I would just say like before making a response like that while y'all should just go to litigation. Why don't you say I would engage with miss Pat was the representative of the family to see if there's anything that we could do. Sure, maybe, yeah, you can write a check but I bet you there's a gazillion other things that you could do to help heal the situation. So I'm really, you know, really like I just don't know I'm at a loss for words at this point that that's a response to miss Pat is, y'all just go to like litigation, you know what I'm saying, I'm like what. Come on. And you're the town manager. You know, I mean, have you had a conference I guess there's a question, have you had a conversation with miss Pat as a representative of the families to ask what do these families want. Let me let me ask just that question. Have you. I've not had a one on one conversation with miss Pat I have had a conversation with a parent of one of the of this young people, but I have read what miss Pat has written, and it has focused on compensation. And I guess was my answer. The question I clarified was was this about compensation. I'm happy to have a conversation with miss Pat at any time and I offer that to you miss Pat and we can set up a time, you know, tomorrow to when you would like to meet I would actually would welcome that very much so. Thank you. You miss Pat and Paul and Deb. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Paul, I understand that you just explained why you'd like to wait for the residents oversight board to be created before we go into, and to do this thoughtfully, and, but has there been any effort to look at the leap report so far, and that was, it was done by the residents and has anyone even has anyone looked at it to see if there's anything that we can start implementing right away, and also, especially with respect to minors, because what I'm hearing is, at least that's a part that's clear to me is that there was a discrepancy between what we're hearing from the police chief from his side what he was doing was protecting the kids because there were minors and not letting them go home they wanted the families to come and pick them up, and that was an act of concern. And that was perceived as being held back by the kids. So I think there's these potential things that can be resolved, and we don't have to wait for suggest that. Yeah, so I can, I will revisit that and review that again, I have not looked at through that lens exactly for the youth. And so I can do that. Council Rooney. Thank you. It occurred to me that that perhaps in the in the interim between having a resident oversight board in place. I wonder if it did not put press in an awkward position of reviewing someone else's policies. Would it not be something that press could at least start reviewing from the lens of how do we interface with people with all of their training with all of their engagement knowledge. Can they start to go through the policies and, and, and safety protocols with specifically with that lens that they are now that they're now using and, you know, start underlining and highlighting the things that can be brought to the attention of the police department at this time. It seems to me that that would be even a probable first step to address item number four, which is against develop protocols for the press department itself. Maybe there maybe there's some energy gained in or time saved even in starting to look at both of these together. I think maybe I can answer at least part of that, which is we we certainly are engaged with the PD around our policy development. And I think kind of naturally in that process, there's certainly conversation back and forth about the way that those processes might intersect the way that we might have shared training and shared language and shared understanding. I do just want to say, I'm, I'm not a cop. I don't think I'm going to be a cop at any point. And so there is some language in that world that I do think it makes more sense for folks like, like leap to talk about because that's a group of retired law enforcement. But certainly, you know, my commitment to participate in any conversation I'm involved in continues and glad to help out, you know, I'm proud to be on the team here glad to help out any way I can. Thank you, Earl. Councilor Tom. Yeah, I feel like I'm kind of the third just trying to throw out an idea, you know, so that we can move revising the safety protocols, you know sooner than than maybe the year would take for the resident oversight board to be seated. I don't know if this is possible since the RFP has already been, you know, released with the scope of services but could, you know, whoever the consultant is that's retained through that. While they are, you know, working on, you know, putting together the criteria or whatever helping to select the resident oversight board, could they also be working with the CSS JC and the Human Rights Commission crests I mean whoever would be the group to work with the representatives from the community and the town to start to put protocols together so that can be happening at the same time that they're putting together the resident oversight board so those protocols are in place as sooner rather than later just throwing that out as a suggestion. So can I, I'll just say that I, although the RFP does state that it's in phases one and two, and it seems that is sequential I think that there are going to be some of those phases that do overlap. And it does envision that the consultant would work with the town manager and other town departments and boards around those policies and forms so I think some things will be happening at you know at the same time simultaneously not necessarily as it's sequentially as it's written so I think the answer to that is yes. Thanks Pamela. Councilor d'Angeles. Thank you. I'm assuming, and I can be wrong that the police the protocols of safety protocols of the police department uses should be public documents is that correct. And is there any way that they can be forwarded to members of the CSS JC and also to council members. So we can begin to look at them as well. So that can be done there on the, they're on the police department's website but we can share them with you proactively. Thank you. Miss Pat. So this is kind of related. So, um, this is in town, who, you know, call me auntie or mom. I say well respect so I was spending time with a family recently and a young kid in one of the elementary school building had mentioned something about the police officer being in their building. So if we're thinking about safety protocol. We don't need to think about kids youth, because they see, you know what police officers do to people who look like them. I don't think police officers should be in any school building. It can be traumatizing for black and brown kids. As much as it's trying to do community policing. Police officers do not belong to our schools, especially for our kids of color, because it's the same blue uniform that harass their uncles, their father, their brother, their parents, their aunts, and so on and so forth. I hope that would be a language in terms of safety protocol police officers should not be in our school. Buildings. