Bangor committee reviews language access plan and legislative updates

[0:53] Katie Brydon: Okay, we're live. All right, hello and welcome to the June meeting for the Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Human Rights. This evening I will start, I'll read roll, but we won't have to vote on roll because we don't have any members logging in online. Shane said he was going to try, but he didn't think he was going to make it, so we will just assume that he won't be making it this evening. Kat, Katie Robinson is excused. Adam Baker here. Suzette Burrow here. Shane Boyce is excused. Raylan Burke here, and Theresa Fallon here. Great, and Mark is also excused. I'm Katie Bryden, the chair, and we have with us our assistant city manager here, Courtney O'Donnell. We have a few minutes to catch up on. We have three active meeting minutes that we haven't voted on. The last one being April 28th, and then the May 6 sort of emergency meeting that we met when we were determining the ordinance feedback, and then our May meeting minutes on May 26. So is it okay if we take those all together? Okay, so I would need a motion to approve those minutes. Thank you. Can I get a second? Great. Are there any notes, feedback, changes, edits, discussions? Done. All right, so all in favor of approving those three meeting minutes as is? All right, five zero passes. Thank you. Seeing that we have no one online or in the gallery except our special guest, we will skip over the public comment meeting for now, or the public comment piece. I don't need to open that up because no one's here, and then we'll move on to committee business. So the first piece of our committee business is our council legislative committee update with Councillor Daniel Carson. Thank you for being here, Daniel. [3:15] Daniel Carson: City Councillor Daniel Carson. Great to be with all of you. Of course, I want to start by apologizing. I know I was invited to be here last month. I had a scheduling conflict that prevented of me from doing that, and I want to thank this committee for its flexibility in having me here today. It's been busy. Yes, a lot of meetings to join all of you. What I thought I would do, if it's of interest to the committee, is sort of review the rationale and vision behind the creation of a legislative committee and Review a little bit from the first two meetings that we've held, preview a potential language change that the council is thinking about, and then talk about how things end up at the legislative committee, so the referral process. Does that sound like that line here? Okay, great. So I'll go ahead and start with the rational vision with a little bit of a story. Of course, I was, I joined the council in November, and very early on during meetings and pretty routinely actually, when you go back to recordings of Council workshops and no matter what the discussion was, whether it was thinking about the crisis of homelessness that we're experiencing as a service center, or whether it be you know the unlike unfunded right state preemptive laws, you know, that preempt city policy, we continue to run into pieces in our discussions where we would find out that there were you know levers that we could not pull, right? And so those things are right state legislative process, and so people would say oh I really wish we there was a way we could do this, I wish there was a way to do that. And as discussions continued to unfold and particularly post our annual meeting with the state legislative development or state legislative delegation, there was really an interest in the city council of forming, potentially forming at that time, a legislative committee that had the ability to liaise with our state delegation and elected officials around potential legislation of city interest. And so other pieces that sort of had come out in ongoing discussions before there was an order drafted for the legislative committee was also that Bangor is the third largest city in the state of Maine, and politically does not necessarily live its voice as optimistically visible in Augusta for the scope of our operations. And additionally, being a service center city for a larger municipality this far north has additional challenges, right? When you think about the geography across the state of Maine and the concentration of people primarily in Southern Maine and along the coast. That concentration also yields a political concentration in Augusta. And so very often, when it's not intended, there can be more of a focus on the conditions in Southern Maine and Coast of Maine. And so this was another way for us to overcome what is a challenge, right? When it comes to the size and scope of things here, and then additionally the priorities, right, of service center cities can look very different based on geography. And so a lot of those things led us to wanting to form that committee. So those are pieces of, some pieces of rationale and vision around doing that. Of course, that committee was formed and approved by the council. And I think actually just for people following along at home, it would be helpful to know that give the language the ordinance on that committee can be found in our code of ordinances chapter nine section for Article one section for standing. So that is just some pieces of rationale and vision around why we formed that committee. We have since had two meetings, the legislative committee. In the first meeting, primarily, we had an organizational discussion to think about how the committee will function according to the ordinance that brought it to life. And so the legislative committee is a committee of the Council and its responsibility, despite it being a generative committee, is to keep the Council apprised and seek full Council approval for any action that we might take. And so we determined that first meeting that the best process would be interplayed between the legislative committee meeting and the council workshop where the legislative committee could bring ideas or reports to the full council for approval, recommendations and advice on how to proceed, whether or not to proceed. We also did an idea gathering session. Counselor Beck actually, who's joined, who's our council liaison, brought a, I don't remember how it was worded, but it was a county taxes for service centers idea that we had started to look at a potential amendment to that state law. And then of course we had sort of an open idea gathering session. I'm not going to list everything that came out of that session or even prior because, and I'll show it to you, but like every time somebody says anything at all, I just write it down. And there have been so many, and even before the legislative committee really was formed, somebody would look and say, wow, well if we had this, would be a great idea, and we'd scratch that. And so with the amount of ideas, of course, that we already have, the committee also talked about having that sort of guiding light to be able to narrow down the scope of what it is that we will take on based on the capacity of the committee and that guiding Light is going to basically be first that things align with the priorities voted on by the City Council, and then of course second, that any additional idea that is this may be outside the voted on priorities, of course, could be approved by the full council. So I think the third thing that I would preview is that since the formation of the legislative committee, the committee has proposed a language change, which we did bring to a council workshop, and I believe went through first reading referrals yesterday. Yesterday. That potential change, of course, again, in the code would be to add a line to engage in conversations with candidates for office, partners, and other stakeholders on topics falling within the purview of the legislative committee. This committee, and while the causes are needing to lift our voice louder in Augusta, needing to overcome the challenges of being a service center this far north or whether it be you know the geographical challenges of population essentially is about building relationships right so in lobbying or in advocating for ourselves that's really at the end of the day what we are seeking to do is to build relationships with our state delegation with other elected officials and we propose this language Change to include candidates for office partners and other state stakeholders for that same reasoning to build relationships right so I mean I just as an example of that we now know that Bobby Charles and Rick Bennett and former speaker of the house Pingree will right face off against each other in election for governor in November and so if this language change were to be approved of course in a very non-partisan way it would provide the opportunity for us as the city to be able to liaise with Those various candidates and share pieces of our priorities with them and to hear about their priorities as they seek their elected office partners and other stakeholders of course on the same lines of building relationships because we are not here to just we're not going to reinvent the wheel right and so if we identify a piece of legislation that we'd like to target, or we identify a topic, chances are very good that across the state there are not only other municipalities who are considering Similar questions, but other organizations or groups like maybe the Chamber of Commerce, maybe the Maine Realtors Association, and so on. And so this would provide the ability for the legislative committee, of course, with the approval of the council, to engage with those groups as well. So I think I'll pause briefly to see if there are any questions so far. I just want to say thank you, first of all, just [12:45] Katie Brydon: thank you so much for sharing such a comprehensive overview of what, how it was started, what the purposes are, and where to go. That was really helpful. Answer, thank you. Of course, thank you. [12:57] Suzette Holly Furrow: Does anyone have any questions for the councilman? Susan, so just do any other cities have a legislative committee? Do you know, like Portland, Augusta, Houston, they do that. So my understanding [13:11] Daniel Carson: and I would not be able to credibly provide you with the list off the top of my head, but I can say for sure that at least Portland has a legislative [13:21] Suzette Holly Furrow: I don't know if that was the a finalist about having a lobbyist that get voted on the camera member for the city [13:27] Daniel Carson: So that's a great question in our second meeting, and I'm glad that you asked that, because I forgot to review our second meeting, and I promised to do that. So in our second meeting, as such as pointed out, we reviewed that potential language change and as well the lobbying services that the city already engages in, and those are three areas. We have our membership with the Main Municipal Association. We're also city members of the Main Mayor's Coalition and the Main Service Center Coalition. The discussion about retaining a lobbyist did not result in the legislative committee's desire to have a lobbyist on staff. We think that primarily it would be the legislative committee's responsibility to be building language, to build the relationships, and that we certainly have the capacity with staff and myself to go if that's what the council wants, but we did. There was a vote to bring to the council a request to have $20,000 set aside in the event that our capacity or our ability to lobby for a particularly challenging piece of legislation required us to seek that outside expertise. The Legislative Committee, I'll just say, as a matter of being good stewards of that money that was set aside is in the room. I'm not at all excited to dip into that, but it is just there in case