 We do. We've just gone live. So the meeting is being recorded now. Thank you. Good evening. Working group. It is Wednesday. 31st of March. And it is 533. We're calling this meeting to order. We have a quorum and I'm going to take our role. If you please, Ms. Walker. Here. Ms. Owen. Here. Ms. Ferrara. Here. Mr. Vernon Jones here. Welcome all of you. And I'm sure we're. The others of us will be joining very shortly. Welcome also to the community members who are joining us this evening. And we're happy to have you and. Welcome your comments, which we will in a few minutes when we do public session. Let me go right into a brief description of our agenda. Let me say, first of all, in terms of the approval of the minutes, I want to thank Ms. Moisten. For working diligently to catch us up with minutes. We received these two sets of minutes. And we're going to open them up today. And so while we. Have just received them where I'd like to suggest. The working group do. Is read and be prepared to comment on those at the next minute meeting for this discussion and approval. So we will. We'll pretty much to spend that for the moment, but since we do have them, we have been plenty of time for moving for next time. So we're going to open the meeting up with a public comment. And I miss Pat. Hi, we're going to open up a public comment. And as we always do, we see if there are any comments from our working group members to begin our meeting. Our action and discussion items. We'll always have at this point, a consultant discussion, which is really an opportunity for our consultant groups, seven generation movement collective to be with us. To give us updates on their work and give us a chance to have a conversation with them about next steps going forward. Last week we talked about. Our. Community. Our resource initiatives. Responder initiatives. We didn't get very far with that. We're going to revisit that and see what direction we need to take as a group with respect to. To press. Since we all had a lot of feedback and we. Pretty much that bogged down in a. In a lengthy discussion. Of importance, by the way. In the first part of it. So we didn't get very far. Into it. So, but we'll come back to that and make sure we keep moving forward. There is a letter that. We have a couple of us in subcommittee are working on to. Send to the town council relative to our. Work as a community safety working group. And we're going to talk about. That letter in particular, and then the next steps on how to. Get it in final form and. What. What we plan on doing with it relative to the town council. And then an agenda that item that appeared on the last. Last meeting where we didn't get to it was planning for a meeting with. Chief Livingstone. And we'll get to that that. Hopefully will not take too long. But we'll try to make a point to come to some conclusion and agreement on what's going to happen with that. As always, we will go through our upcoming events. And then we'll move on to our next meeting date. And if there were any items that didn't come. Before the chair within 48 hours in advance. We'll bring those items up at that particular time. And then we'll move to adjourn. So. Welcome miss Bowman. I see you. Popped in. Glad you're here. And. As I stated, we're going to go right. To the, the group to take a careful look at the, the minutes that were in your packet. For the, for February 17. And for March 24. Thank you again. This moistened for putting those together. We will approve those next meeting. And, you know, if other. Notes come forward before then, you know, we'll work on those as well. Okay. Let me go straight to public comment. And. Open it up to our community members who may be present with us. You'll be recognized by this moisten. And. We'll open it up to our community. For a comment. At this time, no one has their hand raised. Okay. We'll wait a moment. I see in our attendees, we. We'll wait a moment. I think we'll have at least a couple of the folks in the attendee list are. In our consultant group who will be. Updating us. Very shortly. So. If there are no. Comments coming in this moistened. None yet. No, there's not. No. Okay. Thank you. Then we'll just move on. Community safety working group members. I have one, but I'll defer to others. If they have any at this time. This pack. Hi, everyone. Hi. I just wanted to comment about the. Rally on Saturday. To support Asian community downtown. For me personally. It was very meaningful for me because I know little about. Asian community. I'm just to hear. People speak out. And speak to the power was very helpful. So I learned a lot about. Asian community. And I just want to. It was very good that the. The communities, you know, supporting. The Asian American here. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. For that. For that recognition of that event and the acknowledgement. For those who are. In our audience listening, I just want to remind you too that. This is an example of the kind of. Outside of the meeting learning and research. And. Participation that goes on with our group. So. On an individual basis and on a regular basis. There are a number of things going on in terms of our reading, our research. And our participation in events. So. Thank you, Miss. Miss Pat. And, you know, thank everybody else. Other comments from the. Group. Not seeing any. Mr. Vernon Jones has his hand raised. Oh, you did. Okay. I was just so surprised about that. Back around there, man. You chameleon. You chameleon didn't mean. As they say. Thank you. When there's white pain on the walls, you know, I know man, you got to, you got to change that brother. A conversation with you about that. I wanted to echo what Miss Pat said. I thought it was a remarkable rally on the comment and one of the most. of solidarity among different groups of people of color and the rest of the community. I thought it was really just a remarkable event. And I just wanted to say, if it has not come up in some other way on our agenda, when we get to the items not anticipated, I would ask that we have a brief conversation about outreach to the business community and also just to mention of how we might address some of the things that were in the column in the Gazette this morning, was a response to the North Hampton report. It seemed like there's some things there that we might want to make a plan to at least investigate. Thank you, Mr. Vernon-Jones for both of those, those comments are very important. I might say we certainly could put that in the other topics section, but also I want to say if there's an opportunity to preface a foreground, any of those particular comments during our earlier discussion, I would say please feel free to bring it forward. And we'll talk about it as is applicable to what's on our agenda. I wanted to just say a couple of things. Sorry, one more question. The thing that was in the Gazette, is that different than what was in the bullet? I guess, Mr. Vernon-Jones, you could answer that. And also, can I see her, can I see the hand raised? Am I able to see that? Sorry, I didn't raise my hand, sorry. Oh, okay. You should be able to, yes, but yeah. All right, thank you. Come ahead. I just, the thing I was referring to is a column by Al Simon in this morning's Gazette policing report in Northampton, a good first step, but areas lacking. I hadn't seen it before this morning. Oh, okay. I wasn't sure if there was something else after the thing that Mr. Backelman sent. All right, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you, Ms. Bowman, Ms. Guerrero. Yeah, and I guess for me, it's just that I didn't see the article, so I don't know what the specifics are. So I don't know if it would be appropriate to bring it in when we're discussing other parts at some point, or at the things that weren't anticipated, but I'd like more background, too, on it, you know? Other comments? So the comment I wanted to make is that, and I think this is sort of fitting with what Ms. Pat was talking about, what I brought up last week about the shootings in Atlanta, and now currently, you know, what's going on in full view of our country in the world with the trial of Officer Chauvin. And I think just as for us, not for us to discuss this necessarily, but as this unfolds in front of us, it reminds us of the importance of our work to try to get to a place where we can actually serve our country and our city, excuse me, and our country, certainly, but our city in a way that's going to be healthy, that's going to be safe. And it's especially going to be healthy and safe for BIPOC people. As this thing unfolds, there's a lot of emotions going on. I just want to highlight the fact that, you know, last week's meeting was very emotional for some of us and probably maybe more than some. And in the midst of that, trying to, for us, I want to keep reminding us of the importance of our charge as while we carry and hold these emotions, we also carry huge responsibility to move forward in a very productive way to get a lot of work done so that we can influence the decisions at the town and local level. So just saying that it's present in the atmosphere right now and it's going to affect people. And I hope that as we absorb these things, we can also translate it into some really strong action and purpose so that, you know, we can stay on point and move forward in our work. And so, I mean, that was it for me. And that comes with a thank you to everybody for continuing to do what you do. If there are no other comments, Ms. Moyson, I'd like to go to our, consultant discussion. I do believe Dr. Shabazz and Dr. Lesbowski are here and present. Hi. Hi, y'all. Hi, Dr. Lesbowski, how are you? Good, thanks, how's everyone? Good, hi, Dr. Shabazz. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. This is second week seeing us. We hope you're done with all of your work, but knowing that you're not. We are eager to hear both your updates and any questions you have for us, but also anything we can do on our half to support and encourage your work going forward. So Dr. Shabazz, you and I are kind of point people for this, so I'll begin with you and I'll let you and Dr. Lesbowski. Continue the update. Well, I really want to say that our group has been very busy this week. Dr. Lesbowski, Dr. Johnson Anderson and Terry Mullen, and also all our community ambassadors have really been working furiously to do this research, to make it meaningful I think our community ambassadors seem to have finally gotten there, I don't know, in the swim of things, so to speak. And I'll let Dr. Lesbowski speak more to that, but it's really a pleasure working with them. These are all such very capable people. And I just think I'm the luckiest person in the world to be doing this really important work and being able to work with these great minds and who are just as committed as I am. So Dr. Lesbowski, you want to give them a, let them know what they've been doing this week? Yeah. Sure thing. Thank you all. I will report that we had our third session workshop on Sunday afternoon. The purpose of that session was really to get people ready to go, right? We focused a lot on the informed consent and ascent form, which is needed for research participants to sign. Goes over all the different ways that they will be protected and the way that the research remains confidential and such. We went through Zoom. Everyone was equipped with a Zoom account for their interview process. People will be conducting interviews or focus groups over Zoom or they will be meeting people in a more traditional face-to-face capacity to collect their data. So it was really a check-in about an hour and a half for us to make sure people felt, our ambassadors felt ready to go. And prior to that, we had discussed research questions so they have those and now they're out in the fields and we are seeing the impact of that already. Lots of different troubleshooting has been going on. Terry has been carrying the tech troubleshooting which is fantastic and a lot of different late night conversations with folks and they are already well on their way to setting up interviews or focus groups and conducting them as well. It is crunch time. They have until Sunday to collect their data at which point on Monday, we will get all of the different transcripts, transcriptions rather of their conversations and start to do some data analysis with them. So that's where we are. And then Dr. Johnson Anderson and myself, we will stew in the data for quite a bit of time and come up with the themes that emerge from that data and start on that, you know, that section of the report. I'm happy to take questions. Just real quick, I wanna point out that this, what Dr. Ladowski has described is the participatory action research model. So we recruited community ambassadors. Those community ambassadors as Katie indicated just in her description there, then met and discussed what would be the important questions to ask their community members and then now they're following through with that. So it's just fascinating when it works. And we're excited about, you know, the getting into the data. And just to echo Dr. Shabazz, they are included at all stages of the research process. So even drafting that informed consent form, right? It's about drafting it, getting their feedback, putting more into it based on their conversations. Even in terms of compensation, right? Our research participants will be compensated with a gift card, getting their input, the community ambassadors input about, you know, what makes sense, what would your participant's value in terms of whether it'd be restaurants or supermarkets or whatnot. So they're included at all phases of this research, which is highly intentional, but takes more time as a result. Thank you both for that. I'd like to, before I take a couple of questions, I see Ms. Pat, you had your hand up first, then Ms. Pereira, I just do want to acknowledge and thank Mr. Bachmann for being here. I meant to do that earlier. Given the fact this is the weekly meeting, it's a lot of attendance time and I certainly appreciate the commitment. And I know there are probably some things. Dr. Shabazz, you want to talk about relative to the work with the ambassadors and I'll come back to you in a minute, but I want to defer to Ms. Pat. Please, you have a question or comment and then Ms. Pereira. Actually, I would let Dr. Shabazz finish her presentation. I can wait. