 of the Health, Social, and Environmental Affairs Committee to order. Madam Clerk, please note that all three of us are present today and we can maybe begin with Rev giving a few words of comfort. Sure. Tell us about it for this day and for all of the kind wonders you've allowed us today for your blessings that has impacted our lives and of course the city of ours. Be with us as we discuss, be with us as we have gathered. Allow us to be sensitive to the issues that are before us. We ask it in your name. Amen. Amen. All right, so we have a pretty packed agenda and I want to jump right in to our first agenda item which is an update on the Senior Resources and Lori Center Unification Proposal. And I actually will pass it over to the Honorable Will Brennan and his team to talk a little bit about where we are. Thank you, Chairwoman Vussels. My colleagues, Ed Howard, you gave us a charge to go away and come back with a good solid proposal for the Senior Resources Lori Center partnership which we believe is going to do fantastic things for our aging population here in the city of Columbia. It was a heavy lift but we got there. I think you have the proposal in front of you but what I wanted to introduce is the seed money that the state gave us with the efforts from Representative Heather Bauer that's going to help us get the Lori Center deferred maintenance, put a little shine on the Lori Center. Right? And with that comes the city funding for growing health and wellness programs for our seniors 55 and over. I don't know if that's 55 and over is more, how do you determine that? Is that the aging population? I don't feel like it's seniors, right, Howard? So, anyways. Don't persevere. Don't persevere, Howard. Don't persevere, Howard. Howard is going to enjoy this Senior Resource Lori Center partnership. We are members of the Lori Center. Well, fantastic. And speaking of that, this is going to open up the doors for free memberships for everybody over the age of 55 in the city of Columbia. So, first I wanted to bring Heather Bauer up to talk about the money that she was able to get from the surplus budget and the support at the state house for this initiative. And then Andrew Boozer with Senior Resources will come up afterwards to go through the proposal and the kind of a glimpse of the vision. All right? Thank you, Councilman. And thank you, Council folks, for having me this morning. I'm Representative Heather Bauer, I represent House District 75, which is southeast Columbia. And this is really exciting for me because when I was elected, my main charge was to work with local councils at all levels to make sure that we support the folks that need it the most. And I was adamant about securing that $250,000 in the South Carolina budget for the Lori Center and the Senior Resources Unification Project. Their goal is to provide resources like mental activities, physical activities, meals, and so much more to help seniors live a healthy, full, independent life as long as possible. And I would submit to our goal as government bodies at any level is to help serve as a safety net for many populations, including our seniors here in Columbia. I'd also like to note that more than a quarter of the seniors they support are at below 200% of the national poverty level. It serves as a safety net a year. And with that, I would urge the council to continue their support in our seniors in Columbia, including this Unification Project. Thank you so much, Representative Bauer. Let us brag on you a little bit. It is a pleasure to have Representative Bauer is probably the most active member of the House Agricultural Committee that they've ever had. She's working on both sides of the aisle, making friends on both sides of the aisle and doing a super job for District 75. I'm so pleased to have her with us today. And she's bringing home the bacon to the Lurie Center and everything else. Yeah, I appreciate that. In District 75, at least I think 35% or so or more are way over the eggs. Wait, no. Super seniors. Only by maybe a decade. But it's super of my district and I know the city of Columbia. So what better way than to work together on supporting this Unification Project? Well, thank you so much. Just a couple of questions. Is this going to go directly to the Lurie Center or does it go through the city? How is the funding going to work? So it will go directly to the Lurie Center. So those that you all probably know, this is my first year. So I'm learning as we do this myself. But I did talk to my budget folks and I did discuss with the executive director as well that we would have to make sure that with the paperwork that needs to be done with the IRS, just making sure that's all taken care of before we disseminate those funds. It will go directly to the Lurie Center, i.e. You know, through the combined five of them. Correct. Yeah. Any other questions for representatives? Thank you so much for all of your work. Appreciate it. Thank you. I think you got the money. You're good to go. As a pastor once told me, if you've already said what you need to say, pass the plate and go home. So with that, plates are already been paid. Well, I just want to say a big thanks. This is a great example of government working together at all levels and community partners working together at all levels. And I really see the Lurie Center as a precious unicorn in our community. There's no place like this in Colombia. And it really puts it on a firm foundation for the next steps. And I've been working with their board and got representatives, their board and senior resources board here today. A lot of hard work has gone in through this since we started back in the early January. We can see the finish line with a goal of August 1 to have this in fruition. So we're really excited about the possibilities that this will bring for older adults in Colombia. The growth potential, once we stabilize and grow, looking at other models around the country that has a hub and spoke model where you have a base like the Lurie Center that can always be there for the older adults in our community. But then some spokes where we can reach out into other areas that may be underserved. And so as we strengthen the core, I want you to know and to hear that we don't see this as the finish line. This is the starting line and we want to grow and move forward so that it is