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Pat. Okay, I'm not seeing any other hands before we move on to number four I just wanted to bring the attention to the leap report in case folks who are listening may may not be aware of it. This is a group that the CSWG worked with, and they gave recommendations on protocols. That report is available in the CSS JC's report as a link. And it's also available on the CSWG's homepage, the town of Amherst CSWG homepage. And I do see Councillor Walker has her hand up so I'm going to go to Councillor Walker. And then I also see that Earl has his hand up. I just had a quick question while we were talking about police protocol I was reminded that we also passed a motion that we were going to be the town manager was going to be working with the police department to create a proactively anti racist department and wondering if any steps or changes have been made to the PD or their policies because that was part of that looking at the policies and what changes could be made to move towards being proactively anti racist and I'm wondering if there hasn't been any start to that. Councillor Pamela. Yeah, so we have gotten started by not in a policy review but with having workshops with the police department through conversations with the chief. We've committed we meaning the offices of diversity equity inclusion have committed to a three workshop opportunities with all three shifts. And this one occurred. I think probably at the end of March, and will be due back to go to them and their next professional development day. So, we felt that there was, you know, a lot of information to cover. Obviously, you can't cover all of the conversation that you have to have around becoming anti racist in one workshop so looking at what we thought was a minimum decided three opportunities to visit the police department was warranted. And the first one has occurred and there are two others that will be scheduled. Alicia yes please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Pamela for that clarification I just also wanted to stress, or I guess question, a question first that if there will be other steps taken after the conversation, because part of me like I'm understanding that like there needs to be some sort of conversation and understanding towards building knowledge around what anti racism is. But training doesn't create anti racism. And so like things need to be put in place policies need to be changed to create the anti racist environment like just giving a training on what it is doesn't actually do that. I'm just wondering like what are the steps after the training that's more of what I was looking for like what changes to their day to day routine to their day to day policies that are going to reflect these training. I think your point is well taken, but anything that would require a change in work conditions for the police officers has to go through the collective bargaining process. So, and as you heard, or you may have heard earlier, the town, town legal counsel, any HR director are in the process of doing collective bargaining. And so, from the DEI office perspective, we're beginning to have the conversations in the workshops, and obviously have been in contact with the HR director director about some of these issues, it'll be the HR director and legal counsel and town director who will have to to engage in the collective bargaining piece that will lead to changes in work conditions. But, you know, unfortunately that's, that's the only answer I have at this point. Thank you Pamela and Alicia. I see your hand is still up. I would like to follow up that is helpful to understand my only concern is that I think and I could be wrong about this but I think the bargaining process has been happening for quite a while at this point. Because I think this is the same exact answer that we got last year at this time that they were in the collective bargaining process. And so it's taken quite a long time. And so one, I'm assuming so please correct me if I'm wrong that we can't, like we wouldn't be able to implement any of these changes during this bargaining process and so that we would have to wait for the next bargaining process. If there were things that we wanted to effectively change and so why would we not be looking into what those things could be, or are now. So, the collective bargaining process is always long and cumbersome, and parties, either parties either management, or the union would have the ability to do impact bargaining. So, in theory, there are you could seek something for the police department and impact bargain for that being currently. You know, I'm speaking in general terms, rather than in specifics because I'm not a part of the process and I don't know what the conversations have been, but then, in theory, I would say you're not precluded from from having a change. If you could, you know, if you went through the impact bargaining process and Paul is probably the best in the best position to say more about that. Yeah, so we are in the middle of negotiation so I really can't comment very much, but it is for the current contract that would once it's agreed to would go into effect immediately. So it's not for a successor agreement is for an agreement that would as soon as we get to a conclusion that becomes the new contract effective as soon as it's signed by both parties. Thank you, Paul. Deb. I guess this is a follow question for Pamela and for Paul, in terms of, you know, I think counselor Alicia Walker made a great question here which is, you know, how can, how can you work with the police to be actively anti racist. I don't think that you need to wait for union process for the police department to be actively anti racist. You can do a variety of different things that can happen to, in terms of messaging, and in terms of how the police are going to interact with, you know, those outside of, well within the police department and outside of the police department to make sure that they are actively anti racist. I don't see how any of that has to be bargained as part of the union now if you're asking them to do extra work extra hours extra this extra that. Yes, that has to go through the union process. Now, changing the police department to be actively anti racist, and changing the way that the police department acts from within and without, and messaging and making sure that they are actually behaving in an anti racist way and starting to understand those things. That doesn't have to be that does not have to be bargain. So I have a question about that why does that have to be bargain. I'm confused. Yeah, so I think you're absolutely right. It does that kind of activity that Pamela and Jennifer are doing is being done that doesn't have to be bargain the, the sort of education the engagement with the officers, when they do it they go down three times to make sure they collect, they cover all three shifts, because you know that they all work different shifts or some people work midnight some people work four to midnight etc. So they go down and meet with the different shifts. So they can do this training that is that is part of the effort and Pamela can speak much more persuasive or clearly about that way of, you know, how do you change an organization in an organization. It's not you know she said it's not one workshop it's a continued level of engagement and I think Pamela I've admired how she has started to engage all town employees it isn't just please it's also dbw it's a town hall it's a library. She's been, she and Jennifer have done a really terrific job at rolling out different things, ways for the community for the town employees to be engaged. And she's welcome to speak more on that if she wants but it's, you know, she understands that it's just not a one and done type thing it's a, it's a continuous and involvement of our of our staff and learning and learning and sharing. I did that way before Pamela like it responds I mean, but I think it has to be an and both right because like a counselor Alicia Walker was talking about can't just be the education it has to be a partnership between the I, and also. I'm just going to focus on the police I know obviously I'm glad that all the other town members also getting it because everyone needs to, but focus on the police right now has to be work with the police chief with all of these deputies with all of the supervisor the descendants, all of the sergeants, so on and so forth. It comes from from the leadership, right. So the leadership, it can't be just the education from, you know, Pamela's group right has to be Pamela's group, along with the police chief, and the leadership at the police. Is that happening is, is it happening where the messaging is coming from the top right, so is the police chief. You know, can you send us right copies of the police chief, sending messages to their person, his personnel, stating that police the police department is anti racist. So, I can't speak to that because I'm not the police chief but I can tell you that the workshops that the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is doing for the police department and every department in town is customized to the work of that department. And in each of those instances, I've met with the head of the department, I've talked about the content of the workshop, and we've talked about the best way to deliver that. So, I spoke with Chiefs Limingston I also spoke with Gabe Ting, we talked about what the content should be we talked about the delivery method, and how we could could engage the