Bangor committee delays special amusement permit change, advances health grants

[0:27] Susan Deane: All right, we're gonna be live. [0:32] Michael Beck: Okay, welcome to the government operations committee. It is 6:20 p.m. I'm the chair Michael Beck. Joining me on the committee here is Councillor Fish, Councillor Meller, Councillor Deane, Councillor Walker. Also joining us at the table is Councillor Carson and Councillor Faloon, and we have a full agenda tonight. Coming to the table now is City Clerk Lisa Goodwin to talk about the proposed amendment to the special amusement permit laws. [0:59] Susan Deane: Good evening. This change would eliminate that requirement for the public hearing and the contemplating for all of the special amusement permits. It will retain a provision in the ordinance that if there is an issue with a certain business that there are problems, the person having problems poge and not payment taxes, whatever that problem might be, and it would come to the council for a public hearing. Any [1:28] Speaker C (unidentified): questions on that? Not 13, without the public hearing would it [1:33] Susan Deane: still come to council for approval? No, so it wouldn't come at all. No, it would be to be done provided there were no, if what, like all the other business licenses that we have, it would just be approved once we receive all the approvals from the other departments. Then we [1:48] Speaker C (unidentified): anything? Okay, questions? So [1:56] Michael Beck: this actually might be a question for the city solicitor about the changes, because I just had questions about if we do this, it looks like we might leave some, at least on what's proposed here, there might be some conflicts we'd have to still change, and I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about that. For example, you know, we, for 61 17, it talks about how these amusement permits have to be approved by the city council, and I'm just wondering if that's something we'd have to change to also phrase the mechanism for the city clerk to approve it, because that's the one thing I guess I'm seeing is missing, is for example 61 20 is there's just no mechanism for the clerk to do it. I wonder if that's something we also have to amend just to make sure that this is the direction we want to go, but we also say that in addition to the city council, the city clerk can do that approval. [2:58] Speaker D (unidentified): It sounds like that is something that you would want to want to put in there. Okay. [3:05] Speaker C (unidentified): [3:06] Michael Beck: I mean, I mean, I made some notes here that, you know, like, I can share, but I mean, I guess it comes down to if this is the direction council wants to go. It's just having to revisit these other surrounding section just to make sure we cover all the conflict, because again, the rest of it just talks about council approving, and with the approval of city council, they just put it in there that the city clerk can also approve. That's all I thought I had, council. [3:37] Susan Faloon: Flint, thank you. I'm not on this committee, but I guess I, like, I trust our city staff to approve these, but I'm kind of thinking that it would be nice to at least know the ones that are coming up in case we are aware of any issues as counselors, you know, because there have been some of these facilities that have had ongoing problems in the past, and I would hate for something to just go ahead and get approved and then there are continuing issues, and maybe they, you know, maybe city staff raised it, but maybe they didn't, and I don't know, I guess I'm just thinking it would be good to know in advance. I mean, I think it's a good idea, because every time we have a public hearing on these, we waste so much time just opening the hearing, closing the hearing, waiting for people to come up, and we very rarely, if I've never seen anyone testify at one of those since I've been on the council, so like, I think it could save us significant time, but you know, if there ever was an issue with a particular establishment, I would just like to know in advance if that was coming up, so we could raise that comforting. [4:51] Susan Deane: I would be comfortable having it taken out of the city council portion, but I do think that we should have a listing of who has applied and who is being targeted. Sometimes we don't always know what's going on. It would be nice to have that. I'd like to have some guidance if you're going to do a listing, because once they apply, we have 15 days to turn it around, so if I sent out a listing to you and I didn't hear back for 20 days, then we're not staying in the guidelines. I don't even know if we would need to respond, but just to have it documented, that would be my opinion. [5:33] Susan Faloon: Yeah, I would agree with that, like, if we don't respond at all, then you move forward with it, but that way we do just get a heads up in case we do have an issue. If we miss that, 's on us. I agree. I don't [5:51] Carolyn Fish: Think we really need to take it up on council. However, it's nice that there is an opportunity for the public in case there's something we're not aware of, but I think if we're on notice that these are coming up and intending to be approved, and that was somehow a notice that was also public, that would kind of be the public notice as well. And otherwise, you know, it's up to the clerk and the manager, and it already says if there's been other issues that from police or fire that have notified, then it comes probably back to us for discussion, but I'm fine with it with notice given into counselors and making that notice public so that the public still has an opportunity. [6:34] Wayne Mallar: The other question, counselor, I'm not sure we need to have a list. I need to know if the chief of police and the fire department and code enforcement doesn't have any problem. I think if we had a problem, that would be a personal problem, and I think it's irrelevant, not [6:53] Susan Deane: for me. Well, I'm thinking that it should be public notice who is being permitted, and isn't that part of transparency? Not as far as the state's concerned. Well, [7:12] Michael Beck: obviously just from a from a neighborhood standpoint, you know, there has been over the years there's been a couple of licenses that come up that the public, you know, surrounding it, just like it's too noisy, these are the problems, and so that gave council a chance to put some stipulations on that particular license, like that would be the one area I would see, just you know, because we're not taking the public's input completely out of it, if it's a in their view as neighbors a nuisance property, at least so they have the opportunity, at least contact counsel, you know, contact a decision-maker to say here's what my experience has been, so that would be if you might have us to doing this, but other than that, you know, I'm all for the streamlining, you know, previous counselor said that, you know, we do spend a lot of times opening empty public hearings and nothing, you know, comes to account. Any other questions? Given that, I guess, and I'll share the note I made, and I can, we can talk more about it, just the more change that need to be made to make this happen, just so that it takes out the conflict. I'm wondering the best path forward would be to bring this back to the next gov ops with updated changes I think we want to make, you know, a recommendation to full council, and have a what comes before us for full reading to have the, yeah, I don't know what the what the time frame is, how quickly we want [8:44] Susan Deane: To do this, there's no urgency in doing it. I mean, we can make some changes and bring them back in. [8:51] Michael Beck: The next process, okay, any objections to that or to entertain a motion on that? I would move that we [9:00] Susan Deane: postpone this in order to amend the protocol. Certainly stipulations, does that make sense, that we've discussed? [9:19] Michael Beck: We have a motion and we have a second. Any doubt? Okay, then I'll come back to the next collapse. [9:27] Carolyn Fish: Else the amendment would be to make it uniformly consistent so that 61-17, C1-20 are more consistent with the rule change, and that the counselors are just given notice, and such notice will also get given publicly, and those are, those just to be clear, those are the revisions we're [9:52] Michael Beck: looking for. Yeah, just to make sure it's thorough all the way through, because they'll use all these different sections of the city council, so we're just making sure that there's a mechanism for the city clerk to also do the issuance in this city. Okay. [10:07] Speaker C (unidentified): Thank you. Thank you. All right, well, let me [10:11] Michael Beck: move this on to the second item, an order authorizing a subcontract with Northern Light Mayo for substance use and tobacco prevention services as part of the main prevention network. And joining us at the table is public health director Jim Gunderman. Hi. [10:31] Speaker H (unidentified): Good evening. This MOU that's in front of you, this order that is in front of you, is renewing basically an MOU contract that we've had with Northern Light Mayo for a very long time. This funding comes through the Maine CDC. This funding is provided to the public health district. And so we apply for the district, and in order to be able to meet the needs of the whole district, we do a subcontract with Mayo to cover the Piscataquis. Us, there's no funding from city dollars that go to support this MOU. Okay, any discussion from counselors? [11:11] Carolyn Fish: Counterfish, this is annual because we, yes, we've been here before. We have been here [11:17] Speaker C (unidentified): before, yes, and we will be here again. Other questions, comments, discussions? You're looking [11:28] Michael Beck: for a recommendation for to go to council, please. Okay, I'll entertain that motion. I moved that [11:34] Speaker C (unidentified): recommendation. Motion second, in a second. Do we have any doubts? Okay. [11:43] Michael Beck: That's going to go to full accounts. Moving on to number three, a resolve authorizing the city manager to accept and appropriate 823,851 for the Nourish Maine rural nutrition education program for the University of New England for fiscal years 2027 and 2028. [12:00] Speaker H (unidentified): Yeah, so as you may recall, our health department used to get funding to do SNAP education. When that money went away at the federal level, we ended our program, we let our staff go. And then the state of Maine, along with many other states in the country, received money called the Rural Health Transformation Program. That was millions of dollars that came to the state of Maine that are sort of being carved up in different ways as part of that big, beautiful bill. The state decided that they wanted to revive the