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. I'm here for the duration. So I don't want to hold up Katie. So if you all have questions for Katie, that would be great. Okay, I'll go then. Actually, mine is not questioned. I just want to thank someone, Jen, for recruiting ambassadors that quickly and what you guys have done so far. And I think it's a good thing that you guys, we assured the researchers, meaning the ambassadors that it's going to be confidential because I know it's a tricky issue. People are very fearful in this town for people to want to do this. And we are sure that by confidentiality, I think it's a good thing. Thank you guys for doing that. That's all I want to say. Thank you, Ms. Pat, for that offering. In fact, that's probably after Ms. Pereira. I'd like to maybe jump to that very quickly because it's related to what we're talking about here. Ms. Pereira. Yeah, so thank you so much. I mean, obviously all the work that you all are doing it sounds very intentional. I just have a couple of questions just in terms of who you all are interviewing, things like that, not in terms of identity or anything like that, but just numbers. So first, I guess, how are you all, because I was hoping that you'd get folks that of course speak other languages, folks that obviously, like you said, I was happy to hear that you, I know it's COVID time, but I'm happy to hear that they'll be able to do something in person, hopefully with the social distancing and things like that because I know a lot of the folks that I know I'm interested in hearing from, they're not gonna be able to do things by Zoom. So I guess that's my questions like around, translation interpreting services, how is that going? And then when you said that by Sunday, you're gonna be getting the interviews back, I guess, like what they all given like, okay, well, you need to interview X amount of people. Was that the way it happened and stuff? So this is a question I have. Also in terms of, yeah, like identities and cross intersections and stuff like that, how were you all identifying folks to interview? I think was my third question. So I just wanted to get a little bit more idea of that kind of overall sense of how you all are getting this information. Katie, if you have a moment and to stay because part of my presentation involves the recruitment of the community ambassadors and maybe you could speak to that. I just wanna say that real quick. So you don't leave. No, that's fine. So to answer those questions, which are great, thank you Ms. Ferrara. I would start by saying we were intentional in our recruitment of the community ambassadors so that we do have a multilingual group so that we would eliminate the need for interpretation because when you add an interpreter, it adds another layer of one complexity for research sake but also that confidentiality could be more compromised. So we have speakers, I think I mentioned who speak for additional languages and collectively speak for additional languages in addition to English. In terms of the way they will recruit, the community ambassadors will recruit what we're hoping for would be seven people each. Now the time constraint is a good limitation and we also are dealing with weekends that are filled with Passover celebrations and Easter celebrations on the bookends of their main data collection week. So the goal is seven. So we'll hope for that. In terms of the identities of the participants, one of the first questions that the ambassadors will ask the participants is to identify themselves racially, their ethnic group, their gender identity, some basic overall identity, what do I wanna say, markers so that we can then code for that, right? So we could code to see if there's trends amongst people who identify as male or trends amongst people who identify as Asian American, Pacific Islander, et cetera. Your other question, I think that's about it but it really is people starting in their own general circles but also a lot of outreach, like for those of you who were there at the event on Saturday, we were able to make an announcement, pass out flyers. So it's a lot of snowballing too so that it's not just this idea that, everyone they're interviewing is their friends or family members or whatnot, it's outreach. Sorry, just one, just also age in terms of making sure that there's some young people that are being interviewed. Yep, so like I said, we have a consent and a sent form which means we've got people under 18 whose parents have to consent in order for them to be involved in the data collection but our age range is ranging from teenage years to elders. I have a question for you. In terms of this, the ambassadors going out and getting seven folks, this blanket sounds like it's being spread pretty far and wide. All right, does it have enough coverage to ensure that we engage as much as humanly possible, the BIPOC community in this town and to get their responses and if there's any questions to whether we're not doing that, is there another level of intervention that you could think about going to that would elicit more responses or deeper responses? And I think this is feeding back into what Ms. Guerrero was talking about. This is pretty layered in terms of categories, the age, the gender, the gender identification. We could also think a little bit of if it's possible, at least on a subjective basis in some respect, even what economic levels we're looking at here, I think because that's a piece of it. So it's multi-layered, I'm sure you understand that. So I'm not preaching to the choir in that sense but the kinds of questions that are even raised are sometimes ones that would be more likely to be answered by certain groups and less likely to be answered by others depending on the phraseology of the question. So just saying all of that to say that's on my mind, I certainly leave it to you. That's why we have you all here to cover as much of the ground as we can and to ensure that we get the information. The last piece of that is if we're looking at Sunday as sort of the point where now you start looking at data, do you expect you'll have enough information at that time to begin making some, at least fairly substantial comments about, once you look at the data about what it is this community is giving back to us. And of course, it's a lot of the time, we don't know what the questions are but that whole thing. Or are you feeling like, hey, if we come up short, we're gonna have to dive back into this again? No, I'm confident we'll have a strong set of data. What the challenge will be is, as I said, stewing in it and really, I mean, if you can imagine people having conversations which at minimum will be half an hour, that's a lot of written narrative to go through. So it's a strenuous process, but as Dr. Johnson Anderson and myself say, we're excited to nerd out and really get into it because that's really the not fun part per se but the exciting part to see what themes emerge. And we're going to incorporate our ambassadors in that process just in a general sense, not doing what's called the grounded theory with us, which is going line by line and coding and coming up with codes and themes. It's technical talk but they will be providing us like based on the seven people you heard from, what struck you, what did you hear, what common themes came out from those. So getting their initial feedback first before we even dive into the actual data, the narratives. Is this going to be, even in this preliminary form or I'm not sure how long it's going to take you when you said my words that deep dive, you said stewing in it, right? You can't say stew to somebody who hasn't eaten dinner. Right there. But it sounds like you're going to spend some time with this and that's certainly understood by all of us to get this right. Yeah. The stewing process, how long would that, how long do you anticipate that taking and when might the community safety working group at least get a preliminary narrative of what you're coming up with? You will get it when the deadline says, I mean, we will spend as much time as we're allowed with it because again, you're going to code for different identities. You're going to code across, see what the themes are, see what people say. So you will have it on time, but it will be when we're allowed to provide it to you. Thank you very much. I mean, just to give you an idea of previous work I've contracted on, usually you're given by contractors like six weeks just to deal with the data sets, right? Not even the writing part, but like here's six weeks, here's a hundred interviews. We don't have a hundred, hopefully we'll get 35 to 50, but it's a tight, tight, tight timeline. Understood. And I want to say parenthetically around this to members of the community safety working group and any folks in our audience right now that this is an intense amount of work for a number of people who are committed to doing it and getting it to the community safety working group on time. And so we also appreciate the fact that every one of us has parallel lives going on at this time. And so the energy that's being put into this is doubly appreciated by everybody because of what we all face on a day-to-day basis. So we thank you for that. I just, Ms. Farrell, I'll come to you a second. I just wanted to, and I'll go to you if Dr. Shabazz wants to defer here. No, but- But what I wanted to make sure we get to is the question of privacy. That you wanted to talk about at this meeting. So if I could go to Ms. Farrell and then come back to you, is that okay? Thank you. It just kind of goes along with what we are talking about. But I know that obviously what you all are gathering right now is dealing with par. But I also wanted to ask like, because now since you all have been kind of working with this for a little bit, I know obviously everything's moving very quickly, which I appreciate is the, what about the other information obviously that we have, which is like the surveys, the two forums, the APD information that was sent to us and some of the other obviously other emails that we receive from community members. How will that play into, I guess, the par information? Will that be kept separate? Just so I have an idea. So- Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say in terms of part A, I know the main focus is to gather the community input, right? And so from my perspective, the important piece to start with will be the data from the interviews or the focus groups, which will prioritize people's voices. From there, what we can do is find our themes after looking at the interview data and the discourse, so to speak. We can, what's called triangulate, sorry, I'm getting technical again. And pull in the other data sets and see how it compares or contrasts with what the people say. And further our analysis through that additional information. Dr. Shabazz, do you have other things to add? No, that's what I was basically gonna say. Thank you, did a great job. So let's just move to the, thank you, Ms. Ferrer. You got two thumbs up from Ms. Ferrer, one for Dr. Lizowski and one for Dr. Shabazz. Even you didn't say anything, you got one. Dr. Shabazz, the privacy matter, I think you wanna just talk about that a bit. Yeah, can I share, screen? Sure, Mr. Bachmann is here. I'm sure he's involved in this conversation as well. Okay, so I'm going to share here, let's move this down. And all right, so we sent in an invoice and it's our first invoice to send in. And so we're trying to make sure we have the format right. And the comment came back from the town