officers in the content and that's ongoing. The same process has been used for DPW, the same process is being used for the fire department and every other department talking about where each department is what their needs are how can we customize the conversation to the work of that department. So, I believe that the answer is yes, that we are doing both and the and part of some of the work is being handled by the town manager, the HR director and legal counsel, and the and part of the part of the question is being handled by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. So, Paul, do you have any information in terms of the messaging from the leadership at the police department. I don't know what the chief has written to his staff I just know that he has been he and their leadership team have been working very closely with Pamela as have the other department heads. So it's not unique to the police department. We as a department head as a leadership team are committed to this. You know, we are blessed to have the leadership of Pamela who has knows how to do this work I trust her judgment on how to implement these things. This type of training and education and engagement with our employees. It's so I feel like we're on a really good path. And I hope that people would, you know, trust that we're moving this in a positive way. Because my last point would just be to, you know, to build to continue to build that trust and it would be transparency right to share that with the community. For us to know what the police chief is actually sharing to the is leadership and the rest of the police department in terms of actively building an anti racist department right which is, which is obviously going to leave. the vestiges for whoever the new police chief is going to be right. So, so I think, you know, if this is indeed happening, which I didn't know about until we now ask these questions. We need to know more about it right and it needs to be another languages needs to be shared in different modalities so that a community is understanding what's the work that's being taken place. Thank you, Deb. So, Councilor Walker I know this was your question initially I do see Miss Pat's hand is raised, and it may also be in relation to this. So I'm going to ask Miss Pat if she'd like to add to this and then we'll come back to you Councilor Walker and then to Councilor Pam. Actually, I have a positive comment to actually make since we're talking about anti race racism. And I think one of the ways also is to reach out to people that are hard to reach. And I want to illustrate an incident in March, where our time manager, the Cres director, and Jennifer Moisten, they came to Black Business Association of Armist. Needless to say that not only that the meeting was productive. I said, you know, I'm a member of that group. It was a big deal for some of our time residents to meet our town manager for the first time. Some of them don't know who he is. Same thing with our new Cres director. When we're talking about outreach, breaking down barriers, the way it should go is to have the people in power. Go into the community and meet those people at their own terms. Don't ask us to come to your office. Come to us. What a difference in made. I was hoping that the town manager will brag about that and put it in his report, but he didn't. But I think we appreciate three of you that were there. I also want to comment on some time counselors who have reached out. When I raised the concern about inequity in upper funds. I've been saying this for more than nine months now. The upper funds were supposed to help anyone in that has been impacted negatively by by pandemic. I raised this issue. Everybody knows that it has been in the media. The time console leadership didn't bother to bring it up. All the existing black owned businesses in our town did not receive a dime. Out of the $650,000. That was a mark for businesses. But I want to thank. Thank you, Pam. And Jennifer Tom for their private support. Which in that to me privately appreciate to a few. I also want to appreciate counselor Michelle Miller. Who, on behalf of his of her group, a RHA. They may be attending the next BBA. For listening session. No outreach from the council president. And the council vice president. The time console leadership. Even though we live in this town, we pay our taxes. We go to vote. And yet. When it comes to resources, we do not get it. And when we speak up. We have powerful people disparaging. Members of BBA. We have business improvement district. This party director. Gold. Disparaging to whether we're respected restaurant owner. In our town. So if we're talking about anti races or working on racism. There has to be. Strategic collaboration and engagement. In our own terms, many people of color. We need to lead you need to come to us. We need to tell you what we need. We need to work together. You can say. My door is open come to me. We've been oppressed already. Do you guys understand how difficult. It's not like we're not going to get it. We're not going to get it. We're not going to get it. We're not going to get it. Meetings like this as a person of color, no matter your age. But I just want to thank the time manager. For taking the courage to come. And I hope it was, you know, meaningful to you. Thank you. And yet we haven't received any money. We're legitimate group. Okay. We are five. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Nothing zip. Thank you, Miss Pat. Counselor Walker and, and then counselor Pam. Thank you. I'm going back. To a previous topic, but I did just really quickly. Want to emphasize and support. Miss. Concerned specifically regarding our best spending. For another time in terms of equitable spending of the ARPA funds. But I also just wanted to come back to the. Creating the anti racist. Department of at the PD. And talking about that this was a recommendation that came up in terms of like something that could be implemented. Immediately. To restore trust and to create safety for our BIPOC residents who still have to deal with the PD because no matter what, even when Cress is taking 911 calls, the police will still need to respond to some calls and they will still be responding and dealing with BIPOC residents. And so this is. Like immensely important. And I think that's getting very lost in translation here that like we're talking about the safety of black and brown people at the hands of the police. Like this is very serious. So that's one and that like, I'm not talking about training. And I don't know how much I have to emphasize that because I've said that before and I said that when I proposed the motion itself. But like. Training doesn't actually change anything that doesn't change the way the police are dealing with the public. It doesn't change what the policies are. It doesn't change what their protocols are. It doesn't change how they talk to each other. It doesn't change how they talk to people in the community. It doesn't change anything like I am talking about real. Tangible changes that we can measure that we can present to not just pay. We had a conversation about this. And now they're just doing what the same thing they were doing before. But they had a conversation about it first internally. Like that is not what I'm talking about when I'm saying creating an anti racist department. I think it's great. They're having conversations. I think everyone should continue to have these conversations, but that is not what I meant. When I proposed this motion and I thought I made that very clear that that was not what I was expecting. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Dorothy, you are up. I just want to let everyone here know that if you need to take a recess for any, any reason, you can always turn your camera off. You can also call a point of order and ask for a recess. So just in case folks weren't aware of that, I wanted to make sure everyone knew. Dorothy. Okay. I have a question and a comment. How long is this new police contract? Is it a one year? Is it three year? So typically contracts are three years. So I mean, to me, I'm sitting here in my spare time sometimes saying, what am I going to do in the weekends? To me, the summer is here. And I can see it's a, it's a long cycle and there's a lot of legal things and a lot of law, but they're going to be a contract and it will not have the new, whatever things in it. Okay. So that's a, that's a real delay. So I just want to say. A positive and then a suggestion. You have acted with incredible speed. With people who work for you in setting up. Crest, I mean, amazing. Okay. And it's, it's kudos not just to you, but to the whole town of Amherst and it's known nationally and setting up the, the department. But I think that you have been dragging your feet when it comes to people who don't work for you. And I mean, I understand that because you can't always tell what they're going to do. And sometimes they say things that you don't like or you don't agree with or you don't even think you're true. Okay. But I just want to say, I really do have a lot of trust in you. And I think I've shown that and I've said that. So I'm just one of the themes that I think we're coming up with here is, is for you to have a little more trust of some of the other people in town. And, and I think that we can cause I think we all agreed. We want to move on these things. We want to make some changes. We want to safer town. We don't all agree on things. For example, I don't totally agree with Miss Pat about no police in the school because if there's a shooter or something dangerous, I want our police department. To go in there fast and not be like of all the taxes. Okay. So I do and I really do see the need for a strong police department, but I think that what the kind of restructuring of public safety that's going on here is really good. And I'm really happy with it. But I just think we need to trust each other a little bit more. And it'll be, it will be mutual is what I'm thinking. I'm an optimist. I think it'll be a mutual increase in trust. Thank you. Thanks, Dorothy. I just wanted to clarify a point that was made about no ARPA funds being awarded to black businesses because we did receive a detailed list of businesses that were awarded. And out of that, just to give a few examples, M&M links, head games, global cuts, carefree, CACRE and white lion were given awarded the funds and from, and then 97% of the grants went to BIPOC, LGBTQ and women on businesses. And that being said, you know, no process is perfect. And I feel that if, you know, if people, if Ms. Onanabako has noticed that there's some ways that this process could be improved, I would really encourage sitting down with, with the committee, there's a committee. It's not the bid. That's my understanding is there's a committee that's made about diverse people who, you know, go through all the applications and then award, but if that process can be improved, which I'm sure any process can, that, that feedback should, I mean, I think I would be happy to sit in that meeting and find ways to improve that process. Thank you. Councillor Bauman. Ms. Pat. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. I'm going to go to the meeting and find ways to improve that process. Thank you. Councillor Bauman. Ms. Pat. That was fun. Actually. It's incorrect. And this is the narrative that it did. Has been spreading in the media. It's not true. None of existing black-owned businesses, regardless whether they're members of BBA or not, That document I requested and the finance director send it to me. Existing businesses, none of black business got that. I'm not talking about new businesses that are going to be opening up, that are renting from big landlords. I'm not talking about that. Existing business category, black home businesses, document don't lie. I have them and I requested that it be included in the packet for CSSJC meeting tonight, so the public can see. When I open my mouth to say anything, I do my research and I'm very confident when I open my mouth because that's why people trust me. I beg to disagree with Shawnee because it's not true. The so-called 90-something percent of marginalized are, it's all incorrect because the way it was put, white women were considered minority. Again, I don't have any problem of any business owner who received funding, but to put white women as minority or marginalized, to make up the percentage is very deceiving to the public. So the records are there. They should be on the town website, go to CSSJC and look at it and the public can make their judgment who is telling the truth tonight. Because I know what I'm talking about. Again, existing business category, no black home business received funding. However, new businesses like Capri received, and it's a member of BBA, she's going to be opening up in June, okay? Global cuts never receive a dime. And I'm going to let him know tomorrow because his business has been mentioned tonight where he did not receive any money for the upper fund. He did not. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pat. And it sounds like maybe there's some clarification that's needed and maybe Paul and Sean will be able to provide that clarification and make that available to everyone. That would be great. Yes, Councilor Lopes. Yeah, so first I just, you know, want to thank everyone for participating in this meeting with CSSJC and the HRC and in particular to Elizabeth Haygood for calling out, calling attention to the importance of hearing the youth perspective directly from youth voices and particularly in spaces that decision-making spaces rather where they haven't been included as possible. But I do think that if we have a discussion and we're talking about the bid, we have discrepancy of information. The bid has shown clear facts that not just the second round, but the first round that there was money awarded to black businesses to BIPOC businesses and this conversation, if we're, you know, as if we're talking about businesses, I believe those business owners should be there, as well as Gabrielle Gould and whoever else is having that. So we can move forward because we are dealing with something where at the end of the day, if we're talking the state funding with state regulations, there is a process to how that money could be received and who. So to put it in a situation where it's about public opinion and who believes who, when it's something that we have all of these A's and B's and Hammerson having to do that, this is a situation where we can use facts where, you know, we can know what businesses received, why and why not. And I think if not, you know, we're being divisive because, you know, at the end of the day, the bid was the only organization throughout the pandemic that was out there and doing something calling attention to business. There were not other organizations were not out there publicly. And last, I think we want to be careful because if we're not all coming together around this issue, we're gonna be sending a message to youth that if you simply receive an I, you know, an LLC or register as a business, then that's gonna come with a virtual assistant or someone who will connect you to what funding or what not is available for you. When in actuality, as we all know, you may need to hire somebody to do that where you have to introduce yourselves as a new business so you can receive and be directed to that funding. So I think that if we are to carry this situation, we should really have all the stakeholders involved as we're talking about everything else, or bringing those stakeholders because if not there's a slander and this is hearsay and we're just risking the public coming to a conclusion when they don't have to or they could at least include clear facts of making that decision. Thank you. Thank you, Anika. I just miss Pat before I go to just want to confer with the chairs of the committees. So the chair of the town council and the chair of the two committees in terms of timing. So we have number four, five, six and seven to continue through is everyone good to keep moving ahead on these items? I'm just looking. I mean, how much more times they're gonna be because I do have my child at home and so on and so forth. So what is this looking like? Yeah, I think that I respect and know that this conversation is definitely needs to be had. I do think that for the sake of everybody's time we may need to set aside a different meeting to have this conversation and have this go on. So I at least as far as for HRC and if any member thinks otherwise I think moving forward would make sense. Yeah, could we get another date on the books? I would suggest that we go through the other three items and if there are other items that are also important to various members of