an accessible center for everyone. With the associate membership that's now available with the city support, we'd like to offer that to all citizens over the age of 55, which we think is really critical for access, get people in the doors and then look for opportunities to grow this into the future. And I'll get a lot of private support, get support from both at the local and the state level as well. So we're excited about where this is going and just appreciate the help of Councilman Burnett and Representative Bauer to get us to this point today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah. I just wanted to say that the funding solution for the Lurie Center has been a long time coming. We at the city council level have struggled for a number of years trying to find the right pot of money that could be used for the Lurie Center. And the combining of the senior resources with the Lurie Center is just the perfect thing. And I appreciate Councilman Brennan's work on shepherding this partnership so that we can confirm it by the city council. ACM Shealy, anything from the city's staff's perspective that you wanted to add? I would like to ask. I think there was some discussion previously, Andrew, about going to the county as well. Have they considered a request for funding? So they have considered a request. The county historically supports senior resources very strongly for Meals on Wheels and some of our other programming. They have a meeting today at 2.30 regarding that aspect of the funding. And so that would be a significant amount. We do have a pre-approval as a community impact partner is what County Council has called on senior resources and one of nine organizations in the county that are slotted to receive those funds next year, dollar amount not yet determined, and we would not know until October. And so I will say the county has been supportive in the conversations we've had on that, but not in a position to do the funding request that was similar to what you received here at the city. But because Representative Bauer was able to really step in with some help at the state level, we were able to still put the pieces together. Thank you for that. And then the only last thing I would mention, Dr. Bussell says, I think we did consider some of this allocation in the part of- Right, so with that said, I mean standing in the gap is huge that Representative Bauer was able to make that happen on the state level. A lot of funds are where they are, you know, they're in a sense one-time funds. Obviously they're sending in a amount of funding we're able to carry it for for the three years. And this council has made that commitment. I really would encourage those conversations continue at the county level. They have a much greater allocation of ARPA funds. And you know, with some of my counterparts they are in very recent discussions. They are trying to figure that out because it is such a huge amount of ARPA funding that comes to counties versus cities. So the fact that our council was able to utilize ARPA funds, I certainly think that's something I would hope the county might consider as well because we want this to be sustainable. And as you said, she wanted to continue to grow and ARPA funding is what it is. And it's just that allocation we put into our proposed ARPA budget for city council for the next three years at $150,000 each of those years. So we want to look beyond the three years, right? And I would hope the county would agree with that. Yes, I agree with that. And so county, county's priority in this pre-day Salieri Center conversation was for ARPA funding in the senior resources component of that to go towards our meal programming around the county. And so we do have a significant ask for ARPA funding that meets today at 2.30 that hopefully is it going to be considered. And so as those ARPA funds at the county are expended then that opens the door for other possibilities at the county. Like so we've had positive conversations but taking it one step at a time. We will continue to do that. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Boither, I appreciate it. One last question. Can you talk about after that three year leading up what is the revenue streams that you have identified through Department of Aging so that this new partnership can really stand by itself? Sure, so our goal is in this three year period to diversify the funding streams, senior resources as a designated council on aging for Richland County has access to funding through the Department of Aging that can do one time and reoccurring funding for evidence-based classes, for nutrition education, things that would be a great addition. We've also had some good conversations with private sources, with some private foundations, individual donors that are interested in some healthcare systems. Conversations have been ongoing with healthcare systems. They see this as an opportunity to have our population improve wellness so that then the costs don't come on the other end when they show up at the hospital or the ER. And a lot of investment in that at both a federal, state level and we will be working on that over these next three years. So any momentum we gain here or the momentum we do gain here in the next three years we'll be able to continue in coal with other funding sources. I'll vote it and they will come, thank you, Andrew. Yes, Madam Chair. Councilman Brennan has just been raised to the chair of the Central Midlands Council of Government and on the transition meeting last Thursday the COG had each one of their divisions give a briefing on what services they had and I was really amazed at the Department of Aging how many services are available. So I think that there are a lot of them that have not been tapped by the Lurie Center that with your knowledge of the government system will be a good source of revenue for the combined. Is it gonna be still called the Lurie Center or is it gonna have a new name? Yes, the Lurie Center will maintain this name to building. This is a situation where we feel like one plus one equals three instead of one plus one equals two because senior resources in our building we have is mostly offices and kitchens for meals but not gathering space for seniors. And so that's been identified by our board for years as a growth potential in an area of concern. So that meets this need from senior resources and at the same time the Lurie Center has had the dreams of having more robust fundraising activities and membership drives and more access into the community and that's something the senior resource is able to bring to the table. So the boards and the leadership really feel like this is a situation where combined as a greater in product than operating separately. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Chair, do we want to forward this request on the council for July 18? Can we get it on the July 18? Can we do that as well? July, is it July 18? Will it be July 18? We're planning to bring the funding, the entire ARPA budget to you on July 18 which this is already programmed in. Okay, great. With that cover, okay. So is it unanimous that we'd like to move this forward? Yes, yes. Okay, so are we moving this forward to the July 18 city council? Yes, yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right, well, we can move into the next agenda item and that is an update on our rapid shelter, Columbia and our homeless services, Ms. Camisha Heppard, our homeless services director. Thank you so much. And we continue to keep this on our committee agenda as the program is still new and we're building new relationships and Ms. Heppard has done a wonderful job in thinking creatively on how we can continue to reach a hard to serve population. So looking forward to hearing your update. Sure. Good morning, my name is Camisha Heppard. I'm sorry, Heppard. I hate when people mispronounce my name, Ms. Heppard, yes. That's fine. So we've been open since November the first and I'm really excited about the data that we've put together to share with this committee. Right now we have 41 participants in the pallets we received the majority of our referrals from the library and that's only because the library has social workers on site and the majority of the unsheltered population hang out there during the day. So the social workers there provide the bulk of our referrals, but we also get referrals from CPD, from Mercy, from Transitions, from Prisma. So and department of social services. So far we have our demographics are split up by 75% male, 23% female, transgender is 2% population, African-American is 68% of that population, Caucasian is 31%. Our age range from 18 and older, the majority of our populations are that older adult population. So we work really hard on resources for them because resources for seniors look different, income looks different, housing looks different. So we work really hard in tapping into those resources. We have 49% of our residents have mental health diagnoses, 33%, yes. 33% is substance use, chronic health condition is at 26%. And then we have a developmental disorder at 15 and physical disability at 38. I know that we have been reporting substance at 35 to 36, but know that this data is from November 1 to June 16. And so the data that we previously been reporting was a shorter spend of time, so the percentages are different. We provide intensive case management, which means that each resident sits with a case manager and they develop a plan, they develop that plan together and everybody's plan looks different. The ultimate goal is permanent housing, but what's needed in between is different. So some may need mental health, some may need substance and some may need income because they don't have income. So the additional data that I do have is that from November to now, we have had 12 veterans admitted in the program, 26 residents came employed. 41 of the residents that we have encountered already came with SSI, SSDI and 75 of those clients came with insurance, whether that was Medicaid, Medicare or some kind of community-based primary care insurance, they came with that. So case managers work to close the gap on the residents who come without those services. Since opening, we have housed 19 residents and housing for them looks different. So some have been unified with family through the Greyhound program that we have. If we have individuals experienced a homelessness and they have an aunt in Florida or in Arkansas and they are in agreement that that person can come there, we provide transportation to reunify that individual with family. We have... I'm sorry, but that number is increasing every month, I believe, because I think initially we started off with about six. Yes. It's sort of mushroomed and we're at 19, 20 now. 19. All right. So in seven months, we've housed 19 individuals in residential facilities, in their own home, in some type of shared living, because again, permanent housing looks different. What we have found since we've been housing individuals is that consistent services is needed to keep them housed. So I know we talked about wraparound services and so wraparound services for us is making sure that residents have what they need, whether it be community long-term care services for elderly or if they are connected to substance mental health services, so they can continue that. But what we found now is that we had to increase the aftercare. So what we do now is, my program specialist is now, she's going into the community and she's making those weekly visits with residents that we moved in to keep them housed. And it seems like it's working. So where we have been housing our residents, we build in relationships with those property owners. So they call us and they say, this thing is happening or that thing is happening. And it gives us a red flag to go out and check in on individuals and make sure that they have what they need. Any questions at this time? Yes. Commissioner, do you have the average length of stay? I do not have the average length of stay, but I can get that for you. So the rule is up to 90 days, but we know because how hard the work is, sometimes we have to extend the stay and we will extend the stay as long as the resident is positively working towards their goals. Do we get any reimbursement from, say, the VA for veterans? We do not. And right now, since we've been open, we've housed 12 veterans. I'm saying that wrong. We have, they have been, we had 12 residents in the program. And as they move along, it has been the VA helping with that. So they get the HUD VASH, they get HUD VASH or they get other, they also move to residential facilities that's built for veterans. That's good to. So a