we should be back. Thank you for that. [15:01] Suzette Holly Furrow: Go ahead. I have another one. Yeah, sure. So the Service Center, this is kind of separate, but where do you find, is there any place in the charter or something that defines exactly what a service center is that's [15:14] Daniel Carson: A great question, and I don't know the answer to that question, that would be [15:18] Suzette Holly Furrow: word charter, is it in the Charter? Okay, I know where to find a clear definition as to what exactly, I think it probably changed over years. Yeah, I think it's like an informal term used for, you know, the municipalities that are perhaps overly burdened to a degree because of their location and demographics and services and things, and so they tend to attract folks from other parts of the state to them for those services and things. I know for us Maine Municipal Association has like a list of who they consider to be a service center community. If I had to guess there's probably others that consider themselves a service center community, but whether or not they're necessarily always [16:04] Katie Brydon: was included in those conversations, I couldn't tell you. Does it say in that main service center, what was it that third coalition, does it identify it in that? I could look, yeah, and come back. [16:18] Suzette Holly Furrow: Did you like, the reason why I asked is just because I do feel like, you know, Bangor is getting overwhelmed, you know, and so that's why I'm wondering like what exactly is definition, what other towns are service centers, right, there you know resources they [16:35] Katie Brydon: provide, right, or are there any other towns like in Penobscot County or even north of Penobscot County that are considered? I could assume that there are, but to what level, and are there varying degrees in terms of how many [16:48] Suzette Holly Furrow: organizations you have that provide services? Yeah, I think that's accurate, like I said, if you were to ask folks in southern Maine they probably for example wouldn't consider like Presque Isle a service center, but I'd argue it probably is for like, you know, very top of the state, they have homeless shelters, retail, some services and things, so yeah, absolutely I think [17:09] Katie Brydon: it's always in flux. Yeah, thank you for those. Any others? Go ahead. All right, Adam, just first off [17:17] Rheylan Burke: I really want the legislative committee and having bank or have a bigger voice for that and kind of my only question is was there a set amount of time like the committee would meet with like state representatives and then would that like be like a public meeting or like or [17:37] Daniel Carson: Like, how would that like work? So much, that's a great question. Legislative committee is bound to the same state laws as anything else. Our meetings are going to be public. The cadence of the committee will depend on the work of the committee. And so right now, right, we're out of session and there's not a need to meet as frequently. So I think once every couple weeks the committee can come together. As we approach that session, the legislative session, and we have generated ideas that we want to put forward, we're going to seek to meet much more often so that we can engage in that work, and those will be public meetings. Thank you. Thank you. Any [18:22] Katie Brydon: other? I have some questions, counselor. I'm wondering, and maybe I'm just, I want to make sure I truly understand the scope of the legislative committee. Do you envision it being more of that relationship building so that the Bangor priorities can be top of mind for elected officials in Augusta? Or do you see the priority being that members of the Bangor City Council will go and testify for things that would better benefit the city of Bangor? Does it seem equal to you? How do you envision that playing out in terms of [19:01] Daniel Carson: activity in Augusta? Yeah, great question. And so I think the answer that I would give is that I don't necessarily have a priority or preference to those things as you know like just setting a guide, but rather to consider those in relation to the topic of discussion. And so it may be, right, that it's on some piece, right, that it's helping our delegation to keep a priority top of mind. In other places, it might be the need to actually increase our voice, right, and not just for the state delegation, but to actually have the city liaise or increase our voice in a way that their state delegation involvement and the city council and partners and stakeholders should, you know, a language change occur. And so I think it's really going to depend on the topic and the piece of legislation, the complexity of the movement to accomplish. [20:01] Katie Brydon: Yeah, I think it's so important that we have more bodies in Augusta, just bringing that Bangor presence and having that regular cadence of, you know, being seen, being heard, and really sharing that voice, because to Suzette's points, there are so many needs that main court has it is getting overwhelming. So just having that presence I think is going to be really important. Do you envision it sort of your committee will then like look at the legislative calendar and say okay this is what's on Here this is what's not on here, who can we tap? Okay, that's [20:32] Daniel Carson: awesome. Yes, and the good news there is not only will we be keeping an eye on the legislative calendar, but our the main municipal association also really does great work in maintaining containing a constantly updated and moving list of things that are being watched. We'll we will not simply rely on that and we're of course going to have our eyes on things because the reality is that you know the same sort of thing that I identified earlier, that geographical difference that you know with the population also can be reflected in the main Municipal Association. And so very often, right, we are aligned in our priorities, but sometimes there are priorities that they are advocating for that may impact us in a different way and require our own voice. [21:20] Suzette Holly Furrow: So yes, right, so may municipal association is a non-profit that in the board is basically the members, and so the full of their members of course are smaller communities in maine. So what Councilman Carson is saying is that, of course, sometimes the priorities of the majority of their members are gonna angle toward those smaller communities and their needs and less toward ours because we're just a small portion of the communities that they serve. But he's absolutely right, they do a fantastic job of keeping an updated list of things that impact municipalities and also their status, which is like really helpful because that I can't tell you over the years how many hours I've spent trying to figure out like where something is in the process, what's happening next, like it's a lot to interpret. So yeah, that is so I [22:17] Katie Brydon: just sort of making that parallel and there's the main school board association that will you know all of the members of a school committee that are statewide and they'll say like this is what's coming up and if there are opportunities that we say like this is really important, this will impact being more greatly, we need to get more folks to either share their story if there are individuals that can go to Augusta. Is that part of the relationship building that you anticipate? I think it's maybe What I'm getting at is, how do you envision, I know that you said you would only sort of rally the troops around approved, either approved legislation or initiatives that have been approved by the full council or Bangor priorities. Do you envision that you'll look at sort of those things that are coming down the pike, then identify, okay, this matters to Bangor, then have a vote on full council whether that's important, and then get folks to help testify and sort of go to Augusta if needed? I just want to make sure, maybe what I'm getting at is, how can we best support you as citizens of Bangor? And then also making sure that there's a very fluid line of waiting to be told when it's helpful. Does that make sense? [23:38] Daniel Carson: Yes, that's a great question. And I think the way that I'll answer it, if it's OK, is to actually get into referrals. Oh, great. Yeah. I think might actually illuminate the same process. of that and then you can tell me what I've missed in your question and I will yeah I think that was a journey that was and I know I appreciate that and I think I sort of I could tell that you were you wanted to know how this committee what can we do and also make sure that we are also supporting [24:05] Katie Brydon: the priorities and not stepping out of line and actually being comfortable and how does that look because it is a very it can obviously be incredibly partisan in Augusta how can we as a that your elected officials are all nonpartisan, right? You all serve the city at large. So what does that look like in terms of what people are prioritizing and telling you to pass, and how does that work? [24:31] Daniel Carson: Yeah, so there are a couple of sources of referrals to the committee. And so the committee is who decides what to bring to the council. OK,. Although the council can decide to send something to the committee, because it is a committee of the council. Either way, the full council is going to be who decides what it is that we actually take on and the actions that are approved on behalf of the city, because we are, we will be acting on behalf of the city of Bangor, and so the council will have to direct us in that. So referrals, the legislative committee is a generative committee. It has the ability to think of ideas and to consider those on the committee and then of course to bring those to the full Council of the Council workshop. The committee could receive referrals from the full Council. That has happened you know sort of informally so far where we'll be in a meeting and somebody will say well I really wish the legislative committee could take this on and just because they said and I write it down or It can be formally from that council workshop that somebody moves and there's an actual motion to make a referral to the council. I would say that potentially related to this committee I would say that potentially this committee could make recommendations on legislative matters to the council and then the council could decide whether or not to move forward with that to refer it to the legislative committee. I think or even in my and I'm going to follow this up with the promise to go and actually Bring this to the council at a workshop but in my reading and understanding the council could also approve acre making the referral directly to the lips so that's I would need to follow up with sure. But I wanted to at least bring that as a potential idea that I can follow up with the Council. And then of course, if the Council approves the language change that has been proposed, partners and stakeholders are also part of that language change. So it is possible that in the course of discussion at the legislative committee or in the course of discussion when the committee brings an idea to the full council that the council may identify this committee as a partner and what in what case you know the council could move that and then of course we could maybe take a collaborative approach on a particular piece of legislation. So there seem to be a lot of possibilities and of course for anybody listening at home we are always happy to Receive ideas from citizens of Bangor who you know just they have an idea and they want to share that with us. We've already received some you know and so I want people to know that they can do [27:36] Katie Brydon: That