the group that that be collected and we look at what the appropriate venue is for the discussion of those other items and if additional data needs to be available for those. But we did set an agenda that was based on these seven items and I would prefer for us to finish those seven items and then look for other opportunities and other means to have the discussion about other issues. Thank you. Well, Lynn, respectfully there's four more items that we need to talk about. I don't wanna be rushed. I will stay on and I will talk then and we'll be in for midnight. So that's fine, but I'm not gonna be rushed. If you all wanna continue, fine but we will talk through all of them ad nauseam. Well, here's a suggestion. So I think in terms of the ARPA this is a really important conversation and of course, none of it can be disconnected. It's all interroled to what we're talking about. It does appear that we need to get some clarifying information and perhaps have some other folks who could join this conversation. So I as a counselor would like to ask the chair of the town council to work with Paul to figure out how we might, as you said, Lynn have a venue for that discussion. With respect to the four items that we have remaining I think we should continue on and if folks are good with that maybe do another check in at about 1030 and see where we're at because our brains will start to deteriorate here. And I just, I would like to, before we move on to number four check in with Ms. Pat and Alicia since their hands are both raised to see if that sounds like a plan we can move forward with. Okay, I just want to say to Anakar that I stand by everything that I said and the public will find out who is telling the truth. Being powerful is not good enough is for people to follow the facts. And I'm excited for the public to find out who is telling the truth. Is it me or is it Anakar and Shalini or the big director? The public will soon find out. That's all I can say. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pat and Councilor Walker. Yeah, thank you, Michelle. I definitely think that it would be very wise to have another time to talk about ARPA funds and ARPA spending. I just really quickly wanted to add that I think part of like the challenges and the complications with ARPA funds is like one transparency. We don't do a very good job of reporting and tracking what is being used and where and the sheets that are available on the town website are very confusing because there are a lot of monies that have been allocated but have not yet been spent. And the way that those are identified on the website are very confusing. And I think it's also just the way that we chose to distribute the ARPA funds which were quite strange. And I really highly suggest you all looking at the way that other towns have done it might help provide some clarity specifically Springfield which gave millions of dollars to BIPOC owned businesses and nonprofits very different than the way that Amherst has and very different the way that they tracked it on their town website. And so I think looking at the way other towns have done it in comparison to how Amherst have done it might explain some of the frustration but I also am happy to have this conversation at another time. Thank you, Councilor Walker. Okay, so with that let's go ahead and move on to number four which has continued to develop protocols for Crest regarding active engagement by community responders and we'll follow the same process and Deb will get us started. All right, thank you. So for me with Crest and Ms. Pat I've already talked about it and I didn't know that it was only $20,000 that they were given additionally for this next fiscal year which again doesn't make sense to me and that the police department is getting hiring and so on and so forth. So Crest needs to be 24 seven, Crest needs to be fully staffed so that the police are not responding to anything that is non-violent which was what we had put in the CSWG and with Crest not being fully funded not having the staffing, not really having the way with all because they need the capacity you can't burn people out like even like Earl I mean, he's doing an extraordinary job but he's only one person in terms of the leader needs to be an assistant director that needs to be other kind of leaders put in place there to help out and so that's not gonna happen with an additional $20,000 because you can't burn people out because it's not sustainable for them to be able to do the work but yet the community needs for there to be something in place so that the police are not responding to non-violent incidents as what occurred in July 5th, right? So wanna know that and also, so how is that my question is so how is it gonna happen with the current staffing and with only an additional $20,000? That is my question. So I think what I'd say is there's about 85 departments similar to what we do in the country. There's probably 20 or 30 that have the scope we have. There's maybe eight that have the kind of structural support we do, the independence we do. There's nobody that's a separate department. None of those much larger departments, Denver Star, Cahoots in Oregon have gone 24-7 yet. It is a tricky step on two levels. The call volume is much lower. So frankly, isn't a super attractive position. You're not gonna have much to do at the beginning. And the second piece is I think when we talk about adding a second shift, people think about maybe doubling the staffing. You're actually talking about closer to tripling the staffing to get to a third shift. You have to add a whole new leadership component. That leadership team needs to be as comfortable as I am. The one thing I am really concerned about is us taking steps before there's the kind of capacity. And then, I love the people I work with. I love my coworkers. I am fortunate to have my coworkers and I worry about adding a large group of people without a really kind of thoughtful understanding of what the work looks like, which we're still developing. I recognize that me telling you that we're the fastest in the country, we still don't feel fast enough for Amherst. And I lose sleep over that idea. Most of anything in my job that I wanna get this to where folks needed to be as quickly as I can. As far as the technical pieces of it, it takes folks quite a while to get up to speed on the approach. It's some of the work we do is counterintuitive to what folks think of as public safety. You're asking folks to go in the really challenging situations and at no point are they gonna have an ability to coerce the person. They're not gonna have an ability to deny them access to a thing. They're not gonna have the ability to take a thing away from them, to find them, to punish them. So getting people up to speed really, I think has turned out to be about a nine month process. So that's just on the technical end of things. I don't think that even if the resources, the exact amount of money to add folks was, we'd still be a year out from me feeling any sort of comfort with that overnight shift. And particularly Denver is going over nights this summer. And so I'm watching really closely how they're doing it, how they're approaching it, the infrastructure they're building, what looks very different. So on a technical end, I just think we're probably, I often think of Alicia in describing this of, I know I'm holding you guys as baby, the baby's out of the crib, but boy it ain't running yet. It is toddling along and we're still needing to develop some experience. That's the one thing I can't hire anybody who's experienced at this. The only way to get it is to do the job and to do it for a long enough period. So as far as the budget, that is a decision that's been made. On my end of things, I think we need to earn it. That is my philosophy to this is I think when you think about the kind of original sin of public safety is that the money has always followed people's fear. People were so afraid of black folks, they put money into the more violent aspects of policing. Whereas we have the opportunity to look at the work, to thoughtfully approach it, to ask for resources as we need them. And again, I think that's an unsatisfying answer. And I know that, but I would be doing a disservice to the work to say what we're doing is art. And if you rush art, you put people in a bad situation. Sorry if that was a weird answer. That's