couple of questions that I have. One is how has the support been in terms of outreach after 5 p.m. in terms of some of the organizations that we work with? I know we had identified that being a potential challenge. Have you all been able to get referrals after five? We do get referrals after five. I get calls and texts all the time after five. And so we have the evening outreach specialist and he's doing really well. We have partnered with the yellow shirts and they have that evening person on that works with the city's evening outreach person. And we gotten the money approved for the opioid project. So that is also increasing the evening weekend holiday outreach specialist. Yeah. Once we've, once you've gone, once a person is admitted to the Rebbe Shelter Center and you're in a family community, you do the necessary triaging of that person. That person graduates. That person graduates and of course leaves Columbia for whatever, whether it's family or permanent housing somewhere else. Is it what's the follow-up scheme or is there a follow-up after that person as quote unquote graduated? So we found that it is a need. So that's why we added the aftercare component to the program. And that's what the program specialist is doing. So if they are in Columbia, she is going to the home weekly, monthly, it's just according to what that person needs. If they go out of state, we don't really have contact with them. They have our telephone number, they can call us but if they go out of state, we are seeing that as an exceptional success and they are flourishing with their family. Great. Inside of the city, that outreach person recognizes what that person's quote unquote needs are and we continue the supporting of that person wherever he or she is. Right. And it's not the outreach. So I don't want individuals to get that confused. Outreach is not providing the aftercare service. It's the program specialist. Okay. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you. I forgot my question. Any other, okay. Just remember, does refuse, I know refusal was a pretty high percentage when we had looked at it from earlier at a work session. Does that continue to be a challenge where people just are refusing services? What? Okay. So the total number of referrals we had was 362. Total admissions is 131. And so discharges right now is at 90 and so that is individuals who are refusing to work the program. And it's to be expected. We all know that individuals struggling with mental health or substance, it's a cycle in this multiple times that they go through before they get it. And then so our philosophy is once they get it, we're here for them to come back and we'll work with them. Okay. And then I did want to note in terms of the opioid funding, we also funded two substance use treatment facilities in Irmo, one of which I'll connect with you on that they only took private insurance until they received this funding. So this is a potential avenue for us to refer some of the folks that have mental illness and substance use co-occurring to use some of those resources. So there's hopefully going to be more opportunities now that more folks are taking advantage of that funding. And I would just note that to continue to receive that funding, if possible, it'll be great if we can also potentially track those that may be engaging in opioid misuse. So we will absolutely be tracking that because we got approved for the opioid funding and that's one of the requirements. And we'll be using the quick link that does an assessment. And it's like seven questions and it'll give you where they are. It grays it, that's not the right word, but it gives you a risk level of one through 10 and that tells you if they're at risk or if they are active and then what next steps would look like. So we'll have case managers doing that, we'll have outreach doing that and even during the overflow season, they'll also be doing that. So I'm really excited about the opioid funding because it allows us to do so much more. It extends our reach in the community with the unsheltered and those struggling with substance. And so with the opioid funding, we get five days a week. We have the peer support council from Laredak on site. And then we also have partnered with the Rainy Day Fund. And so they will have a coordinator that will provide temporary housing services for individuals that's involved in the court because we know so much the court system and unhoused individuals, that's a barrier for them. So we'll be able to provide funding for them to pay fines and fees to participate in residential facilities. So I'm excited about the new fiscal year coming up. And speaking of that, Dr. Bustles, nation's been really working hard on the contract. So you know, there had always been the contracts even before we hire a commission to have an umbrella for homeless services with rapid shelter funding fitting under that umbrella. Some of those contracts obviously still are in place because of the partnerships. The partnerships have been really structured because we've now done so much internally. And Tamisha and Missy have been working with the various partners to streamline some things. Do you think that you all want to see those contracts? Some of them are still over 50,000. The new one would be with the RAID Act to have- I would like to to be able to- You wanted to come to committee first. That'd be great. Just so that we can also be knowledgeable as we talk about how the rapid shelter project has started to expand and we're building these relationships. So more of like a four year information would be helpful. Correct. And then they would go to council's full agenda, the ones over 50. So I'm not sure when y'all meet again, but some obviously need to be, we need to set in place for the start of the fiscal year in the summer in September. Okay. So we'll get those. That sounds good. Thanks. Anything else, committee members? Great. Thank you so much for the update. I'll just say a word commission. Let me just, I think you did, I think you've done an exceptional job. It is terribly hard to manage what you're managing. It's an ongoing task and it would certainly be good if we continued from every meeting to have a report similar to what you did this morning. It's good to know that there are some of our brothers and sisters who are graduating, for lack of a better word, graduating from the rapid shelter center to a permanent housing. That's something to rejoice about. So it certainly says that the dollars that we spent, and it's not a dollar, it's not a dollar emphasis because it's a life being generated in a new direction. And we're certainly thankful for you and the members of your staff for allowing us to hear every month what you're doing. So we want you to be a part, a permanent part of this agenda, just to get some idea of what's taking place. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you to members of your staff and continue to work. And I want to say thank you and I want to give them a shout out Mac and Wall and Nyacia Franklin. They have been doing a great job. So we, like everybody else was struggling with staff and they stepped in and they went over and above and they've been really doing, residents have not missed out on any services. It's been continuous. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, now we'll move into the, I think the next three agenda items, I'll probably pass over to ACM Shealy to provide us a little bit of an overview as they all are somewhat related. But the ready for 100 resolution 2.0 is a follow-up from our previous discussion. We had tasks, staff and CPAC to streamline that and add an action plan. And I believe they have some updates today. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Bussles. Delighted to have Bob, the chairman of CPAC, Julia's back with us. And Bob, if you'll just kind of go over really quick the work that the committee's been doing in conjunction with our staff and then. Yeah. And thank you for having us back first of all. And it's good to be here. With some help from Mr. Shealy and Mary Pat, Robert Anderson, we kind of went through the language of the proposed resolution, tried to streamline it, replaced a bunch of where as is with bullet points and identified the action plan part of the resolution. So there were also some changes to, some of the wording just to make it clearer. There was one thing that kind of slipped past us. And that was some lack of clarity in the very last bullet point in the action plan. So Mary Pat just passed out a suggestion for a revision to that bullet point. But I hope that we've successfully got the request that you made of us last time. And I think we're happy to be back to talk about that and really to, this is a way of putting some concrete steps into that original 2017 resolution. So we're looking forward to getting moving on, moving into it. And thanks to the staff, city staff and others who have made their contributions to this proposal. So Bob just for clarification, really the change in the last bullet item is adding at least every five years thereafter that's essentially the change. It wasn't clear, it basically it said we'd have to reveal the climate plan every five years before. And what we wanted to say was there would be a date at which the climate plan would be made public and then it would be updated periodically after that. So. Madam Chair. Yes. Bob and Clint are the numbers that we see in here that we're pledging to meet? Meetable are the things that we can do? Are they achievable? Are they achievable? Yeah. Are they meetable? Yeah, they're meetable. Once we concretize them though. Yeah, you gotta concretize them though. It's something I'll tell you about my concretizing. I think Clint was very helpful in helping us think through that. And my sense is it's gonna be a lift but it's going to be a lift that will benefit the city financially and in terms of the environment as well. And that ultimately we'll be glad we did it. So that would be my answer. Bob, thank you. And I'll add just a little bit of flavor because it's a great question. It's something that we spent quite a bit of time talking about. I think the evaluating where we are doing the energy efficiency audits, developing the plan, all those things, developing this cohort, those are great recommendations that we need that will help us organize and move forward. And we're doing a lot of that work already. Certainly having so many megawatts of renewable infrastructure online, procured or online by hard dates are their aspirational goals, particularly that 2025 number. But we have been having some really good conversations with developers and also with Dominion Energy and looking for funding opportunities that will make that revenue neutral for us as a customer and all customers of the city of Columbia. That's really important to us that we wanna do the right thing but we also don't want our power bill to go up or everybody else's power bill to go up. So we're looking for creative ways to do that. And we think there are some avenues and the funding opportunities are there now more than ever before. So... Yes, number, the procurement of 75 megawatts of non-combustible renewable energy. That's in that. Will the hydro plant help us meet this goal? So I believe CPAC is looking for additional non-combustible but I think it does. That's five megawatts average, 10 megawatt max once it gets operating. And I would just make the point that the reason that we didn't say solar was to allow for other possibilities as well. And that certainly would include hydro. So in your opinion, Bob, these are attainable goals for the city. I believe so. I really do. And I've been so impressed with the interest and support of particularly public works and client. That really gives me some confidence that we actually could do this. Right. Good to hear. And we've got a lot of funding coming down from the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill and other federal sources that I think now is the time to be jumping on a bunch of these things. Thank you. Any other questions? What's the next step? I think we forward this to larger council. Back up to council. If you're good with doing that. Yeah. Okay. We'll formally refer this up. Well, we are quorum. So unanimously to council at a upcoming meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Bob. Bob, thank you for giving us tangible targets to shoot at. We have a goal. And that's what CAC has really helped us. You know, the overarching ready for 100 is quite conceptual. Now we've got some pretty tangible targets here in the near future. That's what I'm looking for too. Yeah. Something we can say, yeah, we've