as well. That's awesome, thank you. Did that answer? No, the referral piece, I missed that. So that actually answered my questions entirely in terms of like what that flow looked like. And again, just how to make sure it was all, I mean, obviously it's all the board, but like what would that process look like in terms of getting involved in a helpful way? So thank you for that. May I ask who's on the committee? Yes. [28:04] Daniel Carson: Counselors Leonard, Walker, Dean, and Fish. And you. Yeah. And me. I almost forgot. [28:21] Katie Brydon: I just have one more question, unless anybody else will take the floor too much. Do you think, and you might not have an answer to this, do you think there is a priority right now that the legislative committee is most excited to sort of push? [28:41] Daniel Carson: That's a great question. So we have not arrived at a full list of priorities, but I can tell you that in multiple meetings, people have brought up questions about Dorothea Dix and the property over there and the operation so I know that question especially as we think about the newly formed homeless committee and the work that committee is going to be undertaking that question continues to come up so I know that people on the legislative committee are at least excited about learning about that. Is that state-owned? It is, yes. I thought so, that's huge. And so I do know that city manager there and City Solicitor David Szewczyk are the staff for the legislative committee and I know that the city manager there is working on engaging with the state to find a way to get us some education about what that looks like over there, the operations, different things. So I know that 's a- Yeah, that's reasonable. Of our time. Otherwise, the work ahead is going to be that the committee has also, you know, has already come up with a robust list of ideas. So we're gonna have to do some narrowing down to determine what the biggest type for, of course, related to priorities and different. [30:08] Suzette Holly Furrow: So my father was a legislator and I know we get a lot of letters in the legislature and you know individual circumstances. So if someone say has a personal issue that they you know would like resolved [Adam Douglas Baker: would you] Encourage them to come to the city committee or this is more things that have to do with city-wide things, you know what I mean? Because you like, I guess what I'm saying is you people would still want to write the individual letter to their representative and then not pursue it because your committee doesn't want to get inundated with letters, you know what I'm saying? So like how do you draw the line? Like Dorothy Dix is a good example because that is like a city-wide issue, but you got to mean like You don't want to get overwhelmed with people's personal letters saying, hey, I'm trying to get this pursued, my legislature's not really answering my question. [31:08] Daniel Carson: So I think that's that's a great question and I haven't really thought about that from the committee perspective, but I think I would say a couple things, and one would be that generally city priorities are going to be what drives the activity, is city priorities as determined by the council will be the main driver of how we proceed, but I think, you know, the city council, as the, as the local government, I think it's extremely important for us to be able to do that. Extremely natural for people to want to reach out to us when they have difficulties in right with state law or here in Augusta, and I would encourage people to do that. I wouldn't be able to promise that if people are doing that those things are all going to come to the legislative committee, but I certainly would not want to include somebody should have come reaching local officials if they want to express difficulties that they're having a point, because they're they are our constituents too. Right, and actually so is our state delegation, they're also our constituents, so I think that's a that's certainly a welcome opportunity for constituents to be letting us [32:15] Suzette Holly Furrow: Yes, of course, yeah, that would also be helpful too in terms of as you're building relationships and stuff, you might be able to help facilitate a connection or something to help a bank or resident even if you even if the committee itself cannot absolutely move something along. [32:30] Daniel Carson: On and in fact I we've that's happened already a couple times with our state delegation. A constituent in the city of Bangor will reach out about what actually ends up being a city question rather than a state question, and they'll facilitate that call, pick up the phone and say hey I've got this person who has this question and it's not our you know it's for you. So I think we could do that would provide us a great opportunity to be able to do this right. I could just see great [33:00] Katie Brydon: value in feeling like this is a priority for my neighborhood or this is something that I care deeply about, knowing that the city you know there's a there's a group of elected officials in your own city that could help us through that up to the state would be probably very uplifting and empowering. Great questions. Any other questions for Counselor Carson [33:27] Suzette Holly Furrow: When are your meetings out are they part of the they are irregular? Oh okay so scheduled as needed [33:34] Daniel Carson: So we've had two so far probably at least once a month potentially more than that in this early period, but as we get closer to the legislative session [33:48] Suzette Holly Furrow: And also individuals that want notifications around when that committee meets is able to do so by signing up at bankorbain.gov slash alerts. We didn't even tee that up, good job [34:06] Katie Brydon: Wonderful. Well if there's nothing else this was incredibly helpful. I would love the opportunity you know once you officially meet with the council and have everything set aside in terms of having that if that language is approved in terms of partners where we might be able to support, I think it would really behoove all of us, [34:25] Adam Douglas Baker: If you're not already signed up for the alerts, [34:27] Katie Brydon: To participate in the alerts, watch us if you can, look at the minutes, because if there's anything that we can help, I think that would be a really beneficial opportunity for us as well. The more people, the more voices that are gonna push forth some of the more priorities that we all agree on, the more, hopefully, I guess it will have to listen to us. [34:50] Daniel Carson: Before I you cannon me out of the table I just want to make sure that what I 'm walking out with my what I'm supposed to come back with and that is that question about potentially making referrals to council on legislative matters that could either be referred to the legislative committee or the council could approve that. So I'm going to bring that question to our next council workshop. That'd be wonderful, thank you. Any other some of those problems and please feel free at any time any of you to reach out i love hearing from everybody and those of you at home daniel.carson vanguardmaine.com this is really [35:35] Katie Brydon: great work i'm very excited that bangor had this committee so thank you thank you thank you very much counselor thank you for having me have a good night i'm gonna because i can't say it oh you look here all right wonderful now moving on to our next committee business we have the language access plan that draft review so assistant city manager oregon was so helpful in putting together the draft language access plan in determining where what this might look like i would love if you're okay with this off in [36:23] Suzette Holly Furrow: terms of where it's floating that at a city level yes so since the last robust update i have combed back through got updated feedback from staff i also met with the multicultural center which was actually very helpful they just some basic information that they provided me with is they have they serve about 200 people regularly like on a ongoing basis and then about another 150 kind of sporadically as needed about half i think of those folks are 21 or younger so a lot of kids yeah they do have some translators that are able to help what they see as the biggest the two biggest languages that they see is spanish and arabic and when i asked the question in terms of like what is like from the city perspective what's one of the biggest barriers interestingly it had nothing to do with like language actions was access in terms of translation but actually had to do with our transit system and the lack of expanded hours because yeah they often don't have transportation immediately and so it limits their ability to get around easier so that was actually a really good insight that was really helpful and i did mention this committee and they did share that they would be happy to come and meet with you all and share more about what they do and answer questions and stuff as well so that's something that can be scheduled if you guys are interested the work with the ASL translator is ongoing we're actually working through a proposal now to get in particular public safety but actually other departments sensitivity and cultural training around ASL, but also other, what's the term? It's escaping, but other needs that I think our staff could really benefit from in terms of responding better to a citizen's need on the spot. Whether you're talking out here at a window or a police interactions, EMS interaction, [38:58] Katie Brydon: Anything like that and you're talking like outside of language is that what you're getting at? Yeah like autism. Yeah and other. Yes. Yeah so that's fantastic and that will continue. [39:13] Suzette Holly Furrow: No matter like where this plan lands but I also we have with the community connector what's called the Title Six plan that will actually be coming before council I think next month and that plan requires us to kind of evaluate our area in terms of the need for LEP and because if you hit like a certain threshold then FTA considers like okay you're diverse enough that you have to provide certain information and services in a way that folks can understand it and so as part of that we always reach Out to the university and colleges because that's actually they have like a large concentration of LEP students and so they're a pretty good easy gauge to understand kind of what they're seeing and doing to help their students and then we also work from statistics and things available through the census and whatnot to kind of help us better or understand the needs of our community and we also asked drivers and others for input as well so all of that to say that there was a lot of information That was taken into account and so I considered this language access plan like a pretty good starting point knowing that as we continue to evolve as a community that likely will need to revisit it at least yearly if not more to make sure that we're staying on top of the need but not going so far that we're going out of our way for things that really aren't needed either because there are supports in place already for the individual or having something like the language line which is being Tested out by public safety is readily available and provides that direct translation service. And so that's and I we did also I did run this plan by the department heads. I mentioned previously that some of the departments were really felt that this was important and having a sort of protocol or like resource that they're supposed to follow in terms of providing language access to our citizens. And so yeah this is just like a basically a first draft that I was hoping that you all had time to kind of