 Good, good morning. Thank you for, for your assemblages this morning and hopefully we can get our work done in a very powerful and meaningful way in a short way. Thank you all so much for being here just before we get started. I think it's customary and I think it's our tradition now. When we start a meeting, we generally have a word of grace. And if you would bow your head with me for just a moment. Create and merciful God for all that you've done for us, for the glorious possibilities you've allowed us to share in. Lord, we thank you for every person that has assembled today. We thank you for your mercy that allowed us to assemble. Particularly Lord, we ask that you be with Henry Simons and his family. We ask for your continued mercy and grace as they struggle with the reality of death. As a family, as a city family, allow us to be with him. Allow your spirit to enrapture them with your mercy. We ask it in your name. Amen. Several things we want to talk about this morning and of course the continued conversation on the, as we gather as an administrative policy committee on the chief in the city of Columbia Health Initiative. We want to at least legitimately discuss alternatives and options as we wrestle with the whole issue of health in our city. I want to thank Tim Benjamin, our chief of staff, and of course Ms. Ashley Wood, for she's not here today. She's not feeling well. We litter up in prayer too. What I'd like to do is I've had a conversation with Ms. Benjamin and Ms. Wood previously and of course I think the committee has shared information with them relative to some of the things and how we plan to continue to talk about this. Pam, if you would carry us through what we've talked about and materials that has been shared with us. Yes, sir. Additionally, I'd like to just report through. There were two recommendations from council. Of course we will need to meet again to further discuss those two matters. The first matter of course is the mayor proteum position. The position of course usually and traditionally has been a one year stand. I think the proposal is that we change one word to make it two years, but that's an additional conversation. The other conversation of course relates to municipal judges and the election of the municipal. The description of the municipal courts. That's correct. So if we could, what we're going to do is defer that conversation until we set another meeting with the administrative council committee. Okay. Is that agreeable? Yes. Is that agreeable? Yes, sir. All right. Ms. Benjamin. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Yes, Reverend McDowell and the administrative policy committee charge staff with evaluating the creation of some type of some type of way to address community health issues within the city. And based on the research that we provided to the administrative policy committee. The recommendation was to look at creating a community health initiative model where there would be a partnership between city leadership. A committee or board that's formed that consists of community organizers, organizations and medical health providers to push forward health related programs and services in the city of Columbia. The model pulls together all of the resources that already exist. The healthy BR and some of the other organizations that are out there doing this type of work. It pulls together all those resources to help the cities, the city address health disparities, chronic disease management and provide guidance to city leadership on how to deal with health related emergencies and crisis. So the beginning step to implement this sort of initiative or this committee would of course be to approve the formation of the community health initiative committee as we do other committees that address city related issues through a resolution. The suggestion or the thought is that there would be a board of directors and you see before you a listing of potential partners board of director member suggestions that would be a part of that community health initiative board of commission. So what in essence what happened is we would have these experts in the field of health and wellness who would provide us with the data to support any goals or vision for any health initiatives that the city would be sponsoring supporting or initiating. The committee will be responsible for assessing the current state of the health and wellness of the city through the use of data that already exists with these partners and or that may be gained from doing a survey or a health assessment. Then with that they could focus on the areas that are in need of attention, whether it be specific health related conditions like diabetes, hypertension, those types of health related issues. They could also do things that target specific communities or zip codes. So that would be something that they would gather from the data that they pool together and they they use. They would also leverage their individual organizations that they represent in order to target their efforts that they're already doing towards improving those health related indicators. And so working with those partners, we could implement programs, sponsor events or do other health related activities to improve those health outcomes. Anybody got any questions about that so far? Mr. Chairman, I think this is a good start of the list. I think it's probably too many people to be on a board to get things done. The way I have kind of put it together in my mind based on the Baton Rouge plan is that we would have a small governing committee of health experts as the core committee. And then form subcommittees based on let's say diabetes or based on gun violence or based on whatever element of the health that you want to be focused on at that time. And that the head of that committee, the subcommittee would then automatically go up and serve on the oversight committee, the coordinating committee. And then you could get small groups, small committees focused on a particular problem. And we can identify plenty of problems to form a committee to look at that particular problem. And then the leader of that committee serves on the oversight board that kind of coordinates the activities of all of these people. Yes, sir. And if you look on that list that we give you, it does have. Let me just say one