 We want to respect everyone's time, so we do have four now, and so we're going to go ahead and get started with our meeting today. Just to let you all know that Rabbi Boone is not going to be able to join us today, but he did give us a message, and I'll read the message because it will explain where he's at. He has said, Jeff Reigns is fellow Task Force members. Let me extend to all of you greetings from Israel, the Holy Land of all religions. Each and every one of us has had our faith and our beliefs that each of us without doubt believes in the holiness of life. If we as individuals and as a community want to be holy, like the Holy Land itself, then we need to be whole, and you've gotten this one society. I want to thank you for working so hard for the whole entirety of Fort Worth. If we are whole, with the W, soon we can be filled in holy with H, Fort Worth, a city full of equity, equality, and peace for all. I look forward to seeing you next month. Blessings Rabbi Boone. So I wanted to make sure to share that with you. We do have a couple presentations with us today. So I'm going to let my co-chairs give opening remarks, and then we'll get started with our agenda. Thank you and all remarks. I'll just say quickly, and you put a holy in there with an H. I have a holy with an H, that's all. Lord have mercy. I just want to say to my fellow Task Force members, we are down to what we used to call the nitty-gritty. We're trying to come up with some real solutions for disparities that we've already identified. And time is getting short. And I just hope that we're able to come up with some things that will be good. Consider and then recommend to the council. I have no doubt that we will do that. And then after we do that, we've already talked to the council and business community. We hope there will be others who will support us in those recommendations. So I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Barbara. Next on our agenda is the approval of minutes from our April 16th and late 21st meetings. So we. All in favor. I think we're going to have discussion. There's been three strategic plans created between the city of Fort Worth, forward chamber and visit Fort Worth. So today we're going to hear from Robert Jones, the year for one, Jerry Howard with forward chamber partners with Bob Jamison. To let us know a little bit about the strategic plans. And then we can also use that information to see how our recommendations fit in to that to those strategic plans. So Robert, Jerry, Bob, who wants to go? I guess I'll dive in. Well, thank you all for having us out to really talk about our strategic plan and some specifics about that. Many of you were a part of the advisory committee that gave us some feedback and recommendations when we were developing the plan. So for those of you that did participate, thank you for that input. She all may be aware that was a very long process. It took us about a year to complete the plan finally presented at the council in December of last year. And they adopted the recommendation for them about tip strategies, the consultants that completed the plan. We've been working really for the past six months or so on the implementation phase of the document. I noticed that Bob had handouts for visit Fort Worth. I didn't bring a copy of our plan. It's about 500 and so pages. So I didn't think you all wanted to carry a large book around with you, but it is online. If you haven't had a chance to see it, I do recommend that you go to a city's webpage under economic development plan 80 plan. And you'll find not only the full plan, but the executive summary of the plan, which is a little bit easier to read and then some target area reports that we did. So I'll basically just give you a high level overview. The plan really focuses on three specific areas. And that is building up our competitiveness as a community, really enhancing our ability to grow and attract creatives that really form the talent base of the types of companies that we're trying to bring to Fort Worth. And then really focusing on development and redevelopment in some of our communities, specifically those communities that have been underserved, that have not seen some levels of investment that we've seen in other parts of the city for the past 10 to 15 years. Now we'll say that the plan is, it is the city's plan. And I say city big C as in the community, not city small C as in the organization. There are 200 plus strategies outlined in our plan. And the city's not going to, nor should it, take the lead on all of those initiatives. So there are some things that the city will take the lead on. There are some that will continue to work with the Chamber on and the Chamber will take the lead on. There are some that visit Fort Worth will take the lead on. And then there are other strategies that are going to be spread out among other entities within the community. So we talk about things like a medical innovation district. Well, that is something that we're really going to rely on our hospitals to get engaged in and do a deep dive on. We talk about entrepreneurship and how do we build up our small businesses. So that's a partnership with the Chamber, but there's other entities like University of North Texas Health Science Center. There's a lot of incubators and co-working spaces that have come into Fort Worth lately. It's partners at the Gwynn Campus, Tech Fort Worth, and Accelerate DFW. So again, it's kind of a broad mix of partners that we're going to bring together to really drive this plan forward and implement all those strategies. I will say a couple of things as we are in kind of year one of the implementation piece. One of the big things that we've drilled down on as it relates to economic development and business attraction is an issue of wages and how that impacts our poverty levels overall in the city. So historically, the city has been somewhat silent on wage requirements and our economic development incentive deals. Primarily, we have been focused on the amount of capital investment that the company is bringing to the community and the types of jobs or the number of jobs that they're bringing. What we haven't really drilled down on are the types of jobs. So while it's great to have a $30 million distribution center that's going to bring 200 to 300 jobs to Fort Worth, if they're paying $12 to $15 an hour, I don't know that that's really helping us a whole lot. So if you look at some of the recent data that comes out and we really talk about cost of living, I think that's our recent report that in order to afford just a two-bedroom apartment in Texas, so this is in Fort Worth, but in Texas, you have to make it about $19.22 an hour. And that's just to kind of keep within that 30% of your income is tied to housing. So if you're having to make $19 an hour just to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Texas, again, I'm not sure that $14 to $15 an hour jobs really are helping us as a community. And so as we begin to think through our policies and how we go after specific types of companies and specific types of industries, one thing that we're really starting to focus on is what are the wage rates that these companies are paying? We have an unofficial standard that it's gonna be about the county median average, which is about 50, Judy, you may help me, 56,000. So that's kind of the ballpark that we're shooting for. But obviously we definitely want to attract jobs that are paying higher than that. But again, in order to attract those types of companies, and if you're talking about attracting the Toyotas and the JP Morgan Chases and maybe the Amazon HQ twos of the world, you have to have the workforce to fill those types of positions. You have to have the structures in place, both from the ISD through the Tarrant County College through our university system to make sure that we are developing that future workforce and then making sure that we are retaining the existing pipeline that's in the market today. So we have TCU graduates and UTA and Texas Wesleyan and UNT. We need to make sure that we keep those folks here in the community as opposed to going to other cities to find employment or if they are staying here, make sure that we have the jobs that they can fill as opposed to them having to drive all the way over to Dallas and other parts of the North Texas region to find that white collar employment that they're looking for. So that's really one of the key things that we're looking at as it relates to the plan. The other thing that we died down on, which I mentioned is this aspect of community development. So again, as you all know, in Fort Worth, we've had areas that have seen some significant investment over the years. I won't name any names, but we can all drive around the community and see where that investment has occurred. But there are other parts of the city that have not seen that level of investment. And so as we're thinking about policies, again, we want to understand what are the changes that we can make from a policy standpoint to ensure that we are moving, pushing investment in some of those areas while still maintaining the attractiveness and investment that we've seen in other corridors of the city. So whether that's providing some enhanced level of incentive within underserved areas, whether that's being creative and maybe putting together a fund that puts cash into a deal up front. Again, that's something historically we haven't done previously, but we're trying to really look at best practices across the nation, understand what other communities may have done to really help drive investment in some of those areas. And I think if we can begin to have some successes, I think you'll see, for example, areas like the near south side, which has a tiff and has really grown over the past 15 to 20 years. Because of that growth and that investment that they're seeing on that side of town, you're starting to see people are now looking across the freeway and saying, well, what can I do on the other side of I-35, on the eastern side, and you're starting to see some investment over there. So I think it has covered this concept of if we can take these existing areas that already have some growth and continue to seed them and make sure that we are doing all the weekend to ensure that an investment occurs, that we'll start to see some of that other activity happen in other areas of the city. So that's really a broad overview. I know we just want to provide a general update on the plan and maybe get into some questions. But I will say, as Jared and Bob come forward and talk about their specific plans, these plans are all working in context. So while we have a large, again, citywide organization plan, it is definitely aligned with the Chambers Plan and how they're reorganizing their focus over there and it definitely dovetails specifically with some things that Bob is doing to visit Fort Worth. So I think the most positive thing I can say about all of these plans coming forward is that they're all very much in alignment for what we're trying to accomplish over the next 5, 10, 15 years. And I think it's important that that's being said because I think in some communities you don't always have that be the case. So with that, I will turn it over to Jared maybe or Bob. I'm not sure who's going to go up next and they can talk about their plan and we'll open it up for questions. First off, let me say good afternoon and evening. I actually think it is to everybody in the room, those that I might not have had a chance to speak to. I do stand or sit on behalf of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. Let me start by saying thank you to this group. It is an incredible thing to see the work that the group has done and we look forward with tiptoe anticipation to the work that you guys will do and to the results of the work. And we're excited about that and we're certainly excited to play a part in the continued work that you are doing. It's no secret to anyone in the room and probably not a secret to anybody that's a resident of the city of Fort Worth, that the city is changing. And that's an incredible thing and it's a great thing to be a part of. As the city changes, it has demanded that the organizations that represent the city change as well. Certainly the city is changing, the CVB is changing and the chamber is changing because you've told us that we needed to change. So for the last 18, 24 months, we've been in listening mode, listening to our constituents tell us what they want it, what they like to see, what they want the chamber to look like, feel like, smell like to be honest with you. And as you all are aware, the last six or so months we rolled out our strategic plan in concert with what has happened at Visit Fort Worth and what's happening at the city. And our strategic plan, although not 500 pages, is pretty robust. But it's broken down into four specific areas and I will be brief in highlighting each of those four areas, one of which Robert has already alluded to being economic development. While it is important that we chase the next Amazon headquarters, I think it'd be irresponsible on our behalf if we didn't pursue that, we've also got to chase the small business guy and that's what I'm going to speak to first. I lead our small business and entrepreneur efforts. The definition of our city is one of the unique things about the city of Fort Worth right now is that we're still young enough in our evolution that we can create an identity for our city and that's probably not true for other cities this size. They are who they are barring something uncertain, i.e., Detroit. But we've got a golden opportunity in Fort Worth and one of the areas in which we want to address that, specifically through the strategic plan is in the area of small business. The reality is, certainly in the Fort Worth ISD, the preponderance of the students that graduate from the Fort Worth ISD will never set foot on a college campus. And for a very long time, we have told our students not exclusively in Fort Worth, but throughout American society that the road to success is college. And college is certainly a road to success, but it's not the only or the exclusive road to success. So what we want to tell our ISD students is that listen, it's not a requirement that you go to college unless you want to be a brain surgeon, unless you want to be an aerospace engineer. Those things require college, but the reality is there's a real opportunity for you to make a really good living for yourself without ever having set foot on a college campus and you can be a small business owner at 14 or 15 or 18 or 20. And that's a space that the chamber has ignored for a significant moment in a portion of time. So what we're doing right now is we're working on an initiative that's full of outreach, right? So the reality is that the chamber is downtown in the Ivory Tower. But I grew up in Southeast Fort Worth and a lot of the people that I grew up with don't