review and give thoughts and feedback and stuff that I can take back and work with the department heads to further flush out before returning to you [42:01] Katie Brydon: Thank you so much for that update that is so helpful. Any questions off the bat for [42:10] Teresa Fallon: So [42:14] Suzette Holly Furrow: The Multicultural Center, how many towns does that serve, or is it the whole entire Penobscot County, or is it other local? That's a great question and one I can't answer unfortunately. That might be a good question if we're able to invite them to come, but I do know just in our conversations is that I do know that he had mentioned like Old Town and Orono and folks like that they were also servicing because those are tied back to that transit conversation because the service area is much larger than Vancouver but I couldn't tell you there could be folks in Eddington or somewhere else for example that I'm just not aware of it's the multi-function center Brewer it is in Brewer Yeah on Acme Road okay yes yep [43:07] Katie Brydon: Do you know what the threshold for the Title VI plan is? How many LAP? [43:14] Suzette Holly Furrow: I don't off the top of my head. I'm happy to come back to the next meeting with more information about that. I will say that we're pretty well below the threshold. Okay. Yeah, and we have been consistently, although I will say that we're trending upward, we're still we're still pretty far below that doesn't mean though that like if we were made aware for example of a particular need that we would try to meet it 's just that we're not required to based off of those [43:44] Katie Brydon: Thresholds of the plan oh yeah absolutely yeah no I was just wondering if that if it was like maybe close enough that would trigger some sort of more consistent review of this if we were getting closer and then you would obviously that would you know that would trigger Title Six before any of this but it might give us more of a more regular cadence because that was my big piece with the feedback is this yeah and I think [44:15] Suzette Holly Furrow: What I had in my mind in terms of you know updating it periodically was not just for like myself for example to look at this plan but to resend the survey out to employees like once a year to get their feedback and to reevaluate statistics and things just to make sure that we are taking everything into consideration as we're evaluating this plan yeah absolutely [44:40] Katie Brydon: Thank you I'm also I know that we obviously you've met with the Maine Multicultural Center. We've also, you know, had the Bangor Adult Ed share the resources and services that they provide to get a number. I'm wondering the, there's like so many, this one question is going to open up 600 other questions in my head, because the school's Community of Belonging Advisory Committee that was previously known as you know Bangor's DEIB, Bangor School Department's DEIB committee, they have all of their ML teachers as a part of that committee. They have an incredible pulse on how many families are in the district who need services in from you know pre-k soon to be three years old up until graduation. And Adrienne who's the new Executive Director of the Maine multicultural center is on that committee he's been instrumental in really making those connections in terms of families and students i'm wondering if that might be something that we could even connect with the community of belonging advisory committee at the vancouver school department to see if we can get numbers oh yeah of course since that is sort of it's seeming that's sort of the biggest hole it's one of these students needing much and they obviously are connected to families right so how can we get a better pulse on those numbers which the reason that I was sort of mulling over another question in my head was that we used to get regular updates from that committee at the part of this advisory committee. I know that we've had a significant turnover in school department leadership since those committees started, but I thought it was always helpful just to sort of maintain that bridge. Dana Carver-Bialer, the director of self-right she is still leading the and she's the leading the advisory committee but her co-chair on that committee is marwa hassanan who's the board chair for maine multicultural yeah so there's a lot of overlap right these are a lot of people in the same pools and i just feel like if we could all get them together i'd be happy to sort of reach out to dana if that would be helpful just to see if she can connect with our elmel teachers just get a number on what we're looking at in terms of yeah especially if she was willing to come to a future meeting to give you know more insight and information absolutely i think that would be really helpful and i don't know i guess i never thought to ask if the school has a [47:40] Suzette Holly Furrow: language access plan or it's sort of like intertwined in terms of like their education [47:45] Katie Brydon: Education requirements and stuff like that. Yeah, it is, it's from what I understand. I'm not gonna, I was gonna pretend that I knew the answer, but realistically the, because there are so many of our social workers, ML teachers, like each community, you know, need is, has so many staff present, but these trainings are built in for all of the educational purposes. But it's something that we also talk about often at a school committee is, relying on Google Voice app in the classroom really appropriate? What are the expectations for students? And granted, it is a different, I don't know. It's, there are pros and cons to obviously being immersed in a school six hours a day with a single language. [48:43] Suzette Holly Furrow: Age 10, yeah, I did, I forgot to mention I also spoke with the literacy volunteers. Oh great, and they, I sorry, I don't know the, I didn't bring the numbers, but they were also a great resource, and of course they're a great fantastic resource for helping folks get to a level of English proficiency where they're able to meet their basic needs and also create kind of connections to folks locally, you know, that are willing to help them out with anything from like how do I go to the grocery store and do certain things to, you know, help me sign up for class sort of thing. Absolutely. Adam. [49:33] Rheylan Burke: I just want to, I like the idea of meeting with the multicultural center that like just talk to them and just learn and more, I think that's a great idea, and just I think the language access plan is a really good thing for Bangor, and just it's super inclusive, and everybody's needs are different, especially with language, and keeping it updated I think is also paramount, because our city's ever changing every single year and its needs are different, so yeah, I just like where it's going [50:06] Katie Brydon: So more of a comment, but thank you. Yeah, it might be helpful to see if we can have, and I'm happy to send out an email to Dana about the work of the school committee, but also include Marwa and Adrian since they're both associated with Maine Multicultural Center and on that committee. Is there other feedback or things that people are like, oh this is absolutely missing from the language access plan, or maybe this isn't what we need to have in here right now, that would be helpful for Courtney to receive, it's [50:48] Suzette Holly Furrow: okay too if like after this meeting you're like, oh yeah, you should be an email, I'll definitely take into consideration, I [50:56] Katie Brydon: Think, for me, first of all, thank you again for all of this work. I am so grateful that you were able to connect with staff and identify where the priorities are. Obviously, the entire effort of developing something like this was born out of how can we obviously make the actual city council meetings more accessible. It was, what was that like two years ago, that you went to a committee meeting or a city council meeting, and you got this paper from North Carolina that had different ways to access the city council agenda in the languages most commonly spoken outside of English in that community. And that spurred for all of us here. That would be a really great opportunity to look at what we present to individuals living in Bangor and whether or not it's actually accessible from a city level. From then, I think that you've done the diligent hard work of actually connecting the city staff and what they hope to make available to citizens, what they would need in terms of training and resources, so that at the end of the day what our citizens are seeing and receiving in terms of engaging at a city council level and then also with the other departments is as accessible as possible. So it sort of came from two different sides of the same point. Yeah, two different sides, same point, and now we're sort of making that point, which I [52:31] Suzette Holly Furrow: really appreciate. Suzanne, I do think of a question. So Courtney was the, I know we talked more about ASL. Was ASL the ones that like department heads and subs said they felt like there was a biggest need for ASL? Yeah, in particular the police department. Yeah, and Katie, does the Bangor School Department teach ASL? [52:57] Katie Brydon: It does, yes. Yeah, so we do have that, and we have some really incredible students that have really embraced ASL, right, have some really, like, there's this, like, feel of biliteracy that the state of Maine gives out for individuals that are learning more than one language at high school. And ASL has predominantly, the students that are learning ASL have gone really far in the state level in terms of sharing how much their multilingual bilingual awareness is and using ASL, and so it just speaks volumes to the education but also the student, like, heart for ASL at the high school level. So I think that they're, that's like a really untapped pool in terms of resources, where obviously I'm not saying like let's get a bunch of high school students in here to translate, but what do those Educators in terms of their resources look like and who are they relying on and where do they and also be really curious like [54:07] Suzette Holly Furrow: From the school perspective like what the numbers are around that because the individual we're working with on our side she said she believed like around 100 or so in the Bangor maybe greater area that's like involved and well connected in the deaf community but and of course other people come and go and so that number I'm sure fluctuates but I'd be really curious how [54:34] Katie Brydon: That aligns with what school sees yeah and I know two individuals that are professional AFL translators that live on my street alone yes so I know that there are yeah exactly [54:50] Suzette Holly Furrow: I used to have dyslexic kids and a lot of times that was recommended as a second language you [54:55] Katie Brydon: Oh sure yeah that's cool. It's easier with the language. Yes it's really neat. Adam. [55:04] Rheylan Burke: I may I may have missed this answer or does the city or like agenda like stuff does it have like a different language option for people who say you don't like English or like or perhaps or have a struggle with it as an accessibility it's only something I think we've had many [55:27] Suzette Holly Furrow: Conversations about no unfortunately that does not exist you will know at the your on your agenda we did add language about like if you have a request this is who you call and then information that folks may need to make sure that they're in the right place at the right time and how to get there and whatnot and I think at one point there was consideration by this committee to potentially make a recommendation to Council to amend their agenda to include different information