word. Yes, sir. Certainly. When we look at our potential partner list, we recognize initially that if we did this, this would be our humongous board recognizing. But we also recognize that informing this list, we identified persons, we identified persons that would be needful and helpful in putting this together. No, we do not need a conglomeration of folk doing things and then sudden that out to various committees. What we have here, I think, Pam, what we talked about. These are potential persons and we want to recognize those persons who are the quote unquote the sensuals and perhaps doing something as we drop down a tier below that. That board needs to be a governing board, but it also needs to be persons. I mean, there are other persons on this list that we've left out. Sure. And perhaps them being placed in our own subcommittee would be would be helpful. But we do need that boy. Whether it's seven to ten folk. And of course, tearing down and sort of branching out. I think in my estimation that gives what we want to do more latitude to do other things within the community. So I don't want to give the impression that we put together a board that has 4,000. Yeah, we don't want that to happen. But we do want a board at the very beginning, at the very beginning to be an oversight board. I'm sorry, Mr. Davis. Yeah, I basically agree with both of you. Just looking at the list of potential partners. I think I would use this list also to be the whatever the unit is, obviously the board, a board as we traditionally know it would be a bit large. But to maybe break that down into the group, the committee, and they could use this list as for potential resources. Each one of these entities listed, in a lot of cases they have, there's some specific expertise or associations that would give us, that would kind of help do some legwork in going back to part of your presentation to identify not only the areas and people who might be impacted by certain challenges, but they would have access to information. And also, I probably already have partnerships that we could tap into and in some cases partner with to get us to where we want to go and how we want to make the health initiative of the city more effective and very impacted. So I'm thinking we're saying the same thing, but it's good to realize that a lot of these entities right now, for example, they list, they exist for a certain reason. But we all know that the reason, the initiative that we have on the table now exists is because there are some shortcomings or we need to make sure as a city that we're getting, the citizens are getting full benefit of the services that do exist. And that helps us in terms of an overall quality of life of the people who live in the city. Yes, sir. And if you look down on the, at the bottom of the page, you'll see board of directors, and then we start with a few people. And I don't want to name names because we of course haven't reached out to these individuals, but these are some potential people and you'll see that list is is a little shorter, but identify specific people who are working currently, either through MUSC, the South Carolina Institute of Public Health, Sisters of Charity, Mental Health, those are some ideas. So you're exactly right. We would be tapping into getting board members from the community, a smaller group, seven to 10, who would represent that board, and then they could bring in subcommittees and other individuals to participate in the initiative. So that those were our thoughts. Of course, we wanted to make sure council other council members had the opportunity to provide any suggestions on board members as well. These were just some that we we knew were out in the community doing the work and some that we thought we may invite to participate in the board. And Mr. Chairman, going on what Ms. Benjamin said about that, letting the other council members have input into this in a couple of weeks, we're going to have three new council members, one of which is a doctor in health sciences, if she is the one selected for that position. So I think that once this committee agrees on the form that we want to move this health committee direction, we want to move this health committee in. We need to pause and let the council get reconstituted with at least three new members, maybe four new members, before we start adding flesh to the bones. I think you're right. I mean, anything that progressively is going to happen, it has to be after the election. No question about that. Which means that there has to be a repeating of priorities and what we essentially want to do for the city of Columbia as it relates to health issues. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to have a perhaps a talk back session with the other three new members on council. Now, the other the other thing that I think is very important. Some of these persons on the list, we did take off the list. Because we just felt like that was not the right time for us to include them. It's going to be essential, though. It's going to be essential, I think, as we put together this model is that we've got to identify how many board members there's going to be. We've got to identify persons who are going to be a part of that feeder system. If you've got a board here, and you've got subcommittees branching off of that. That has to be something that has to be clearly delineated. No question about that. The other thing is persons who are board members, who are our own perhaps a subcommittee, sort of like a feeder system. They're going to help us because there are prostheses out there who wants to be a part of this thing as it relates to diabetes, as it relates to amputations and that sort of thing. We don't particularly need them as a board member, but they could very well be a part of that feeder system. And I think those are the kinds of resources we want to make available and have available for as we put this board together. Now, we don't want a board and we'll get at the real rough edges of this thing. We don't want a board that's just going to be, we want a reactionary board, a board of accountability. And I think as we work through this, that has to be, those things has to be included in that model. Because you can easily say there are other persons who are doing the same things, but the issues are still there. And