manager about having to put people's names, that type of thing, because it's an invoice to pay, particularly the community ambassadors. Of course, we're paying the community ambassadors as seven gens. So it's like we're being contracted, they're subcontracted. And because we have to invoice in order to get payment, I guess it's assumed because how the bid process works and I guess how the town works is that then like chairs or, I don't know, like cement, we would then put, this is, you know, do upon delivery. People who aren't chairs, they're not cement and we're dealing with some very delicate issues. And so I wanted to share with you how we are kind of tracking our data. And this is why, of course, I just pulled this off the internet, but I just wanted to share with you why privacy is important. It's already been said by Ms. Pat and by others, that there's a fear of police. There's not only a fear of police and these two articles are from 2014 and 2015. So we can imagine how heightened that fear is from 2020 and the present. And people are very reluctant to share their stories about police interactions. Even the people that we have grouped together for focus groups, many are unwilling to sit in a focus group together and share stories amongst their peers. And from what I'm getting in terms of those stories, it's like people are afraid folks may think ill of them in some way. They may misunderstand the interaction and the outcome. So folks are very fearful. They're also, they have hesitation about, you know, sharing information with the town because honestly, many people of color have not had positive experiences in this town, you know, from young people to grad students who are here just for, you know, temporary stay to folks who have lived here all their life. So they're very reluctant. And the way in which we got them to agree to participate was to one, have some integrity and be honest with them and to assure them that their personal information would not be shared. So I just wanted to make that clear. And as I said, our ability to really engage with these community members depends on protecting their privacy. These are some of the ways in which we are, however, recruiting and collecting their information and trying to assess, like in any hiring process, trying to assess what's your interest in this position. Okay, so Katie, you're still there? Yes, I am. So you and Dr. Johnson Anderson created this form. You wanna talk a little bit about it? I've just taken clips from it. I haven't taken everything. And all this information has been redacted, obviously. Sure, do you have the whole thing there or what is the? I have some of maybe three different parts. But if you just wanna talk about maybe the creation of this and why in order to collect certain pieces of information. Sure, thanks. So we, you know, as it's been asked, we've been looking, you know, during the recruitment process, we were looking for a diverse set of people who identify as BIPOC or AAPI to make sure we had representation and access to those affinity groups, if you will. We're not asking the ambassador of a particular identity to only reach out to that particular affinity group, however, you know, we imagine that people's outreach is going to be diverse and we're not requiring that they stick to like only AAPI identifying people if they themselves identify as AAPI. But we did ask for them to identify themselves racially, ethnically, what languages they speak. I don't know if there's other, if you wanna advance slides or whatnot. So that we could contact them. We asked them for their email, gender pronouns. Yeah, so Grace, go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna say pretty basic demographic information. You know, questions about what is it that, why do they wanna do this work? Are you an Amherst resident? We are limiting, you know, there's some people who are, who have stories, but you know, they're not in Amherst per se. So we're not obviously interested in if they're not interactions with the APD specifically. And then we asked them to commit to, you know, the four sessions that we had already scheduled to make sure that they could be available and also, you know, this particular week from this date to this date to make sure that they could do their community outreach. So it was much based on availability and if they matched a particular identity that we were looking to make sure we have representation from. And you also, yeah, so this, let's see, there was a statement of interest, right? That you also asked, yeah, what's been your own experience with town police? So they share that as well. And also the form did, the explanation was such that it explained the intensity of the work, right? It's a short amount of time, but it's time consuming, which they're, you know, realizing at this point if they haven't already. Yeah. Any questions about this form to our go one? Okay. Look at them. Don't see any hands I'm on a different screen right now, hang on. Okay. The other thing I wanna mention is that the majority, you know, I would even say I would imagine just based on what I know thus far the majority will be people who identify as BIPOC or AAPI. I believe there are a few people who identify as white but represent other groups such as people with mental health or a houseless population. Right. So we do have, I think Ms. Ferrer, you had asked about class diversity. That is represented within not only the ambassadors but within the folks who are being interviewed. And also like age diversity too and the ambassadors also. What was the last one? I'm sorry. Age diversity and the ambassadors. Oh yes. Yes. Most definitely. So I just wanted to share here, we ended up recruiting six instead of five because we were trying to assure some language diversity, ethnic diversity. And we ended up including a six person to assure that. And so we've labeled them here just for you to see these represent six different individuals working with us. Okay. Any questions with that other than that, I'm gonna go on to show you the work schedule that basically Katie and Dr. Johnson Anderson. Before you get into the work schedule, I wanna see if I know Mr. Bachman. Oh, you got your hand up. I was gonna go on you. Okay. I can't see, yeah. Because I have the screen up. Yeah. Yeah. So when the accounting gets an invoice, it compares it to the contract. And so there are two things that popped up on this one was the documentation. And they asked for names and addresses, but Dr. Shabaz says that doesn't make any sense. And I totally understand why. But that last screenshot you had would be totally, that was suffice I think to show six ambassadors hired because we just have to document that there are six ambassadors hired basically. So if you could send me a shot of that, that should suffice for that. And the other point being that the contract did call for five and not six. And so this is a bigger part of your contract is going to go to this, which I totally understand why you would wanna do that. But just be aware that this means you're not gonna have funds for something else down the road that you've already budgeted for. Right, no, absolutely. We're keeping account of that. Yeah. So if you can send me this screenshot, that would be ideal. Yes. Okay. So then maybe I don't have to talk about this, but if you're interested, I don't know, Katie, you wanna talk about your furious work schedule here? Is this even, can folks even see that? It's a little small. Yeah, it's confusing if you don't speak the language, but this is just, and I don't speak this language, although I'm multi-lingual. This is the analytics from a particular Zoom meaning that was held or maybe two, although I don't know if Terry separated that. Yeah, this is workshop two as it was given to me, but I put it as workshop one, because yeah, I don't speak the language. Okay. So we have redacted it so that only my name, Terry's name, Dr. Johnson Anderson's name, those are disclosed, but the other names are not. And from what I understand, it's like people getting on, I'm not quite sure actually how to read it. So it's actually the minutes, the minutes for where people are on the Zoom. So you could see that I think you all started at seven thereabouts, and you continued the Zoom until 920, right here. On the 24th. That's basically the important information with that. And then it continues. So just wanted to, I guess, give proof to what we've been doing. And we have our own Zoom account specifically to ensure people's privacy. We all work at other places that have Zoom accounts and we didn't want that to be an issue where folks' information would show up in some way. So we purchased a Zoom account to again, assure people's protection. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz. Dr. Lozowski. Other comments or questions from our working group? Ms. Pat. I'm just excited about, you know, how creative they are that they can get a privacy of accounts to ensure people's confidentiality. How lucky are we in our midst to have this type of experts and resources? Thank you, seven generations. Same, CSWG. I have to give all the credit to Terry Mullen because Terry has been running the whole technical piece and just awesome person. And I want to give credit to the community members who are out there sharing their stories. You know, it's a hard topic for a lot of folks. So to share good experiences, poor experiences, what not, that takes a lot of courage. And I'm grateful that they're willing to step up and that our community ambassadors are willing to collect those stories. Ms. Rivera. Yeah, I just want to echo, you know, everyone is saying thank you so much for gathering all this very important information and making people feel comfortable enough to share this because it's just, you know, really difficult like you all have said. And I totally agree. I mean, it has to stay private. You know, if we can't keep their patient confidential in terms of that type of situation that then the fires out and everything, you know, we won't be able to get the real information that we're trying to get, you know? And I know that people are afraid and they're afraid of retaliation. So I want to make them as comfortable as possible. Yes, Dr. Lozasi. I just also want to add that we have been again, intentional to make sure that we have a system in place in the event that the process is triggering for folks when they interview or after they interview and they're triggered by their memory or whatnot, the experience of the data collection process. So we have put into place and hired a counselor who also identifies as BIPOC to be on call for the duration of, you know, the data collection period as well as, you know, a week after or so. So that's a resource that people can reach out to because again, the participants are always number one in qualitative research. Oh wow. That's good. And I'm thinking down the line at some point as this work begins to accelerate a little bit more not only with the community safety working group but with the consulting group that we're connected to that we're going to have to come to a place where we say something publicly about our work. We don't want our work to disappear. We certainly have reports that we have to send out but we also want to be very transparent with our community because while all this work is going on, not everybody knows all this work is going on. So how do we, you know, just thinking forward a little bit at some point I'd like to bring this up with the community safety working group and also the problems. When can we articulate our stance at any particular point right now to show the community that we're working and moving forward? And I'm building on some comments I heard last time that we met that, you know, too often we do something and then it kind of falls off the page. But I think if we keep it in everyone's eyesight and mind sight, whatever we're doing it gets the attention of our community and I think they see our strategic intent in what we're trying to do. So just saying this, I'm foregrounding an opportunity to talk about this with not only within the group but also with you, Dr. Shabazz, Dr. Lozowski and others on your team to say when we might collectively present something to our community as a more broader communication in the media that says, hey, okay this is moving forward and there's a lot of people involved in this and it's not just this thing happening on the sideline that nobody knows about. So saying that would all do appreciation to everything that you're doing and everybody else is doing. So. Absolutely. I think that would be important. I mean, that's what this work is about. So inviting the community and presenting to them making sure they know about the meeting when it's presented is gonna be really important. It's a visibility thing for me at this point and how and when we do it is, I guess it's important. So let me just, I'm gonna circle back, Dr. Bachman. I mean, you could be Dr. Bachman and