achieved. Thank you, Bob. Next, we have an update on the EPA grant. I can forward to somebody next to her if you're very chat. All right, Robert. Thank you. He's right about that. How are y'all? Good. The last time we were here, we had just become eligible to apply for a million dollar grant on the EPA, the climate pollution reduction grant. And we had a very short time to pull it together. And we were able to pull it together. And thankfully, we got the council of governments to take the lead and we formed a great coalition with the, if you look at the sheet that is before you, there are a lot of governments that have already signed on, like counties, all of the counties, and some municipalities, we've got some higher education and some business groups. But we are, we've done, we've submitted everything we're supposed to in the nick of time, just in the nick of time. But it's a non-competitive grant. So we've got it. You can't say that often. We've got it. And the next step is to hire somebody to help the cog to start pulling everything together. So the city of Columbia has gotten the EPA grant and we are partnering with the Central Midlands Council of Government and it will be a staff person on their staff that will actually be implementing the grant. Right. And that was viewed, I'm sorry to write it. No, no, please. That was viewed more, I guess we had some hesitancy. We didn't mind leading, but from a regional planning standpoint, it made it easier for everybody else to jump on and it wasn't seeing this Columbia's plan because it truly is a regional planning grant. With the thought being the, the hope, and I think the, I don't know, promises are not the right word, but there's a great opportunity for competitive dollars on a much larger scale for implementation of the ideas that come out of this plan. So pretty exciting for us as a community. So the cog is gonna be basically the backbone. Will they be awarded the funds? The award goes directly to the cog. Yes, they will. Great. And what do you all need from us at this point? Or is this more of a- I think this is just an update for you. I hope we get it. Well, we got a million. Okay, but the next phase. And we'll bring back some updates as this plan is developed. Mayor Pat, what's the timing to have the plan developed? What's the window? The two plans are just comprehensive plan and there's an initial plan. And we've got till 2027. Just for planning. So y'all will hear a lot about this. Wow, okay. That's very generous. We want to get our plan done and get in line for the real implementation. For the big money, for the action. Because there is money coming out in the early or middle of next year. And in order to be eligible, you have to be part of this planning. Got it. So all the other counties really stepped up. Yeah, this is an impressive list of people that support, that sent a letter of support. Thank you very much. We were very pleased. Thank you, Mayor Pat, Robert, Sarah, the whole team for stepping up and helping pull this together. Because it wouldn't happen without you guys. So thank you. Thank you, dude, the team. Thank you for the update. Thank you. All right, last but not least, we have the update on the lead for city certification. So the good news is you're not gonna get an update from me. But I do get to introduce what we've referred to as just the intern. So each year we've hired an intern about eight or nine years ago. We actually went through the star certification and we brought an intern out of USC to help us with the star certification. And at that time we were awarded three stars. Unfortunately, star went away. Star morphed into lead and they've kind of merged with the US building council. So we brought another intern on who was a very shy individual at one time, but she's come to know. She's gonna walk around the streets of Indiana real soon. And she's gonna know more about things than she ought to. Like what does the button really do when you push it to walk across the street? What's the inside of a traffic cabinet look like? So that's right, drink that, okay? But everybody thinks if you push it hard enough, fast enough, it's gonna change the lights a little faster. So we've tried to teach her a lot about public works and a lot about the city, but she's taught us a lot about her also. So I believe her parents are watching online today. We appreciate her working for us, but I'm gonna introduce Clara Lotz. Yay. Thank you, Robert. Very kind introduction. I appreciate it. I am just the intern. Thank you all for coming, or well, thank you for allowing me to come here today and talk to you a little bit about the lead for city certification. We have been working on this for a little bit over a year now, and we are excited to say that it's finally completed. So I wanna give you a little bit of background before I talk about the good, fun stuff. So lead for cities, I don't know if this is on. How do I do this? It says it's turned on. Okay, she's changing it for you, you're good. Okay, cool, thank you. So lead stands for leadership in energy and environmental design. And the lead for cities program is the leading global rating system and certification program for evaluating sustainability and quality of life, specifically for cities or communities. So it takes a multi-stakeholder approach and serves as a catalyst and transformative tool toward more sustainable, equitable and resilient communities around the world. So the lead for cities rating system consists of several categories, which is part of your sheet. It'll look like this. It has categories and each category has varying amounts of credits and each credit is a varying amount of points. But the major part of the rating system is the credits. And so we will submit these credits in order to get our points and the credits consist of data, a written narrative and then the resources. And lead for cities is first and foremost very data-driven and performance-based and it's a third-party program. So they have no specifically vested interest in us and it's very unbiased. So these are all the categories that are within the rating system. We can see some that are typically very common in a sustainability rating system or guide like natural systems, greenhouse gas emissions, materials and resources. And then others that are maybe a little bit less common like integrative