know anything about a chamber and they certainly wouldn't find any value in coming to the chamber. So we're going to go out into the neighborhoods and tell the neighborhoods who we are so they don't have to come downtown because that's where we are in the small business space. We're talking about growing tentacles if you will to get into the communities, into the districts in partnership with the city so that everybody has the benefit of its chamber so that the chamber in the city, our size benefits the person in stop six as much as it does a person in Westover Hills. In the small business space we want to partner with the city to make it easier to open a small business, so we're in the process of tilling the ground right now. Not to make it easier for you to start a small business because quite frankly to start a small business all you need is a DBA which costs about $30 at your local courthouse. You can get that in a matter of five minutes. But it's incredibly difficult to be successful in the small business space but if our small business field is not successful then it's hard for our city to be because all the science tells you that the base of the economy is going on being more collaborative with our council in the city through the partnership with the city through what we do at Visit Fort Worth to make it friendlier or easier in the city to be successful in the small business space. There's more information coming as we continue to roll out this vision. I've only been with the chamber for about eight weeks so we're not quite ready to roll out a vision or an initiative yet but stay tuned for that. But that's one of those. Economic development which I won't spend a great deal of time in but we do still have to chase Amazon. Again, it would be irresponsible on our behalf not to chase Amazon or not to ensure that American Airlines stays in Fort Worth. We're certainly working in that regard. I've got a counterpart, Chris Strayer who recently moved here from Columbus, Ohio to make sure that we cross that particular T and dot that specific I. In addition, the talent piece and so if that doesn't speak to the fact that we're in concert with the chamber with the city I'm regurgitating everything Robert just said which speaks to the fact that we are working in concert and collaboratively with each other but we do have an opportunity in the governmental advocacy space which is where Rebecca Montgomery is working and then finally so I've mentioned small business, governmental advocacy economic development and then finally talent and workforce. Dr. Tony Edwards is five weeks into his career at the chamber and he comes to us from Charleston State because we recognize that there's a gaping hole in what Amazon is looking for and what Fort Worth has to offer and maybe there's not a gaping hole maybe we just haven't built a message or a narrative that's strong enough to make Amazon know we've got the people here we've got everything you're looking for here and so we're working with the city to tell that story, if you will so we're changing we like to think we're changing for the better if I can be candid we no longer want to be the chamber known as shaking hands known for shaking hands and kissing babies but we also want to be effective in the work that we're doing and those are the four areas in which we're targeting our strategic plan to make that happen. I'm not sure if it's time for a question but I have a question this is Todd Simpson oh, Todd yes, I don't know I don't know if it's okay at this point to ask the question for the last presenter but so I have a question sure Todd, do you want to wait for the last one to make a presentation that way we can get all the presentations to the Q&A that's fine, I'm sorry I need the person to ask a question sure, well let me join Robert and Jared in thanking you all for the opportunity to present a little bit of background on Visit Fort Worth formerly known as the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau and to talk a bit about our destination master plan and also echo their sentiments in terms of the appreciation the work of this committee is doing on behalf of our community and it is an important point in time and the work you're doing is significant and we're pleased to contribute a little bit of our story in hopes that that helps form recommendations in a way that is helpful just because I think that the Chamber of Commerce and certainly the City's Economic Development Department are more commonly understood let me just give you a little bit of background on the Convention and Visitors Bureau now Visit Fort Worth and it's an organization that was formed as a Department of the Chamber about 52 53 years ago with the focus on developing and facilitating supporting that segment of our economy that is directed towards travel and tourism and with an intent to encourage visitation from other places in Texas, other places across the country, other places around the world and so that represents the work of our organization trying to generate economic impact through the travel sector. We just reported through our research that Fort Worth has again hit another record number in terms of visitation and with 9.1 million people coming to visit Fort Worth in 2017 it is those visitors have a $2.3 billion economic impact and there are 23,000 Fort Worthians that are working in the travel and tourism industry in order to take care of those 9.1 million people and their jobs are paid for by that $2.3 billion economic impact. One of the things that I think is important to consider as we work to make sure that the right infrastructure and support is in place in order to grow as the city grows that this industry segment grows is to recognize that through economic up and downturns and then in recovery periods the tourism the tourism job market responds more quickly and in the last recession it led the nation in job creation coming out of the recession and so first of all obviously a robust travel infrastructure or industry in this community is it putting a lot of people to work and creating a diversity of job opportunities at all levels and in all size organizations. Additionally you know this is an industry that does have in place an education track that exists. I've worked personally with the hospitality program at Northside High School but I know through Fort Worth ISD there are other similar programs that focus on the hospitality industry and that feeds into TCC's hospitality program which is currently housed at the southeast campus and the University of North Texas up in Denton also has a very well regarded hospitality program all creating opportunities for young people that might find an interest in this industry a way to find employment beyond just following the path that I did which was start as a bellman and become a front desk clerk and work your way up but there are other ways matching on the job experience with education to really enter in the industry at a management level. So the industry is pervasive throughout the community and our destination master plan was really designed to envision those elements in Fort Worth that continued growth of this city as a destination that would draw people from all around and there are three things that are impacted by visitors. I mean three things that can help grow the impact and one is to increase the number of people that are coming. One is to take the number of people that are coming and ways to extend their stay and then in addition to finding ways to have them extend the stay give them more options for places and ways to spend their money and so in the booklet that I did hand out which is a condensed version of our destination master plan it does talk about the five areas of focus that were developed through a nine month period of community focused sessions and digital outreach or email outreach you know just really pulling all sorts of thoughts not only from the community but also from customers, meeting planning customers tour travel customers that are familiar with the city and had observations to make and it focused on things like enhanced experiences so if you're trying to encourage people to stay longer to the degree that there are more things to do or that there are you know there are a variety of options to include even in just a day that we look at those different opportunities we've talked about strengthened messaging the making sure that as our marketing efforts communicate the story of the city of Fort Worth that we're reflecting it in a way that suggests that all are welcome and you know we continue to take a look at what are the best practices we see out there and to evolve our communication around that but that also means that we're working side by side with the organizations represented by Robert and Jared to ensure that there is a growing amount of a growing attempt of consistency of messaging and that there is alignment in how the language we're using to describe Fort Worth as a destination we talk about expanded facilities as one of the areas of focus and our industry does rely on or has benefited from the fact that the city has made several significant investments in facilities like the convention center, Will Rogers Memorial Coliseum and the like and that those are areas that help create opportunity for conventions and meetings and conferences. Conventions can be a great way to introduce or a proven way to introduce a city to people that might then ultimately consider bringing a business here or relocating here themselves and so to the degree that we continue to work with these other two organizations and align our sales efforts around particular industry convention activity that also then creates ways that we can help build a case or build success for the efforts of the other two organizations. Improved connectivity is another focus area and it really talks about transportation and making that experience for the visitor a seamless one as they need to get around and certainly what benefits the visitor also benefits those of us that live here. And then lastly there is a there are items that were surfaced as important initiatives for our community relative to the traveler or the visitor that deal with collaboration. And examples of collaboration that have been long standing partnerships with our organization has been relationships and funding mechanisms for the not only the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce but also the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce who have been long standing and great partners in helping identify minority based conventions and meetings and making sure that we are successful when we're out trying to attract those groups here as well. So those are the elements of our those are the elements of our plan some other things that I think are important to bear in mind about the industry as a whole is that while you might think of it as what comes to mind might be this hotel or that hotel as a large employer in fact the industry is made up of many medium and small businesses it allows for or supports a high level of entrepreneurialism and so there's you know there's a lot of opportunity that comes from a robust travel and tourism segment of our economy and so that's the goal thank you. Ty we're going to open it up with you with questions. Yes I just had a question regarding the outreach initiatives and the small business development is any of that programming or any of those training is going to allow small businesses to you know learn how to gain access to capital or any type of training or maybe even relationships with some local bank? Absolutely. The vision is for that training to be comprehensive and so we are collaborating right now with a portfolio of small business owners to both successful and some that have not been as successful as others to understand the mandate on the city and its resources so what does that look like what does a successful small business look like what did he or she start to need when she his or her idea was evolving when you talk to Carolyn Phillips at Alchemy Pops you know when you talk to Billy Joe at Billy Joe's lawnmowering service we've interviewed lots of those people to understand what that looks like and we are working incredibly hard to make sure that that comprehensive solution is available for him or her when they're ready to make that step happen. Thank you. I have concerns with the city. Let me jump in on that as well because if you're not aware the city has had a program for about 20 years to help small business owners at the Gwynn campus to really do the specific types of things that you're asking about to not only with training but access to capital and when I say access to capital that is not just the larger banking institutions that will are willing to step up small business owner but I'm talking about some of the partners like Peoplefund and Alliance Lending and William & CDC who are willing to put dollars in for a new business owner who may not have a track record yet or who may have had some blips in their credit history and they can't go to a bank and get traditional financing so those tools are out there. I hate to say that the Gwynn campus is the worst kept secret in Fort Worth but it really is and the more people can learn about what that facility has to offer and how that relates to some of the things that the chamber is doing as it relates to small business I think that's just going to be a compliment to their overall effort so please if you're not aware of it, give me a shout. I can take you on a tour and show you about all the facilities we have out there. Just a quick question. The proof of this growth of small business can you tell me anything about the growth of small business over maybe the last 10 years? In any community, in Fort Worth in particular about 90% of your real job growth is coming from small businesses I don't have the specific numbers off the top of my head as it relates to the back clients but I can tell you that on average at the business assistant center between the back which is the city's operation Techfort Worth and IdeaWorks and we were averaging about 1,800 or so clients that came through there on an annual basis that our job creation was probably about 700 or so a year and those numbers are out there on our annual report so I can get specifics on that I just don't have them off the top of my head right now So there's you do follow-through right? You do the training follow-through what's the average lifespan of these companies? You know it really depends on the company and it depends on where they approach us in the life cycle so we get companies that are you know Jared woke up this morning and said hey I get a great idea for a business I go down and get my DBA I've got a thought, I've got an idea but I don't know where to go with it from there so we take people at that very early stage all the way up to you know a medical technology company for a couple of years so you know I would say for