I'm gonna call you Mr. Bachman. Paul, whatever. Are we okay with the questions you and Dr. Shabazz had about confidentiality and the actual stuff or is that something? Yeah, I think that's that screenshot. The second to last screenshot was with Suvice to meet the needs of the accounting department. We can process that quickly. Great, we'll send that on tomorrow, no worries. One more thing, Terry, I think sent you all an email about the areas that we're working on on part B. Did you all have any questions about that? Should I bring that up on the screen? I would suggest you just be a good time to bring it up. I personally don't have any questions. I think there may be some questions from members of our group, but I don't wanna preempt that by moving forward. So Terry had other work tonight, so sent this on ahead and I appreciate that. It looks like the police review boards, Terry is pinpointing. I'm also working with Terry on this part. Alternative responder models we're working on, youth services and then peer specialist models. See, I guess that doesn't make it any more visible, does it? But that's what we're doing. Depends on your age. I wear my five footballs all the time. Let me let me stretch this strength of screen back here. Let me let me go to our working group. Let's see if there are any comments, questions, curiosities about this. I know it's appreciation for where you were going, Dr. Shabazz with looking at the municipalities, et cetera. And just to say, I do see you, Ms. Ferrara, I'll just, if you don't mind just a second. I do want to say that we have been doing a lot of work prior to your engagement. And we are talking about community responder alternative practices. So what that conversation is coming up soon in our discussion book, because we didn't get too far with it, but it's an important feature of ours. So just at that as background, but I know Ms. Ferrara, you had a question and then I think Ms. Bowman, you had your hand up as well, you left to Ms. Ferrara. Well, just quickly, I don't think I saw that email from Terry, so maybe if you all could share it with us, I just wanted to have it. So we sent it, yeah, we sent it to Mr. Wiley and Ms. Owen because of the, I don't know, if we send it to the CSWG email, does it go to everybody? Yeah, it goes to all of us. But I mean, you can send it to Mr. Wiley too. I was just saying if we can, maybe Mr. Wiley can forward it to us or whatever. I just want to have a copy of it. Yeah, no, I'm just- The best way, if I may say the best way to do that is to, because the emails are voluminous. I don't know about Ms. Owen, but if they are always CC to Ms. Moisten. Okay, so send it to Ms. Moisten and then she'll send it to everyone. Sure, you can CC me if you'd like, but I think it's important that Ms. Moisten gives because she will quickly turn that around as something that needs to be shared with the entire group. Okay. All right, so we'll do that. And hopefully folks will get it a bit quicker. Like I said, Terry wasn't able to be at the meeting tonight. So this is from the last conversation that we had about moving from the municipalities as the comparative model because then that limits what we're looking at in terms of services. And it seems that the CSWG is more interested in different services and different programs that are out there. Certainly they are in different municipalities, different cities and towns, but we can begin to look at them, particularly Terry has been really effective at looking at the data pertaining to these models, these alternative models, these services, et cetera, and seeing like for instance, how effective they are, not just in the community, but with BIPOC folks in that community. Do they have an adverse effect with BIPOC folks in that community? So Terry has been going through the research related to that, particularly like I said, we wanted to pinpoint which services and programs within the two months time to look at. We are aware at particularly the Kahootz one that you all have been looking at and a couple of others. So as we're doing our research, we're keeping in mind that you've already sent us a bunch of information on that and that you all have done a lot of research on that. And so our plan is to incorporate it into the draft and the final report as a comparison, but not to necessarily go so far in depth about it because you all have done the research on it. We wanna point out things that we have maybe found that are different from what you all have found, but that's what we're keeping in mind, that certain ones you all have certainly done a lot on already. We just, what we're saying, we don't wanna repeat the work that you've done, I guess, but include it. Yeah, just looking back and actually, I was referring, my comments, I was referring to something else that was sent by Terry. It was a municipality summary. That's the one I was referring to. This one, this document here, I just went and searched it because I had not really seen this. Oh, okay. So the municipality one was from last week. Right, yeah. I didn't see this one and I just actually found it in my junk mail. Oh, sorry. Okay. Because it didn't recognize, it's a filter I've got to change, but I didn't recognize the address. Okay. All right. It's not a big deal, but I'm saying, what I think, and what I'm learning little by little as we go forward too, and I asked Ms. Moison this question on another matter, is that these exchanges that we have, if they come between us, that she being sort of the grounding point in this as well, and that she also be part of in the loop for record keeping protocols, things like that. We can still have a conversation, but we have to keep town in the loop. Yep, for public record. No problem. For public record, yeah. Mr. Vernon Jones. And then, wait a minute, excuse me. Ms. Bowman was first. I'm sorry, Mr. Vernon Jones. The comment went longer than before. Sorry, Ms. Bowman. Welcome. Thank you. Your turn. All right. Thank you. I just wanted to make a comment because since our last meeting, I found out, like, so like one of the things that was brought up was a Cambridge, like that Cambridge has a task force that, and they've had a task force that's supposed to work towards, I can't even remember like how it was worded, but basically to work towards holding police officers accountable, I just wanted to point out that there's nobody on the task force last I heard. And this was like, I would talk to someone who was from that area in this past week, and there's nobody, there hasn't been anybody. So I think that's something that we should just keep in the back of our minds. There's gotta be a way, there's a reason for that. We need to figure out what that, we need to keep that in mind as we do things that when you have a police force and you have a task force that's supposed to be holding them accountable, but nobody wants to be on, there's a reason for that. So we need to keep, like as we're moving forward, we need to really be keeping, we need to keep that in our minds and how that sort of situation would be addressed, like whether we're looking at it as like, yeah, I don't know right now because I haven't really thought about it, but I just wanted to put that out there because I think it's very important for us to consider something like that, but clearly that still puts people, people feel still that they're at risk absolutely Tashina, just to speak to that real quickly in terms of the research and what the research has shown is that when you have task force commissions, those types of things and they have no subpoena power, then your citizenry figure out fairly quickly that it is not a good use of their time to be on these types of organizations when it's simply checking a box. So resident citizens are pretty savvy about this at this point and I think that's what happened to Cambridge. There are other models around the country that are revisiting the notion of commissions and trying to kind of reset the rules, renegotiate those types of rules with their municipalities to give them at least subpoena power when it comes to bad actors within the police force. That's very good to know. Thank you. That's all right. Thank you, Ms. Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz, Mr. Kern Jones. Yeah, I'll just comment in terms of these four program areas. I think it's an excellent list. I think you're totally on target and I assume this is being taken care of but since it wasn't mentioned, just to say that with regard to the alternative community responder programs, I'd like to make sure that some of what you report is ones that are not contracted out to a social service agency in town but are rather employees of the town and not under the control of the police department. And if possible, I'd love to know for us to have some more information about how dispatch is handled. We've already identified that we wanted it possible for community members to contact the community responders directly. They may also be dispatched by 911 calls but we wanna make sure people can be contacted directly by the community. And then it would be great to know, we've talked about wanting the community responders to be BIPOC or at least the teams to include BIPOC members. You know, has anybody succeeded in that? If so, how did they do it? How does it work? And yeah, I think those were the two two big things I was hoping might get included if you can. I'm sure that comes up amongst those for different services and programs as well. Dr. Lazowski and then Ms. Owen. I just wanna thank you all, I'm gonna head out but wanted to thank you before I do so. So thank you all for your ongoing support on this initiative. Thank you. Thank you for your work. It's my pleasure. Ms. Owen. I was just gonna say that the list looks great. I'm glad that youth services is in there. And I was going to say that she had her hand up. Who? Dr. Lazowski, but you already called her. I just saw it like- Yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah, does someone else have a hand up? I'm watching a bunch of different screens here and a couple of down screens. So Ms. Pat, thank you. Yeah, you know, the list looks fantastic. Thank you very much. I was last week, I would have, if you had presented this last week, I would have said, would you guys be willing to compare social services? But it seems like, at least for me, the issues I would like CSWG to work on is already being handled by the town manager, meaning the housing. Hopelessness, I think. If I get it correctly, Mr. Buckman, this is something you're looking into, correct? And housing? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so it's not a mute issue for us, I think. I could be wrong. So that's what I wanted to say. And thank you for wanting to do that project. I applaud you for that, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Thank you, Mr. Vernon Jones. Also just to add, hopefully, in support of those two comments too, I think, I guess I'd like to ask, as you're working forward, things seem to be moving forward in a very predictable and good manner and a very effective manner. I'm hoping if you see or anticipate any pitfalls that might be coming our way or any obstacles that we might wanna be thinking about collectively to try to overcome that we bring that to the group as well because we have to anticipate a lot, as you know, what might happen next. And I think we're benchmarking our way along this path with your very informative updates, certainly. But I want us also to be able to anticipate the kinds of things that may throw a sort of a stick in the spokes here as we're riding our bicycle down the street and that we can be able to talk about that in advance of that happening. So just putting that out there. And I know Ms. Pat, you had your hand up. I'm wondering. I don't mean to put additional work on Seven Gen. I was wondering if it's at fault possible for you guys to research with other services like having a diversity inclusion, whatever it is called, diversity equity inclusion program in other places to see how effectively that is working. It's one of the areas that CSWG identified by, you know, I don't mean to put more work for you guys, but it's an issue that personally I'm very passionate about and I'm hoping that in the time of time as to implement, keep my fingers crossed. Absolutely. I can only speak to what we've been hired and negotiated to do because I think we need to keep in mind, you know, you have two months to try to get some substantive data to tell the story of the need, right? So, you know, in doing that, I think there should be some further advocacy work, however, folks within the community and the CSWG would like to make that happen on diversity inclusion and equity. Doesn't have to be my company like I always say, but it could be someone else. But this town, I think would benefit as many towns, but particularly this community would benefit from a group that has experience in working with, you know, the administration, staff