Human Rights Commission Regular Meeting   10/17/2024

Yes, I am.

Here.

Here.

Heather?

Here.

And Elizabeth?

Do we have anyone in the audience or anyone online?

In person only for the first woman.

Roll in, roll in, roll in.

We like being with you.

Let's do one and then the other.

Approved.

Catherine, Suzanne, Heather, Elizabeth.

And for the minutes on October the third, approve.

Mary, Catherine, Suzanne, Heather,

They all look fine.

Cool.

Do you have anything that you have heard or do you remember?

No, not recently.

Moving on to the office staff.

I think that's all I have.

Are you guys setting up a table for that tomorrow?

Yes.

Because we have tables there.

Yes, all of the events in the chart are things I'm planning to table.

So thank you, Lily, for doing that and manning those tables.

We do have one other cabling event.

It's at 5.30 on the 24th of October, next Thursday.

We have a lot of traffic at them.

I know it says the middle of the day.

12 to 3 on Thursday, November 14th.

So what day of the week is that?

Remember, no alarm, you didn't have to read this, there's no quiz, none of that.

It's quite the read though.

I don't know why it didn't dawn on me at the time.

Listen to me too, but I was trying to roll with it.

Oh, you can see how, Ernest, you can call me on that stuff.

I was asking you to talk about this for a moment.

Yes.

What do we call a special meeting?

Written request.

So do I need to write a written request to you?

Yeah, you could, you could send me an email right now and I'll be like, yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And there you go.

But if we do hold, if we do get a training, it would be on 11-21?

Well, the other thing you can do is you could train at the work session on 12-5, which is also possible on December 5th.

Yeah, because we have timelines that we could start with this, correct?

Yeah, the 12-5 work session is better for me.

It would be different if it was 12-25.

I want to review that with them anyway, so good.

So maybe, I don't know what other people are going to be doing around the holidays.

Are you good with that?

Yeah, let us tell us what we need to make sure we are paying attention to.

So apologize.

You should be able to still use the public link, which would not require you to.

Great.

I think we caught everything.

I feel like it was all gone.

Here, while she's doing that, what we're going to do is we're going to scroll down.

I was going to go sit in the chair for a sec.

But that's really what I'm suggesting that you do is read the investigative report, ask us questions about it.

Can we send those by email?

It's the post investigative documents.

What tab is that?

This is tab 11.

370.

I'll help you with that.

Thank you, Heather.

I'll probably say it wrong.

You said 2-439.1.

So all the cross-examination and presentation of new evidence, testimony, all that stuff's in there, so.

Because the respondents do not agree, that is why we would hold a hearing?

You don't have to.

If the attorneys had not come back to you, because this is not totally tied up and other issues are tied up?

We haven't investigated it.

I didn't.

And then based on the vote, you either hold a public hearing or you say, nope, we're not holding a public hearing.

who are not happy with the outcome.

I don't want to do it off the top of my head, but we might have some time.

We just all have to read through and... Yeah, yeah.

Maybe consider what outcomes that you can anticipate if you do a public hearing or don't.

OK, thank you.

That makes sense?

Yeah.

By doing that, so.

If it was a public hearing, would it be open to the public with names?

State laws kind of.

You have a public hearing.

Yeah, please.

Yeah, that's also true.

So I'm trying to make sure that we're doing the right thing.

I understand why you're doing what you're doing, but it's still kind of messy.

So it's nuance that we haven't gotten through yet, but we're erring toward the side of caution at this point.

Or do we dig into this now?

And then there's the what does it mean to hold the public hearing on this case?

And will that be it for this case or will it continue?

Can the complainant appeal that overturning?

Does that bring up another public hearing for us?

I've got to do the first one.

But yeah, yeah.

What's that?

Our training would have a little more.

Not holding the hearing on the 7th of November, just voting on whether to hold a public hearing.

The ordinance is the public hearing.

Is that like, that's the big question?

And they're like, go ahead, send that off.

And the judge also, I mean, that was the judge's finding is that there could be, the retaliation was relevant even though it wasn't part of the original

could be reviewed by the commission and there didn't seem to be a compelling reason why to say nah because that if there's an issue found in the evidence that that wasn't brought up by the complaint in the original complaint it seems like that's the best service of the ordinance and and the spirit of like what's protected to address that rather than to be like Matt you didn't raise it so no even though the evidence points that that might be the case that that happened.

What's the serving the ordinance?

You can't order anything.

Like one of them has more, I mean, you know, more.

Yeah.