but I think the Reason why we didn't offer like translation for the agendas and things was because we set off down the road to figure out if the need was actually there and based on everything I've gathered I think it could be useful particularly for Spanish whether or not it would get used a lot I couldn't tell you [56:19] Rheylan Burke: Yeah, [56:22] Katie Brydon: That's a thought, yeah. Thank you. But I think that it segues into a couple of different opportunities for this work and for what we offer. One being our committee website and review is what we'll discuss next. And there are opportunities for us to really enhance what we're putting out there. And is that something that we could put on the city website, like if you need, you know, language access to anything in the city, like this is something that I don't know if you were to think, hey, I want to go to a city council meeting, I don't have a lot of, you know, comfort with the English language, what can I type in to see if I can get support resources? There's something that we could maybe put some sort of tag, you know, if you Google it for the city council meeting for us to. [57:18] Suzette Holly Furrow: So that you, what you're talking about might be one step further, but I do just want to note that we're actually required by law to make sure that we provide accommodations, including for language needs. And so this does exist, and actually Grayson as the assistant city solicitor is our ADA coordinator. Coordinator. We probably need to do maybe a better job at like cross-referencing this in certain areas to make sure folks know like how to get the assistance that they might need and whatnot, but at least a starting point is there. [57:55] Katie Brydon: Sure. And this sort of opens up the bigger question on my mind, which is this language access plan and us identifying its sort of value in terms of staff training. You know, our ordinance says that we are to provide resources and support and recommendations to council as well as staff. And so that's sort of when we were determining what is the best plan of action in making sure that the city of Bangor is accessible, it was going to staff and saying before we sort of jump into this, is there a need? It was determined that there was a need. So then we stayed in sort of that bucket and we said, how can we shape something that is going to help staff? My question for you is, if we look over this and we meet with other individuals and we identify better data and numbers and we feel really good about this language access plan, is this something that will be implemented or implementable by staff, or is it something that needs to go through council approval? Yeah, that's a [59:13] Suzette Holly Furrow: Great question. This is an internal policy for staff, so it would be approved by the city manager. Okay, it is something that could actually be revisiting at her discretion. Okay, so even if we were to put this in and then later this fall the committee is like, hey, I came across this, we really need to revisit that plan, you guys can totally have that conversation, make a recommendation to staff that hey, you should really consider amending that plan to exclude [59:40] Katie Brydon: X, Y & Z. Wonderful, thank you. And then the second piece of it is, you know, we, the other bucket that has sort of been lingering out here is that piece of identifying how we can make the agendas more accessible. We, if you remember, spent a lot of time daydreaming about people going to the city website and clicking on something and having different languages open up that would give you information on the city council agendas and how to access them. It seemed, based on our feedback, that the need was much greater at a staff level in supporting citizens rather than individuals wanting to go to city council meetings. That said, and I guess this is for the committee, we don't have to make a decision on this right now, but do we wanna keep that bucket open of identifying language and physical assistance, accessibility offerings that we could build out and recommend to city council for their agendas? Do we want to continue exploring what that might look like or how to offer that recommendation? Do we want to stay on the staff side? Do we want to do one at a time? What is your vision for how we might not get lost in the sauce with all of these different pieces, Suzette? [1:01:04] Suzette Holly Furrow: I think that, Leo, when we talked about, obviously I can't remember her name, the woman, she's on the committee, she talked about all the so many apps and okay yeah it's like yeah that translates for you yeah hospital so then I think that we kind of were like oh it's really that much of a need or you can take a picture of something at trans yeah I think that is what prompted language line actually it's a very similar service yeah I love that they're testing that out okay any [1:01:40] Teresa Fallon: Other thoughts? I think, I feel it makes the most sense to stick with the staffing side of things and develop that and get that and present that and get that finalized, because as you guys have mentioned, we already kind of evaluated where the need was, and if it's on the staffing side, I think we should probably focus on that item, and then it's definitely something we can revisit in the future. We should develop something on the website. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. [1:02:17] Rheylan Burke: Oh, just echo. Yeah, just keeping it with staff. But if some reason has to like get recommended in council or what, I'm just have that, but that door open, at least you're not sure not necessarily keeping our options open. [1:02:37] Katie Brydon: And it might be helpful, too, in terms of, you know, meeting with other service providers in the city that are supporting individuals that are, you know, multilingual, what those needs are. Because it seemed like we kind of got the feedback that, like, people are good on getting to meetings. But I would, what I love most about this is this piece of sort of like comfort in identifying how to get to the meetings. I think that this covers a range of needs. Individuals that maybe have a lot of anxiety about going to a place where they're not comfortable or unfamiliar. People who have access and mobility needs. Even if it doesn't come down to us offering language, I do just want to keep some of that physical and maybe like intellectual accessibility options on here as a as a pin for us to revisit sort of if we have like a parking lot for this language access plan. I think coming back to what sort of disability services we might be better able to offer, because yes, while that accommodations and accessibility is on the website, I do think that even just a piece of this is where you park and this is how you get in here is a huge barrier to folks that might otherwise want to participate, anticipate and feel really overwhelmed by the process because of either am I going to be able to climb the stairs or are there other options and also the idea of what door do I go in is too overwhelming to me, these are I think probably a lot more prevalent in our city than language needs, so I think there's some value in that, and I think that maybe just identifying that as a something to revisit would be a recommendation that I have. I absolutely agree. A little horse. I know, I'm sorry. [1:04:48] Adam Douglas Baker: Back to that culture, but I absolutely agree. Yeah, kind of like park it for now. Yeah, when we or when anyone or any or group focuses on too many things at once, it gets lost. Thinking of something in particular with the organization in Bangor, they have all these great ideas, but then they're they're not completing them. So I think that's super important, but probably to focus on the staff level first where that's the higher need. Awesome, thanks all and [1:05:20] Katie Brydon: That brings us to our committee website review and enhancements, which really does give us such an opportunity to sort of put all of these things that we want to make known to the public Click available in one beautiful spot. So as you know, this is what our page looks like now if you go to opportunities to get engaged in committees. And we have this entire page where we have the opportunity to talk about what we're doing, what our goals are, what we hope to accomplish. Courtney was kind enough to put that sort of like contact piece on the page so that individuals are able to either provide feedback or connect with us individual not individually but connect you know go to Courtney and she would make sure that is presented at an upcoming meeting for us to evaluate if there are citizen concerns. I think in the past it's all gone through our liaison counselor back, but that would be really helpful to have one clear area. What we need to determine is what we can put on this page that would actually speak to what we're doing and what we offer, and to sort of go off of Teresa's last point, what is actually within our bandwidth in terms of what we're able to offer. I think that's probably been the biggest piece of this. We have a lot of things we want to put on there, but we're like we're gonna do a blog about what month it is and how to celebrate that and what's happening, but then who's gonna write the blog right, how are we going to continue a cadence where it doesn't fall flat and people know to go there to learn about either what's happening in the state or you know what month is the celebration etc. So things that we have talked about in the past being on here are an overview of what happened at the last Meeting our last committee meeting so that people can go to it and say, oh, I have a good idea of what was discussed and what's happening, a calendar of what's happening. We definitely said we would like the calendar to be representative of different communities that are celebrated each month, but there's also the opportunity if someone has a desire or interest or expertise in a certain area, to be able to use a space on that website to provide information to the general public. I think that those are really great ideas and opportunities. We just need to decide, if we're going to do this, what's that timeline look like? And how do we make sure that we're signing up appropriately so that there's always something? Thing what we had talked about is I'll give you an example. October is National Disability Employment fund, so people with disabilities that should be employed, but more than 80 of adults with disabilities are unemployed simply because they have a disability, not because they're not willing or able to work. So if I were to write a blog about the benefits of hiring someone with a disability and how many adults with disabilities are unemployed, and I would want that to be on the website for October as an awareness, there's a whole, you know, National Disability Employment Awareness Month is a whole website, it's a whole organization that does this work. They could be great for people to just familiarize themselves with that, because that is the world that I live in and that's what I do with my every day. So I would then want to write information about it. And I would have that ready to go at the September meeting. I would send it to Courtney before the September meeting. She would include it in the packet. Everyone would read it and say either, yeah, this is helpful, or this is not helpful, or this doesn't reflect things that we think are important. And then if it were approved, then it would be on the website in October. But it would have already been voted on and accepted by the committee in September. So that would mean that I would need to do it in October, September, August. Does that make sense? So if we were to determine what we would want to