within the town, you know, at all levels on ways to be more diverse, to be more inclusive and to have equity, which is always the really challenging part of D, I and E work, right? The equity part. So, you know, I think we can make, we'll be able to make some conclusions as a CSWG, as a community after this research, but it could really benefit from a kind of analysis of where do we go next, right? Now that we have this information, what do we do with it and where do we go next? And that's where most municipalities, they have it, that is their end goal when they have this type of work done. You can look at Boston, you could look at Springfield, you could look at, you know, lots of different communities around here, that after they have this data and these reports, it's like, well, now let's make a plan to reach some goal, you know, that you have in mind. So I agree, but that would be down the road, I would think. I don't know. One thing in addition to what Ms. Pat is saying, and I'll go to you, Mr. Bernard Jones in a second, is that if you notice where we're getting input from, you know, it's coming from a lot of different places. People have sort of overlapping interests in this work. There are reparations for Amherst, there's Defund 413, the legal women voters is investigating a lot of different areas. We have, you know, our human rights initiatives and, you know, our, what is the thing of the town, Mr. Bahum, what's it called, Ms. Moyston? Is it core equity? Yeah, so I just saying this out loud because there are a lot of folks who are invested in this work around diversity, equity and inclusion. And we should pay attention to it in terms of how it impacts our work. Because we are, it's a very systemic kind of thing we're dealing with. I'm just gonna take a moment, if I may to highlight someone I know quite well, and he'd be the first to say it's not a perfect science, but Dr. Jeffrey Canada, who worked in Harlem, Harlem Children's Zone to bring about change within a particular neighborhood. And it wasn't about just one entity in that neighborhood. It was a large area, but he says, you know, what order for the entire neighborhood to improve or the area to improve is education, it's policing, it's the churches, it's the social services, it's the mental health, it's the health services, it's all of that. And if it doesn't all rise together, then you're gonna leave people and services out. So I think we've got to stay focused in terms of what our charge is. We're dealing with the Amherst Police Department and public safety, and especially as it focuses on BIPOC people, but it's not divorced from education. It's not necessarily divorced from mental health and health related issues, for example. So just saying that we're not on this island and I think whatever we do, we should pay attention to what other people are doing so that we're not duplicating work or duplicating research or duplicating these kinds of things that we're kind of on a path that's a collective path in a way while we keep our own focus in terms of our purpose and our charge. Just, I wanna just put that out there as to be thinking about it in the background. So Mr. Vernon Jones. Yeah, I wanted to ask CDSWG, do we have a mechanism for seeing that seven gen continues to get information about input we get from the community? I was just thinking about, you know, Vince O'Connor wrote to us in the last week suggesting the possibility of basically undoing and then totally recreating the police department as well as the civilian responders and sent us copies of the police contracts and Dr. Chavaz, I wanted to check, does your group anticipate reviewing the police contracts at all to see how it might, whether or not those contracts are an obstacle to any recommendations you might make or do we need to find some other way to get those analyzed? So we hadn't planned on it, but now that Vince O'Connor, I think Jennifer, you've been sending us information from the meeting, I believe, so we've been... I sent them the email that I sent that you guys, I see see them on that. Yeah, good. So Jennifer has been doing a good job at sending us that and she sent the meeting from last week as well. So this is like new information and on the part B side where Terry and I are over that, Terry and I did consider looking at it to incorporate it. How much it will be incorporated, we'll see. I mean, there is a critique that we are looking at within all police departments regarding the union, regarding their contracts and how much citizen commissions or task force or review boards, I mean, they're called different things, how much can they be a part of making decisions, right? In terms of those contracts with the police. So that we are including in terms of the commission work. But now since it's been brought to our attention, we'll look at it, but I'm saying it's part of a larger, a larger part of the looking at commissions in general. Yeah. Great, for sure, for sure. Ms. Ferreira. Yeah, and once you mentioned that, Dr. Chavez, I am interested in that in terms of the oversight committees, because I've looked at some of them and as Ms. Bowman, as Tashina had said earlier, some of them either they don't have people on it or they only have like one person on it. So we want to know what's going on with that. And also I want to look at not just the traditional oversight boards, there's a lot of oversight boards that are very traditional. I'm sure that that has evolved because some of them have been in place, like even the one in Springfield, it's been in place for years, but I don't see a lot changing there. You said, I'm saying it's very traditional. So again, and I used that last week, like outside of the box kind of thinking in terms of that, because I don't want some of the same old, same old that has been in place because it hasn't worked. So what else is out there that possibly is working and is innovative, is new, and is bringing about some actual addressing some of these issues and has the power to do it, has the power to do it, because a lot of them don't have the power. They don't have the power at all. And that's why they're afraid. That's why there's no one out there. Yeah. So there's one in San Diego that we're looking at and you might subscribe to their newsletter, San Diego, San Diegans for racial justice, I think it's called. And they put through, I think a city ordinance or something having to do with creation of a commission set. So they actually put it on the ballot and vote it to empower this group. So there are some interesting models out there. That's one we're looking at. And I think we mentioned the one in Oakland, even though it seems very far out of what an Amherst is, they actually are one of the more empowered ones having to do with the residents and citizens. Not perfect, but they are. Hi, Ms. Pat. So I'm a number woman. I like numbers. And I did actually look into the town budget. Obviously everybody knows that the APD budget is like out of whack. Even with their overtime, I was wondering, and this is piling more work to the 7th Gen to, like, you know, compared to other places where they're getting money to implement their new alternative public safety. I said that because of last week, the town money that told us that we're quarter million in deficit. I believe I was listening to one of the council's meeting or I stumbled into something on the website, whatever, but there is something that is called free cash, like extra money that the town has, which is more than four million dollars. So, you know, things like that. I'm just curious what other municipalities are doing to pay for public alternative public safety, but I stand to be corrected. Town manager, if that's incorrect, but my understanding is that we have like extra money set aside somewhere, is that savings money or I don't know? Mr. Bachmann, I think that's the question directed clearly to you. Yeah. So if you would mind if you want to take a stab at that one. Sure. Please. Yes. So there's two sources of funds, typically one is this town stabilization fund, which is money that's set aside purposely by the town, which is in essence a savings account. And at the end of every year, there is what's called free cash. And the thing that people say is ain't free and ain't cash. It's a sum of what has been turned, the Department of Revenue certifies how much money was turned back from budgets that did not get spent, plus revenue that came in, that was above what was projected. And that creates a sum of money that changes from year to year. It's not a savings account or anything, but funds can be appropriated out of that for special needs or something like that. But it typically what the town does is it creates a budget every year and out of that budget, based on how we allocate all the revenue, the school gets some, the library gets some, the town gets some, and we cover all the expenses and it all built out of that budget. So. So I guess my, let me make myself much clearer. I guess my question is for 2021 fiscal year, that will be ending in June. If indeed we have more than $4 million per cash, could we use that money that was certified by, you know, by the government, yeah, to spend that sum of the money or all of the money for alternative public safety services that CSWJ is recommending. Is it possible? I think the answer is yes. Okay, that's what I, yeah, okay. And one other glaring thing that I noticed was for social services for this current fiscal year was actually cut while the APD budget went up. So I just want to put that out. So that tells us what, you know, where our priority lies. I do know that, you know, we have pandemic and we shut down and perhaps, you know, we didn't need much of social services, but to have the lowest, not the lowest, the most vulnerable population in our town having the services that are cut, you know, says a lot about the people that we elected, you know, to manage our budget. That's all I can say. I don't want to say too much, not to get myself into trouble. As long as you don't give Dr. Chavez more work beyond her contract, I think you're okay. But- I'm joking. I can say whatever I want. I can speak my mind, but- Absolutely. I love numbers and I'm looking at these numbers. I'm like, oh boy, okay. Well, here's something to think about in support of what you're saying, Ms. Pat. I think we're, you know, let's roll back for a minute. We're trying to, this group, this working group has a tremendous charge and responsibility in front of it. And this charge basically is to make recommendations that are substantially different and potentially substantially more impactful and effective. Around both the police department and the whole delivery of safety services in the town of Amherst. We're not just talking about making some numbers shifts. We're not just talking about making some, you know, scripting some things out into programs and having things change. We're talking about a mindset shift in this town. And I think we have to remember that in close proximity to what we're doing as a group. This town has been functioning a certain way for a long time and to become, to get out of some of the trenches that we're in to improve services is not just simply changing a program or a program but also changing a mindset. And I think we have to be very clear about when we look at creating our budgets, what are our priorities? And this is known to all of us. If you wanna know what the priorities are, you follow the money, okay? You follow the money. And I wanna say this too, and at the same time saying that we have to be as a community service working group more educated around how town government works because all of us, including myself, doing all the nuances of town government. Sometimes those hands are tied because of certain particular things that we're doing. However, if we're talking about changing things, change like that and change in mindset is not gonna come within a moment. It's gonna come with setting a firm foundation, I think. Certainly with what we're doing right now but also getting some sustainability behind it so that it doesn't disappear. And I think Ms. Bowman mentioned this last week. I don't wanna speak for you, Ms. Bowman, but as far as what you're saying because there's a lot of emotionality around that because I think how many, we can't tiptoe around this but we have to be purposeful and deliberate around it. We can't fall in love with the problem. We have to address the problem. And I think one of the things where we're talking about doing is, having Dr. Shabazz in seven generations and bring us information we need. We're talking about us as a group meeting our charge by being able to craft recommendations that are gonna change the mindset of the town if you feel what I'm saying and begin to take the actions that are going to stimulate some activity. I don't want us to get stuck in the moment of the pain of the moment. I want us to get unstuck in a way that says, hey, look, let's put some things out there. Let's stay what we want. Let's stay what we need. Let's get the research behind it and let's craft something that's gonna make a difference for this town. Otherwise, it's gonna go back to some other point we were in history where we said, hey, this was great. We did our report in June and guess what? We forgot about it at some point. I just would hate to see that happen for this group after all the work we put into it. So our responsibility, I'm just reminding us of our charge is to come up with recommendations and the way to do that is to be able to craft coherent and sustainable statements about what it is we need to do and how we need to monitor it going forward, period. We have to kind of stay with it. We can't digress from this right now. And I think that's where Dr. Shabaz and her group is leading us too. So we have to stay on point, if you will, and understand how our government works, whether we agree with it or not, understand how it works and begin to work within it to make the changes that will be sustainable over time. You follow me? I, that's just my sense of it. And I would hate to see us not do that and lose focus of where our vision is going as a group. So, wow. So let me just, let me pass the offering plate around the church right now to see if anybody wants to donate to me, what I just said, but if you don't, that's cool too. Anyway, that's my comment, Ms. Ferrera. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I definitely hear that. You know, I mean, obviously we have to keep this moving forward. But yet, and still I guess what I'm saying is that we have to make sure, because like you said, I mean, this charge that we were given is very important, it's critical, right? When in critical times, you know, the George Floyd trial is going on right now, right? In terms of, you know, what happened to that man, you know, that he was murdered and the fact that these killings and murders are continuing. It's not anything that, you know, for me it's more so about just stop the hate, you know what I'm saying? Just stop the hate against BIPOC, AAPI, anyone that falls within the press group, you see what I'm saying? And it's just like, and so that's a reality that's happening. So for me though, I want to have all the information, right, because I don't want to shortchange this town. You know, I don't want to shortchange the BIPOC and the AAPI and all the communities that are impacted, you know, on the daily basis by what occurs, you know, with the police and all those that are in power. So I want to know what is actually, what we're actually able to do? I need to have the information, right? I can't function and I can always be for myself, right? I can't function blind because, you know, my thing is I'm going to be very true to what the charge is and what I was given and I'm going to take it to heart, right? So when I do that, I need to make sure that, you know, I can be that and like what Ms. Pat said, right? That she's going to be honest. I need to be honest too in terms of these things. And so we need to know, and I appreciate Ms. Pat bringing up the money, right? And really breaking it down in terms of, you know, because we need to know those things so that we're able to do good, honest work. I'm not, I don't want to shortchange these folks, you know, we've been dealing with too much for too long and this is a time for us to do something different, you know? So I hear it, but I'm just kind of like, you know, we need to have the information and we need to be able to make a change and do something different, you know, be able to do that. I'm not here to do the same old, same old. I'm not. I don't think any of us are. And if there are no other comments, I do want to respect the time that you've given us Dr. Shabazz and Dr. Ozasi has left already, but to thank you for what you're doing and we look forward to next week's update. Certainly as a point person with both Ms. Owen and I are sharing, I'm the lead on it of course. And if I have too many grandkids to deal with what I'm dealing with right now, but she'll take over. But it's, we appreciate and respect and honor what you're trying to do. And we want to thank you for what you're bringing to us. It's been informative, it's been great. I want to release you from this meeting if you need to go and if you want to stay, you're absolutely welcome to stay. Thank you so much for your work and I look forward to talking with you all again next week. I'll be sending you a new invoice, Mr. Backelman. Okay, take care. Thank you, Dr. Bazz, thank you. Thank you. Any post comments to that discussion before we move to the next issue? Are you raising your hand Ms. Moisten? We're just waving to Mr. Backelman. No, I think I was fiddling a little bit. But I will say, but I will say that the process of, I mean, I've only worked or seen the work of consultants in different manners, but the process that we're going through over this is so lifetime learning and to see how it unravels. So I'm so incredibly thankful for being able to be part of this group. You guys already know where my heart is at and to walk through these steps with you guys. So that was that. Welcome. I saw a hand on the right side of my screen. Ms. Pat, it was you, it was you. Thank you everybody for your comments, very meaningful. Actually, what I want to say is, you know, our next item, I was wondering if we can rearrange this so that we can get to items that we didn't get to last week, like planning for the meeting with Chief Livingstone, you know, discussing letter to counsel and then perhaps do Cress chat the last, like move it over. I'm not trying to do your job, Mr. Wally, but I'm just concerned that if we start. All right, no, I wish you would do my job. If we start with Cress, we won't get to other items tonight. Ms. Pat, you want to do my job? No way. Mr. Please, you can just do the job. You're doing a great job. I love my people. Great job. Well, let me just say this and you like numbers, so maybe you'll appreciate this. There are only 19. Are you trying to quiz me? I'm not responding. 19 minutes left in this meeting and last week we were overdrawn because we had a lot of important issues to talk about and I think we got a lot done. If I may, let me just, let me say this and I could literally take this to a different level all together with respect to police. So the inviting key Livingstone, I would like for us to, if we can, within two minutes or three minutes or four minutes decide when we'd like for him to come. We can figure out the, how that we construct that, but I want to push this because I think he's a person and that's a department that's at the focus of all of this work and we haven't yet to hear from him yet. And I think we may have some information to gain from him beyond our question. So all I'm asking if the committee, if the working group can maybe think about when might we invite him? He's open to come anytime we want to invite him. I want it to be informative and an engaging conversation with him that might inform our work. That's it, Ms. Moisten. I just need to be excused for a moment. I just, last time I stepped away, like you guys called on me for the first time out of like an hour and a half. So I just don't want that to happen again. So I will be right back. We will call on you. Thank you. So any, any reactions to my offering? I mean, yes, Ms. Pat. Next week too soon for people, I'm flexible. I don't know. I'm just, I'm putting that out there because it's been on the agenda for two consecutive meetings. And I don't want to interfere with the path and the process we're going on right now. So that's why I'm bringing it up for discussion. Ms. Pereira. Yeah, I guess, well, I mean, we went into a whole discussion last week and I understand that obviously we don't have enough time to get back into that discussion, but we do need to get back into that discussion and discuss it. So I don't want that to be dropped. You see what I'm saying? We only got through the first part of the whole crest thing. We haven't even gotten through, I mean, in terms of that sheet, which goes into other things. So we need to discuss that. So my thing is this, right? I get it about us trying to bring Chief Livingstone in, but I'm just like, is it more important for us to get this conversation done before we bring them in? Or is it not important to have this conversation done and bring them in? I guess that's why I'm not saying I have a clear answer. My thing is I know that I want us to have finished going through this sheet. And so I'm kind of like, I'm feeling kind of choppy right now, I guess. It's like, we didn't finish our conversation. Now we're going to go and talk to Chief Livingstone. I'm feeling a little bit like tugged. So, but I don't know. What do others think? I'm feeling the bounciness as well, Ms. Bauman. So, as you know, I left, sorry. I left at the meeting. Can you take that? I know where it looks for me. So I don't understand why right now we would be even talking to Chief Livingstone because we have other things that I think are very, so much more important to take care of. And we're not taking care of them. I'm sorry. I mean, I'm not trying to be rude, but I feel like there's not a real watch on how much time people are talking. And I think that's really, that's why we're not completing things. So, no, I don't think we should be talking to Chief Livingstone and we need to start keeping time on how long people are talking because it's almost seven 30 and I'm logging off at seven 30 because I have to take care of my family. Ms. Patton and Ms. Owen. I'll let Ms. Owen go because, you know, I've been talking many times. I think it would be, I am kind of like in between because I don't want to just jump into the, talking to the police chief without finishing the Crest Chart thing. I think it would be most effective if we did, if we spent next week's meeting doing the Crest and then maybe the week after inviting Chief Livingstone. Thank you, Ms. Patton. So now I can go. I don't have any particular preference whether it's next week or any other day. So going to switch you, I think the Crest discussion was very robust last week. I'm just wondering, you know, is that the most efficient way to discuss this? So, you know, like some people said they never read it. Some people said they didn't submit anything and so people are on different levels of press. And so, I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss, but I'm not sure if it's the best way to spend our time on the Crest. I mean, we should discuss that, I don't know. If I could respond just to that and then I'll go to Ms. Pereira. Let me reiterate. I'm not pushing a conversation with the Chief. It came up early on and we keep deferring it on and on. I want to reiterate that Chief Livingstone said he will meet with us whenever we want to meet with him. I wish I'd be clear about that. So that does not have to happen next week. It doesn't happen half a week after. If we have, if we determine as if we have other priorities which are fine with me and certainly fine with him. And it is clearly we have a lot to do relative to our contract and working with the community safety, I mean, with the seven generations movement collective. So if we can set that aside for a minute, I'm not pushing that as a need to meet with him or even discuss it right now. I just, let's keep that in the background for a second. Okay, let's get back to the Crest piece. A lot of effort was put into that in terms of discussion, creating a grid, taking a straw poll on what's going on and receiving commentary about it. And last week, we had a conversation that took an extensive amount of time and we only got like that far in that. So given that, let's take the Chief Livingstone off the page for a second. Each week we're having a conversation with and an update from our consultant group. That's fixed and we need that, we need to have that interaction with them. So on. The rest of the agenda is open for us to build. And if we want to really get into, go into depth on this Crest chart and the feedback, I suggest we have two items next week. One, our update from our consultant group and two, our work on the Crest. The other item about the town letter, we can take a five minutes to talk about that, but the folks who are working on that can continue to craft that and talk about that and how we might want to move it forward. But I'm looking to shrink this agenda in terms of topics, but increase it in terms of depth. So if the depth needs to be around our consultant group and our Crest work, let's try to think about that. Comments, Mr. Bernard Jones. Well, I'm fine with doing Crest next week. I do think we should see the police chief before too much longer. Partly, I think his input about Crest may be relevant. I mean, we'll design it the way we want it, but I think he will have information that'll be useful to us about that. But let's do Crest first. And I'm not attached to our sticking with the straw pole or the grid