We are potentially asking the complainant to spend money for counsel.

yeah they did previously so yeah yeah you had thought we're not asking them to they don't have to have kind of obviously but it's yeah so here's the thing they don't have yeah Lily something's on your tongue I think it's maybe important to clarify that this I don't think that this is a situation and I don't know if a situation would be possible

But they're not asking.

Respondent has expressed, yeah, clearly that they want it.

No, the respondent is challenging the judges.

Probable cause of retaliation.

But it's one party has a problem with the party that was believed to retaliate is the one that had the problem with the judge's decision.

Yeah.

Speaking of time constraints.

Yeah, a lot of them, but we'll have them later.

You know that Todd, so we will have as much information as we need when we meet on the 7th.

Should we send those to you directly or to the whole commission?

It may stir up some other questions from commissioners about the case.

This is what we do.

Yeah.

Any more questions for Todd?

Long staff report.

City Policy Recommendation.

Any questions or anything about on number six that are available to council?

Do you mean the draft?

Yes, the draft.

So, so we want, we're going to want to revisit this, this paragraph specifically.

Whenever you're ready.

I'm ready.

Because what you see as a need, that's the strategy that I was like, maybe we can switch it around to do that and actually be more successful than saying, take money that exists in a city budget or a city position and put it out there.

That's another thing.

I'm a little confused.

Yeah, please.

and we conflated those two, but the original request that we were supporting was money's in the budget, let's fill that position so that we can have more focus.

That's how I remember though.

You just confused everything.

And part of that is there is confusion because we know that BRAC was considering and we did this.

Yeah, they're hiring.

They're trying to do it.

And BRAC is trying to hire for that position.

A homelessness outreach specialist.

So BRAC is trying to hire someone for their organization for that position.

It like would be temporary funding that needs to be re-engaged every year.

So BRAC is asking the city for funding for that position?

Like through the RFP process is what that is.

But you found out from Ashley that that position is in the budget.

A different kind of position though.

Have the city engaged and focused and doing work.

Yeah.

And we say?

The position that's in the funding to hire the homeless.

I mean it could be city personnel focused on homelessness services like we don't have to say a title.

It's just like, how do we frame this such that they get what you're after?

As long as that's what it says in the budget.

I mean, my only concern is we don't actually know the backstory.

Yeah, right.

So yeah, it just makes me a little nervous.

Well, and here's the thing.

Yeah.

I'm not nervous.

I want to know if there's a possibility for that position and we need that position.

Yeah.

What are you thinking?

It could be that there's some plan in the works and they're holding this money because they're going to do I don't know what, I don't know what they're going to do.

I confirm that the money is still there.

They haven't.

It's never been posted, so it's not that they haven't found something.

So if you have an opportunity there for funding and why you're holding up and not funding it, what's, what's going on?

Right.

Well, I'm that guy that has a chessboard and I put it down and I need the directions to, you probably want to move right here.

Yeah.

I need to know that.

Yeah.

That, oh, we're not hiring for this position because we're doing this, this, and this.

If it's budgeted.

In the budget.

Yeah.

And if it cannot be hired, I would like to know why.

That's the question, yeah.

That's, I mean, that's, you know, because I know there's a lot of stuff going on housing-wise, different ways of trying to figure out how to handle homelessness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think articulating that in the letter, like we want something to be, what I'm hearing is it wants something to be done with this money that's been earmarked because something needs to be done.

Or is it going to be put somewhere else that it's dealing with or potentially the same thing?

The position is there.

Can I just add perhaps a complicated factor?

Please release these funds.

So they basically have a matching fund situation with this other organization.

Maybe we.

You're in it.

This is number three.

We recommend that the city continue to fully fund supports for the homeless.

And that they report to us what it is and strongly consider the request.

The ability to just pay for the service instead of paying a birth certificate to coordinate the services that may or may not exist.

Right.

Tell them what the plan is for this money.

And you're supposed to be using it to benefit homeless folks.

That's one of it.

But I do think the homelessness outreach worker

would be a good use of those.

They may have thought of stuff, so we should give them room for sure too.

I agree with that.

There's so many moving parts right now and I think that's why it's probably getting kicked around and not

I think, yeah, I think that's very possible.

I think it's anything that can help encourage folks that things are moving.

Yeah.

So that's, that's all that's I'm looking at this, you know, just can we find out something.

Additionally, we understand that there is currently funding earmarked in the city's budget focused on homelessness, and we would urge the city to spend those monies in a strategic manner that positively impacts homelessness, be that a homelessness outreach role or something else that is really moving the needle for our unhoused population in the city.

Can we bring up Shayla's program or leave it out?

That's too much homelessness out there.

Yeah, I agree.