what I got. I have a follow up with that. So I guess we have two situations, right? So we have the community that is asking, especially the marginalized BIPOC community that is asking for there to be someone else, a different group of people, and obviously ideally Cress, to respond to these nonviolent matters as opposed to police. So we're talking nonviolent, alcohol, drugs, any type of resources, anything that community members are going through, because we know a lot of times when the police respond to that, those things will go awry as what happened, you know, exhibit A July 5th, right? And so we have that. And then I have you saying, I guess, right? So then I want to be clear then. So you're saying that Cress can't grow. Well, no, can't grow. That Cress is growing slowly, but surely you need the time, so on so forth. So you are content then, right? With the $20,000, you're content where you're at, and so on and so forth. I guess I just want to be clear in terms of what it is, because for me, my concern, obviously I love Cress and you all are doing a phenomenal job. And that's why, right? That's why I want it to be more, you know? And so my thinking is, hey, let me advocate to give you more so that the community can get what they want, which is no police response to, so that the police don't watch it out. But you're telling me, I think no. Is that what you're saying? No, at this point? What I'm telling you is we are moving faster than anyone in this country has ever done with this work. I recognize that that doesn't count the two years of time folks worked on this thing. I don't think there's anything Cress is incapable of. I just don't know that it's ready today. I think, you know, this is a thing that you're gonna have to make a decision as a community. If you're building this thing for a short run, we can do everything really quick. We can get everything running up and there will be big flaws in it. There will be big, big flaws in it. Or we can do this thing where we build it, we get a foundation, we really make sure, when we talk about anti-racism, that is a thing that we have to stop at every step and make sure it's still intact. Every time we make a move, we have to stop and make sure that we're not over-serving communities or under-serving communities. Have we talked to the community about how they feel about what we're doing? That sort of information gathering takes steps. So by no means am I saying that we won't ever get to that point. I think we will get there faster than anybody in the country ever has. That's the pace we've set. But, you know, functionally, we're eight months into deployment. I just, there's no, there's no evidence from the work around the country that at that point people are experienced enough that you can build the leadership team that can hold those things. I'm not saying that more resources wouldn't be great, but I am saying that there's a difference between building a thing for a short period and building it for the long haul and the long haul does require these, you know, again, I just want to say they feel slow and deliberate to us. When I talk to other municipalities, what they say is, how are you going so fast? There are 10 departments I'm aware of that trained for two years. So the speed in which we're going, there's no precedent for it. And so I also, you know, I don't, I'm afraid that if we take that big step that I won't be able to assure folks that my folks will be able to step up when the time is right. And that's, that would be dangerous for them. It would mean the policing to show up. It would mean them needing to show up in a much more fast way in a way that might lead people to not always be their best selves. So yeah, I guess the answer to your question is, I think we're going as fast as I can make it as I can imagine us going. And we would never turn down resources, but just, let's say tomorrow my budget got doubled, my job would then turn into a fiscal job. I would be spending funding so much that I wouldn't be able to do the on the ground supervision that the work requires right now. I wouldn't be able to spend the time molding folks into the responders they need to be. And that's, you know, there's nine people, that's nine different people who require real tailoring and understanding. So I'm sorry, again, I'm sorry. I know that I'm not living up to the highest dreams of folks. I'm just saying that as a human being, I don't know that those highest dreams are attainable where we are right now. So Earl, I mean, and I'm not about just, obviously CSWG when we made a recommendation for press, we want it to be long-term. We want it to be successful. We want it to have a strong foundation. We want it to have, you know, everything they needed to have for it to be something to go into the future, right? And that's why you have us to keep pressing the town. Because I understand the town saying, look, we've done all this great things and you all have done a lot of great things, but it's a lot because you have us as pressuring you to make sure that you're doing it. And we're going to continue with the pressure to make sure that you are doing it, right? So for me- I want to just put a plug in me and Deborah presenting at the Smith School of Social Work Conference this summer about this very thing. So this conversation is continuing in lots of different ways. Exactly. So I want it to be deliberate. I want it to be, you know, strong and foundational. So leave, you know, I don't want to, you know, obviously state a course, right? If that, but I just want a clarity around that. But the other part though is this need from the community, right? So I think though the town needs to have a plan and again, tap us, CS SJC and whomever else to figure out a plan for what do we do with the fact that press at this point can't respond to all non-violent. So what are we going to do? Because obviously with the fact that you all are not looking at safety protocols at APD, APD is not an anti-racist department. I'm very afraid in terms of APD continuing to respond to these non-violent concerns. I appreciate you Deb. As soon as we can get there, we're going to get there. Michelle may interrupt. Of course. Yeah, please. I just want to let people know that Pamela is going to have to leave in a few minutes. If there are any specific questions for Pamela, we should pose those now. She has a time limit. So just want to put that on your radar. And if not, that's fine. She will leave when she has to leave. So can I just ask everyone who has their hand up to put it down just for a moment? I'm keeping track of the order. And if you have a question specifically for Pamela on any of these topics, the ones that we've covered or the ones that we have yet to cover, please raise your hand. Okay, I'm going to go to Deb and then Councilor Pam. I guess for me, the only thing that I would have to say for Pamela would be around the, because we talked about some of the other ones just to kind of reiterate around the youth empowerment. And I'll say this again, I guess, you know, Paul and everything, that, you know, in your rapport, the town manager is forming a working group to explore youth empowerment and, you know, all these different family outreach, center, high school, middle school administration, not youth, but administration. And then rec, finance, community participation, offices, DEI, Crescent, so on and so forth. I didn't hear youth. So for me, like I said before, youth need to be front and center in terms of creating a youth empowerment. Center, it needs to be their voice. They're the ones that need to be, the working group needs to be them, not a bunch of adults that are going to tell the youth what they need. You know what I'm saying? The youth are the ones that should be driving the youth empowerment to say what they need, where it should be located, what's the parameters, and so on and so forth. I learn every day from youth. They are the savviest people on this earth, okay? And so youth empowerment should be all them. And I'm definitely with Liz, when she was saying about having youth in all other stratospheres of the town management and the input too. But youth empowerment needs to be them. So I hope there's going to be changes to that. So that's just whole kind of suggestion that you all made for youth empowerment because right now, if you all continue down that path, that's going to be a mess. And