actually they have become greater. So as we continue to model and fashion this board, we just need to ensure that we've got, that we're covering all bases. So it's not ladies in general, a process of meeting today and ratifying what we need to do today. Because if we're going to talk about health issues as it relates to this, this has to be an issue that is ongoing with accountability and with actionary things to be done. I'm sorry, we're right here. Mr. David. I'm agreeing with both of you again, my thoughts are that one of the expected outcomes would be that health related issues and challenges that tend to impact the kinds of policies the city has to put together. And when we look at those numbers, say health care for example, I don't know if you guys recall when we were initially trying to deal with the, you know, we were communicating with everybody that had some issues with the challenges that law enforcement have. And I can think of a specific neighborhood right now where there's some mental health challenges that neighborhood is having. And it's a question of what is everybody doing to make sure that that particular challenge that that neighborhood is having with individuals is being addressed. If not, then that's an unhealthy issue in a neighborhood, which tends to spill over amongst the people who live there. Law enforcement has to face a challenge that especially if they're not familiar with some of the background issues before they got there. And I firmly believe as an example that law enforcement staff has to have as much background as possible. And in some cases where they don't need to be the only person on site if there's an issue going on, you know, somebody that's trained in mental health issues that in terms of calming a situation and it's a question of who acts and interacts with that person first. You know, so those kinds of things. And if you have a lot of that going on in a city, then that's that's something that everybody's not not paying attention to the diabetes, same thing. Yes, sir. And we could definitely part of the boards. Some of the things they could do is also advise our internal departments. As you all know, we've got a mental health professional within the police department now. So this board could certainly make recommendations to internal staff in our departments to help us evaluate how we're providing services to our citizens. We just want to make sure, you know, as a city, we don't have certain opportunities falling between the cracks. Communication is one. Information is another. And that sort of thing. It's not a blame thing. It's just, again, making sure that we're doing our part to ensure that, again, that people like to live in this city. And for a number of reasons that feel safe, that they're healthy, and that sort of thing. All right. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes. When I think about trying to develop the subcommittee topics, we use diabetes because everybody knows that's a problem. I go back to the equity study that we have just been briefed on in the last couple of weeks. And when you look at the about 50 different metrics that they used in that equity study, a lot of them are around health issues. And that might be one place that we can use to identify a subcommittee based on trying to solve the difficulty in one metric. The example that the doctor that presented the equity study to us was teenage pregnancies in Spartanburg County. Spartanburg is highest. They have done it. And they took that as a target. And they work with the healthcare providers and the school systems and all to put together a task force on reducing teenage pregnancies. And we're very successful. And I bet if we look at our equity study and go through the metrics that they use there, it would identify for us plenty of targets for us to form a committee. We could form a committee on diabetes and on teenage pregnancies or whatever else the equity study led us to. We might be able to kill two bearded birds with one stone, be more efficient, taking care of our responsibilities to do something about the inequity by doing something positive with the health. Right. And that's the genesis of it all. And of course, this is the first step and we still hadn't identified who those persons might be because every council member will be given an opportunity to perhaps identify or put someone's name into place. Now that person may not and we sort of sort of jump in the gun in terms of board of directors formation. But we would think that council members would be given that opportunity to do that. But this is the first step in identifying that this is what we've already identified a real critical and crucial issue within the city of Columbia. We've already identified that how we bridge that gap becomes very voluminous in terms of identifying subcommittees, whether it's diabetes, whether it's HIV AIDS, whether it's hypertension, whether it's obesity. There needs to be, there needs to be some accountability and I guess this is what I'm shooting at. There needs to be some accountability as relates to our other partners because it gives us an opportunity to ask for not only for the data, but also for the information that we're going to gather putting these committees together. So I think it's a real opportunity for us to not only hear what this, what our staff has put together, but it gives us a great opportunity to expand the horizons. Yes ma'am, I'm sorry. No, sorry. You're absolutely right. And Councilman DuVall is absolutely right. The thought would be that this would be data driven. We would pull things like the equity study, other type of assessments that have been performed to identify those focus areas. And then, like you said, Councilman McDowell drill down, create those subcommittees and then have actionable items like Councilman DuVall was talking about. And Spartanburg, whether it's task force, we have people who are leveraging these partners and what they do to actually effectuate change for a particular problem. Look, that's the most important part of what we're talking about today, accountability. And we know we've got partners to do this, that and the other. This board gives us an opportunity to drill down on specific needs and to not demand, but at least ask that there's some accountability attached to what that