It's just not the outreach part.

be that a Homelessness Services Coordinator.

So we.

Outreach.

Outreach.

Coordinator through BRAC.

I was thinking of it quick.

Does everybody deal with that?

Yep, yes.

And thanks for tolerating my difficult explanation as to why it's helpful.

We should think about it again.

Do we need to take out number two?

So it is duplicative, but rolling with it.

If everybody can look at that and so we can try to get that to them.

What's the, what's our timeframe on that?

On this letter or the right to counsel?

I mean, if we want, if you want us to look at it, I just want to.

And how so?

No, I don't know.

I didn't know if they met this week or not.

I didn't know if they met this week or not.

Let's adopt it on the 7th.

We don't need to vote on these.

You don't have to vote.

I'm willing to give all the power to Ernest.

Is there anything else we need to touch on?

So I hope.

I actually have given up on the two spaces.

There were some that were one space and some that were two spaces.

You're supposed to get rid of the two spaces, but it's okay.

Actually, I'm just going to go through and accept that.

All the spaces in the world.

OK, I can take a stab at that.

I'd be happy to.

But there's a lot to say.

We'll add spaces.

Don't do that.

We'll just freak out.

And thank you, Susan, for your editing and stuff.

Nice.

Next is... No, Form Officer Nomination Committee.

That's right.

So we have, we need to, anybody would like to be on the nominating committee?

Sorry, I need to go back and read the... What's our timing again?

So

I'm happy to be on the nomination committee.

OK.

All right.

If you're leaving, it's automatic.

That's good.

Then we don't have to.

To the top?

And then I know like, at least for, we did some work on the Ally Safe Space training stuff a little early on.

But we never got really back to getting that training.

Okay, fair enough.

We're in contact with that.

I don't know if you all are still thinking about that or have the bandwidth to approach that again.

Fair enough.

We talked about doing something around a public discussion.

I was supposed to do some good information that happened.

Just want to make sure you were.

Let's see where we are December, our regular meeting, our last regular meeting in December.

Do you know if other organizations are working on that locally?

I have not heard and my plan was to go try to talk to someone at Jefferson School to find out if there's information out there because they would probably know if that was going on.

I think, I don't know, maybe three years?

I think it's four years.

But it's also one that is, I think, aiming to be reparative.

So it is front and center that it is intended as reparative.

It is four years.

Yeah, I thought it was four.

So in December, you're proposing to revisit that as a topic or not necessarily to hold the public discussion.

Just to get framework for whoever's next to say these are the people, the stakeholders to talk to about that and then the next group can take it on.

And it wouldn't have to be limited to that, but that was sort of.

Anything else?

Do you remember anything else that we were talking about?

Make sure we didn't miss those things, because it's an interesting layout with all those things up at the top, and then we've been focused on the calendar, so I didn't scroll up.

So anyway.

Thank you, Lily.

All right.

You're like, I'll be right here in this chair.

Right.

Getting up right on the holidays.

I'll be around, too.

We've got a few weeks off, so I'm going to enjoy that.

So we have confirmed there will be no 11-7.

I received your request as Secretary of the Commission, and I have affirmed via email in writing that we will publicly notice it as a special meeting.

Oh, you?

I might be there, but.

You might be there, but you might not be there.

I got you.

Any new business?

Uh-huh.

Yep.

What were other takeaways that you had from Mr.

I think maybe the things that I took away might not be relevant.

Well, yes, I have those too.

But I think you touched on like the major things.

So just wanted to share that.

Any other new business?

And I think it's been handled really.

Should we send, you know, with all the other stuff that we're sending, should we

I mean, we could put a line in the letter we're sending and saying, you know, while we're making these asks, we also want to commend city council and staff for their, I mean, I think that would.

Can we do some separate desilling?

That's just a, just a thank you.

Just an email, just trust the email and send it out today.

What time is their meeting on Monday?

So we'll do so the following week so not this week coming up but the following week well let's try to have something organized to get to getting that dropping their emails so this had to be a formal letter but as far as something to to city councils emails and to our city manager

I'm not joking.

Well, I guess for someone that rides on a consistent basis.

Right?

Yeah.

For the sake of the minutes, is anybody in particular volunteering to draft that?

Thank you.

Do you have it?

I'm still looking for a good cry.

Yeah, happy cry.

Are there any more?

Not that I'm taking the floor very much.

Lauren is here.

Thanks for coming tonight.

Did I miss anything?

Did you say that?

Yeah, we'll check it out.

Sorry, I blinked for a second.

And if all hearts and minds are clear, we are adjourned.

See y'all.