infrastructure around nutrition education and build upon that. So the state funds the University of New England, the University of New England then funds entities again, along the public health districts. We are actually quite excited about this program, because SNAP-Ed has some very strict criteria around who you could actually serve. This one has a little bit less criteria, which means we can serve more of the community. And talking with our program staff just last week, this program is looking to serve more adults, older adults, particularly in that sort of food as medicine model. model. And so this funding is to support staffing, supplies, materials, as well as an indirect rate. [13:25] Carolyn Fish: Dr. This is a great program, but I also know that food shortage is this all of the money have to be strictly for education and supplies to do with education and nothing toward actually [13:44] Speaker H (unidentified): acquiring food products. That's correct. It is for staff time. Some of the things that they talk about is how to eat on a budget. You know, some of the conversations are if you have to go to a food pantry, here's the foods that you may want to lean towards. So it's not an unrealistic program where we say eat your five fruits and vegetables without understanding that the context right now is really hard for people. [14:11] Michael Beck: So I just had a question. So how do you find referrals for the program? How do you realize who you have been checking? So this is [14:19] Speaker H (unidentified): going to be happening in many different ways and the program is still launching in some ways so our staff will be working with community partners to do cooking classes to do education and we're still building on sort of the infrastructure that was provided in snap ed so it's less of an individual model and it's more sort of in a systems model so we'll be working directly also with the healthcare systems here okay i mean just throwing another [14:44] Michael Beck: Like, for example, you know, if staffs work with somebody who's going through an abatement, like, hey, we happen to notice that, you know, there's price and food insecurity here, there's other things going on, you may benefit from this one. They could potentially refer to public. They could, yes. [14:55] Wayne Mallar: Okay, any other questions? I'm just curious, the funding for the programs began when? So the [15:06] Speaker H (unidentified): funding from the program began where we were in the fall. You had already approved for the sort of first six months of the programming, and so this is for 2027 and 2028 for going forward. So I had brought to you a resolve. Oh my gosh, it seems like a long time ago. To approve when we got the initial sets of funds. [15:32] Wayne Mallar: So I guess my question is, if we approved for the year for the fiscal year 26. Yes. So well, what's the big rush to fulfill fulfilled? 27 and 28? [15:44] Speaker H (unidentified): Well, we have to submit budgets, we have to get work plans in place. That timeline is set by the University of New England and the federal, the state of Maine and the federal government. So we work with their timeline to make sure that we get all these things in place. [15:57] Wayne Mallar: So the funding we got, we approved earlier, we provided the funding and they're reimbursing us? [16:03] Speaker H (unidentified): No. So the Rural Health Transformation Grant has been in the state of Maine for maybe a year now, maybe a little bit less than a year when they first allocated that money to une and then to us. That was back in, I mean, don't quote me, but it might have been back in the spring. I had already brought a resolve to you to approve the budget, so we have already received the funding for fiscal year 26 and we've used that funding to hire staff. The [16:36] Michael Beck: other question, any other comments? [16:39] Angela Walker: Yes, I was wondering in the year 2025, the 266 adults in Penobscot and Piscataqua counties, we know how many in Penobscot that actually is, and did the program, when they taught participants how to stretch food dollars and make health choices, was that program in this, did we reach out to like our grocery stores around? I vaguely remember a program being offered where they would go meals through a program and then they would they finish these classes then they would get like a Hannaford gift card or a shot as move card. Is this part of that? And so I'm particularly wanting to know more about Penobscot and less about scattyquist because I'm concerned about [17:30] Speaker H (unidentified): Our residents here, yes, and that data that's provided here was from the SNAP education that was a little bit more limited. I can provide data on what we did in Penobscot County with that SNAP education, and then we'll keep you regularly updated on the numbers for this program going forward. [17:50] Michael Beck: Thank you. Any other questions, discussion? [17:55] Susan Deane: Just one quick question. When you're giving these cooking classes, which kitchen are you [18:01] Speaker H (unidentified): utilizing to do this well sometimes it's cooking classes sometimes it's just nutrition education and sometimes there's not even really a kitchen needed like it's using hummus and crackers and fruit and so sometimes you don't even really need a kitchen or sometimes it's taught with a crock pot if it's at a school maybe a kitchen was used so it depends upon the environment in which [18:24] Carolyn Fish: the classes are being taught we [18:29] Michael Beck: have a discussion this need also needs a recommendation from yes I would [18:40] Susan Deane: move to accept and approve the appropriation of $820,850 for the Nourish Maine Rural Nutrition Education Program from the University of New England to move to full council. [18:56] Speaker C (unidentified): We have a second. Any doubt? [19:02] Michael Beck: Seeing none, this is a recommendation of the committee. Okay, that brings us to the opioid settlement funds discussion. question. The director has a memo that we reviewed. The director speak. [19:15] Speaker H (unidentified): So what I did is I just provided sort of a high level overview about sort of what are the options that you could take at this time. So what I did at the beginning is I provided kind of three different examples of how Opiate Settlement Fund decisions were made in the state of Maine. There was plenty of others and I provided you even with the link to the Ma Center, who provides really an outline of how funding happened. So the first model is the Augusta model, which is the one that Bangor decided to follow last time, where there was an advisory committee, it was an RFP process, and funds were allocated. There's the Rockland model, which is kind of interesting. You know, Rockland also received opiate settlement funds. They did something a little bit different, where they conducted community workshops. The Ma Center helped with that to provide information about the opiate settlement funds and the determinants of their priority categories, where they had about three or four of. And then they did an RFP process. And then I'm not quite sure what happened between the RFP process, but then what happened is with the finalists, they actually put it out for a full community vote. And so they provided a link, the community voted on what they thought were the best programs to fund. And there's the Portland model. And as you know, Portland is the other location with a local health department. They did something different in terms of they had their health department, had their staff develop recommendations for how to use the funds. Those recommendations, and when staff put it together, they talked with their community partners, they talked with overall community members. Those recommendations were presented to Portland's Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee. So just like our GovOps committee. And then those recommendations were presented as part of a regular city council meeting as an order or resolve that allowed for public comment at that time. And then those recommendations were also be passed by the city of Portland's council. I don't have the link here, but I do have a link to what that process looked like. So they made decisions around funding their needle redemption program, funding towards a day space, funding towards project hope, and there might have been one more. So what I just offered as sort of throwing something out there was that we could offer kind of a hybrid or a combination of those models, where we could have a working group facilitated by my department, you can conduct a community workshop. I know that Penobscot's opiate settlement fund is going to be doing a survey. So we can leverage the findings from that. We can use that information, we can provide recommendations approved by the working group that we are, we are working side by side with, provide that to city council on specific funding strategies, and then issue an RFP as appropriate. I provided a link and then I just provided here also is Johns Hopkins provides this beautiful guidance that I provided a link to, a sort of the nine core abatement strategies. This is really an easy read. So if anyone takes a look at it, I thought it was, provided some really nice guidance, in,, you know, really honing in on where some of the most effective strategies are. I also want to sort of call out, I know that we've talked a lot about recovery and treatment rehabilitation, but also, you know, that focus on prevention. And then the last thing I just noted is, you know, I think we're at this sort of pivotal point where we don't have them over million dollars that we had about a year ago. And for this, for you all to consider, you know, do you want to do what you did last time and make these smaller funding, or do you really want to take a step back and think, where do we want to invest in the long-term to make significant? And so this is just me throwing some things out here for you all to consider. All right, discussion. [23:24] Susan Faloon: Councillor Flynn. I'm not on this committee, but in like, I definitely like the hybrid model because I really do think that the public is going to want to weigh in on this. And I think that would be really good to get that information. And then I would personally be in favor of doing something bigger, because it doesn't seem like the smaller awards have had a major impact on the issue in this area. And so I think just breaking it up into these small pockets, and just kind of putting out little fires isn't helping in the overall picture. So I would be in favor of doing a bigger thing. [24:08] Daniel Carson: Yes, thank you. I'm not on this committee, but I appreciate being able to comment. I want to thank you for the work that you did putting all of this information together for us in a very easy and digestible way. I