or anything. Maybe it would be more useful at this point for each member of the group to write in what are the key decisions you think we need to make? What are the key things you want to advocate for? And if everybody would do that work in the next few days, maybe Mr. Wiley, you could organize a way for us to have the meeting. I don't think it needs to be tied to the paperwork we had before. I do have a comment to make later though on the letter to the council. Right, yeah. Ms. Ferrer. I mean, okay, now I guess I do have something to say in terms of this, because, you know, I put a lot of time into filling out this grid. You know what I'm saying? So why can't we just tell people, you know, read up, you know, if you have any other comments, submit it, you know, and let's get through this grid. The grid is not just on Crest. It's on Crest, it's on APD, it's on the budget. And it goes into a whole bunch of other things, you know? I mean, you know, I took the time, you know what I'm saying? A couple of hours on my weekend to fill this out and to put the comments in, you know, then all of a sudden it's kind of like, okay, let's just throw that out and let's just throw in a couple of points. No, I mean, let's get through this. You know, we're gonna have to get through it. It's gonna bring up emotions. It's gonna bring up stuff. This is the work. This is the work. This is it, you know? We gotta get through this. Let's get this done. You know, like next week, maybe we can say consultants, you have 15 minutes because anyway, they're getting a lot of data back in. They're not gonna have anything to really share at that point, you know? 15 minutes for that, the rest of the time, we go through this grid and we hash it out and we talk about all the different points, you know? Because, you know, for me, we keep on reinventing and those types of things. Let's just get through it. Let's just do it. Well heard. Ms. Pat. So basically we're saying the same thing, but in a different way, like our approaches. I think the challenge sometimes, and I've had times when I didn't have time to read some stuff that I think is challenging for our group sometimes when we have a, I mean, I have to speak the truth. Let me speak my mind. If we're given assignments to do and I know we all have busy lives and if people didn't read some stuff and we start discussing it, it's just, it make it very challenging to move conversation forward. I hear you Ms. Farera, you spend weekends doing this. I spend some time too, you know, responding back, reading it as well. There are people because of their schedule or whatever, haven't even read it. And so it makes our discussion very, very challenging is my point. I'm not saying that we shouldn't discuss it, but I'm concerned like, is it the most efficient way? I would love to see, you know, our members actually respond to it. So that when we're discussing, we are all almost on the same page. That's the point I'm trying to make. I'm not saying that we shouldn't discuss it. It's not what I'm saying, but I'm just saying that there are people who haven't had time to read it and it makes group discussion very challenging. Thank you, Ms. Penn. I see Ms. Walker's hand is up. I wanted to recognize Ms. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Wiley. I just wanted to offer sorry, just another perspective because I think it would be very important for us to continue the Crest conversation because I think that really gets to the brunt of our work and like the final result of our work and we are clearly gonna need really in-depth conversation through that, that may even take more than one meeting. So I definitely think we should continue with that. I didn't have time to fill out the comments on the sheet, but I did read over and have done significant thought about it and have done other like prompts throughout the work of this group in regards to the same thoughts and the same work. And so like I'm fully prepared to have a discussion on it, but I don't have anything written down to send you guys because I also found it really difficult to put my thoughts onto the document because a lot of what I have or my questions require feedback from the group. So like my concerns, like I want to hear feedback and like I don't know how to put that on to the paper. It's easier for me in a live conversation with all of you guys to come up with a result. So like I do like the grid in terms of structuring the conversation just so that we can be like, this is point A, this is what we're gonna talk about now, but like if other things come up, I think that's fine for us to talk about other things because we're really trying to come up with something unique here. So I think we should just, I mean, I think it's useful, but I don't think it's necessary. Just in response to that, Ms. Walker, thank you. We have within this group various styles of communicating clearly. And some of us are better in the moment, sharing ideas and commentary, some of us are better in reflecting and writing and those kinds of things. So what I'm gonna suggest is, well, in terms of structuring the next agenda, that we, I think it's Pat, you said this, but talk to the point person along with Ms. Owen, talk to Dr. Shabazz and say, here's a timeframe we'd like for you to report back to us next week. Give us an update. If they can give us anything in writing ahead of time, that would be great because then we'd have a chance to absorb it, but that we fix the time and then go right into the discussion of press. And anticipating discussion of press so we don't get lost in the moment, like we did last time. It was a very important conversation, but you see we didn't get too far. I'd like to work with someone on the working group to say, could we propose a strategy for how we wanna carry out that discussion so we make some progress and we don't get stuck in a rut in any particular place because going back to the top of the meeting, the comments is that we have to be, that will be, I didn't actually say this, but the more results are oriented right at this moment. We have some things we have to produce. And so I certainly, as the chair don't mind spending time discussing and talking about this, but we have to come out with some outcomes at the next time. So those two things I think would be the substance of our agenda for next week. Let's get this done. Let's get to have a discussion. Let's get it done. Let's get it moving forward and put some meat on the bones of this thing that we've been working on so hard for a long time. So those are my suggestions. And I know we're coming toward the end. I just, hold on Ms. Bowman, I see you. I see you, don't walk away. I wanna get back to the comment, Mr. Vernon Jones about the letter because that's another thing that's kind of backgroundish for us. So that's my sense that we get to this, get something moving, get something done. And so Ms. Bowman, I'll take your comment, please. Ms. Bowman? Nevermind, I'm about to log off anyway, so nevermind. Okay, if you have something you wanted to share, you don't have a chance now, feel free to email me or Ms. Moisten and we'll make sure it gets heard. Any thoughts about what I'm proposing for next meeting? Okay, would someone like to work with me to craft a strategy for how to have that discussion? Just as a way to give us a foundation for the discussion. So we're not coming in blank. Don't leave it to me because it'll be a disaster. Ms. Ferreira, would you be willing to do that with Mr. Miley? I can. Thank you. Can work on it, Mr. Wiley. She said can, she can say will. There's a big difference between those two words I've noticed in my career. No, I will, I will be my pleasure. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna have to have coffee with you, Ms. Ferreira. At some point, okay, so the two of us will put our heads together. Nowadays is Zoom coffee. I'm not Zoom and coffee, okay? You have to just wear a mask and sip through it, all right? So thank you, Ms. Ferreira. We'll work on that and you and I will just we'll have a conversation about it first and we'll come up with something. And I hope you'll trust that what we're offering you is not gonna be something in terms of time, not gonna be something that we're going to go back and see if you approve of it. You wanna edit it, whatever. We're gonna come up with our best thinking on it. We're gonna present it to you and we're just gonna go for it. Okay, we're gonna have time to do that kind of stuff at this point. So thank you, Ms. Ferreira. Ms. Pat. Thank you both for volunteering to do this, Mr. Wally and Ms. Ferreira. So can we at least tonight set a date for the chief to meet with us? I'm not fixed to any particular date. What I'm thinking is that if we present our recommendation without APD input, I mean our credibility will be out like. Exactly. So I really, really hope that we get them in here with us to chat. So if we can at least set a date tonight, I don't care, I don't have any particular date in mind. And neither does the chief and if I can just roll back Ms. Ferreira for a second, I wanna go back because I wanna get this and we're at the end of our time already. And Mr. Vernon Jones wanna say something about the letter and I wanna say something about the letter to the town too. Can we get that brief discussion or input in and then go back to you, Ms. Pat, if you don't mind. So Mr. Vernon Jones, what were your comment about the letter? Well, I had new thoughts this week. My guess is that the town council doesn't know as much about the town's finances as the town manager does. And they're aware that we've been meeting with the town manager right along and they're waiting to see the town manager's budget. And I think part of the town council and certainly a lot of people in town are waiting to see how much defunding the police we recommend, you know, if defunding means transferring resources from the police department to social services. And it seems to me that we ought to be having that discussion among ourselves rather than asking the town council to come up with money for what we wanna propose. Yes, and comments, Ms. Ferreira? I get that, but I guess I would need to get more information for Mr. Barkman because, you know, I need to find out what money we have in order to be able to do what we wanna do here. I think that's why we were going to the town council was to ask them about the money situation. So if Mr. Barkman is saying he knows more than the town council, then we just need to talk to Mr. Barkman, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I just need to know where's the money. You know. Come Mr. Vernon Jones said that. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, Mr. Barkman, I'll come to you in a second. I know Ms. Walker had her hand up prior to you. Oh no, I just wanted to say that I agree with Mr. Vernon Jones and now also Deborah that, but that's a like great new thoughts and that we should definitely follow up on that. And I'm curious to hear what Mr. Barkman has to say. And here he is, Mr. Barkman. So I think those are really good points. I think that you're on the right track on this. So the, I think the community safety working group should be recommending what it thinks is the right programmatic approach to what it thinks is best for the town. And then say, go, town manager, here's what we think. Here's, here's, here's, you should go fund it. It's not your job to find the money. It's the town manager's job to find the money. Now I wanna make sure that you understand there's a distinction between what you recommend and what the town manager may recommend, but you have a unique position because you will be giving a report that's outside of the budget process directly to the town council. I'm hoping that you're willing to do that. And I think that that will create this sort of dynamic within the public to create that conversation. So if you say, whatever, I'm not gonna even speculate, but if you say something that's different than what I put in the budget, there will be a place for that conversation to happen, which leads me to a very small thing. In January, we asked for two additional months from the town council for the report. And our report had been January 31. We asked for March 31. I would like, I need to ask the council on Monday for an additional, I'm not sure, 30, 45 days. And I think our alignment is with the consultant is to have everything done by April 30th. So I'm thinking to ask, asking for 45 days. So you have a couple of weeks to process additional things, to finalize things. Does that make sense? So I just, I wanna be on track and sync with you when I put that forward. So I'll also ask for 45 days additionally. But I think that that will give you time once you complete your report to get on the council's agenda and say, you know, town manager, ask for more than we thought or less than we thought or exactly what we thought. And here's why we think we did the work and here's what you think we think you should