processes, quality of life, innovations and regional priority. And I'll explain a little bit about those in just a second. But I would like to now talk to you about the lead certification levels. So here's a little bit of a graph showing what kind of certifications you can get. Each, the amount of points you get based on the credits that you submit to 40 and up is certified, 15 up is silver, 16 up is gold and 80 up is platinum. Based on the star certification, how we got like a three-star rating, this would put us around silver in lead terms. And when we are applying for lead, it's for our city-specific buildings, right? Or is it one building? Can you explain a little bit more about that? It's for the entire city. So it's less about the municipality. Like for example, whenever I did the greenhouse gas emissions rating, they asked for municipal data, but then they also asked for general, like Google modeling data. So all of the transportation throughout the city, all of the buildings throughout the city. So it's very all-encompassing and not just the municipality. Yeah, do you have to answer all of these categories? I did. And I actually, there are about, I think there are about 75 credits on the sheet. So I created 75 narratives that we turned in. Sorry to interrupt you. Oh, no, no problem. Thank you for asking. So the general, the city initially submitted for our initial project review in March of this year. And after about five weeks, we submitted around 73 points. We only got back 35 points. So that was not a total shock, but it was a little bit devastating at first. They, luckily for us, they were still under review. So we weren't totally out of the luck, but we ended up reworking, working with our US Green Building Council mentors. They helped us out a lot. And we were able to submit our final project review in May. And after around another five weeks of waiting, we got 33 points re-awarded, which gave us a score of 68. Yay, congrats. Gold. Yeah, gold. And so yeah, we are very solidly gold certified, which is very exciting considering that the star rating is only a silver in lead terms. And we are about halfway between gold and platinum, which is very exciting for us. So we were very happy to get that back. And a little bit about why we were so happy to get that back is Columbia is the very first lead certified city within the entire state of South Carolina. So we're the only person that's doing this right now, which is very exciting. We're the cutting edge. We're at the top of the pack right now. ACM Philly, this is worth pushing out. I think it's very exciting and maybe having just the intern give a quote would be good. We're also only one of 15 cities to be certified this year. Yes. And we are currently at the top. We were one of the highest rated cities within our cohort so far. So that's very exciting for us. I think it is important to show you a little bit of a graph to see how we did. And specifically, I would like to point out two specific categories for the categories on here, quality of life and materials and resources, excuse me, which are the third and the fourth bars down. For the quality of life, even though we do a lot for that in the city here, we only have about 50% of points. And I think it's important to note that most of the data that they requested to be used came from the census. And at the time of submission, a lot of that data was specifically from 2020 and 2021. So I think COVID may have skewed a lot of that data. So we might have done a lot better in that category that had been at another time. And also the materials and resources category, we only got three out of 10 points, which sounds pretty jarring, but according to our US Green Building Council mentors, we're actually tied for the highest scoring in this category. So I think that may be more of an issue with or a discrepancy in the rating system. What would be in material and resources? That was like recycling and how much waste is diverted and a lot of the reason we didn't get the points in that category is for these very cutting edge, very expensive, smart waste systems that generally no cities in the United States, let alone the world have implemented yet. So it was very difficult to get points in that category. The same thing goes with the water efficiency category as well, they were very cutting edge, very highly expensive, things that no one has implemented yet. And so now that I've talked a little bit about where we maybe felt a little bit short, but didn't technically, I wanna talk about where we did really well. So for innovations and regional priority, these categories are categories where we were asked to submit initiatives and programs that weren't directly stated within the rating system. So for the innovations category, they asked that we give some sort of environmental or quality of life metric that is improved, but it's not specifically stated within the rating system under one of the other categories. So for this category, I submitted the shot spotter program, fine arts, initiatives, so to city, LMI sustainability, and CLEAP, which for reference, CLEAP is a community use local energy action plan. That's another grant that Mary Pat has been working on. And for the regional priority, it was the same sort of idea, submit initiatives or programs that were not specifically stated. However, they asked for this category for them to be collaborative with other organizations or municipalities for the greater good. And that would include the Three Rivers Greenway, regional beautification, interagency animal shelter cooperations, and keep the millions beautiful. The shot spotter is in there because it's a more efficient way for policing. If they know exactly where the shot occurred, they don't have to travel around the neighborhood looking, then they can more efficiently get the shot. Yes, sir. I also talked in that specific credit about how it is reducing the amount of legal firearms that are on the streets. They had specific data that pointed towards that. Now, is that because of shot spotter? I would believe so, yes. Does the data support that or what? We had over 800 done. And you included that in your narratives, right? I did, yes. And if you would like to see any of them, I am more than happy to show you any of the 75. This needs to go to the full council. So two of our other best performing