want to just show support for the hybrid model that you've suggested here and to that question of, I think, the larger thinking more strategically about how to use those funds and making a larger award, a more impactful award, I think, you know, it would be more appropriate for us to do. I think I appreciated some of the thinking behind the smaller awards as that was being put together. Hindsight is always, I mean, I wasn't here for that, but I appreciate the philosophy behind it and wanting to spread dollars to as many places as possible, but hindsight is 2020, and I think that some of those funds could have been better spent in larger, more impactful chunks. And then I would also like to throw my support behind the idea that we get towards the RFP process, that those funds are, that we, you know, use public health to navigate that process. I think another thing that has come out in multiple places, committees, discussions, is the need for more accountability, and we don't have a great way to compel People to be accountable for the funds that they receive because we lack control over other organizations. But if we were able to do an RFP process where public health was, you know, had control over those funds, we could build in reporting mechanisms of things that the public wants to see and that we care about as counselors as those funds are going out, and I think that would just be a better way to encourage collaborate the kind of collaboration that we'd [26:00] Susan Deane: Like to see going forward concertine I would agree with a larger allocation for a bigger project I think that's a great idea I do feel we need to keep a little bit of a slash fund a little kitty for emergencies because every year we have something come up and it would be nice little kitty there just in case so I wouldn't want every penny to go towards one project but the majority towards something that we deemed was appropriate in our best interest and in the public perspective best interest so I'm very pleased with what you've done here it looks very well thought out and organized and I'm hoping that we can make an impact what we have left [26:48] Carolyn Fish: You know what council Carson said I think I've said a few times hindsight's 2020 especially with the first time around and we had quite a bit of opioid money and I think we did the best we could and now we've learned that the problem is just you know so big that it's going to probably take a big ticket number to create the right services and facility that we really need to be more impactful so I'm for putting the money toward a bigger project and I know the homeless committee I know that They're talking about housing but a very significant part of their discussion has been a lot about our folks on the street that have such a use addiction and how that's affecting them and they're coming up with I think it'll be interesting to see what they come up with as well that might be able to fit into this and I really did want to comment that the way you wrote this I was able to click on things and I was able it didn't it seemed very easily to flow and be able to go and grasp that in Information that you had given us and I really liked the abatement strategies given out here that you had written out for us so thank you [28:03] Daniel Carson: Yes, I'm sorry, and I did have one question for you, and I don't need an answer right now, but I would be interested at some point in feeling out and hearing more about prevention strategies that are available. I think that is something that we haven't necessarily done enough of in this space. We certainly do receive grants that are for those purposes in certain categories, and we can close out, but I would love more education from you on what prevention strategies could look like, programs could look like. Even if that's not something that ends up being, you know, part of this funding source, it would be great to know what strategies exist that we really could grasp on to. [28:50] Michael Beck: I'll just say I like the idea of the community workshops. I know a lot of people out there are real passionate about this money, and that gives them an opportunity to come in and try to channel that in a helpful constructive way, and so are you looking for, you know, some [29:07] Speaker H (unidentified): guidance from the direction from the committee? Yeah, I think this conversation was really helpful. I didn't want to get too far into detail without getting your feedback and your guidance, so what I can do is, based upon this feedback here, I can flesh out something with a little bit more detail that looks at that hybrid model, maybe a bit of a timeline, what that would look like for the community sessions. I would actually talk with the Moss Center. They have been amazing. I just shout out to the Moss Center. They've like held our hand every step of the way, and they do that for every municipality, so we can actually go to and say, okay, what did you use for Rockland, how can we adapt that here for Bangor, and can you help us do that? So what I would say is, if you feel like you've provided me with all the guidance, I can go back and just kind of flesh that out a little bit more and provide more detail, timeline, and [29:57] Speaker C (unidentified): key activities, discussion, or questions. Okay, that [30:05] Michael Beck: brings us to the warming center update. [30:08] Speaker H (unidentified): As you have probably all heard, the funding from Mean Housing was allocated, and that the two people that were awarded funding was Bangor Area Homeless Shelter to expand, to expand five beds over the winter, as something that they did last year, and to the Brick Church to fund 65 beds through the winter. So the other two that were not funded was the Mansion Church and Together Place. So I just want to give you just a little bit of context. I looked at numbers last week, and so last year I didn't, did not Have data on every single night, but I had data on 50 nights of the year that came through our Hub 7 coordinator. On average, there were about 85 people in a warming shelter bed over between November to mid-April. So that's the average. The median was 82 people, so not too far off. There were, for three nights during those 51 days, there were 90 people or more. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, on 20 evenings there were 90 people or more, and on about, and now I can't read my writing, on 11 days there were a hundred or more people in a warming shelter. I just want to give you a little bit of context. So what I have heard is that the mansion will continue to be a warming shelter. I don't know if they're going to change some of their operations, but they will have about 25 beds. So between the 65 at Brick Church, the five at Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, and the 25 at Mansion, we're looking at about, what, like 95 beds there. There. I am concerned about the coldest nights. We were shown to have a need for people to be in that space. So right now, I'm working with Bruce Hughes with the warming shelters to determine what would be some potential options for meeting the needs during the coldest nights. And that will be something that I can bring back to you. But right now, I just want to let you know that we're having those conversations. We are grateful for the funding that has come into this area. We're very grateful that Mansion Church is still looking to continue its warming shelter. It gives us options for people to be able to move, but we do feel like there's a concern on those coldest days. Sorry. [33:01] Susan Deane: Sorry, what is the cutoff point for temperature when, and when do you see those individuals would follow? [33:08] Speaker H (unidentified): We looked a little bit to Portland. So Portland last year had a temperature cutoff of 15 degrees. What was interesting about that is they had a temperature cutoff, but they ran to a little bit of a, I think there was a little bit of an issue where they had snow that hadn't reached that temperature difference. So some of the shelters, like the warming shelters they had, may not have opened. So I think if we look at a cutoff, we would have to consider temperature and snow, like at a certain point. So thanks to AI, there on average are about 50 to 60 days during a main winter in this area that are 15 degrees or below. So that would be the number that we would probably think about on the number of days that we would potentially need more space. [34:03] Daniel Carson: Can you be so there were 11 days or something over 100? Do you have in that? What the highest number 120. So we're looking for 25, actually 2530 beds. And for those 60? [34:19] Speaker H (unidentified): Yes. And what I would say again, I only had data for 51 days of the year but I do know that 120 was about the maximum and it was 120 a couple of times during those 51 days. In talking with Jen Lala the hub step coordinator there's a potential that number could actually go a little higher because we're just seeing maybe a little bit more couch surfing maybe a little bit more living together in small spaces that people may need to get out like we don't know what the demand could potentially be like this year [34:55] Michael Beck: We have a discussion. [34:58] Susan Deane: Just one other thing. Until we do the point in time, we don't really know the number on the streets compared to [35:04] Speaker H (unidentified): last year, do we? We don't. And I will say that most people have a love-hate relationship with the point in time count because it does not count people who are couch surfing. It does not count people who are sort of cramming into an apartment to stay warm. So while it does give us some type of an indicator, it's really hard to actually feel a hundred percent confident in the number, but it doesn't, it is an indicator for us. [35:40] Michael Beck: Last year we funded warming centers with some unexpected money from extra reimbursement from GA. Has there been any indication that the state will be so generous this year? [35:51] Speaker H (unidentified): No, we have not. not. However, one of the things that we are looking at is that GA does provide support for emergency shelters for people that have no income. So we're I'm talking to my team about where those sort of creative funding sources could be to have something available during the coldest days. We are not we are not in a place where we're going to have another other full time warming shelter open unless $300,000 falls from the sky. [36:25] Michael Beck: Up come for fish. [36:27] Carolyn Fish: For the people that were not this money, are there any grants and process within that you know of or any other funding they're working on? Where they still may be able to come up with something to comply with? You know 2025 beds? That's one question. The other one is the GA money. I know it's for homeless, but