the most part you're probably spending at least about two years within some various levels of programming there at the back I know Tech Fort Worth's actual program lasts about two years so between two to three years from the standpoint of how long they're actually kind of engaging and interacting with the campus and then beyond that it's really kind of continuing to get out of the business assistant center she runs Alchemy Pops started with a little push cart she's now got a brick and mortar location in their south side so you go from that type of business owner all the way up to a business owner like CS Pharma which got started out at Tech Fort Worth and got bought by AstraZeneca for $490 million a couple of years ago or a company like EOSARA which just got a huge contract nationwide so again it kind of spans the gap so again could be a couple of years could be 5-10 years but you have a system in place to follow up and so if someone can find themselves in three years they can also they can always come back because it takes about three years to get the business it does and some clients the success rate beyond two years as you know is not good and so you get some you know they burn out maybe they find out that business didn't work for them so you do have kind of a large number of what I would say I wouldn't call it failures I would just say recalibration and then they're trying to figure out what their next steps are and then you have some business owners or entrepreneurs that that's what they do that they get in, they get it going five years they're looking for an extra strategy and they're on to their next gig it may be shorter than that it's kind of across the board so we try to be as flexible as we can be to anyone who's coming in the door and saying what are the specific needs that that person has so I think you're like working with us with the economic community if you could though it would be great to get that information about this etc yeah like I said I can that's in our annual report so I can provide the annual reports that we submit that we pull together that relates to what the performance of the Gwinn campus has been yeah one of the things that I did not mention in the overview is that in the small business and entrepreneur space there are two silos if you will there's a small business piece and this is a chamber speaking by the way this is Jared at the chamber and the entrepreneurship piece and those are distinct in today's society there is a trend in the entrepreneurial space right now and we haven't been able to wrap our minds around the delta between a small business owner and an entrepreneur because historically they've been one of the same interchangeable that's not the case today entrepreneurs right now are thinking more along the lines of enterprise he or she grows the business to a point to where he or she can sell it and become a billionaire and move on to the next thing whereas a small business is the Carolyn Phillips that we spoke about earlier and so we are building a strategy for both because quite frankly both of them the hot items if you will is a relationship employment I come from a large employer here in Fort Worth about two months ago and that employer right now is struggling to keep their younger employees because quite frankly they don't want to work between nine and five and not only do they not want to work between nine and five they don't want to come to work every day it's not that they're opposed to working every day they just don't want to come to the building to work every day they'd rather work from home that's a reality and they're spending $200,000 on a degree and they don't want to work for the large companies so they want to own a small business whether that's cleaning tires or finding the solutions for eye drops that's what they want to do and so we have to be nimble enough to be able to accommodate both of those and I didn't speak to that before which is why I wanted to mention that just then, just now how will you address the need to there's such a disparity in some of the services in the businesses that we have how will you all address the needs to build the capacity in those areas in those state codes of services between entrepreneurship and small business so Rosa, the low hanging fruit if you will is a small business space because it's easier, it's simpler I think we mentioned it a moment ago you can go to the courthouse and get a DBA and five minutes later you open an account and you're in business that's the lower hanging fruit it's easier to build an ecosystem and we want to be robust in that particular space because it produces the greatest and quickest return so we're not complete with the entrepreneurship strategy because it is so incredibly complicated as I've learned over the last 8 to 10 weeks or so in fact I'll be in Buffalo on Wednesday at the IEDC small business and entrepreneur conference learning more about how other cities have done that and been successful there we're going to benchmark some cities that are known for their small business and entrepreneur space like Austin, IE Kansas City they've done incredibly well in the entrepreneur space and we want to learn how they've done that and maybe mimic some of that but anything we do we want to tailor to Fort Worth because quite frankly we'd like to think as Fort Worth as a non-properdurial place and it certainly is but maybe tech's not the industry maybe tech is unique to Austin maybe we're better in whatever you name the industry but we want to build resources that are tailored to what the people in our city are with MWE businesses to help build those because good but different I remember me and Austin were interested in their disparity study and they were not doing very well with their MWE small businesses. That's right so if I can be candid while I was being vetted for this job Rosa, I was vetting the job as well I grew up in Southeast Fort Worth and I have an incredibly strong affinity for Southeast Fort Worth and I would not have taken this job unless I were convinced that the box that you mentioned would be checked as a part of the effort that's why we're talking about outreach and the people that I report to at the chamber are fully aware and understand that outreach will be a component of what we do and it will be based on geography quite frankly so the benefits that we get in the CBD are the same ones that will be available in Como or in Southeast Fort Worth or on the north side so there won't be a delta between the benefits as it relates to the chamber that we're making available for the constituents of the city that won't be the case anymore that's part of the messaging that we heard when we were listening and part of the strategy to address as we go forward and I would ask if you will hold us accountable to that pick up the phone you know how to reach me call me and say hey Jared what's happening here you know you don't have any problems doing that everybody knows Rosa will pick up the phone and I encourage everybody they call me pick up the phone and say how are we doing this where are we here because I need to be held accountable and quite frankly it is my goal and my vision when you call me I've got an answer readily available for you that satisfies you in such a way that you're proud of the work that we're doing at the chamber and I'm just going to say it happens on both ends because we as a community also need to make sure that we're ready for the opportunities that are presented because if they are not ready for small businesses they can fail they want to succeed so yeah thank you just one quick question and I will be alluded to it as I said we're in the stage now we're going to be making recommendations to the council and perhaps to the business community you've got your plans already we don't need to duplicate that if you already got those in place but particularly when you say that some of these issues we've been dealing with for 20 years and disparity is still the same what can you give us can you give us one and two recommendations that we can make to the city council or to the business community and I know about you you are on the board of the chamber so you know that what can we recommend that we actually solve some of these disparities as opposed to continuing the disparity and we talked about this 20 years down the road with the saviors any ideas I mean I know you thinking I know you're planning I know you're listening tell us what we can recommend to the council that can make a change well Bob right you you I don't know if I have a recommendation as far as the council you might but the recommendation for the business community would be to fund the chamber more fully than it has been historically so if you're out you know with the kind of plans that are in place in the direction that the chamber is going that it have the resources that it needs in order to be able to do the work that's being envisioned here I you know just another voice saying that the business community needs to financially support this organization would be very important and some of that funding would come to South East Boulevard I think that's what you're hearing this gentleman saying well the city has given funds to the minority chambers we know what the city has done but we have to see the effects of well that's where we need to hold our chambers to the count can I help you a little bit because this is in my committee and Bob Ray what you just asked exactly what I've asked Robert and Michelle's to give us some recommendations on how we can move the needle policy proposal we can take the city council as a part of the task force that would have a measurable impact on these disparities that we've all worked on I don't know if he's going to address that at the moment but that's what we're trying to come up with I didn't mean to give a hint that's your question Matt 9.1 million business 2.4 billion dollars in economic impact must evaporate in our community but the question is what's the annual you suggested that maybe to increase their annual budget but what's present in their annual budget and you send an increase to what to to make them more efficient so right now our annual budget is about 4.5 million dollars at the end of this strategic plan we hope to have raised to secured about 8 million dollars per year for the next four years and that if I can be candid is simply scratching the surface and for some reference there Oklahoma City which is about half the size of Fort Worth has a 13 million dollar per year their chamber has about a 13 million dollar per year annual budget how much of your budget is funding that I'm sorry how much of your budget actually goes to funding those programs so I mentioned earlier at the chamber we shake lots of hands and kiss lots of babies right so we host lots of events they are critical to what we do critical to our mission they afford us the connections with the people that support the chamber and the organizations that do as well so a significant portion of that goes toward those events this is why the chamber does so many events because they become essentially fundraisers for us and part of the danger about what we've done and historically in the chamber space is events are good but events are not unique and so in 2018 in the 8, 10 weeks that I've been at the chamber I have discovered that there are other entities throughout our city throughout our city doing the same types of events that the chamber is doing and guess what they're asking for the same dollars that the chamber is asking for which makes it really difficult for us to go to those large organizations or even the small organizations and say this is uniquely what the chamber is doing which is part of the mandate on us to be different about how we go forward with doing what we're doing in the future so Bob is absolutely accurate we can't do what we do without the funding right now again to answer the question more directly approximately 50% of what we do is used for the work the actual work that we do in a large portion of that is used to pay for the events that we put on quite frankly and that's unfortunate I wanted to take the conversation back to one of the first things Robert mentioned which has been an issue we've debated in the economic development and that relates to the wage level for jobs where a employer or a corporation is approaching a city looking for tax incentives economic incentives and the question becomes what's the most important thing we want to see for that in other words obviously the size of the initial investment is $10 million investment is $100 million investment are they creating 10 jobs or are they creating a thousand jobs but then whatever that number is what is the wage level and benefits that we go along with those jobs so assuming that the city has a limited amount of resources that it can use for like incentives what are we really doing if we're creating these $10 in our jobs now the debate that we've had in the committee is well $10 in our job is $10 more or somebody that doesn't have to right but you're really not lifting anybody out of common with these low wage jobs so the debate is if we're going to revamp the city's incentive policy to prioritize higher paying jobs what might be the trade off for them might be we'll likely create some higher paying jobs but there are going to be fewer jobs that I can do otherwise how does the wage level compare in terms of a priority with where in the city those jobs are created so I'm not proposing anything I think that's just part of what we're grappling with the committee that will be a policy issue that we'll hopefully address and do you want to add any more to that? Yeah well Charlie you kind of jumped in on my one comment I was going to make but yeah I think that from the standpoint of something that the committee can task force can really kind of think through a little bit is specifically this question so you know if we are attracting businesses that are paying higher wages again I think if that company is going into you know the central business district going into west 7th they're going into alliance I think we understand what that wage wage should be I mean it doesn't help us to have lower paid wages in those areas but if a company says hey I'm really interested in doing something in southeast Fort Worth or south Fort Worth the east side and I'm going to bring 200 jobs over into the east side well to Charles's point you know $10 may not be what we want to see but $10 may be more than what's in the neighborhood now alternatively I could say well why are we ceding low paying jobs in our underserved communities so I think that's an argument that we need to make so how do we strike that balance how do we say we want to have jobs and investment in the neighborhood but what level should that salary be at because I don't know that coming right out of the box it should be $56,000 a year but I don't think it should be $20,000 a year either and so