do, if that were something that we would want to consider, I would like to know, one, is that still of interest? And two, if we were to do it, almost seems like we need to carve out some time to say, hey, here are the months. If this is something you want to do, is there a month that's interesting to you? You are now assigned two months prior to write something or share something in that wheelhouse so that people, one, know that we are here to serve the people of Bangor in terms of making opportunities and pushing forward initiatives that make Bangor more accessible, but also that we all have areas of expertise and interests that are really valuable. And so they might be like, oh, I didn't know that was a thing. This is just interesting information to have in terms of widening the scope of what's available from volunteer leaders and bankers that wanna share what's important to them too. So my questions are, one, is that something that we should consider? The calendar, are we still on board with that? Two, if it is, I would love to sort of make that sort of assignment time an agenda item. And three, what else do we want to put on here? If we were to put a sort of snapshot of what happened at the last meeting? Is someone willing to take that on? Right? Granted, we're missing three members tonight, we could always revisit this. But I do want people to think about it and have either an answer now or an answer by next meeting. Teresa, [1:11:29] Adam Douglas Baker: I think it would be helpful to put this on the next agenda where we are missing a few. I also like the idea of assigning the months, and this may be a silly question, but can't we just put not the minutes, I guess that's what I was thinking, like a meeting note, kind of a summary of the minutes? I think the minutes are a little bit more in depth and like he said she said kind of, I think from the ones I've seen, but I think it doesn't have to be too much more complicated than the minutes. That's true and that's something I could draft if you have the time. I would hate to like put [1:12:05] Teresa Fallon: that on you, minutes, and then I can do like a summary. Well, I'm also even wondering if there's [1:12:11] Katie Brydon: a way that we could like take the minutes and like pull from it like three things you need to know. Yeah, it's like three, what we talked about, what we're working on, where we're going, or something that we could like, that way in even looking at the way that the mitten minutes are written, right, it could be like, oh yeah, we talked about bride, come see us on June 27th, right? It could just be like one sentence for like what we talked about, what, where, whatever those three. [1:12:37] Adam Douglas Baker: things are okay if i don't mean to interrupt no i think keep that part brief and then we put the focus on the calendar because we could bring awareness to so many more i guess days or months or special things that a lot of people don't even know about but then so put it make it brief like what you just mentioned but then we have the comment box now yeah you'd like to know more please reach out here yeah yes like i 'm not i don't think that we would get a lot of traffic with questions on so what did you talk about? I would just say but have it directed to somewhere that we could help with that, so it's not just all of you guys is answering like, well, this is what they talked about. [1:13:29] Katie Brydon: I think, oh, I just want to, sorry. I'm so sorry to interrupt you. I just want to say a question that I have based on the calendar and like what's going on. The reason it's like maybe we want to keep this more sort of like information sharing is because, and correct me if I'm wrong, the city of Bangor can't pick and choose what to promote, right? It just doesn't promote things in general is my understanding, right? Right, just from a wide net safety perspective. We're not gonna say, we're gonna put on our site that this really cool thing that we care about is happening on this day, because then we have to put everything on there. Is that correct? [1:14:10] Suzette Holly Furrow: I mean, I think what you're remembering is me talking about promoting like other organizations and things that are like third party to the city. That is kind of a slippery slope. I'd argue I guess depending it depends on in terms of like the awareness and other things you're trying to highlight or make folks aware of, I think that's part of why we're doing check-ins, just to make sure the council has the understanding of what's going on and what you guys are thinking of doing, and then also if the council has taken action on an item and is like for example there was a proclamation last night for pride and the council gave a standing ovation, that's probably a safe bet that there's support for you to highlight that on your [1:14:58] Katie Brydon: web page for example. Oh yeah, we could definitely put proclamations, that's a great idea. Thank [1:15:05] Suzette Holly Furrow: You yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt. Who's that? Oh, that's okay. So is there, you know, the agenda in its center? Yes. Is that, does that have this committee, or it does? I was going to think, could you, could you then, could you just link it here? But I guess, I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, linking it is certainly an easy thing to do. I will say we're a little bit behind in terms of uploading the minutes. We've had a little bit of shuffling and turnover, but that's on our list to make sure that is updated and in fact in the agenda, excuse me, it's agendas and minutes. If you were going to actually, this committee is the first one because of the name of it. You can actually see the minute, the minute, or excuse me, the agenda, click on the minutes of that meeting, and also the link to the video, so if you wanted to actually watch, you could as well. And we're working on updating that, so yeah, we could on this web page for this committee, we could totally redirect folks to that. So we could do like the, oh sorry, I think we're gonna say the [1:16:11] Teresa Fallon: same thing, so we could do like the brief overview, and then if you want initial information, click [1:16:18] Katie Brydon: here. Absolutely, yeah, video, yes, yeah, that's a good idea, that's a great idea. It'd be cool too to, you know, even be able to add on to that. I don't think it necessarily needs to change the feedback section, but even if we're able to say like, you know, on our calendar, like this month is this initiative, here's some more information about it, do you have an initiative you care about, fill out the feedback form below, and we'll connect with you. Because I think just having more involvement in the city, we have just such a diverse experiences and expertise in the city, that being able to have a place for people to highlight, you know, what communities maybe we don't hear enough about, I think it's probably the purpose, right, is that we're just trying to really uplift and put a spotlight on communities that we don't hear enough from. All right, so what my plan is to do then is I will create a google doc that has a place, you know, this is January, and people can fill in the, you know, initiatives or celebrations for January that they know of that are important to them. If this is something that you wanna do, then you put your name in the January column [1:17:44] Suzette Holly Furrow: or in the next column. [1:17:46] Katie Brydon: I'll send that out. And so, or I'll send it to Courtney and she can send it out so that we at least have a list started. We have a list on there of calendars. I think that was made like five years ago and we just like put the Northern Light calendar of days and holidays up there. I don't know that it is truly as reflective of what we would want to put on there and promote. So we can work on that. And then, Ray, if it would be helpful to sort of help you fine tune some of those three things to know, I'm happy to connect with you about that in between meetings as well, so that at our next meeting, we can actually sit down and say, this is what we're going to put on the website. And then, obviously, if there's anything else that people are like oh we also forgot to that we cared about this that is you know that i missed i think there's so much opportunity which is really exciting yeah i expect that would be [1:18:49] Suzette Holly Furrow: like a working document something that committee reviews fairly regularly oh thank you and [1:18:55] Katie Brydon: lastly pride is on saturday we have a table which is wonderful it will be at the waterfront this year like we shared last month at our last month meeting last year we had the opportunity to have a survey that we shared with individuals we also had lots of different ways that folks could get involved give feedback about what they care about we had a table and we had places for folks to write down some why I have it because sometimes it pays to be disorganized and all of the stuff that we had last year at our meeting is still in the same tote that I packed it in on June 28th 2005 and so sitting under my desk here so for instance we had a bunch of these papers and i actually just didn't let me be a bunch you can pass the wraps is this something that we would want to continue to have at our table and offer we additionally had a piece of a big piece of paper one of those like big flip boards and we had folks that came up and wrote know i really care about this and then we have these stickers and if folks agreed with that then they put a little sticker at the end of the day we had a snapshot like what is really important to bangor based on the folks that participated in our table we also had free foot making which we still have all the beads in there for us you know folks just want to have a little activity to do we had some big butcher paper that folks could write like what makes bangor feel inclusive to them i wanted feedback right now in terms of is that something we Want to do again, right, we want to change up the table and do something totally different. And then our survey, if folks had a chance to look at it, when are you able to pull it up? I think here's that, I made a little, I mean, yes, I know that Mark is not here, but he had one question that he wanted to add. We could, what we also did was we sort of printed out a big QR code and taped it to that piece of that piece of whiteboard that we had, where folks could just sign up or rather write down what they said. They could also take a picture with their phone of the survey and then take it on the take right there. So this is the survey that we offered. And if there are, Mark's recommendation was to add, which I think is brilliant, do you live in Bangor? Because that was one of the things that we did not have on there. And I think it would be helpful to know, but yeah, not everybody that comes to Friday's from Bangor. There's folks from all over that come to participate. So it would be helpful to know, like if you are filling out this survey, you know, do you live in Bangor? And then the other questions we had were, you know, do you feel like Bangor is an inclusive space? When you think about Bangor, what comes to mind regarding inclusivity and human rights, things that were germane to our work. If there were instances where folks were feeling like this is a problem or this is really good, we wanted to hear about it. I will say that I think there were nine questions last year, I think, yeah, you guys try to keep it managed, yeah, so more people participate, yeah, and even if there are questions that maybe don't feel like we need them on there anymore or things that might be missing that [1:22:55] Rheylan Burke: would be helpful as well. Adam, just one quick thing, I