I think that's also for people to keep them in their housing. So I really hate when there's so many grants and so many resources. I know it's very important to get these 20, 25 off the street in cold temperature because it's life threatening. But at the same time, I just hate to see us has quickly and easily turned to GA funding. [37:12] Speaker H (unidentified): I can tell you that there is no other funding for this specific warming shelter. The main housing warming shelter funds is the primary source. In terms of the GA funding, the one thing about GA is that, you know, that isn't a set amount of money. Funding the warming shelters at basically a very small amount per bed per night does not take away from the GA that's provided [37:42] Daniel Carson: to keep people in their in their homes. I was just wondering in terms of that funding question that was something I might refer over to the legislative committee to chase. Thank you. I [37:57] Susan Faloon: don't know if you know the answer to this question last so it seems that the state gave out more money than it has historically for these overnight warming shelters. Did we get less than we typically get here in Bangor? [38:19] Speaker H (unidentified): We actually, compared to last year, and this is always shifting sands, compared to last year, the city of Bangor got, as a whole, significantly more money than we did last year. Last year, Bangor Area Homeless Shelter are received about the same amount that they did last year. And I believe the mansion received about 60,000. So to get 400 and something thousand dollars is significantly more. And it's the most that was given to any organization this year. So this year, I think there was about 2.7 million that was given out by the state. And I believe last year is around 2.3. [38:56] Susan Faloon: So is it unusual for them to give so much to one organization and would there have been And any benefit for that to get split up between the other ones? [39:06] Speaker H (unidentified): KATE LAPIERDALE- So I think there's a lot of things that go into consideration when reviewing a grant application that mean housing needs to weigh. Last year, if you look at the list, there were organizations who got $400,000, $300,000. Some of them got grant funding again this year, but a much smaller amount in the other parts of the state the [39:36] Michael Beck: other discussion questions comments [39:39] Speaker H (unidentified): So I think that because I think the message that I want to send is like, we're talking about this, Jen Lawler is helping to bring us together to continue the conversation, and not just about what could be some solutions for funding during these coldest times, but there is an ongoing conversation on how coordination will happen among the warming shelter. So if they have a person who's been sort of told that they can't be at one shelter because of behavioral issues, they can get to the next one. And how do we help with HMIS? So I just want you to know that there's conversations that are actively happening about the coordination during the winter months and how can we solve a potential gap? And we'll be bringing that back to you. [40:23] Angela Walker: I have a couple of things that I would like to that I have like to know about. Last year the numbers that we have, was it documented or noted about how many of our homeless population were suffering from their addiction, substance use, and if so, are any of those numbers the people that couldn't abide by the rules that were at these warming shelters, and were they part of the number that were outside because of that? The reason that I'm bringing this up is because I'm kind of wondering, yes we have the warming shelters, but is it just a bed, or are we handing out recovery resources for them? Are we talking to them about a next step? I'm just kind of curious, you know, being also working in this field, I'm just wondering for this year, how can we wrap those services around people to make recovery more like attractive, if you want to use that word, or I'm just curious on the numbers of people that, because I know, I don't know if these warming shelters are, you can't be drinking, you can't be doing drugs while you're there. And are they looking at backpacks and stuff to see if they're bringing in substances or not? These are just questions that I've seen emails come in about this. So I'm wondering, you know, really about the numbers and what we can do to try to bring people to recovery and have less people outside and following rules. I mean, I'm saying it because I see it, like you're not following the rules, you know, and then you're stuck outside sleeping. [42:16] Speaker H (unidentified): Yes, I will look to see if the data collected included sort of mental health, substance use. I can, my first reaction is probably no, because that's often captured in HMIS, but I will absolutely ask about that. i can confidently say that the warming shelters have resources in go in options path team and other teams go in our own team go in and talk about housing talk about resources and one of the warming shelters last year was in together place and so they have talked about that it wasn't just a warming shelter but people were moving through you know the progress to recovery we can always do more and i think that 's part of the coordination i know that our team has talked about how we can get our street outreach person into each one of the warming shelters on a regular basis but I can I can confidently say yes there was a lot of involvement by outside organizations. And I think that's a real strength of Bangor that all our warming shelters have said, yes, come in and talk to people and get them connected. In terms of policies around bag checks and rules, every warming shelter has their own rules. Most of them do include bag checks. And again, and some vary on like what state a person can be in when they enter the shelter. That also varies. [43:53] Carolyn Fish: Jen, could you also just talk a little bit about how they all work together to prevent that situation where someone is left outside? Yes. [44:02] Speaker H (unidentified): So if someone maybe has a behavioral issue at one location and they're no longer to be there, they will call. They'll be able to call Bruce and say, I've got this person. Can you talk with the other shelters if they're able to take them in? Or they will directly call one of the other warming shelters and say, this person can't be here for a few days. You know can they come over to your place and provide the support that happened quite frequently I also know that say for example Bangor Area Homeless Shelter at one point said you know what we have some people on our list that have had behavioral issues but you know what we're going to shorten the time amount of time that they can't be here so we can bring them back in very quickly a lot of that sort of informal conversations and linkages happen one [44:50] Angela Walker: more follow-up thing I'm wondering too about the warming center sub shelters and are we able to find out if people that are coming into the shelters are [45:01] Speaker H (unidentified): are Bangor residents? That's a very good question. [45:07] Michael Beck: Yeah. Count the fish. [45:11] Carolyn Fish: So I've heard different figures over the summer, especially that are homeless, from those out in the field, and estimates was peaking around 700 this summer, between 600 and 700. And the warm shelters are a reflection of our winter population. I don't think anybody would survive a month out if it went below zero. So if that's around 120, where are the other 500 and 600 people going to in the wintertime? [45:42] Speaker H (unidentified): So first, I just want to delineate that the 700 number, I believe, is for all of Hub 7, so not just for Bangor. Winter is an interesting time. So also, I want to point out that while we had about 120 people in warming shelters, that does not include about another 100 that was between Hope House and Bangor Area Homeless Shelter full capacity. So between those regular emergency shelter numbers and the warming shelter numbers, we're looking about 220 that were in a bed during this, the coldest of nights in Bangor. That also does not include the people who go and live with their friends, are couch serving, are exchanging different things for being able to stay day on a couch. So it's, it's the winter is a time where people find where they can go. [46:33] Carolyn Fish: Is there a, an emergency priority with any individual whatsoever that's on the street that has a child? [46:42] Speaker H (unidentified): Yes, we, the, challenge with that, to be honest with you, we do not have a family shelter in Bangor. That is one of our biggest gaps. The closest family shelter, if I recall call this correctly, it's like Orland, where they have the home program. Families are absolutely prioritized. We try and move them to wherever we can very quickly, pay for their transportation to get there, but there is pretty much no option in Bangor for a family. We try and work with GA. We try and pull everything we can. [47:16] Susan Deane: Comforting. I think one of the things a lot of people say about being unhoused in Bangor is, why would anyone want to be unhoused in Bay of Romaine in the winter? But we don't see a mass exodus of these unhoused people going to warmer climates. They really are just staying here? Or do we see them actually leaving in the wintertime for warmer climates? I mean, [47:36] Speaker H (unidentified): most have some idea. To be honest with you, it's really hard to know because again, people will start to move inside to other apartments. Some people do leave for warmer climates because they don't have that option. Some people, you know, came up here because I thought I have a job or a relationship or some other reason, or their family was going to take them in, and that didn't happen. And we use our resources to be able to get them to a place where they have that support. We don't see a dramatic change in the number. Again, it's a year by, it is really hard to predict. [48:13] Susan Deane: Paul, if I could, if they are leaving, going elsewhere, do you get notification from the area that they have moved to? So you have no way of knowing? Yeah, number. [48:25] Carolyn Fish: Fish, along that line, would you say, I know it's hard to predict, but would you say that those that are truly more have Bangor roots, or that our greater community within our greater community, they tend to be the ones that maybe stay? You might even be the ones that tend to reach out a little more than those that are a little more mobile. I know you have that one, but I know with India that I spoke to, or any when you came at West by my place of business, I spoke to many that when it got colder they were headed back south and they told me that 's their thing they're coming off in the