as you all kind of think through from an economic space how that might work I'd love to hear some feedback on that the other thing that I would mention from the small business side is you look at and Jerry kind of mentioned that there's this there's this split right now between entrepreneurship and small business and entrepreneurship are those young entrepreneurs that are developing apps and seeking venture capital and all that great stuff all the fun stuff you read about in the magazines but if you continue to read about those developments you see that there are significant gaps for female owned companies and companies owned by people of color they don't have access to capital from venture capital standpoint they don't have access to the resources and I would say if the camera's on okay I will say that that I think there are a certain level of female lead minority lead entrepreneurs who do not feel that we have a welcoming enough environment and so as we talk about entrepreneurship and we talk about how do we develop our ecosystem and what are the things we need to put in place how do we try to attract those types of entrepreneurs to the city and how do we help grow them because if you look at you look at statistics I think I saw something 74% of kind of VC capital entrepreneurs are male vast majority of them are white male so there's a gap there that I think we need to try to find some ways to fill and I think that's why visiting some of these tech centers that Jared is talking about these communities that have done it and hopefully have seen success with it will lend itself to helping us develop some strategies around that so again my two pieces would be wages maybe some recommendations on the wages and really some recommendation on from an entrepreneurship small business standpoint you know I don't know that that's something that the cities should fund whether there's programs out there that we need to tie into but I do think that that's an area that could be an interest point for the committee when you said that it's not a welcoming city what was your interpretation of that welcoming being that I'm not going to pick on anyone in particular but and I think if you go to any number of entrepreneurship events in the community I think they are still overwhelmingly white to be honest with you and I don't think that those I'm not in that those people have any the people that are running these events have any malice in their hearts I don't think that that is meant to be exclusionary I think it just that's just the circle they run in you said that for worse not a welcoming city well I know that's what I mean so I'm talking about the groups within within the city that are engaged in these entrepreneurship activities I just don't I think there's a potential to impact the diversity levels because I talked to some of these entrepreneurs and they say well I still need to travel over to Dallas to really find group of people that look like me that I can work with and so that's that's what I mean by uninviting there's anything a specific barrier that's put up just being comfortable in the group I guess what if we came back with a recommendation to develop a strategic plan that would be specifically related to increasing the minority participation and specifically that would address Southeast War work and I guess my question really is is there an opportunity within what we've done so far to create a major paradigm shift and create something that you need to a specific area now we already talked about the medical community medical community was terrible it was terrible all of the little bars that were in that area income it was still was pitiful but it took the group coming together and even the funeral homes and all finding a plan have we done that for some of the smaller communities that seem to not be able to come up at all and is there possibility that we can do that and that in that unique thing that's over the Gwen Center do they have somebody who can help them with bonds because that's what I get to see on the other side is they can get bonded who's doing that before minorities in this area there's several people that because there's a lot of bonding classes that go on throughout Dallas and Fort and back to the airport does sessions every year okay I'm going to put my note down oh the chamber has one we had businesses that would come in because they said that they couldn't get bonding well some of it has to do with credit issues that they have the others are that they don't want to invest in purchasing the bonding so there's a problem in con and the businesses have to understand that they have to invest in themselves they don't need to go out and buy a million dollar bond right off the top of the hat they can buy a smaller bond and grow their business and grow that bonding and of course you know I'm at the airport and they're a long time and I get to see the other side of that and I get to hear the stories and I believe there's an opportunity to create a pathway and maybe an algorithm for those individuals who would like to be in business to have somebody who's willing to take a high risk bond and get a bond out there for them I just think that if we strategically go out to target areas that we can make a difference because that's where the focus will be and if we can do some of that and we use it as we're using the medical community as a pilot and the proof is there and I know that Paul just retired but the story tells itself the medical community and I think that we have an opportunity to attract the business who's willing to put a business there and just highlight that because we have several areas it's not just southeast for a word you can go out to Como we can go to Northside and if we can get one it's going to be Northside Northside Northside I know Northside very well so if we can do some of that though in a strategically supported area where all the chambers are coming together the city is coming together and we're targeting that with some indicators and outcome performance measures it just seems like we're missing it because we're so big picture we need to zero down and get some targets is there a possibility that we can do that? So without showing a great deal because we're not ready to promote or roll it out yet the small business of vision at the chamber yet so without taking too deep a dive into that vision it includes exactly what you just mentioned we will partner with each council district in the city it is truly a partnership with the city and we will develop eight or ten depending on when it's complete unique strategies for these small business hubs if you will so the reality is what's needed in West Fort Worth is completely different than what's needed in East Fort Worth and so with this council specific approach we will be able to tailor and uniquely craft a vision that's unique for that respective district so if the MWBE reality is an issue in one district then we'll build strategies around that so what I would ask for from the group as it relates to the Fort Worth chamber is some patients talking about six months and your public support as you talk to your respective organizations and people talk about the work that the chamber is doing and call me as big as and ask me I'll tell you if you call me tomorrow and you say I want to come and talk to you about the vision I'll tell you what it looks like but hold us accountable to that end but it is a pretty comprehensive strategy and it will address some of the very things that you mentioned a moment ago Charles does that make sense to me I was going to say and I hope I don't take you off too far but I also think we will be similar strategies in the talent development side you know I've been a part of those discussions there's a lot of things that we would love to do on the workforce side that we have limited funds for and go too far off our charges we're held accountable for that the discussion has been that the chamber could then take that up and I think it would address a lot of things you're talking about like in the cities study they came they kept saying oh the the workforce board has a beautiful aerospace consortium and we do and we would love to do more of those but we're not really funded to do that so okay that's one of the ideas for the chamber to think like that healthcare, hospitality more of those positions that started at the entry level and then had the career pathways that could lead to other kind of positions and I don't want to get into all that but again I just think there's a lot of strategies there within the chambers vision that could help all the city of Fort Worth how do we get a specific recommendation we need recommendations I know if I was in Ohio you'd think of one and try to get that he's taking he's taking next so I'll work on that Charles hold a bar in the election specifically for the chamber that was a joke by the way that was a joke I know the cameras are on does anybody have any other questions just real quick these side quarters really opening up down road still a lot of effort a lot of money's been put into that I think it's a great place and the only thing and I'm glad I think one of the things that's happening in our community is education that maybe some of these people aren't taking as much advantage so I would like to see one educational effort being made to inform these potential entrepreneurs and small business owners I would like to see that in the $10 an hour job man I don't know what I'd pay first with $10 an hour but when the only really economic development in our community is I can see it and I ride the streets every day there's family dollar so I'm sure they're not making plenty of bucks an hour and family dollars so I think each side is welcome $10 an hour is a starting place and again they're living below the poverty level but it sure as hell got to be family dollars I saw a new one today and I said wow we're growing again thank you all for being here yeah I did have just one more comment you know as we talk about how we do some of the things and you mentioned marketing and being able to kind of get the word out so people know about it I'm going to kind of double back to Bob's comment that that takes money and so whether it's whether it's coming from CVB, visit Fort Worth, what they are raising whether it comes from the chamber and what they're raising whether it comes from the city allocating dollars in the general fund that costs money in order to do that effectively and so unless we have some of those resources again across all three of these agencies to do some of those things we can only do what we have resources to do something with maybe maybe that's the next thing yeah I have a question I apologize that I don't have the time for either of your plans but with the length of each of your plans and when we're done with stuff that is never done but what does that look like well I would say our plan you know our we thought in terms of ten years for some of you know because some of these things are very long-term projects some of them are pretty immediate but it would be my expectation that five years in we're going to be back and revisiting that and updating it our plan is a little bit different than you know because ours was not about our organization per se but it was more about community assets and strategies that would support a tourism economy and so within that and modeled in many respects after downtown Fort Worth Inks master planning process and how they looked at downtown and what are elements that are important to a successful thriving downtown we looked at the city and said what are elements that would support an active and vital tourism industry so our so our outcome here and result of our work is a little bit different than what Robert and Jared are representing but that's ten years I'll jump in on ours ours is a five-year plan but I will say that in that five hundred page document that has two hundred plus recommendations of things we need to do over the next five years some of those are some very short-term near-term objectives that we want to get done some of them happen within that five-year window and some of them are five ten years and beyond so even though five years is kind of how we set that plan there are things in there that are going to have to continue to be re-evaluated, re-addressed, looked at I will say you know one thing that both plans talked about is increasing the number of Fortune 500 companies in the city increasing the Inc. 5000 companies in the city we talked about I think it was 2000 new jobs we're trying to create above that Tarrant County median wage we talked about new residential investment around the Central Business District we talked about increasing the number of startups overall so there are some key specific performance metrics both on an annual and from the life of the plan concept in both of those documents so as it relates to the Chamber's plan the strategic plan is a four-year plan and if we are successful at the end of about 18 months you will start to feel the impact of the Chamber's work specifically as it relates to small business the impact of what we do will be perpetual the goal is to build an ecosystem that continues to feed itself and produce results and this is why I'm so I'm busting at the seams wanting to tell you all about the strategy but we're talking about building an ecosystem that will produce in perpetuity going forward as soon as we raise the money to make it happen and I candidly we will roll out the strategy within the next 90 days that doesn't mean we can execute the strategy in the next 90 days because it does take funds to execute but you'll have more information in fact if you'll have us back if you'll have us being the Chamber back we'll tell you all about it I'll welcome you back and thank you all for being here with us today for your presentation thank you thanks on our agenda we'll wait a few seconds but we have Officer Ernest Morris President of the Fort Worth Black Law Enforcement Officers and Officer and Officer Nestor Martinez he's the President of the Fort Worth Chapter National Latino Law Enforcement Organization thank you as you all remember at our last meeting we had the POA here and we had asked to see the Latino Black Officers Association be present as well so we can hear about what they're doing within the police officers of the city of Fort Worth and their organization and how they support each other so Nestor, Brandon and everyone who wants to go first good evening thank you everybody for inviting us again some of the stuff we've been doing here recently over the last week as an association is hosting our 2018 police games here in Fort Worth we had a social event and we participated in actually organizing several of the events here in the city of Fort Worth with our membership along with the POA and the BPOA as well that went real well we hosted probably about 2,000 people into the city showed them around took them to