categories were energy and greenhouse gas emissions. I'm sure some people might be like, huh, really? But we actually have relatively low greenhouse gas emissions compared to similarly sized cities. And they thought that we were highly rated for a low carbon economy, which I thought was very impressive. And for our natural resources and ecology, they thought that we had really robust resiliency in natural disaster plans, as well as the city itself has a massive amount of natural resource area and green spaces available to its residents. So now that I've talked a little bit about what we did, how we did, I wanna talk about why does this matter? Why is this an awesome thing that we did? So now that we have this lead gold certification, it'll provide us with the baseline of sustainability to improve upon whether that be for if we would like to recertify in five years, or if we wanna use that towards ready for 100. And it'll also help us advertise. We can advertise this achievement to bring in more businesses and residents. It'll help keep the city resilient as natural disaster and threat possibilities increase. It'll help us continue improving quality of life and equitability throughout the city. It'll allow us to get even more grant funding for more opportunities. And we have now become part of the network of over 120 lead certified cities across the globe. Only 120 globally. This is huge. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you for your hard work. I know applying for something like this takes a lot of time. Yeah, it's taken us a little bit over a year, but we're really happy to have gotten through it that fast, cause I think we were actually, we did it pretty quickly. Robert, you can't find a job for her. Don't say. Don't say. Don't say. Oh, dang it. It's not a young man in Indiana. Oh, damn. I don't want to compete with that. I don't want to compete with that. I don't want to compete with that. Well, thank you for- What was your major? I was a marine science major. Marine science major. That's fair. But now that we've done a little bit of this, I thought I would add some possible future projects. Now that we have the lead certification, we can get grant funding for maybe a couple of these. I think they'd be a great idea to implement in the city. Maybe creating a yearly greenhouse gas inventory, which might go hand in hand. I would like for us to continue to bolster community development projects. I think it would be a great idea to invest in grid infrastructure and implement additional smart systems throughout the city. And unfortunately, I don't have the money to do that. But overall, I would just like to say thank you so much to all of the city departments and all of the staff that helped me throughout this project and for their patience with me during this. It was a lot of work, a lot of data, a lot of wrangling resources and knowledge. And it was just really invaluable to me throughout this process. And I would also like to say thank you to all of our state and local partners that offered their help. It was great to see them and have their guidance. And I'd also like to thank our US Green Building Council mentors and cohort members for all of their help and their passion throughout the way. You do realize that Indiana has no ocean. It's the unfortunate part. Thank you so much for all of your hard work on this. You will truly be missed. But there's always a place for young people to come back to Columbia. So maybe we can convince that special person to maybe come back here. We're only there for two years, so. OK, good to know. I would definitely come back. Well, this is very exciting from the environmental perspective. It opens up so many opportunities for us to really continue to be the leader in terms of some of the sustainability efforts across South Carolina. Do my colleagues have any questions for the team? Well, I do think that this needs to get more publicity. Yes. So you have to stay until all the publicity. But it needs to go into our communication plans that we're talking about. These are selling points in different ways to spin positively for the city. And I think it would be worth also seeing if we could have local media do a story about what it means as to how it helps us, both in the short term and in the long term, in having maybe Robert and his team go and talk about that would be great. And we're happy to help, too, as you see fit. Absolutely, absolutely. Excellent job. Thank you very much. I wanted to ask, Robert, Mayor Pat, is there a certificate that we'll be getting? And I can see that as a presentation to full council and an opportunity to share an unabbreviated version of this at that appropriate time. Have we gotten that yet? We don't have it just yet. We have a meeting this Thursday to talk about with the US Green Building Council to talk about marketing all of that stuff. They have special plaques that we can buy. But I am working on getting a little certificate. Because they already have it made. We just haven't received it yet. But we're we'd love to do a presentation at maybe the 18th of July or on August Council. I don't know when that comes. Is it? I think she's leaving by August. Yeah, we need to do it in July. I also want to say, Claire, thank you. You've been a blessing to us. You really have. And whenever we got the 30 couple points out of the 73 that we submitted, you didn't get defeated your persistence in continuing to mine the information and send it back to the regulating group. That's really what helped us achieve gold. It would have been pretty easy to fold up and settle for silver or less. But you kept pressing on and your persistence is why we were able to get credit for all the good things we're doing. So kudos for that. Yeah, thank you. And good luck in everything. Yeah, thank you so much. I've absolutely loved my time here. It's all thanks to these lovely people. They've been a great help and taught me a lot of stuff. Like, don't press a button too many times. Stop a little bit further back from the light so it changes faster. Wow, look at all these tips and tricks. Well, thank you very much. We are now asked to be upstairs for the press conference, so we'll head up there. But this meeting, can I take a motion to adjourn? So moved. Awesome, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone for a great meeting.