summer and they go south in the winter so i know we can't we don't have a questionnaire for them to fill out so there's no way to know but i've heard that quite often to be true to be honest. So with Councillor Deane's question, just kind of maybe have the same question [49:22] Speaker C (unidentified): I guess. Thank [49:25] Michael Beck: you. Yeah, question before we move on to the next item. Councillor Miller. [49:30] Wayne Mallar: Would you tell us how many warming shelters there are in Hub 7 we affiliate with or send people to? Or do we share with other warming shelters in other areas? [49:45] Speaker H (unidentified): Is if somebody was, if somebody had family or better support in another location, we would absolutely do everything that we can, and we have done this, get them to that area, even if it includes moving to another shelter. We want to make sure that people are in the best environment for their support, and there have been times when people have said it's been Augusta or Portland, and we've said okay, let's make sure that there's a bed for you first. We're not going to send you to that area if there isn't going to be a bed at the shelter. We'll confirm that and then help somebody get there. Closer than that, I'm looking at when I was, let me, let me, let me get that in Penobscot County [50:25] Wayne Mallar: well how many with what does hubs have uncovered [50:28] Speaker H (unidentified): I will, I will get that information for you any [50:36] Michael Beck: Other discussion. Okay, thank you for that update. Thank you. Thank you. And that brings us to the homelessness crisis is protocol policy review and discussion. It's [50:56] Speaker D (unidentified): quite accurate. Yeah, good evening. Okay. [51:11] Michael Beck: Joining from the table is Chief Hathaway. I'll let you take it away. So a little background on this [51:18] Speaker D (unidentified): policy. The legislature in 2021 moved LD 1478 to law. The law compelled the Attorney General and all police agencies, law enforcement agencies across the state to develop a homeless crisis. The law provides some basic expectations. Largely, the law indicates that the protocol must include a referral option services, referral to services. Other than that, the law is pretty much open for the tech protocol which the agency wishes to develop. On March 1st of 2022, the Attorney General distributed guidance and a model policy. Most all law enforcement and agencies in the state adopted a version of the model policy. We met with council during a workshop in late March 2022, outlined the protocol and I followed protocol was effective on April 1st 2022 and the quality requires a biannual review. In 2024 we reviewed that protocol and we adjusted to the procedure section slightly to provide clarity to our staff. That policy remains in effect today. It's time now where we were overdue for a review of this protocol so we wish [52:38] Carolyn Fish: to have a public discussion. Okay questions discussions comes for fish in March of 2025 I think it was there was an update on the policy and does how does that work does that come to that didn't go to full council it was a discussion and then there was an amendment and how did that come to be adopted. Generally our policies are not posted by house [53:08] Speaker D (unidentified): this policy was and I'll explain when the guides were distributed by the Attorney General in 2022. That initial guidance required a public discussion. Then City Manager Carollynn Lear and I discussed, put it on a council, a pre-council, a council workshop, a discussion. In the meantime, the Attorney General rescinded that expectation. We went ahead with the public discussion. There had been some misunderstanding that this policy was created by council, this is the council policy it's not true. The revision in 2024 was done to provide clarity in the section that the police officers would operate that our policy now aligns much closer with other policies say Portland Police Department's policy for example. Great. [53:59] Michael Beck: Council Fish. [54:01] Carolyn Fish: Thank you for sending other policies, and I didn't know that several towns actually kind that have almost verbatim the same policy, but sometimes the application of the protocol seems to be much different than Bangor's application of the policies. So I don't know if that's a matter of training, interpretation, application, but you know I know that we've before said what do you need to enforce the law, and I know that it's suggested protocol that these five crimes, you know, that they not be charged with criminal offense, but at the same time it seems like Bangor's application is being pretty ineffective at this point when right across from the police station you've got people publicly, you know, injecting drugs and just a lot of obscene activity, and daily we are getting emails from the public where interactions with homeless are getting more aggressive and more violent. And so what do you need from us? I mean, what, why is it that Brewer has the same, almost the same protocols as we do, but the application and the enforcement of it is so different? Can you explain that? I don't know that it [55:21] Speaker D (unidentified): is. I think it's perception. Since you brought Brewer up, let's just talk about some numbers from it. We've answered 23,000 more calls this year than Brewer has. We start the day with the same numbers of staffing on the street. We've charged over 1,800 people with criminal violations. Brewer's charged less than 200. We've arrested 1,200 people this year. They've arrested around 130. So the suggestion that we're not actually working or we're not actually getting the job done, I get it, there's a problem across the street, there's a problem in the park. But don't we think that maybe it's a resource issue? People come to get the resources of 17 soberhouses, three methadone clinics, two emergency departments, two psychiatric departments. They don't have those in Brewer. They have them here. So we're overrun. We started in the summer with 20% deficit in staff. If you own a business or run a business, you know how difficult that is. We're still running 20 below staffing. It's very difficult. That's [56:30] Susan Faloon: A fluke, thank you. I appreciate those numbers because that really puts things into perspective. When I was reading this, it just seemed to me like it could be simplified because it just seems like there are so many kind of variables on some of this behavior that, I mean, I have never been trained as a police officer, but if I'm out there and I'm having to make quick decisions on some of these things that are going on, like, I'm not going to have this memorized. And it's just going to be really hard to know, in my opinion, how to interpret this and how to apply it. Is that a problem? I don't think it is. [57:18] Speaker D (unidentified): In the expectations of those laws that the attorney general listed, I think all of our officers understand the expectation. What everybody's talking about is folks that are injecting drugs. That seems to be the issue. Issue, so let's just talk about that for just a minute. That's a misdemeanor, that's not, we wouldn't arrest that person, we give a citation. Once we do that, we have to take a syringe because now we have to make sure we test what's, what's in the syringe to determine if indeed it is an illegal substance. The jail is full. Today's census was about 60 over what they're allowed to have, so we can't bring the person to jail. The jail refuses us, understandably, when people have sores, they have medical issues, they have cuts, jail can't accept that person. They certainly can't introduce those folks into their population. Prosecutor's office, we met with the prosecutor's office, they're generally 300 cases per prosecutor. Those are generally aggravated assaults, domestic violence, child abuse. A simple possession violation is, it's not something that they wish to prosecute, even though they will if we present it. The challenge of this is that we have more of a problem here because we literally, and I think everybody understands that we're caring for a large chunk of the state's most vulnerable people some of the most sick and i know we talk about drugs all the time we think that 's our biggest problem please believe me mental illness is much greater a problem in our community we really don't talk about folks that are struggling with mental health issues but it's far greater a problem did the idea that your police officers are not addressing these issues is we're just we're just overwhelmed with It and I don't think it's fair to classify one community as doing a better job when really we all know that most communities point their most vulnerable to the community with all the services, and that's Bangor and our region. If every community took care of the most vulnerable, we might not be having this conversation right now. But I don't believe the protocol, the complexity of those laws is the issue. No, I do not. I think the officers very much understand what they can and cannot do. And when they engage somebody that they know has repeatedly violated any provision of that, and they do address it with the criminal action. [59:56] Susan Faloon: Yes, Paula. Is there a certain number of times that the same person, is there a record, like if the same person gets caught injecting in public one time, they get whatever, a warning, and then it happens a second time? I mean, is there a way of tracking that? And how many times would it take to get them, you know how many times could they commit that offense before they were [1:00:26] Speaker D (unidentified): Arrested for example we track our engagement by name so we do we do know I'll give you one quick example we arrested a young woman for theft stealing alcohol at a local supermarket she had seven sets of bail we took her to jail because she's engaged in this behavior repeatedly and she told the folks at the jail intake that she was pregnant, they would not accept her. So we gave her a citation and off she went. And that just repeats its cycle over and over. And that's what our officers do over and over. The system is really broken far, above the street police officer. We expect the street police officer to solve society's failures, but we don't give them the tools to do that job. And that's where we are today. Looking at the street police officer to solve this problem when the system is broken far, above that particular officer. [1:01:18] Michael Beck: Councillor Fishman and Councillor Fung. [1:01:21] Carolyn Fish: I agree the mental health issue is bigger, but I also understand that a lot of the mental health, where they are today with their mental health, a lot of times has come as a result of substance use abuse in a lot of cases. Then you have people with mental health crises going on. So I think we have two