the youth empowerment needs to happen also very quickly. If CSWG had already put a model in place, so we don't need to start from ground zero. And it seems like over here, it's kind of gathering input, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, that's delay. It's talk to the youth and let's stop putting these things in place. Thanks Deb. Pamela, would you like to respond to Deb's comments? So I think that the town manager will respond to the first part of the comment about putting together the working group because that's not my initiative. The second part of that discussion deals with the collaboration that Press and the DEI department has in place to actually work with youth in the fall. And our plan is to share an AmeriCorps member to lead that work. So it is our plan and our objective to begin working with youth in the fall with the help of an AmeriCorps member. So I'm working on the active programming parts of those initiatives. Thank you, Pamela. And it sounds like there's a question for Paul in there, but given your time constraints, Pamela, I'm gonna move on and we'll come back to that. And I'm gonna go to Ms. Pat and then I'm going to go to Councillor Pam, Councillor Devlin-Goughier and Councillor Walker. So I just want to remind all of us that CSWG through 7GEN did their research, they talked to youth of diverse backgrounds that are most impacted by APD. And one of the recommendations that came up is actually having a youth center. And I know the Tank Council has capital priorities. Where does the youth center fits into all this? Where are we going to get a youth empowerment center? And I know that there is APA funds that were set aside for youth. What happened to that? And the last thing is why are we doing research again? 7GEN already talked to youth. It's just delaying too much. That's all I have to say. Me, why youth are suffering? I'm very confused about the whole process, honestly. So again, I think that that is a question for the town manager and the section of the youth empowerment discussion and the report that I wrote really bills upon and looks to the work that was already done and envisions having someone in place to put that into practice. So obviously, I don't have the budget to create a building, a structure for youth empowerment center. The goal that I have and that I share with Earl and Press is to have a point person to work with youth to do the direct programming activities, initiatives that were envisioned in that report, which mentioned training on legal rights, career development, exposure to colleges. So all of those things are things that we hope that the AmeriCorps member and have expectations that the AmeriCorps member working with our two departments would do beginning in the fall. I mean, that's all great. And I'm not disputing that, but what location in our school building when school building can satisfy some of the kids? So I get all that. I'm not questioning the programming, but where would it happen? Is that the dedicated space for youth to do this? I have to use existing spaces in town or other resources that we might be able to share from community partners, but I don't have a building in place. So my best option is to start the programming while other folks are working on creating a building. I don't wanna wait until the building is in place to start the programming. So I'm trying to start programming now using existing buildings and existing partnerships in order to do that because I don't have a building and I can't create one between now in the beginning of the school year, but I can start to provide programming in the existing structures that we have. And I acknowledge your statement that those structures may not be ideal, but the reality is that is what I have to work with. So I can only work with what I have. My last comment, I apologize. Nothing personally against you, but why is there that anything that benefits BIPOC community, our town council, our town government, our finance committee, there is no money, tight budget. You know, it's so tough, but we will have money for other stuff that powerful people want in this town. So I don't get it. What message are we sending to our youth? Again, I don't think that that's a question that I am in a position to answer. I understand. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. So the youth empowerment is next on our list. So I'm just looking to the counselors that have their hands raised if they have specific questions to Pamela before she has to leave on any of the topics. Otherwise, we'll come back to the youth empowerment shortly. So I'm going to go to counsel Pam. So it's very useful what she just said that number one, she's not putting together the working group, but that she is DEI will start the programs while the building, you know, because that is obviously at this moment down the road. So that is very useful to me. My question is, when are we going to have, I would, I really do want to talk about the youth center. And I think that tonight's getting late. I would like to have, I have, I like the ideas that came with Seaswag and Seven Gen, but I have some other ideas that I think are very important, which go along with youth and leadership and some programs I think which would be extremely wonderful for the community. So my simple question to you right now, Pamela, is what do you need from us now? So what I need right now is just a little bit of time to start the programming and ideas for programming. You know, there are wonderful ideas for programming in the community safety working group report. Dr. Rhodes also has a wonderful program that I guess he's going to start this summer around entrepreneurship. So I think there's lots of possibilities for programming for youth. I think there's also good opportunities to collaborate with Amherst College, Hampshire College and UMass for additional opportunities. So I am excited about the possibility of having an AmeriCorps member to work with Cress and DEI to pull those initiatives and programs together. And so, you know, I guess a little bit of time, right? I can't create a building overnight, but I can start the programming and offer it in the interim. And that's what I'm trying to do. Okay. So if I have any ideas, I should write them up and then send them to you. Is that it? That will be great. Yeah. We'll do that then. Thank you. Anna. Thank you. I have two questions. So I'll ask one and then pause for a response if that's okay and then ask the second. So the first one is regarding the trainings that are the learning opportunities that are being offered. I'm curious if there's a framework or a model that you're utilizing to scaffold those trainings to support the development of an anti-racist culture both across the town staff, but within departments to Alicia's point. And as you also recognized, an anti-racist culture isn't developed in training but mostly partly in the application of what is learned. The training that you listed in your report is wonderful and especially for white folks, the identity exploration and the context of power and privilege is really an important first step. But I'd love to hear about how you're incorporating that into application, into the work intentionally. And I know that if you don't have a model right now to talk about that's okay, but I'd love to hear more about that if you don't have it top of mind right this moment. Sure. So I mean, I initially reached out to an organization that I'm very familiar with called the National Coalition Building Institute, which was a wonderful program that I'm actually trained in and went through, I would say now maybe 15 or 16 years ago, but it looks like they have disbanded or they're not as active in New England as they once were. So what Jennifer and I have been doing is meeting with each department head, designing our initial programming for that department. And then our plan is to go back to scaffold up. So I'll just use, for example, where the DPW was as far as their initial workshop is not the same as where we envision the fire department, I'll say, and we haven't done the fire department yet, that's coming up in May. The other thing that we're doing with our training is we're going back to each department head to have conversations with them. And this has not started yet. So this is our plan for May and June, have conversations with them about their DEI self-assessment. So