mean, people don't have to give this, but like also have like age ranges, so like porn, yeah, yep, I'm a staff person, so just, yeah, I do think that could be helpful, but I also get like people's privacy if they don't want to, yes, so maybe having, yes, like an option, maybe thing, but like they can put it if they want to, yep, yeah. [1:23:25] Katie Brydon: So we gave people the opportunity to sort of like choose, you know, what was most important to them in terms of inclusivity, welcomeness, sort of what we could work on. I will say the vibe in Bangor is really different from last year. Like, I just think it's really interesting that there's nothing about unhoused or any of the issues that are everyday, day like sidewalks, the things that have been so prevalent for us this year that we hear about all the time. It's like not even in the range of interest from last year's survey. I don't know in terms of like having people talk about the things that we hear most often in terms of needs is something that like is germane to inclusion, equity, and human rights. I don't know if that's something we would want to add. I also, what we were really thoughtful about last year too is like collecting information we could do something with, right. So last year when we had this survey, we had Robin Sineki and I can never remember her title, she's the community development officer. Yes, she came and we shared these results with her because she was also had been doing a survey in terms of like Bangor needs, and that was really helpful to share again from just casting another net and collecting information. So and if you wanted to pull it up, it is, it is a tiny URL, it's just the tinyurl.com backslash Bangor pride acre. Is there any other things that you would want to include, feel like we need to include? Not, you know, it like I said, it's, it is a different world that's not happened in the year except for around my desk. Okay, I think that we should keep it [1:25:42] Teresa Fallon: relatively the same, not only to avoid recreating the wheel so to say, time and energy, but also so we can compare it to last year's results and see kind of where those trends are and what the [1:25:56] Katie Brydon: differences and similarities are. That's a good point. That's a really good point. Thank you, Suzette. [1:26:02] Suzette Holly Furrow: So how do people access us? I know you said something like, but how do you, is this going to go to just people that go to pride, or is it going to go like, how do they [1:26:13] Katie Brydon: Yes, it is, well, that's a really good question. Right now it's just available to folks that are app side, but I really like the idea of like, that is actually what we should have on our website. [1:26:26] Suzette Holly Furrow: That should absolutely be part, [1:26:28] Katie Brydon: like that should be like an evergreen opportunity for people to talk about that. Not just, you know, one event. Yeah, that's a really good idea. I would be getting a much also wider net of individuals. [1:26:44] Suzette Holly Furrow: Did you use a QR code? Oh, okay. [1:26:49] Katie Brydon: Last year for that, yes. Okay, yes. As with most meetings, we're down to the wire. If there's no, again, if you have any changes, let me know ASAP and I print out the QR codes and then I know that. I think everybody has got, I haven't, Ray, I'm not sure about your availability for Saturday. You don't need to tell me right now, we can connect, but I'll probably just send out a mass text to the folks that are available to participate and we can finally scheduling that way. Make sure [1:27:21] Mark Roth: we have like the tables and the tent and everything ready to go. Mike, do you know the location of where [1:27:28] Katie Brydon: the table is going to be yet? They told you they have not, but he, they did say that they were going to send out a map. I don't, I don't have the map. Do you have a map? Is the map up there? I 'm a [1:27:39] Rheylan Burke: personal vendor for it, so I mean, I got it from my friend anyway. Yeah, but basically the map is out at least for vendors wise, so really what they're asking is, you know, last year I spent [1:27:51] Michael Beck: some time in the tent just as a liaison but talking to residents. Those are some really good conversations, so I would like to make sure all the council is invited and aware. Yeah, that's out there, so they're down at pride, they have the opportunity to come by and visit with the residents because they weren't really good conversations. Oh, that's awesome, thank you. [1:28:11] Katie Brydon: Maybe I could look at the map after this, we could see if it's on there. They didn't give me a number, but I could also just send the email again. They said like you're set, you have a spot, I'll send the map. They are also volunteer students, so I will just show up on Saturday and point [1:28:30] Adam Douglas Baker: me in the right direction. So I do, we show up early to help set up or what do you need, what do we need? Because are you just setting it up mostly like, so I that will be what we sort of, okay, that's [1:28:46] Katie Brydon: what I figured, the scheduling, yeah, just to determine the table and the tent and what's needed. [1:28:54] Adam Douglas Baker: Okay, and then I have all the stuff right here, so okay. I did have something that I wanted to bring to the table really quickly after everything else was done. Okay, yeah, now that pride is [1:29:08] Katie Brydon: wrapped up and we have that information, that's helpful, counselor, as long as you're okay with [1:29:11] Adam Douglas Baker: us having trees to go before your liaison yeah that's fine okay i 'm finding myself bothered by something and i feel like it needs to be addressed so our very first meeting or my very first meeting joining this board it was discussed how on social media may be helpful to specifically state like my views and opinions are my own they don't represent any board i'm on and i do that for all of my social medias i also respect and appreciate when someone is speaking at a city council meeting when they do that as well yeah our names are public information of who is on this board and I think this you know it's hard for me to put into words exactly what the board like what our mission statement is I'm sure there is one I don't I couldn't recite it but to me it's to ensure that everybody has equal opportunity that 's it you know every individual matters that we're not stigmatizing entire populations of people that is extremely important to me or and I wouldn't be part of anywhere that didn't have that same mission, to be honest. There is a member of our committee who is on, you know, who's, I will say these, the city council meetings are recorded and from some propaganda websites who love to boast about, you know, the bullying that happens right in this room, which just unfortunate, but there's a public video of someone that sits on our board, it's going up in front of the general public, it's again public information, anybody can view at any time, using words like junkie, and I just I have a difficult time with that because I'm wondering do we need to make it like mandatory to state that these are my own opinions? I don't want to be associated with anybody who would speak about people that way, so I'm having that issue. I'm just [1:31:17] Katie Brydon: wondering how we can address that. Thank you. Yeah, my understanding based on the training, the FOA training that the, that Gregson has provided us, is that should be how we always present any comments that we have, that they are our own and that work is not reflective of any, you know, organization that we are or board that we serve on. I think that's extremely important. [1:31:46] Adam Douglas Baker: And especially if we're going to be talking like kind of anti everything that this board is about, which leads me to, you know, deep concern about why someone would want to be part of this board if your mission and goal and vision isn't human rights for all, equality. You know, I know that sounds so basic, but it's just that is what it is. So having concerns about what fuels someone to want to sit on this board and then speak about people that way, but then also like my name is public with other all of your names and I'm not comfortable sitting sharing a space with someone that would talk that way about people that I love and care about. There's my, that's it, thank you [1:32:32] Suzette Holly Furrow: for sharing. Yeah, do that, but in a way if you feel that way, that's kind of saying that we don't welcome other opinions. So I kind of issue with that because just because we're on this committee doesn't mean we all agree with everything. You know, and there was a member of this board formerly who just called names and we didn't address it, but in person stayed on this committee. So it doesn't mean that we have to all share every single, it's diversity, you know, we're diverse group, maybe we don't all have the same, but we are representing different segments of Bangor. [1:33:15] Katie Brydon: And I do think what came out of, what was that, a year and a half ago, those public comments were the expectations to always present that everyone is just [1:33:25] Teresa Fallon: speaking for themselves. [1:33:27] Suzette Holly Furrow: To say that they're a disclosure state. [1:33:29] Katie Brydon: Exactly. I think that's incredibly important that we maintain that expectation. [1:33:34] Adam Douglas Baker: expectation and I absolutely agree and I thought of that point that no we shouldn't share all the same opinions and nor would I like that to be honest with you but again do you is there a mission statement specifically for this I okay well if we're not all in agreement with the mission statement I almost don't don't understand and wonder why we would allow people to sit on this board that don't share that vision you can have a different opinion but this is an advisory board of racial equity inclusion human rights we all know that if you're you know directly speaking anti-human rights then I'm not sure why you'd want to share this space with us unless the goal is to simply stonewall and that seems very disingenuine and very uncomfortable for me yeah so no we shouldn't all have the same opinion I think I think that's what makes us stronger. But respect is a human right, and I work with people. I'm a junkie. I'm an addict in recovery. I love many. I work with many. That's what I do every day. And to speak about someone in that way instead of using correct, up-to-date terminology, an individual substance use disorder, that just seems to go against the human rights piece to me. So I thought that we should have like a discussion about this and just see at the very least what I'd like to see come from this is we need to be using that disclaimer because our names are together in a public space and I don't want people to oh well she sits on that board but this is how they speak you know. And it wasn't specifically stated this is my own [1:35:23] Katie Brydon: opinion yeah and I do think that we should all be always putting that disclaimer front and center when we give public comment in any capacity when we post in any capacity. I will say that in terms of you know identifying board members or other advisory committee members and it does go through the personnel committee. I know that we also have spoken here about what that application process and interview process looks like and I feel like counselor back maybe it was last year we talked about you know like are there specific questions that we will be allowed to present to the personnel committee for I don't know yeah I don't I know that they seem in my experience to all be the same to be very basic which there's great value in that but yeah in terms of identifying how we can ensure