participate in these games I think it was a real good turnout and not only that real positive impact for people to say hey we'd like to come into Fort Worth and we'll continue to visit them fortunately here is going to be in Abilene so we won't get another opportunity to do that for a while but I think that went real well obviously we continue to do our scholarship awards throughout the year myself we've been able to give students this year to students in Fort Worth ISD along with officers students or officers children that are participating in some of the colleges here in the area and just social events we have a different gala that's at the end of the year that I'm planning you know Fort Worth has never had a policeman's ball and the NLEO is actually really proud of hosting that we started again after kind of a three year hiatus on that we started again last year in Miami so this year we're having it again in December so hopefully that'll go by real well as well once again thank you for having us with the Black Four of the Black Law Enforcement Office Association this year we were able to do speaking to the education piece we were we helped with a program called Read to Win and that program showed measured marked improvement through elementary school kids' reading level we go into the schools and we help them do with their help them come up with reading programs to help them increase their reading level which will help better them coming down their education process this year we also were able to give out three scholarships to Fort Worth ISD seniors that were going to colleges around the area in Texas that was something also that we were able to do instead of just giving out money we also were able to give out laptops to each one of them which the laptops will be able to guide them throughout their whole matriculation through college also we partnered with a lot of the community leaders the churches the businesses and we hear some of those issues and problems that they're hearing and me personally I'm glad to hear that some of those issues are being addressed in this room as far as economic standpoint small businesses and things of that nature we continue we plan to continue our community outreach with the communities in the schools and with the neighborhoods the churches and everybody in the communities that we do serve I'm thinking you're pointing over here gentlemen I'd just like to give your assessment of how you would grade your department and how it deals with complaints of police brutality do they do it well are they liking how would you grade your department in dealing with complaints about police brutality me personally I would say that our department is kind of ahead of the curve most of our officers I do have body worn cameras now and that alleviates the fact of who's telling the truth who may have been lying we have steps and processes that it goes through people that has to be the whole situation has to be looked at processes are contacted quote unquote victims are contacted as well the process is it's a thorough process so to see that justice is served in either situation so I think that our department is ahead of the curve in that and when you say ahead of the curve is there anything you see liking in what your department is doing as it relates to this issue some things that I see and I'll go back to kind of reflect what he said our department is ahead of the game when it comes to investigations on these use of forces to training for the officers that are out there on the field the use of body worn cameras to actually kind of negate some of those complaints and then turn them into complaints that don't have any merit that and the culture that has turned in the department as well to say hey body worn camera is a tool it's not a negative within the department actually helps you helps you keep your reputation as a good solid department when it comes to providing service for the community the investigation portion as well it's a thorough investigation we try to interview as many witnesses as we can we've gotten to the point where we're actually going out and looking for camera footage within the area we've established that going out there to these business owners if an incident does happen in a certain area we'll be able to canvas that area and see where the cameras are located so we can get an outside perspective or a different angle of whatever incident happened or occurred I think our police media relation is good, it could be better and when I say that just to give us the time and the actual effort to finish our investigation before anything is put out so that we don't have to negate something or that the media has to negate anything when it comes back to the information put out we're doing a good job as far as that but everything can always be improved and when I say everything can always be improved funding for new training, funding for better equipment funding for just going out there and recruiting good officers that stuff can always improve with any department but ours specifically just one last one for me oh, I can't get one but when it comes to discipline of officers within the department for alleged abuses or policy infractions is there a difference in the treatment of minority officers versus white officers I'd like your assessment of that over the years we've kind of we've worked on a matrix a disciplinary matrix so that we can be consistent with the either punishment or disciplinary issues that are involved in the use of force or things of that nature maybe before our time there was but to this point we are very involved and when I say we, our associations are very involved in establishing that disciplinary issue we're invited to these meetings to review discipline to be a part of the process when it comes to even a review board when it comes to the last meeting that the chief is going to have with this officer before termination we're invited to be there to either counsel or set up some kind of dialogue that we can address with the chief reference to investigation so I don't know if that answers your question or not but it has changed from what has been in the past if I told you there are members of both of your organizations who would say there is discrimination in discipline within the department when it comes to Hispanic and African Americans do you agree with that? I would disagree with the statement because if you have a pool of officers that only makes 21% of the officers in the department obviously you're going to see a different type of disciplinary issue so if the department is composed of 1600 officers and 60% of those officers are white and 20% of those are Hispanic you can still have the same type of discipline across the board but if you see more officers of a minority race being disciplined through the department it's because it's less we have less officers if we had more of a diversified department I think that would be a different number that you would see if that makes any sense you would have anything the other way around wouldn't you say? I think at this point we're talking about disparate treatment between the two not who gets disciplined more or who gets disciplined less I agree with you there's 60% more white officers then if there were equal amount of infractions across the board they probably would get more because there are more of them but we're talking about disparate treatment among people that have done something some sort of violation and it's the same violation and they get different treatment and I think what he was speaking to is in our time of policing that has gone down and those numbers have significantly reduced from what we've seen due to the matrix due to there being checks and balances along the line of punishment it's not just one person making a decision off of how they interpret the infraction or how they interpret the rule it is multiple people in that chain that get a chance to look at all of the evidence provided to them and then they make a recommendation from there there's always definite room for improvement Are there any inclusion of your members that's in the programs in the department aimed at racial and cultural sympathy are your officers the resources that they bring to the table may be so to answer that yes there is inclusion in many different aspects of what's going on within the police department as far as let's say specialized units we have a diverse panel of people sitting on the board to help assess this candidate for a specialized position when in years past there would be just one demographic officer sitting there assessing this person for their suitability for a position things of that nature and there's many people involved with the matrix or disciplinary matrix the changes that need to be done our use of force policy and that as well so across the board we are involved in each aspect do you feel that's true for an Hispanic officer as well yeah absolutely because like I said this is a several year process that we've gotten to the point that we are now and there's more people of minority that are participating in these panels in these boards even in the education of officers that we have our PERF training it's a very diverse group of individuals that provide that training to the officers already in the department so yeah that's there like I said there's always room for improvement we're very much involved in that process and the follow up how do you feel about the improvement efforts to increase the number of people of color within the department who would have more than 40% of people of color involved is there a way to act in recruitment at those at the state level I think that at this time there are active recruitment efforts being made can they be improved yes I think this city is full of qualified candidates that are here right here from Fort Worth that have Fort Worth home grown that can be quality police officers that can serve their citizens and they would have an affinity for their area because this is their city this is where they live this is where their parents live this is where they grew up so there is an effort in recruitment can it be better yes we've addressed colleges all over the nation and when I say colleges I mean primary black colleges that are all over Louisiana, Texas Mississippi we go out there but the end result is that we'd like to continue to bring people from Fort Worth and when we only have one officer that's out there in charge with that task it's kind of difficult but yeah we continue to do that and we recruit within our own same organizations if we see a guy from Dallas I've brought several officers from Dallas myself just by giving the benefits and letting them understand that we are a good city and we have a good department but we always need good officers just the growth the demand for officers out here it's very present I mean you see it because like these gentlemen we're talking about everything that they said it touches with us because we need the department to grow and we need that department to grow the right way when it's in order for it to reflect the community that it serves so yeah we are very involved in that as far as organizations concern is there some recommendation that this task force might be able to make that it's healthy as far as recruitment or just in general department wise specifically with recruitment but also in general me personally I think that if we had if our recruitment department division was if we had more people that were actively dedicated to that in that situation things I think things would be better and then also playing the seed at a younger age maybe some sort of law enforcement courses at a high school level playing that seed at a younger age because there's a lot of people in our city that they never think about being police officers until you know high school they graduate high school college wasn't the route for them they went military they do military they come back police is automatically their next stepping stone but there's an opportunity there where we can reach them right in that time frame where hey we can drop this seed in their in their mind and it might blossom into something good and I'll share this it was kind of funny but my partners that are over there if you want to make milk you still have to have a refrigerator store that that's where our police department comes into play you have to have the infrastructure for that development that growth to be safe to function to have the traffic safety everything we are part of the city and we're going to grow but unfortunately we haven't for a whole year we haven't hired anybody on the department we haven't increased our specialized units we have we have no funding when it comes to that it's very limited so yes a city this size and a city that has two million something visitors every year deserves agency that's a little bit more than over 1600 9.1 million so yeah that and we could go out there and recruit all day long when it comes to officers to reflect but when we don't have that capability to train those officers and bring them on to the department yeah it's just not going to work thank Corey and Walter Mr. Dan I appreciate you guys being here there was a we tried to get meetings set up with you guys before I appreciate the fact that you know all meeting together now and you did have a chance to meet before you all together before you met with us and talk about all organizations you may not be able to answer me now but to get into your conversation that you had which is I think it's great that you're meeting were you some of these questions to ask you now or at least some of the things you talked about in those meetings I would say definitely so like as far as recruitment retention use of force issues disciplinary issues these are all topics that we have discussed and depending on the incidents that may have happened or if there's no incidents happening there's always room for improvement and change so your answer that you give to us now is the same answer but you've met with them a lot yes these issues that you're asking that you're wanting input on these issues are not just hearing foot words they're across the nation so you're going to get the same answer when you say when we say hey we want to improve this we want diversity in our police department we want to be able to better our city as a whole you're going to get that across the nation it's not but we want to be better than others Walter you can speak up but just a quick question no I'm just asking you to speak up speak up all I'm saying is we want to be better than others and I think we are what are we doing to strengthen community relations that's a particular we're we try to go as many community events as we can we try and hold community functions from whether it be a 4th of July parade in the community so they can see us and talk to us and pick our minds about things whether it be Dad's at Dunbar the last Friday every month they have Dad's at