things going on, and some of them are related, if not a lot, to substance use addiction. So what do you need from us to have the city and the council do something? What can we do more immediate? What about, you know, I know we have a legislative committee, would there be a transitional correctional center? I mean, there's Charleston Correctional Center, do they have vacancies? Can we collaborate with Penobscot County if our jail is system? Them is there some kind of resource so we can start actually permanently charging some of these, you know, not all of them intend to misbehave, but there's a good portion of them that already know those five crimes and they've used that, they've used it, and they also know how to help [1:02:26] Speaker D (unidentified): you wiggle their way out of trouble. So two things, I do believe that we do need to have some sort of a step down unit. CHCS just opened up a program which may prove helpful, but a lot of what we do is we engage the person that's in conversation with stop sign and people see that and they 're concerned and they feel unsafe and they're scared about this person who's aggressively talking on the stop sign. Well, that person's not breaking the law and they don't belong in the emergency department because they don't meet the criteria. So once the officer deescalates the situation, what is it we do with that person? That's a lot of our calls during the course of the day. We don't have a resource for that person. Most certainly, if they don't cooperate, then we can't force them into a service that doesn't necessarily exist anyway. So that's one. We definitely need some level of help with that situation. Because like I said just a moment ago, that's a lot of what we do during the course of the day. A lot of the times when we hear we don't feel safe is because people see that sort of behavior and it's either a behavior that's resulting from substance abuse in the moment or it's indeed somebody that's in some sort of crisis and we need a placement for that person. We do need them to participate, but we need a placement. Two, I very much understand why the jail turns us away. If they are indeed well over-censored day after day after day, then they have to be selective to what we bring. If we bring in a person who is aggressive in the community, somebody that is violent, they'll accept that person. They'll figure a way to accept that person. But the person who was at McDonald's on Saturday tipping over chairs that we arrested, they did not want that person to turn them away. So we gave them a citation and set them out the door. so i don't blame i don't necessarily put this at the feet of anybody i think as a whole we really need to have a much broader discussion than just what this policy represents we're we're fine if the council if you collectively wish to make some adjustments to this policy we're not we're not opposed to that 's fine but i think you might have mailed it just a moment ago when you said do we need to speak to our delegation legislators what is it brought what project we can do to help address this problem, because I've said before, we say it during budget, you've heard me say it during other council meetings, we can't expect a street [1:05:00] Speaker K (unidentified): police officer to solve this problem without the resources. Yeah, all right, if we, and I don't know [1:05:09] Carolyn Fish: maybe this is something for our solicitor or our manager, we do, we're, we're carrying the blunt of it, our residents are, our businesses are, every day we're getting emails where the interactions are getting more and more aggressive. Now residents are even, you know, talking about how they're going to defend themselves because they don't feel, we're worried, you know, we're protecting them. So it can, if we can, we declare a state of emergency to get some kind of emergency ideas, you know, whether we have some temporary correctional facilities, something that's available out there with of collaboration. What could we do if we declared a state of emergency? Yeah, so I think this question had been posed to me last fall, and the answer was really very little. And if we were to declare it, we'd really want to be sure that we had a clear and direct ask of the state. Otherwise, it would simply be a squandered opportunity. So I think it would first be what is it do we think we need, and is that something that by declaring a state of emergency does it create an avenue for [1:06:24] Speaker D (unidentified): us to ask for that thing, but also I, if somebody feels unsafe will engage that, this is different than, I mean I use the example of the stop sign because that is not an uncommon call for us downtown. But if that makes somebody feel unsafe, I appreciate that. But we're going to be there to address that problem. It may not, we may not solve it. We're the police, were like emergency intervention. We don't solve long term problems. But if someone feels unsafe, my goodness gracious, we need to be engaged with that. I can't think of any time when someone's called us and said they feel unsafe that we haven't been at a door at the side in the short order. So I want to make sure that, you know, a panhandler that asks you for a couple dollars is a nuisance and uncomfortable. I get, I understand that, but that's not necessarily unsafe. But if a person is feeling unsafe in their neighborhood, by gosh, we need to know about that. I don't [1:07:18] Carolyn Fish: think they call anymore. They've called and got no results. They don't call anymore, and they do feel unsafe. [1:07:26] Susan Faloon: Dr. Flunnen, and then Dr. Carson. Thank you. I think you might have sort of answered this. I was gonna ask like, what do you need from us? Like, what tools do you need from us other than those resources? But is there anything like in the immediate, like, are your officers the ones who are on the phone having to try to figure out what to do with that person? Or, I mean, is that an area where maybe you could use some help so they get back to doing what they typically do if they are the ones doing that? [1:07:59] Speaker D (unidentified): So we fortunately engage BCAT. Have. We have a partnership with the PATH team through CHCS. So we're able to use other resources. Of course, we have our partners at public health. So we're able to shift some of that to those that are better suited to make those phone calls. And if it's a mental health situation, we do have our partnership with Acadia Hospital. So we have plenty of partners that can engage the long-term question so the officer can go to the next call. But I think messaging is the issue here. I spoke with our BCAT team today. We are still experiencing new faces, new arrivals of 30 or so a month. That is their data on the street working alongside path options and others. They've engaged a more difficult group over the summer. And what I mean by difficult is folks that are not necessarily receptive to the services. So we try to soft hand them off to a warm hand off the path and see a path through CACS and sort of engage these new folks that have come to town with services. But there is a struggle with a certain set of this community that does not want help from us or our BCAT program. So we hope that we can, by shifting it over the path and others who are equally engaged in this process, will make some inroads. The person, you know, again, messaging is the issue here. If we are experiencing 30 plus people a month that are coming here whom are here right now but will be next month, I don't know how we're going to continue to manage this problem where it sounds like from Council official's explanation we're not managing it well. So more and more people are coming here requiring more and more management, more resources. And please remember, I don't know about all city departments, but many city departments are struggling with staffing issues. So I think everybody is trying their best, but we understand that we're not beating everybody's expectation. That is absolutely true. We appreciate that. Right, it does bother me greatly, a lot. I mean, I do live in Bangor, and it bothers me when I hear that we have people in neighborhoods that don't feel safe. That is the problem, and I would like to learn more about just that is that is unacceptable [1:10:33] Susan Faloon: Are there any changes you would like to see to this policy? [1:10:37] Speaker D (unidentified): No, I don't, I don't necessarily think that the policy needs changes. I think that I do believe that if you collectively want to have discussions about it, then we should have that discussion. If there's members of the community that engage you that want this policy to have some adjustments to it, we're certainly open to that. 's not working, that's fine. You know, in my conversation with staff and some supervisors about this, knowing we're going to have this review at some point, this policy is not necessarily a hindrance to staff performing their duties. It's a combination nation of many things, this policy partly, and then frustration. You know, you arrest somebody seven or eight times and you know, literally truly before you have the report because it is submitted to your supervisor, they're back engaged in other behavior that you'd be called on, and that's, that's not unusual. So there's a level of frustration that's also attached to it. I mean, this policy frustration and like I mentioned earlier, a system that is overwhelmed, not just at the local bed or city level, but way above us at the state level and above. I don't have an answer, but I will share with you that we do have a very good staff at the police department, and they operate with compassion and then lean into a problem with enforcement when it's necessary. I mean, we think we all, everybody in the room wants the most vulnerable in our community to be connected with service until they engage in bad, behavior, and then we have to step in and address it. And we do that, and I just outlined the numbers are so bad in it. [1:12:16] Daniel Carson: I'm not on this committee, but I do have a couple of questions and then maybe a couple of comments. I'm not necessarily that I would need answers now, but I know that there's data, but so as a result of this policy, are people connecting with services? [1:12:32] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, I don't know. That's a valid question. And I don't know that I can answer your question. I almost think we need to have a representative of public health help us with this question. When I spoke with BCAT earlier today, my the suggestion is that there's not as much cooperation as maybe you would hope, and there's a variety of reasons for that, and some they didn't leave them, they don't, there's something, there was distrust of law enforcement, there's a variety of reasons, but I don't know what you have at that time. I don't think