be thinking about. But wait, just a quick little follow-up for Mr. Bachman. So when you say that we have that extra 45 days, I know it's for the report to report to the town council but what about for the budget? I thought you had to get the budget in by May 1st. I do. And so that's, I'm listening and I really want you to have that conversation about the crest soon. So I think that's really the pivotal point for what we're developing here. Yeah. And that's why I was thinking in terms of, you know, in terms of our next week conversation, I think it'll motivate people because that's what I was gonna say is just like, Mr. Bachman needs to have his budget in by the 1st. So we need to have something to him by the latest, what like the 28th or like we have a meeting on the 28th and Wednesday, we'd have to have something to you by the 28th. So then we wanna meet with the police. So anyway, Mr. Wally, so that you can kind of work backwards and kind of see, okay, we have a couple more meetings. This is when we have to do bop, bop, bop, bop. Exactly. At the top of this meeting, I remember me saying we have to be really more purposeful about what we're doing because we can get lost in very important conversation but sometimes it's not productive in terms of where we need to go. As we understand the context, we understand the need, the urgency and everything. Let's put our energy into creating these kinds of next steps that are gonna move this process forward. So I appreciate and on what you're saying on this career. So we'll do that next meeting. I wanna go back to you, Ms. Pat. I didn't forget you about the meeting with a proposed meeting with Chief Livingstone. So you asked about the possibility of setting a date to meet with him. I am open as long as it's not next week. I'm open to hear suggestions from our working group as I feel a responsibility to get in touch with along with Mr. Boncoman with Chief Livingstone to have him present here with his staff to have a conversation with us. So any suggestions on the meeting time? Not next week. Ms. Owen. Looking at the calendar, maybe we could meet with him the week April 21st just so we have two meeting times to talk about Crest just in case the conversation spills over and we don't finish everything next week. Just a suggestion. Appreciate it. Thank you. That's what I'm asking for. Does that align with other people's thinking or do you see it sooner? Ms. Walker has her hand up. Yeah, I'm looking around. There it is. I just saw it on the thing yet. Ms. Walker. Thank you. So I agree with Brianna. I think that would be a good date to set because I think also that it would be important for us to set some time before we meet with them to think about what exactly, like are we just gonna be asking them to do a presentation or do we have specific questions that we want to ask them? Because I think it would be helpful to come up with those questions ahead of time because we do already have a bunch of answers to questions that we already sent to the police department. So like what in addition to that, do we want to know? I think would be helpful to come up with before we meet with the police. So I think it would be smart to give ourselves two meetings before meeting with them. No objection to that. In fact, I'd be happy to reissue. There's so many people working on different things. I forgot who, was it you Brianna who worked with me or with you, Ms. Walker? I worked with Ms. Carrera on sort of trying to set the format for the meeting. I can reissue that to folks. And if we can agree on the 21st, that's fine with me. I'm good with it. If everyone else is good with it, let's set it. We'll send out that request again for feedback on the format of that meeting and the questions we might want to ask. It also gives me an opportunity to talk with, because I know Mr. Bachman you've been working with Chief Livingstone to sort of, you know, choreograph how that's going to take place and what we really want to have a conversation about. And that'll be clear in the communication that I sent out. So any objection to the 21st, let me put there. Okay, before I go to Ms. Pat, you want to comment? Yeah, I have no objection. The date is fine with me. Just to be clear, so we're not sending anything like that to the town council, correct? We're not doing that. It's a mute issue now, right? We're not going to do that right now. I think we're going to take a step back and reflect a bit and on advisement from the working group. And so those of us working on the potential communication with the town council, we'll keep that on the sideline and in case at some point we need to go back to it, but we'll re-engage that process at some point. We have bigger fish to fry. Yeah, I just want to be clear. I agree that we shouldn't send them any letter. I just want us to be very clear that we're not doing that. When have you not been clear, Ms. Pat? Ms. Ferrer? Yeah, just to be clear too. So we'll have, so we have our meeting next week that we'll talk about the Crest Grid and then possibly even the 14th. Then we meet with the police chief while the 14th, I'm assuming we'll just kind of finish prepping for the meeting for the chief on the 21st too. And then we meet with the chief and then we need to get something to Mr. Bachman, then by the 28th, right, Mr. Bachman? Yes, correct. Okay, so by the 28th. So are we all on board that that's enough time that we got this? Can we? I love that question, we got this. It depends on who the we is, you know, Ms. Ferrer. We know how we gets to find. Ms. Pat? Mr. Bachman, can we submit our report to you on the 29th? Too close? Mr. Bachman. So what's important to me is not so much where it's important to what you're actually recommending and the more clarity I get on that the sooner, I mean, the 28th is really late. I mean, if you know on the next week or the week after where you're headed on this, that would be very helpful. I think we'll have a pretty good indication of where we're going, certainly. And I want to say we have to be very conscious, again, going back to the comment, to understand how, for all of us, to understand how town government works. Will we like it or not, whether we agree with that, but to understand how it works so we know how to work within it to get our needs met and to communicate effectively. So that's pretty much it. Are we all good? Paul Hartz and mine's at ease. Okay. Let's move forward then. Upcoming events, any? I'm not even going to look at you, Ms. Moyston, today. If there are no upcoming events, if you do have some, Ms. Moyston, and if you do, any of us, if you do have some, please email them to Ms. Moyston. We can communicate them to our group. So the Human Rights Commission will be celebrating their, I think it's the 15th Human Youth Hero Awards. So in the meantime, though, we'll be shortly collecting names of youth who have done extraordinary acts of kindness. That can be anywhere from sticking up to the kid in your classroom that or virtually, I guess this year, picked on to kids who have food, food drives on their initiatives that they create food drives, initiatives on their own, whatever it may be. But it's always a very exciting time to celebrate our youth. Is there a town linked to that, Ms. Moyston, that we can all go on? Because I'm sure some of us know some. Yeah, there will be. I'm just putting that in your head. We're not quite there yet, but that's upcoming. And we usually, in the next few weeks, we'll be sending out the notifications to have people send in nominations. So I just thought I would put that in your heads and you can always reach out if you don't wanna, if you feel like you might lose it and just let me know who they are. And then I can touch back with you when the time is appropriate to fill out the nomination form. Thank you. I have one announcement. I believe legal women voters have a Zoom meeting next week, Thursday. I'm not sure if it's next week, Thursday about how to run for officers. Like Mr. Wally has said, people need to understand how this town works. So I would love to see by folks run for officers, especially town council. And I'm looking into our young generation, Brianna. Tashina. Ms. Alicia Tashina. Tashina, run for town council. We need to replace some of the folks there. So that's my pitch. I was disappointed to not hear you mention Mr. Brenner Jones and me. And the young people, just, you know, Pat, come on, really? Everybody, everybody. Come on now. Everybody, come on, everybody. Please, spread it out. Thank you. Tell your friends. Thank you, Ms. Pat. We're in front of officers. We need to reverse, oh, sorry. We need diverse committees in this town. We need to change the way this town works. Thank you. Thank you so much. Let me go back to the now next to our next meeting date. Proposing next Wednesday, if that's still consistent and good for everybody at 530. OK, we'll set that as our next date. And Mr. Vernon Jones, I'm going back to the other topics piece. I kind of circling back to where you were at the top of the meeting, I'm trying to remember what that was. Well, the only one I really want to bring up at this point is I think our credibility requires that we do at least a little outreach to the business community. Yes. I would suggest that we not establish a subcommittee, but that we ask one or two of our members to initiate contact, give them a little idea about what we're thinking about and invite their input. I don't think we have time for them to come to a meeting and I'm not interested in a subcommittee that has to post its meetings. But I think one or two people on our group could reach out to the bid and the chamber and get some input. And it would strengthen the credibility of our report. Do you have a particular, maybe sort of bank or small bank of questions you think this subgroup might use to reach out to? I wouldn't. I do. You know, here's what we're thinking about an alternative community responder and we're thinking about an oversight board and we're interested in your input about your experiences with police and what your needs are and anything you'd like to say to us. And I wouldn't do any more than that. Sounds good. You have a comment on that, Ms. Pat? Of course. I'd like to volunteer to reach out to the Chamber of Commerce. How about that? Because I have questions to ask them that I can report back to you guys. I was a former business owner in town. So I know the questions I can ask about alternative public safety. If you guys trust me enough to do that. I appreciate you doing that. Would you like some assistance in doing that? Yes. Mr. Ross Vernon Jones, we work very well together. I work very well together with everybody. How about that? Well, I can't speak for Mr. Vernon Jones. If he wants to join you, that's fine. If Ms. Pat wants me, I've learned not to say no to Ms. Pat. This guy you guys are seeing here, he got a lot of crap at Fort River School for what? For supporting BIPOC students and families. And he's been steady all these years, still doing the work, nonstop. So seriously. It was the Mr. Ross Vernon Jones. He's been doing it for a long, long time. Yeah. Yeah. He got a lot of crap from people. Yep. And from me too, as I work with him. He managed to avoid that too. So it was good to deal with it. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Yeah, you are our accomplice. You're beyond our life. You are accomplice. You risk everything to support BIPOC publicly. And I want you to blush. I am. You are unsung hero. Yeah. You and Michael Burger. I've known you guys for more than 37 years in this town and you have no plans. You've been very steady in speaking true to the power. Thank you for supporting BIPOC community. If people don't know, please know tonight. I'm going from blushing to passing out here. I know. I'll stop this. I'll tell you, the two of you better come up with something really good after that comment because the rest of us are just like, what? What is she talking about? It's true. I know it's true. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Thank you, Mr. Vernon Jones. So you all worked on that. Thank you, Mr. Bachmo for being here this evening. I thank you, Ms. Pereira for continuing to work with me on this. And we'll keep you all informed. I will be in touch as a point person with Dr. Shabazz over the next few days to sort of check in with her to see what's coming up next time. If I get any information, I'll certainly send that through to you, Ms. Moisten and the group. And I think we're doing the work. We're doing the work. And it's not easy all the time. So thank you all for doing what you do. And I think that's it. So can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Ms. Pat, second? Ms. Pereira, thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned as of 7.51 p.m. Thank you all for your hard work. Thank you again, Mr. Bachman and Ms. Moisten for your support in town. And we look forward to meeting next week. Thank you all. Bye, everybody. Good work, folks. Thank you. Bye.