Dunbar where we're there to talk to some of those high school students whether it be a Juneteenth parade on tomorrow being out there in the neighborhood so that they can see us they can see us who we are know our names and speak to us and have those real conversations that we can only have at those levels to where we can speak to them and understand things and we can understand each other being out there in the community that's the things that we continue to do and we're going to do as an organization as well you go out there and you try to see what's going on feel the pulse of that community that you're serving our departments has a lot of pride in it's MPL program neighborhood police officer which is in charge of one particular demographic area they go out there and they see what's going on they know what meetings are taking place in their community and their rec centers in their churches they go out there and they do that and they go out there and they invite the command staff they invite their supervisors they invite the chief they can't make it obviously we have different issues and different things that we got to take care of it comes back to the more we're out there the more we understand what's going on in the community and we have a very good MPL program our organizations are very in tune with that as well not only here in Fort Worth but in Dallas and Houston and all the places that I have chapters as well Cory you said you'd like to cultivate up when they're young so you think bringing back that program would be a good idea as far as I've known I didn't know the Florida program was gone no the Florida program is still in existence but the Cadet program where you actually started as ages of both age 14 to try and get them in the mindset that was a fun to get to I think any situation where you can drop that seed of knowledge at a young age to where they can grasp on it and think of on it themselves and let it blossom would be a great situation for us to be in a program within the department that actually breaks down that uniform for example because a lot of people are scared of the uniform that lets them realize that hey these are people that care about their community they want to see the youth in a better situation that they are any program that promotes that absolutely the PAL program is something that we've been pushing for at least two years now we only got one officer that's dedicated to that right now at this point in the city of Fort Worth our five year plan was given through Chief Fitzgerald and Chief Halstead I believe was the one that planned the seed for that he gave us an agenda to say to work on this for five years and let me know this is what I want you to I want to see in five years we finished our board we finished our bylaws we finished our business I guess the business model for that program and we were done a year in advance so we're set up it's just having the officers that are out there dedicated for that one last question you both said that you believe the police department is ahead of the curve correct and being progressive on some things correct would you agree that we're behind the curve and what is your opinion on the citizens review board behind the curves Fort Worth does not have a citizens review board just about does except Fort Worth so would you agree we're behind the curve on that I would say yes I mean any kind of situation where we can have input from the people that we police is going to be a good situation it's having that open dialogue and like you said breaking down the uniform is going to be a good thing to have you don't view it, never view it as a hindrance I wouldn't view it as a hindrance no the review board for me is something that's very very sensitive because we have to have people on that review board that understand our daily dealings on the department and in the streets if we have some kind of vetting process or some kind of application process for those people to actually go out with us for a couple of weeks or go through our policy and procedure very thoroughly then yes that should be a possibility but having somebody that has a different agenda as far as what the department has and when I say agenda I mean not to because you can literally turn over a monster over every rock if you really wanted to but to continue to that positive hey we're going to make our community better if somebody made a mistake correct that mistake provide training for future officers and move on that's the kind of training that we'd like those people to see not to keep us in the past but to continue to move forward because I think that's what our department's trying to do I know the chief the police department has some training and think that the citizens are invited to come in we have those and I'd be curious to see what the turnout is on those how many people we actually see get involved in those programs we have a simulator that we offer to the citizens every so often a simulator that actually gives them a very detailed and a life like situation where you have to use daily force how many people actually go to that I did and my son and his friend last week and it's a great experience absolutely those are the type of programs that we need to have if there is the citizens review board on our policy it wasn't like perfect so with that type of education then you wouldn't be opposed to a CRB as long as they educated and exactly what they're looking at and not from a novice point of view no I'm sorry it's going to be a very detailed and very SOP I guess procedure type of process so I can't fully comment on it because something can change tomorrow for example I'd have to kind of look at the process and see how we're going to vet those people and see how we're going to do the training in order to say hey yes I do agree with that so so you're in a hiring freeze right I feel a little too I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago for the process so we're having a hiring freeze and given the time it takes to train an officer completely the demographics at best once the freeze is lifted at best it won't change for approximately two years I gave it about five years more than that I appreciate that and again I should say thank you guys for being here because I know it's like for you guys to be black police officers and Latino police officers and come back to our community and you kind of catch it both ways sometimes so I want to say thank you guys I think one of the things that I think that this body has to do is to make being a police officer more enticing to our community because right now we just don't have the interest because of some of the stigma that they deal with but real quickly now you said that you guys partnered with churches, leaders in the black community who were they again I know for they said Pastor Bell was one of the main ones they partnered with on the east side and the police partnered with Dr. Michael Ville again this is what the information that I received from my board of course so these are some of the things and then they said here in recent past he's been more of he's had more of a abrasive relationship with the police department oh you're talking about the three coalition so I do get that part now I do get that part now you guys meet with the POA and you said that you guys have representation in are you part of the meeting confer agreement do you guys have input in that or you're voting entity and the POA as well both associations we do meet with the POA we will have a seat on the negotiation table whenever it comes to we just finished it here last year I think so we're not up to for another four years my plan is to my plan is because I plan on being on that board we have an executive position at this point we need to be a full vice president or a full president on that board that's my thought process for the next four years if we can do that internally as our organization grows and our leadership grows within our organization just like his then absolutely we'll accomplish that Walter just real quick this last one I understand and you talked about the video cams and all of that how it supports transparency but to be honest I think it's really whatever transparency that almost did exist it's hurt that image the more we sit and I said before in city council and I said now no matter how much money we spend on all this equipment if you got officers attorneys things all and and won't record the entire incident what happens with the community is that they get bits and pieces and by the time that the real truth allegedly is spoken that we've already perceived the notion in our mind because of the way the information had to get tools so I think that hurts us it hurt you in a sense if you're not going to use those things and it pulls to that I would say again we are progressing we are moving forward as far as body camera footage and things of that nature and I would just say the vast majority of these incidents that the police officer doing everything right you'll never see people see the sensationalized thing they see the things what media blows up but there are many many many more incidents where the police officer does everything right along with protocol everything right those situations those incidents where the alleged victim claims some sort of infraction those are put down very quickly by watching the video seeing what truly happened what truly didn't happen and they're you know complaint being unfounded so just main thing a lot of these videos that you're not going to see our police officers doing things 100% right there's many more of those than our officers doing things keep in mind technology continues to grow and the way I want to touch base on that is that we're literally getting patrol units equipped to where with these officers open the door that cameras can activate automatically that's something that we didn't have five years ago ten years ago somewhere on there so yeah situations get intense officers forget stuff because unfortunately they're thinking for their lives at that point and so they might not have the opportunity to touch that camera down on their on their lapel or whatever but this technology is getting more advanced and even pulling out your taser some have even suggested going to the system where you pull out your weapon and it actually activates your camera so yeah we're going to have better tools in the future but it all comes back to help progress him as a department and I can't give him a data boy for doing this job but hundreds of videos that are right in doing his damn job I think most of us are like that so those that show up and they're written on Facebook and they're out there on YouTube and then they're shown to be false and then also all the bad media has been taking off the social media pages so there's a plus and a minus one yeah I appreciate that what you said and also those backs of what we discovered too is uniform training and actually practicing those things that are taught in the academy as you come out because what we discovered too is in some instances with other officers we met with is the fact that they take on that personal approach of the officers they're working with which may be field training officers or whatever and so I think they're working right now to alleviate that, correct that to make sure that there's some standards that are set that everybody's following on the same standards. We're getting to that point because we've progressed over years since the time I've been here on the department for 17 years and it started to the time that we are now people understand and officers understand that you have to do the right thing. You have to do the right thing out there whether you feel it's just or unjust at that particular moment you have to do the right thing because people are watching and there's accountability for that as well so our transition in our I guess our culture is changing as well too just because social media you know video access you know all the technology that's coming out there is so readily available and so quick to come out but it goes back to we got to think about the fact well how is that to somebody's do just or do I'm sorry to that do process. You know if you come out with the video how is it you put it out to the community and it's wrong and then you take the entire population for his court or his trial so that's stuff something the community needs to be aware of as well you know give that opportunity give that investigation it's full investigation time and let that go out because at that point you're really taking that just as away from the person that's being accused of whatever he's being accused of. One final question for me and I too thank you for me we got some of your chain of command here a few weeks ago and we particularly asked about disparities the fact that very there are several departments within the department that have no African Americans and no are very few Hispanics in them we asked why was that we were told that it was because Hispanics and African Americans really don't like to work overtime and don't want to be on call and I just want to know if you I mean and correct me if I got this wrong that's what I heard who I'd be curious to see who it was who said that exactly did I get that wrong we asked why weren't there if that was said I would disagree with that wholeheartedly I would as well can you tell us why there are no African Americans in squad and homicide at at least four or five other areas we're so low on those numbers to begin with I know what I heard that's the main reason right there we give a small pool to choose from you're going to have less opportunity the detective units such as homicide major case that don't have any African American we only had at the time we called those numbers we only had 16 detectives that were African American and we had 19 investigative units some units aren't going to have the detective an African American detective in it plus there are other corporal positions which in the same way as the detective they come to investigations that also need to be filled and I'll kind of add to that and I'm sorry I don't want to get into all of this because I haven't mentioned anything because we have all that in the document you've got that right now but it did come up like Robert said they called African American Hispanic by name so I assume I understand what they're saying is that they don't want to work those hours the same one would become a field training office and so that was mentioned that's what they tried to wrong and it was said so there's a lot of disparities in the areas that you just mentioned but we've got it documented already so it's not a challenge you were talking for me to challenge you on here I would just recommend that we make sure that we get clarification I would and let me go ahead and add that I would I would clear that up more by saying we don't have people that want to work those positions period in the department