this policy [1:13:06] Speaker H (unidentified): is driving connection. I think it's where somebody's at. Some people are ready to engage, some people aren't. And what we're doing is just using best practices. This policy reflects many best practices, but this policy isn't driving the connection or not. [1:13:25] Daniel Carson: And the second question is, are repeat contacts, is that something that's increasing, decreasing, increasing and do you have an assessment about why it's going either way, like if it's increasing, is that due partially, you know, mostly because we have 30 new faces a month, right, and just [1:13:44] Speaker D (unidentified): by math that's how it goes, or so by conversation, I don't know that it's increasing, but we certainly know who our repeat offenders are, and a repeat offenders, we do childhood crimes, I mean, we have to introduce them into the system at some point, in some cases it can be a lifesaver, or we all know of stories where going to jail actually saved a person's life. So repeat offenders, if you do address criminal action, do we try to be compassionate as reasonably possible early in the process based on the violation of faith and religion? Does that mean that we're going to allow a lawless community where everybody did free for I'll do whatever they want. I know. No,, no. You know, again, the numbers that I outlined earlier, suggests that we are indeed engaged with people that are that are bad actors. And we'll continue to do that. [1:14:42] Daniel Carson: Thank you. And I just have a couple of comments if it's okay. And the first is just generally and hearing that there is a great need to have continued discussion around resources. And so I hope maybe this committee, somebody on it could send a the referral over to legislative committee to have a discussion on the types of things that we can advocate for on your behalf. I heard pretty clearly you talking about a step down unit, step down team. That's something we've talked about before. I've heard it over and over, so I would love to engage in a deeper discussion about what that could look like. For me in regards to this policy, and I recognize the limitations that we have, right? A jail that's full or over census we don't have another space right I mean there's not everybody's a great candidate for that anyways we want people to get services first we want people to get connected to recovery we want people to heal at the same time right the those kinds of conditions are I think a driver in some of the behavior that we see you said yourself and people memorize these what can they get away with? And I think once you know what you can get away with, if you're gonna be able to get away with it, you're gonna get away with it. That's a problem. And I don't know what the solution to that is, because again, you have the jail that's full, there's nowhere to send people. And I've heard people, I've received emails, I've had people say to me, well, we send people out of state, that's a wildly expensive process. So I don't think that 's reasonable to try to collaborate in that way what do you see as like a potential other space between you know we have services we need people to agree to do that we have jail what else is in your mind it is an option can I just offer and maybe this is a question [1:16:43] Speaker H (unidentified): for Chief Hathaway to answer is the role that drug court also plays in this system and giving people an option at times to either go to jail or to go into some type of recovery program. So I don't [1:16:58] Speaker D (unidentified): Know. Yeah, drug court has been a fantastic program. Officer Blanchard who many of you have met has since retired but he stayed on with us on a per diem basis so we can continue his work with drug court so we still have a law enforcement connection to the best condition with drug court and you were right that is a good program there has been there have been some success stories a number of success stories to their program and we're very much engaged with it i think you know it 's a process of many things it's not just arresting somebody right He's introducing people into services, it's a combination of things, and it's the police working in partnership with providers, with public health, and with our mental health professionals. It's really a partnership, but I really wanted to come to you today, tonight, with solutions. I wanted to have a more positive conversation, and I'm sorry we're not, right? I'm really worshiped with that we could present you with some solutions so we could make the folks that feel unsafe feel safe. I mean, that is the objective of the police, right? The objective is for you to be safe and feel safe in your homes. And if we're failing at that, then we really need to look at what we're doing and how we can improve. And, you know, that does, it does create some concern for me. I really does. I want everybody in this room, I want everybody at home that might be watching this now or will watch it later on to feel safe in their work environment, when they travel through town, if they go out to a restaurant, to their doctor's office, and most certainly at home when they go to bed in them. And if we can't accomplish that, then we really collectively have to stop rethinking about what we're doing and how we can be better, and we are most certainly part of that equation. My final comment, thank you, is [1:18:50] Daniel Carson: that, you know, I know we see 30 new faces a month. You've mentioned the pocket of people who are not interested in receiving services. And I recognize that there's a challenge there, but that could be for multiple reasons, right? Some people are not ready for services yet, they could become ready for services. Other people have distrust of law enforcement or so forth. I'm gonna just say this like as a comment, I don't know how to feel this out in policy or how to effectuate it, but I am fully disinterested in bringing people to Bangor who are fully disinterested in eventually moving forward and so i think if like if you're going to come here and live in the woods with a group of people and not follow any rule and you're never going to seek recovery and it's i 'm not interested in trying to manage that and so i think personally like if you're another city and that's what you're sending somebody here to hear who fits that bill, send them back is my view. [1:20:00] Susan Deane: Dr. I keep going back to your statement that mental health is a far bigger problem than drug addiction, which it's hard to say which came first, chicken or the egg, because a lot of times they go hand in hand. We recently had conversation at one of our meetings regarding Dorothy Dix which as we know has been sitting empty for so long and we had discussed possibly making some sort of a bid for some of the properties there which I mean over the years everyone has thought this every new council member thinks this and we've never been able to do anything with it if we were to be successful to gain access to a building my thought at that meeting just kind of came out of nowhere was is there some interim between a mental health facility and a jail yes and are these successful elsewhere and what would that facility look like [1:20:57] Speaker D (unidentified): they are indeed successful elsewhere and I think chcs has just opened up a program smaller in size than what you're referencing it may indeed be aligned with what you're thinking but I don't know the capacity of that you know we're talking I think the capacity of that program will be exceeded shortly. We, as we talked about earlier, are serving a region or a community. We're trying to solve this at the community level while trying to solve a large region's problem. So I think it's a capacity issue, but yes, jail is not the answer for most all individuals we engage. And the hospital is not either. Something in the middle is the right solution for a lot [1:21:44] Speaker H (unidentified): a lot of the people who... OK, can I just offer something? The other thing that we're seeing with people who are experiencing mental health challenges, there is a wide range, right? And from our experience is that there are people who just need to be in a stable environment to be on medication to manage their mental health. And just with good medication management and support, that would then provide the stability, and they wouldn't be engaging with law enforcement, and they wouldn't be engaging in some other, the emergency departments in the same way. So just getting them to a place, and sometimes what we're also finding is maybe it's someone who needs to go into assisted living, they don't need to be hospitalized at a location like Dorothea Dicks, and we don't even have sort of like all the avenues to be able to support people at each part of the sort of spectrum of mental health challenges. Thank [1:22:34] Susan Deane: you. [1:22:35] Susan Faloon: Two questions if I may. One is at what point does something like drug court get introduced? [1:22:47] Speaker D (unidentified): That's a prosecutor's decision. Okay, so if we charge somebody with a crime, if they district just demonstrate they have us an addiction or substance abuse issue, that's a [1:22:56] Susan Faloon: prostitute. Okay, my other question is a year ago, a little over a year ago, I sat down and talked to you and you said in general Bangor is a safe city. And like I know that the way that we track, have tracked stats, crime stats in the past was a little different than other cities, which kind of skewed the results. Would you say today the same thing, that Bangor is generally a safe city? [1:23:26] Speaker C (unidentified): Yes we [1:23:29] Speaker D (unidentified): have to put this in context. We are in very nice, we have some challenges. Every community of our size is struggling with some level of challenge. We seem to have a disproportionate number of folks that are that are struggling with a variety of issues in Bangor, but again we really do receive a large reasons that the most second vulnerable, but is Bangor safe? Yes, Bangor is a safe community. I go out in Bangor, and I don't necessarily always see what I might hear about through social media. When I go downtown for breakfast on Saturday, I see pushing baby carriers, I see folks jogging, I see people with kids downtown, and I don't see the violence and the aggression and things that I'm led to believe that are occurring. Yes, I do see hand-handling. I do see that, and I know that makes people feel uncomfortable. I don't know that uncomfortable is always unsafe. I would love to remove the uncomfortable feeling that people sense, because I think that then they would feel safe. But I don't know that in every instance we can do that. But as Bangor Safe, yes, I can assure you that in most all instances, Bangor is a safe community. There's always a pocket of issue