each department was asked to do a self-assessment, to look at their staffing levels, to look at the constituencies that they serve, to think about ways in which we can embed equity policies and practices into their work. So the goal is to tie, well, to have the initial training and then to go back and tie the future trainings to that equity work. And of course, with each department, I'm sure there are probably dozens of things that we could be tackling, but we're really gonna try to be realistic about this and try to tackle like two to three things in each year because getting into the practice takes time. So if we can identify one or two practices, have people work to achieve equity, to review their policy on a specific practice and to work towards that and then go back in year two and repeat the process and expand it. I'd love to say that we're going to change every department, but we're overnight or within a short-term timeframe, but that's just unrealistic, especially given the fact that we are a department of two and we have a lot of departments both to work with and then repeat the cycle through. So at this point, I'll be quite honest and say, I had hoped that we would have done more trainings and more departments as we approach the first year anniversary. I had written into my sort of one-year vision that we would do a minimum of four and we're gonna make that goal, but primarily because we've already done two really large departments. We have a third large department coming up and then we have all of those departments in the bank center that we're gonna, which are all sort of, they share the fact that they're all outwardly facing. So veteran services, senior services, the health department on Crest, there is some commonality in how they approach their work with that group and so we can group them together. But when we start to look at the other departments, finance and accounting and clerk's office, it's gonna require a totally different way of grouping them together, even to bring them together for professional development and thinking about how we incorporate equity into their work. As you can imagine, everyone, no one wants to feel that their work is inequitable, right? From the perspective of members of the town staff, they are doing anti-racist work because they don't think that there are inequities in their work and no one openly says, oh, I'm a racist. The real challenge with having folks have these conversations is getting them to understand how their practices and policies, which may seem neutral on their face, have a disparate impact on certain communities. And that's not a conversation that you can just have once. It's a conversation that needs to be repeated. And although you need to start and have the conversation with some mutuality of respect. So it is not my approach to go in and condemn and to say, you're doing everything wrong. This is what you should do. It is my approach to talk about the narratives, to talk about the inequities and to talk about ways in which we can better the work that we do. I think the principle that explains my approach, the best is to think about universal design and how it works in the school system. Universal design benefits very targeted populations, but it also benefits everyone. And so when you start to have conversations about designs of your programs and policies that are equitable and universal, then you can bring more people along because they don't feel that they're being admonished or attacked or denigrated for work which they probably rightly so feel that they've been doing the very best of thinking. Even though that there is an opportunity, as someone said, there's always an opportunity for improvement. Thank you. I'm really interested down the road. This is not a tonight question, but down the road I'm really interested in learning if you're about your self-assessment in terms of whether you're using competencies that can be measured over time or what areas of focus that you have. And I appreciate you sharing more about that. My second question is actually about the next point, which is the communications plan. So one of the things that we've talked about today but that I was noting when I was reading is, are there alternate methods within a communication plan that are engaging directly in community to reach the populations that are not being reached by our current modes? The existing communication plan talks about putting out out on all of the typical methods, which is great. And as we've heard tonight, it'd be really great to see new modes of providing public access. The part that made me uncomfortable about the report was the phrasing of based on expressed need. Because if someone doesn't know how or where or when to express their need, we're not gonna hear it. And so, or they're not getting the message that we want them to express the need in the first place. So I'd really love to hear how you all plan and Pamela, I think this is part you but maybe it's more Paul actually. I'd really like to hear more about the process for engaging in community to reach the folks who aren't currently being reached. And I know that's kind of a tough scenario because how do you know, right? But we do know in a lot of ways. We've seen other aspects of community outreach. Crest has done a really great job at this. And so I'd like to hear what methods you're using to expand our modes of delivery to reach populations that are not currently being served by our existing practices. So I think that this is an area where the town really is in the beginning steps of trying to figure out how best to meet the needs. We know that translation services are needed. We're trying to figure out how to have those translation services on demand. We're trying to figure out how to have translation services without adding additional burdens or additional responsibilities to current staff who have specific language skills. I've done a little bit of research on this area and looked at some plans that were developed. Well, the plans that I looked at were on the federal side. There's also a group of DEI directors in the Commonwealth who've been talking about translations and access. So we're still in the gathering and trying to formulate a concrete plan. I think it will really vary by department how best we can communicate that. And then we have to have some agreement about some basics. And there have been challenges. We talked about how to have conversations with the joint meetings where there were translation services available. We posted a meeting and I got a request about whether we would be able to provide American Sign Language and had to try to scramble to see if I could pull together a list of resources. So there are definitely challenges in this area. And we're not nearly as far along as I think we would like to be, but I will be working with Brie and other department heads to address that. And so it is definitely very much a work in progress. I think the benefit is that we do have those earmark funds that can help us pull some pieces together. So the research that I've done, I looked at some federal plans that have developed translation and access protocols for various departments that have been very thorough. I looked at the and have conversations with a company that provides real-time translation services for the Massachusetts Port System. So a wide variety of languages. That company also can provide translation services of documents. I think it's a matter of getting everybody and by everybody, I mean myself and Brie and other department heads together and formulating a plan that we can then try to carry out. So it's very much a work in progress. Thank you. Thank you, Pamela. And thank you, Anna. And I'm gonna go to Councilor Walker. If I could just ask, I do hear some background noise. I'm not sure where it's coming from, but it might help for folks. So it's probably coming from my location. So I have been having connectivity issues. And so I'm actually in the kitchen of a friend of mine. Oh, okay. And there's a conversation going on in another... Oh, no problem. All right. So I do apologize for that. And I will apologize for having to leave the meeting a little bit earlier. So I'll just share that I have been ill the last couple of days. And so I've been really hanging in, but my medication is wearing off and I really can't stay much longer, but I welcome any additional questions.