because they're so strenuous they affect your life everything that's called out the times this and that and the other that's across the board it's within our department because when when I have people in specialized units calling me and telling me Nester I need you to recommend or push somebody into this unit and encourage them to apply for it because we don't have anybody that's willing to apply for it yeah absolutely but at this point I'm done I don't have any more people all my good people are placed in those units and are actually working so what you're talking about is white issue not just our organization the department white issue what I'm talking about is the statement that was made because you don't have SWAT or you don't have a field training officer and there are no African Americans in the or maybe some Hispanics but the fact is what we're saying was is that they didn't want to work those long hours so the only thing I could assume is that they were talking about people in color because they're not there in that situation I think it speaks back to within some of these units you don't need lifestyle change it's not just an easy switch sometimes and that goes on throughout the entire department some officers don't want to be on call with SWAT 24-7 because they have 21-7 callback you may be out with a birthday dinner for a family member you get a call you have to leave and there's some officers that don't want to work the deep cover narcotics investigations where you're working with the drug cartels and things like that putting your family at any risk there's some officers that don't want that there are some officers that want to be good patrol officers and be good patrol officers for their time with the department but if it was sad, you can say it and speak for yourselves just go ahead and say Black officers and Latino officers are not lazy or petty social no I don't think that was the intent I don't think that was ever the intent because in our command staff we have that communication and I really don't think anybody in our command staff would go with that can you discuss this stuff the issue of the Task Force meeting so that's all in a minute as well I mean like literally discussion of our meeting with the disparities and field training officers so all that stuff is discussed in the meetings as well so I'm sure that's available to the whole Task Force if you want to go through it any other questions of ours can you how many Black officers are you up to really this is a report that we have from 2018 from 2018 the total African-American officers we have 171 males and 98 females making up 12% of the department so Chief Kraus I would say from the perspective that they're limited in each area we can't find one I mean as far as what for those for those positions Latinos you have 344 male and 105 females which makes up 21% of the department and I'll say yes to that because we're just so low on those numbers and some people don't want to apply for those jobs so as we write the final report recommendations well our recommendations come out from this week what would you like to help recommend it to alleviate some of the issues and to make us a top notch place where people are not going to be able to try and get a job I think it's some of the same recommendations I've been making this entire time as far as recruitment efforts retention efforts helping continuing the process that we're doing with the discipline matrix and helping with those disparities putting even talking within officers which we do among ourselves as associations about promotion having the ambition to want to promote and go higher or having the ambition to want to be in some of these other specialized units and just continuing the outreach and the communication with the community we can't do our jobs without the community and that's just the plain facts of it we need the community we need their input and we need their side of the story so to speak there's several things that we're discussing within associations as well you know I hear all this stuff about the growth and the development throughout the city and I've never once heard that police fire medical that is an actual part of this growth and development we've been here for about an hour and we didn't hear anything that this was part of the growth and development that needs to be addressed that needs to be pushed because without the structure and the safety you can't grow you can't do all that stuff because it's going to come back and haunt you at the end and when we say that and when I also say that go back and invest in your community encourage officers maybe an incentive for people that live in Fort Worth to apply as a police department to continue to promote our police department as a good paying career that you can look for in the long run and you can live in your city and be okay you know that kind of things are what we're trying to go out there in the community we're trying to go out there and raise those kids to want to be police officers through our POW program through our mentorships that we have our career days things of that nature but when we keep getting hit as a society throughout the nation as far as law enforcement being a negative law enforcement being a negative that's always going to kill us in the long run but we need to be included in that growth development of the city and as an overall mirror for who we serve our city several of us went up and did the training several of us went up and did the training and I will tell you that the responses it was like changing it was a great experience just for the record the city does have a staffing study underway all for the police department and the code compliance department and the initial finding should be available within the next few weeks Yes Jennifer Jennifer you know one of the things you're talking about I understand from other research that I've been involved with the pool is small and trying to attract and incentivize folks to to aspire for those top positions one of the things that I'm thinking about today is we've talked and heard about younger generations and what they do and don't look for and work life balance or integration whatever we're doing in college does the police department also need to look at the types of jobs and how jobs are created and how those evolve as well at the time so that you're not just trying to match the talent from a job but also kind of adapting in the other direction as well I think that was touched on with these gentlemen earlier about actually making he threw the number out there 50,000 a year for a decent job in the city of Fort our police officers start off with correct me if I'm wrong 58 56 is that correct chief somewhere around there 55 somewhere around there so I mean it's right in line with the minimum with the minimum requirement of what these gentlemen are presenting why shouldn't it be a professional job a profession that can be a career that's also an incentive to the city of Fort Worth because these ladies and gentlemen are going to be out here and investing in these communities and wanting to it's very it's you don't understand the pride that we had by actually hosting these gentlemen these police officers from all over the nation when people come to Fort Worth they like seeing us and then we try to accommodate we're one of the best I guess promoters of the city if you talk to us on a regular basis and that needs to be an incentive as well too so I mean that that's an idea and like I said incentivizing the fact that you want officers to live in the city of Fort Worth that work here in the city of Fort Worth one word now one last question would you agree that because there's not diversity in a lot of departments the officers who are on patrol there's a cut in pay to take a promotion because a lot of them do work other jobs and the income would be reduced because they have to devote more time so that can be a hindrance as well to have officers promote? Possibly it possibly could be a hindrance but also you see situations where some officers will be in patrol for 15-16 years and for them to promote they would end up taking a pay raise to get their rank the first year you know that would definitely be the same so that kind of skews the number too you know it's again do we have one last important question that we've not or need to hear an answer that we've not already heard not a question that is a comment that comment is as a leave it's still an operation each new class still have a criminal justice program in fire state and I would it would be really nice to get involved in it because in our first meeting we had one of your officers that graduated through that program that's in police department right now I don't know how many others in there now as well but it would be good to invest some time in that too we've thought about going to the TCC to the north side high schools you have a culinary at north side you have medical professions at as a pass school why not have a school through the Fort Worth ISC that is strictly for law enforcement whether it's attorneys, whether it's correction officers whether it's police officers looking for being here and spending your hour with us we've got a lot of great information two hours two hours we appreciate you all taking the time to be here with us thank you very much we appreciate gels as well thank you the next name is Ramondo and Estrella Smith, the leadership training which I think we all have minutes for that as well we have summaries the first two of three leadership training sessions that we provide for city officials last week we actually completed the third of three leadership training sessions for city council board of officials, department heads and assistant directors and I can summarize that leadership training by saying that I think we've made considerable progress in raising awareness among city officials about the impact of racism and discrimination upon our community and the way that we provide this will serve to all of our citizens training sessions I think have been hard hitting I am not close from addressing the hard issues about the history of institutional structural racism in our country and our own community the city council examined the Jacklyn Craig videos in detail and reached a difficult conclusion about that particular incident we talked about the use of common language to discuss issues about racism which is important we discussed implicit bias across the racism by privilege, by supremacy how these biases tend to infiltrate our policies and practices even subconsciously and we learned about how other cities across the country are dealing with these issues we had former mayor of Minneapolis spend time with our city council the former deputy mayor of New Orleans was also part of the group we spent time talking about the concept of targeted universalism by we set common goals for all of our community while targeting specific segments of the community that may have different needs and approaching them in different ways I think the response was generally positive to that idea we talked about the importance of continued public engagement that even after the work of this task force is complete the hard work really just begins and that will include the need for continued public engagement perhaps even intensified public engagement greater and more effective continuous oversight of implementation for whatever recommendations emerge from this task force tracking progress through hard data shifting from a complaint-based response system to a needs-based response system that's going to require a major shift in the way city government functions right now if you are an influential citizen you can get whatever you want from equipment that is implicitly biased changing from that system to one that is based strictly upon need in an attempt to reduce or eliminate bias will require major cultural change in the way city government does this whether we are ready to do that or not is not clear at this point but at least we recognize that it will require a major cultural and procedural change and talked about evaluating budget requests through the lens of racial and cultural equity and how that will change the fundamental budgeting process city government so that we would still apply many of the same criteria but we would add equity as a significant criteria for evaluating these are examples of the difficult topics that we discussed I would say that the city council in particular has advanced concern they will tell you that they have advanced concern in their understanding about these issues in their awareness and sensitivity to the issues are they at the point where you want them to be I'm not sure that's clear yet I think that's something you will want to determine for yourself perhaps through direct communication with the city council and I understand that the co-chairs have expressed an interest in meeting with at least some of the council members for a candid discussion about these topics a lot of parliament will be quick to remind us that if you gather too many council members at one time for a discussion you will have to provide public notice of the meeting which could discourage the kind of candid discussion you want to have and so that's a topic that we will need to explore further but I think I can say that we have made considerable progress through the leadership training it's been difficult progress if I were to say that everybody was equally enthusiastic about it I would be misleading you you would not believe it anyway but I think we have made real progress and I think you should feel pleased about it Esther is going to add to the perspective from the standpoint of community leaders and ordinary citizens who have been engaged in similar training just very briefly so we will have another round of engaged interested citizens so these are the ones that kind of are all called that didn't require nomination we are going to make sure we are invited and engaged as many as possible here at the Tannock Garden tomorrow and then next week we will have those nominated community leaders will be convening for the last round of those community conversations around engagement practices around shared common language that city officials are using so that there be kind of a common bridge without exception each of the community leaders engagement has brought a diverse group of organizational leaders, neighborhood leaders who are primed to partner with the city in advancing racial and cultural equity so that continues to be exciting we've got scheduled, confirmed community leaders training for one city council person and waiting on three others who have already named they want the training anyone has any questions next is the template for the committee recommendations if you all should have a copy of it yes thank you very much you also have received electronically and in hard copy the template for the committee recommendation form that has the