particular partner is doing. That does not negate their efforts at all. But what it does, it gives them a real sense of big brother is looking. Big brother is looking. So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mr. Davis. No, I'm surprised that we have so much in agreement here. The big brother syndrome and so forth to take the approach that I think we're trying to get to would prevent the appearance and the accusation that this thing is going to be or this approach is going to be bureaucratic. And I'm saying the less people we have up here, the less bureaucratic it will appear as well as allow more and faster direct interaction and communication with the resources. We really talked about resources, and it's a question of the always two questions. Why is that happening? How? What are we doing? Why aren't we doing whatever? And I think if you can show and prove that you're not going through so many. Through so many steps to get conclusion that we're okay because you look at the list. This is a hell of a list right here. And they're all resources. There's a question of how do you get through all of this to individual attention? If we do that, then I think a lot of the challenges, questions, and sometimes allegations, we would be in a better shape of not being faced with that. And I think that's the bottom line. People are healthy because they have access, they get treatment, or they get attention, or they have an opportunity to participate. And we have that, then we would reach that goal. Yes, sir. Reverend Dow was really imparted on Ashley and myself about not just having a board for the sake of having a board, but for people to be doing things that are really going to help, you know, the community tangible things, real things that mean something to people. So I think the next step would really be for you all to have the actual creation of the Community Health Initiative Committee. Like you formulate other committees, go through that process as a council to do that. I would prefer that we recommend back to the councils that we do a Community Health Initiative, but hold that until January. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. Okay. That was the intent, of course. I think I may have said after the election, whatever that means, after the season is over, and all of us have over. That gives us a good opportunity to foster greater participation. We're going to have at least three people that might think differently. Yeah, they may think differently. You know, if Howard and I are still on this committee, of course, and my brother rotates off, then of course there's a person we need to bring into full circle. And the other persons, of course, as we report to the council, they will need to know full circle what has taken place and what is predicted. So we're not talking about something that's going to, and I think we need to be very clear about this as critical as health issues are in Columbia. We need to be very intentional about our approach to making sure that these things are taken care of and that there's someone or a group of persons out there who's very concerned in addition to our partners. But we're looking for accountability, man. We're looking for, if you say to me, if a partner says to me, well, we've given X number of dollars to a partner, and we still got a growing issue in this zip-coded area, we got an issue. We got a problem. So this initiative allows us to circle back and say, we need more dollars. We really need to make sure our bank is just like the books we're giving. So I think we're right in terms of putting this together, this first step. But it's not a final step which involves steps, and that's steps within this. If we're going to make this a kind of emphasis in our city that's going to be doable and empowering to those persons who are in those areas with some real health issues. So Mr. Chairman, I know that the staff gets nervous when we try to vote in these committees. So I won't make a motion. Please don't do that. But I would suggest that maybe the chairman at our next meeting on November 9th? November 9th. Is that the 19th? November 9th. That's correct. November 9th. 19th. 9th. November 9th. And November 9th, the chairman report back that the committee has agreed on a framework for a community health initiative. And we would like to delay any further action until we have a newly constituted council in January. All right. Well, I'm not going to process that procedurally, but we'll take that suggestion. And of course, these two brothers are in agreement. We'll bring that report to the council of which I am in agreement. We can call another meeting. Maybe we can do it by zoom because I don't think it'll take five minutes to do next administrative committee meeting. But that'd be ideal. That'd be ideal. We'll send a team out to get Sam all hooked up. I think the framework of what we want to do, I think we've initially, and we'll carry this to council with hopefully with their approval to move forward as we continue to do the framework. Is that Erica? You okay with that? You got that? Yes, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Miss Benjamin. That's it. That's it? That works for me. That's it. Well, look. Anything else, Mr. DeVall? Mr. Davis? No, sir. Maybe we adjourn. No, I'm looking for a healthy city. Well, just let me say in parting, I want to thank Pam Benjamin and Ashley Wood. They've been very receptive to some of the things that we've talked about. They've been very helpful in having us put together some of the resources that are there for us. They've been very helpful in identifying persons with some real expertise in areas. This is not the end, folks. This is not the end. This is only the beginning of what I think and what can be a very helpful and healthy process in the lives of our brothers and sisters here in the city of Columbia. It's not about just putting it on paper. This is actionary. And if we don't pursue this as an actionary kind of effort for our city, these issues will continue to become volumous in the lives of people. So, Pam, thank you. In her absence, Ms. Woods, thank you. Thank you, Madam City Manager. And, of course, again, please lift Henry Simon and his father and his family in your prayers. Thank you all very much. Have a good evening. Day. Stand adjourned. Thank you.