that like there's awareness of the mission because also like how do people get assigned to the different committees yes yeah how would [1:36:40] Michael Beck: To say you certainly recommend a question I mean it would be up to the personal committee whether or not they would pick that but you could make like anything else make your recommendation and what the council or the personal committee does with that is up to them yeah thank you [1:36:54] Adam Douglas Baker: I think it's really important that we're inviting to everybody. I'd love to see like in you know an audience but I'd love to see community members but if we're speaking that way about people and we're known it's very simple look at the board who's the members that people are not going to want to come. I would not want to come if I was you know still an addiction of people on the board spoke of people in that way and I think that's important that we're a safe open space for every type of person so That's why I brought that up and thank you for yeah thank you for [1:37:23] Katie Brydon: That I think it also brings up a good point that again years ago we had an onboarding process for individuals and granted we do have Grace comes and does the FOA training we talk about what we do but if there was an opportunity to maybe look at what that onboarding process was especially if folks start in January maybe that's something we can look at this fall and say like what is our onboarding process what are we going to present to individuals because there's a whole you know Google folder With all of our whatever resources and ideas and things that we've accomplished all of our annual reports you read through it but in terms of making sure that like everyone's aware of what our shared priorities and goals are not in a narrow scope but in a at a larger in a larger capacity what are the needs of Bangor and how do we address them I think that I would love to put that on the calendar for the fall to look at in terms of what that onboarding process looks like because we do just kind Of show up and it's like yeah we had to go with training and go with it we wanted to do something to help ease that but like all things there's ebbs and flows to how we pay attention to that so I think there's a good opportunity there yeah thanks Adam oh just [1:38:47] Rheylan Burke: Real quickly with the onboarding thing I know I was just kind of a special circumstance we're not special circumstances but like I joined like after the onboarding stuff so like I feel like making sure like new people will say like who joined the middle of the year or like half through the year like somehow that they also get make sure they get that onboarding yeah training as well so from my own experience as well I mean granted I know perfectly I can I know most of their goals I can look up The stuff but like for somebody else who's brand new to this they might not know yeah so yeah thank you thanks all I appreciate that [1:39:30] Katie Brydon: Counselor do you have updates friends [1:39:37] Michael Beck: so yeah this month was basically budget that's what consumers for time but I want to let you know last night the council elected not to pass the employee authority and immigration matters so what that means is council previously already approved an order that would instruct the city manager to look at the state law to go ahead and implement that now she already had a policy ready to go but it was holding off on that because it didn't make sense to give it to staff and train staff when council Is still deliberating this other ordinance, so now that's been disposed with, now she can move forward with giving that policy to staff, which would instruct staff have how to what they need to do if I to come and ask for information or interact, so that so that's that. Now the other thing that we did was, well, this is also a bunch of stuff, but I wanted to let everyone know about the bingo rental assistance program. So we end up passing two pieces, that one, sorry, we passed one piece first reading on the other, but we ratified acceptance of six hundred and hundred eighty five thousand two hundred twenty one dollars to fund the rental assistance program. So that's from HUD, that covers May 2026 to March 2027, covers 42 households in Penascot County. That's great, yeah, that's really awesome. And then the bigger chunk, we have the first read on one point 1.1 million dollars for about 73 households, and that covers is September through August of next year, community development block grant passed and that appropriated eight hundred thirty seven thousand dollars in funds plus two hundred fifty thousand dollars in anticipated loan repayment income. So that's for property rehabilitation, homeowner assistance, neighborhood improvement, social services, and affordable housing preservation. So that was huge, which we also authorized the annual action plan for that. That's going to go to HUD. There's an ordinance that we did the first reading for last night for manufactured home parks. So it's going to the planning board. So it's going to allow manufacturer home parks established before January 1st, 2026, to use more flexible development standards. And I know that's important to like properties like the Cedar Falls Global Home Park, who's looking to actively develop more properties. And that's one that we need more than Bangor is more housing. The standing committee on housing was established, so that's been both readings now, so I anticipate we'll start that application process soon. The advisory command homeless, as we expanded the mission on that, so we amended the ordinance to expand its charge beyond just coming up with a strategic plan, but to also allow council to refer things to it in the short term, as well as come up with a stabilization plan in the short term as well. Because as we know, winter is coming, so the more impact and or input we can get, the better for public health, alcohol prevention. The main cancer foundation grant we accepted, forty one thousand three hundred twenty dollars. It's a 30-day alcohol reset challenge that they're gonna, public health will conduct in Penobscot and Cataclysm counties over two years, as alcohol is a leading cause, preventable cause of cancer. I actually didn't know that, so glad we did that. Additional items last night we proclaimed Pride Month, so that was really neat, and council didn't give a standing ovation, and I had to wear my Bangor pride gear, which I just love. We also earlier in the month, on the 8th, we proclaimed Juneteenth, also important. We also recently passed, or we authorized Parks and Recreation to work with the Greater Bangor Association of Realtors to accept a grant funded donation for accessible play equipment at Hayford Park, and I wish I brought the pictures with me. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, they brought in some pictures of it, and it's just, you know, comes the car, so I have them, but yeah, like the wheelchair can go right up bottle when they can participate, and yeah, so I was really happy that passed. We also passed the ability for the city manager to apply for grants without prior approval, because the process right now is count, you know, c matrix to come ask permission, we need permission, then go. Well, the problem is grants come and go so fast, that's, you know, we miss opportunities, you know, so this way here it's, to me, you know, again speaking for just myself, the most important pieces, you know, after we get it, you know, it's okay, that's great, you know, and approve it, because if it creates a new program and things, Council has some considerations there, but that's the important piece, and that's still intact. I don't say it's still there, but at least no longer the city manager has to wait for that, and the budget passed last night. I mean, the big takeaway was the final mill rate was 17.13, which is down from the original 1807, so that's a 57, seven cent decrease, but the biggest pieces I thought this committee would appreciate is the housing support navigator position is now funded through say down for arpa, but that work was deemed important to continue, so was the homeless response coordinator, that position, which again, that position I find, we don't, during the process we found, is keeping almost a hundred people, how is currently in County for one, so now it's gonna be safe on it, so that's so that Program will continue also funding for the community connector for full-time driving, which is huge, which you know hopefully will help us schedule, you know, the possibility of bringing Saturday service back. It's the step forward towards that. Already mentioned the CDBG funds, but also general assistance program is being maintained in the same level last year, about 1.5 million dollars, and the school budget also was finalized, which includes, you know, special education, title one assistance for low-income students, idea funding for students with disabilities, and 21st century after school programming for disadvantaged youth. [1:45:49] Katie Brydon: So it was a and state funding for free lunch, which my children were like a rat at that point when that came, that resolve was read. Don't take away free lunch, I was like [1:45:58] Michael Beck: but that's what consumed us this morning with a lot of meetings, a discussion, a lot of work by staff, a lot of late nights, but a lot of great conversations [1:46:10] Mark Roth: and you know budget ultimately passed. I know that's a huge undertaking so [1:46:16] Katie Brydon: thank you all of you all of you for your work on that 's enormous. I would say [1:46:21] Michael Beck: you know the biggest things goes to the staff though, I mean the decision making is difficult and going being tough, but there's a lot of crunching, a lot of work that goes into what put in front of council, so I can't say enough good things about the staff and the hard work [1:46:34] Katie Brydon: they put in on that 's amazing quick question so then with the non-passage of the ordinance does the city manager's policy go into effect in terms of directing staff with [1:46:48] Mark Roth: the ice ordinance or vice policy? It's my understanding that was the hold up is [1:46:53] Michael Beck: you know again didn't want to put the policy in front of staff while we're still trying to deliberate this other thing. It wouldn't be fair to staff to train one thing and then all of a [1:47:00] Mark Roth: sudden here's this new change, so staff will still receive that. Yeah, I couldn't tell you when but [1:47:05] Michael Beck: now that roadblock is cleared, so that should be happening at any time. Okay, well thank you for your [1:47:12] Suzette Holly Furrow: work on that as well. I just have one thing, the this committee's update to govops is on Monday, June 6th, June July 40th of July, oh my goodness, yeah, July 6th, which I've I'm sure well counselor Beck is the committee chair for govops, but I'm assuming Katie is committee [1:47:34] Katie Brydon: chair will be there. Mm-hmm, sure, I mean I will now, so Monday July 6th, and the expectation is because it's a quarterly basis, we would just say like this is [1:47:51] Suzette Holly Furrow: What we're working on, yeah. And if you have like a memo or something, I'm sure I'd like to be included in the packet ahead of time for console to be able to read, that's welcomed. And sort of, I think the idea is that, you know, you elected sort of Katie as your chair, so you're kind of empowering her to act on your behalf in front of GovOps. [1:48:16] Katie Brydon: But I'm sure she'll be happy. I'll send you the memo. Yes. Wonderful. Great. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Any other business? Well, thank you all and can we have a motion to adjourn I get a second all favor thank you