green shading across the hall tab number one in your binding we requested it last time we promised we would provide it to you this particular form has been reviewed by all the committee staff and approved by the co-chair with the business that the co-chair has made and I think it's important for me to emphasize what Mr. Sanders indicated at the beginning of our meeting we are now beginning the home stretch of the task force's work and we are now at the point of taking the disparities we've already identified and formulating strategies that will effectively address those disparities and therefore the co-chairs are requesting that by Friday August 3rd as a deadline that you provide your final committee recommendations to our staff so that the co-chairs might review them initially at their meeting on Monday August 6th in advance of the committee's making presentations of the full task force at your August meeting on August 20th so August 3rd should be a deadline that you aim to meet committee recommendations forms the co-chairs are requesting that the committees focus on strategic recommendations what are the broad strategies that you recommend that we pursue to address the disparities in fact they're asking that you limit your attention to three to five broad strategies under each strategy you may have a series of actions trying to arrange them under just a handful of broad strategies that will address the strategies even if we had three strategies from each of the six committees that's 18 strategies that's a lot for this task force to consider now some of those strategies will overlap and that's why the co-chairs will review them to see where they have aspects in common and then they'll want to work with the six committee chairs to review all the strategies so that we have a common set to present to the full task force for review and approval so as you march down the form we'll see that we want you to recap the disparities we want you to formulate the strategy and express it in a simple paragraph then outline the recommended actions to implement the strategy including the timeframes for executing those actions in one or two sentences each potential challenges that you're likely to encounter in implementing the strategies and if possible how other communities facing similar issues have overcome those obstacles we'd like for you to identify the responsible parties who should do what to implement the elements of the strategy who should be the lead organization who should be the support organization with respect to each of the strategies what resources are necessary financial and human resources and finally success measures how do we establish objective outcomes oriented data by which to determine how well we're doing on progress toward reducing or eliminating the disparities that the committees have identified we want to know the extent that those disparities exist today and where do we expect to be or seek to be five years from now if we implement the strategy effectively that's a lot to do we spend a lot of time with the respective committee staffs reviewing the expectations they are eager to help and I will cite for example the health committee they've already scheduled a half day workshop on their strategies they've already begun to identify what those strategies should be so to address health disparities for example they know that one strategy will need to be educating the community about health issues so they'll have a series of recommendations a series of actions that relate to educating the community another series of actions will another strategic recommendation will probably relate to improved access to medical care so they'll have a series of actions pertaining to improved access to medical care will probably have a strategy that deals with better access to nutritious food how can we get more groceries in southeast Fort Worth on the near north side and other places that tend to have predominantly minority population will probably have an action the strategy that deals with improved fitness levels promoting more active recreation in communities that have disproportionate levels of diabetes or other chronic illnesses these are examples and I'm just using the health community as an example I think they're moving in the right direction and I'm sure all the committees are moving in the right direction but the emphasis is on strategies that effectively address the disparities tying the actions to disparities and showing cause and effect we have a lot of work to do we don't have a lot of time to complete that work we've had extensive discussions with the four co-chairs the idea is to have progress reports from the various committees to the task force at your next meeting in July not expecting your final report in July but we are expecting your final report in August so that's a lot of work to be done in a short span of time and we would encourage you to schedule all of your meetings accordingly between now and then and then of course in August you'll hear your present the reports we'll have subsequent meetings for the co-chairs, the co-chairs with the committee chairs we'd like for the full task force in September to adopt a preliminary set of recommendations that will go out for public review and comment and then in late September or early October we're going to have a series of open house meetings in fact I'd like to ask Michelle to do it as she would in a moment to explain what we're doing to organize those open house meetings across the city geographically so it would be a different format from what we had in the form of the town hall meetings the town hall meetings draw big crowds maybe 150 to 200 people and folks wait for an hour or hour and a half to get through three minutes at the microphone and then they say there are three minutes that's appropriate for many purposes but for the purposes of providing constructive comments on the detailed recommendations you're going to be making we think it will be a lot more productive to have the open house format whereby you'll have a series of seven or eight stations at least six of which correspond to the six committees and you'd have committee members staffing those stations being available to answer questions and engage the public in constructive discussions again Michelle can talk further about that so that's where we are with the committee recommendation form we urge you to follow the template as closely as possible I think it's going to be impossible to fit it on one page you'll probably need two or three pages for each strategy and again three to five strategies for each committee you've got good staff members we're happy to provide you with whatever staff support you need but the creative leadership is going to have to come from the task force itself and we encourage it to do so you have to answer any questions if it's appropriate I'd ask Michelle to comment further on the open house form as Michelle said in order to give the best feedback and interaction with the people who come to the meetings we were thinking about having four meetings in different geographic locations and at the meetings we would have a table for each of the committees with the recommendations and it would have staff and committee members there at the table so the residents can come in find out more about it and we'll have regular recommendations for each committee we will also have an online tool that will have each of the recommendations and then people can comment and provide feedback on the recommendations electronically if they're more comfortable with that but that's the plan right now we're still working on locations because we want a nice big space so that people have plenty of room to go from table to table to find out the information I think we're looking at dates in late September early October for those open house meetings and task force members have specific venues you'd like to recommend in different parts of Fort Worth or Michelle to consider please let us know we'd like to hold these open house meetings in locations that are easily accessible to the populations we're trying to serve we'll have to we'll be in on the process sounds like a great idea I think no I know but that's it so do you think the process is destructive together but it's going to spark it's going to spark a conversation which was that's what we want which I didn't agree with but but I would think that there would be the miscellaneous duties as a side so I would think there would be an overall re-presentation before we just tell them to go we can do that typically yes typically the way this works you'll have the open house let's say from six to eight and if a citizen is only interested in learning about the education recommendation they can just go straight to the education table and talk to the education experts about what they want if they want to go to each table they're free to do that too if they want to spend two hours there at the camp they want to drop in for 15 minutes at the camp it is it is often a good idea maybe sometime in the middle of that time frame let's say at seven o'clock to have a brief 10 or 15 minute program and by one of the co-chairs talks about what the task force is doing and staff can provide a brief generalized summary of the recommendations and current people to stop by the different stations if you like we can work on a presentation maybe even a common video that's what I was thinking if we had a short video we could have that plane maybe and then they could come in watch the video and then go in I think that also allows people more flexibility in their schedule if they really want to come but they can only come maybe for the last 30 minutes or the first 30 minutes if we had that short video we could just have that plane as they enter and then they could go to the tables so we'll turn our option I was thinking there should be some type of presentation first because people are interested in more than one thing they're interested in everything that's there but if they get that a briefing on it before they start then they have an opportunity to go to whichever place they want to go but just you know the presentation could be a video that's right it could be a video but at the same time I think it all would be time for it to start time for it to end and have people there at the very beginning where they all are together and if they're excited they can do the video but I think we all have a couple of premise that we want to gather people there to view and understand and give their panels alright next thing on our general committee reports Ty are you still on the line? I'm not I've got time to report for them we meet again July 9th and we will begin work on the on our template at that time but also there's a bit of recommendation too that we look at before we finish that look at the municipal courts Charles so staff is drafting some suggestions on this point and we won't meet until that has been done and sent out to the committee to review the sir anybody for education yeah the committee met last Tuesday and reviewed the recommendations form as well as reviewed on disparities and something to schedule to not earn money to present this recommendation okay health I was going to say the 26 okay we reviewed the disparities we started formulating our proposals we got quite a bit done this Thursday night as well to try to do more of that we lost a member of our committee Harry took a job a good job apparently sleeping but the staff is great and we have some momentum going forward so we have to get a lot done because I'm going to be gone a lot in July so I'm pushing to get a lot done before that so that when I come back we can start holding them I know transportation we're meeting tomorrow to start doing the same thing that everybody is talking about is start putting the recommendations together start looking at the draft okay you have a list of the future meetings starting July 16th all the way to December 4th so please mark those dates on your calendar and as we move forward, especially for the outreach in September we'll give those dates to you as soon as possible so in addition to the items we have on the scope I thought I mentioned for information that the co-chairs and the committee chairs have been invited to meet on Wednesday, July 11th to have a meeting with the women's policy forum for discussion about the task force's work and for smaller roundtable discussions about ideas to address the fairings pertaining to each of the six committees so this is an important opportunity to engage influential community leaders in the women's policy forum about issues of racial equity and encourage all the co-chairs and committee chairs to participate and to the degree that you can I think it would help to socialize what we're doing have a conversation with people and it gives you a great feedback I'm talking to the committee and certainly you know give us feedback and I have to wait until the end of the project to go back out to the community they are the community closing remarks co-chairs I was on the agenda to just have a brief discussion and had hoped that more people would be here but we seem to we seem to be fainting you know Isaiah talks about not fainting we're almost at the end so I would just ask that everybody stay focused you know you replaced them because of your task force or reason because of your strength your knowledge your commitment to Fort Worth and just your ability to either be that formal leader or be the informal leader that can lead the Fort Worth so please, please stay engaged we're almost there and I know that we all love Fort Worth this is so important and what happens in the future so don't fainting us and if you want to go back and read Isaiah where is it Mark? in the Bible I can't remember either I'm sorry to keep you on the side but you know it hangs on my wall I should know the answer to this Isaiah 28 thank you we just antified and I knew we knew this and if you want to read that it talks about just just walk in and the meaning is walk in with whatever it is that you're doing and if we want to take it to today you know what we're doing and just don't fainting just keep dependent on the group and dependent on yourself and your strengths and of course we're all operating as God's grace so don't fainting us I'd say enough tonight thank you very much I can't believe that I'm afraid that's going to hit me I just want to thank you all for staying involved and you know what we do today as Lily said is going to help for the future we've got to remember our past but we should be dwelling on the past because we have to look to in the future today's a different day than what it was in the 60s now have things changed in some places maybe not they may have been pretty himself but they're yet to know and we should give up on that but we should look towards the future because that's how we're going to make for work better thank you all for being here and we'll see you next exciting time