when we have violence, one person on another. In most all instances, not every instance, those people know each other. Is it safe to go downtown this evening? It is safe to go downtown this evening. Will you encounter somebody that might make you feel uncomfortable or make you feel uneasy? It's possible. I don't know, but it is possible. Can we remove that? I hope in time we can. I hope in time we can. There's a lot more good going on in Bangor than best, and sometimes we seem to focus just on the bad when really I think we could spend some time [1:25:23] Carolyn Fish: focusing on the good as well. Thank you. It's kind of frustrating in the counselor for three years. We hear two different things. I hear from people the booth on the ground sort of say somewhat related to some type of service to the young house. Then we hear, you know, we have 40, 30, 40 new faces, the majority of them, most likely not. And yet, you know, our service providers come and say, they're all Bangor's. Well, they're not all Bangor's. I've come to the conclusion. I love you, Jen, but I just cannot believe that maybe half of them are from Bangor. And so then we have the problem of how do we address that and control that better? I know we're a service center. They're going to come here, but somehow we have to come up with a way of better, somehow filtering this out and coming up with a solution so we can get a handle on it. And so that's, that's a bit frustrating. And maybe I hang out with the wrong people, but I will tell you every day someone is telling me they left a restaurant downtown and they were aggressively, they just didn't see someone that was acting strange. They were, it was an aggressive, scary interaction, that things are being taken off from their porch. I mean, every day, you know, when you're recognizing counsel, they're going to tell you someone in my own family last week was chest buttoned and basically lost his balance and thank God it was him, not me, petite person coming out of the closing. And every day people are reaching out and telling us their stories. So, you know, maybe in a certain block or two, but I won't go walk my dog anymore at night unless him goes with me. I personally don't feel safe to go out in the dark by myself with My dog, so you know, I appreciate, you know, your perception, and yes, I love Bangor. There's a lot of good. I think we'll get past this, and but I just think that people get more angry when they hear us as the leader say, well, you just happen to have an incident. Well, you know, it makes you uncomfortable. That doesn't mean you're unsafe. You know, I think if they feel unsafe, that's a problem, whether we want to make the opinion they are or not, they're feeling unsafe, and a lot of our residents are feeling unsafe. So you know, I don't know, I would like to take up that discussion again about emergency, if that's what it takes to get the state's attention, and we can get some kind of action to help our police department, because they do work hard, they're out there, they're they've got the boots on the grounds, and they're the ones trying to handle the problem that we need to come up with being better partners to help them. So I'd like to have more discussion about that. I don't know if we can put that back on the agenda or how we can do that. [1:28:23] Michael Beck: Make a note about that question I had just to kind of put things in perspective. How many contacts would you say we throw makes a year under this protocol? We don't have to get that [1:28:36] Speaker D (unidentified): information, so I don't know that I can give you a factual number. I don't think, if I guess, [1:28:44] Michael Beck: if you're to guess, is there a percentage in your mind of how many of these contacts are repeat? You mentioned, you know, who the repeat offenders are. How many do you think we're dealing with there? [1:28:56] Speaker D (unidentified): I think there's a sizable number of repeat offenders, yes. I feel as if this has been an unusual summer, and I get, I gained this information from both talking to the street officer and BCAT responders. They have seen an influx of reports this summer at a higher rate than we've ever seen previously. Speaking with the BCAT responders this morning, she told me that there seems to be a shift. In early summer they started seeing new and new and new faces. She said, we drive down the street during the course of the day and we see new people and they stop and engage them. And it's people they've never seen before, and that happens every day. And she said that was not so much like that last summer. It's something that came to fruition this summer. That's her observation. And that would align with what a lot of our officers are saying. We do know that we have people that are living in our homeless community that have been here for a number of years, but we are seeing a new cluster of new folks. We moved a group along on the railroad track a few weeks ago. That was one month later in this year. So or people who we've never engaged before, we did not know who they were. So again, it's a messaging issue. People are coming to our community from other areas, and it's overwhelming the resources [1:30:22] Michael Beck: that we currently have. And one of the things I heard you say earlier is that this protocol isn't hindering the department's work. If the legislature tomorrow wants to come back in session and just repeal the whole thing and say, you know what, you don't need to have a homeless protocol anymore. What would change in Mingor, anything? [1:30:41] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, the only portion of that policy I think that people are interested in is the usable possession,, right? They see someone with a needle or shooting up in the park. And that's the issue that I think most people see, and most people want police action on. Changing this policy, if you remove that from this policy, it would be a clearer path for us, but it doesn't necessarily hinder us. It's the process that hinders us. Again, it's a it's a it's a classy misdemeanor violation. It's a citation. We have to seize the syringe. It's two to three hundred dollars to have that tested, introducing into the court system. It's unclear if the prosecutor's office will write a complaint on that, or will they simply dismiss it out of hand because they just do not have the time to prosecute that. If they do prosecute it, then we will go forward with the drug testing. The officer will have to appear in court, and that's what we do. That is our job, whether or not we have a policy or not. If we had sufficient staffing, we would be doing this now. Last summer, I had this conversation recently with a council candidate. Last summer we were full staff, and we had a three-person team that did nothing but focus on neighborhood drug saints, and they were all over it to the Point where I was getting calls from other police departments, other police chiefs asking, what are you guys doing over there? But what we were doing, it was messaging. We were pushing some of these drug sales out of Bangor. They were very aggressive. We are down nine right now. We were down 11 a short time ago. We do not have that unit right now. We just don't have the staff. When we get back to close to full staffing, having, we will indeed have that unit again. I think I've suggested to some of you I Certainly have this conversation with the city manager. There may be an opportunity for me to come forward during the next budget preparation and seek a few more offices to develop a dedicated neighborhood drug unit that would work in partnership as a resident with a resident agent, resident agents, I'm sorry, with Main Drug. I've already talked to me about this. We're ready to go with it. We just need people. It's a people game. Our pay is competitive. Our schedule is good. We offer a variety of opportunities for folks. It's a good profession. We're just not saving the applicants. I had a Chiefs meeting at the Crosstown Center last week, and I was having conversations with Chiefs from all over the state, and everybody is struggling for the most part. I mean, the Portland, the Lewiston, we've got the back of Old Town. Everybody is struggling with some level of staffing you should if the people game we'll get back to it when we're full staff this conversation will likely not occur but you'll hear from your residents and folks that feel unsafe they feel much better because they're seeing us in the neighborhoods it is indeed the neighborhood where we need to be we'll get back to it [1:33:38] Michael Beck: So that's our mailer and the council person [1:33:42] Wayne Mallar: How many encampments do you say we have would you say we have now? We have a large. So we are moving them out. Yeah, because I remember that was something the city [1:34:02] Speaker K (unidentified): Manager asked that there'd be no more encampments. Well it you know this time of year it's true [1:34:06] Speaker D (unidentified): That we stay on top of things so we don't have to encampment slides that's called what it goes in on if we can engage and work with a smaller group like do you say [1:34:16] Speaker H (unidentified): I just add that I think there's a really good relationship between the enforcement of BCAT and police and then our team to go in and provide resources and I think it's been very effective so [1:34:26] Wayne Mallar: At the current time you'd say there are how many encampment individual encampments at any one time [1:34:33] Speaker K (unidentified): In the last couple of months, I don't know, what can you do? I would say there are pockets that [1:34:39] Speaker H (unidentified): that have developed but then have been quickly moved on with them. There are no continuous funds. [1:34:44] Speaker K (unidentified): All right, I'm not aware. I'm not, I'm not to say the jurors no. I'm just, I'm just asking because [1:34:49] Wayne Mallar: I hear from people about this group of people there and other. I just wondered if it was okay they're there for a few days and then moved, which is what I hope is going on. I would hate to think [1:35:00] Speaker K (unidentified): they've been there for two months and haven't been moved. I think there are pockets, but there shouldn't be. Yeah, when we find out about, when we learn about it. So what you need is more help from the general public to tell you where the pockets are. Yeah, we will, the public inform them if the [1:35:15] Speaker D (unidentified): public calls up, we receive through a secret fix, right terminology, we haven't gotten out of the blind email like a lot of you know, but we have, the public doesn't need that, and the issue [1:35:29] Wayne Mallar: getting better that you want the public to inform you of encampments, whether it's a single or are multiple. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that the public, yes, use it, absolutely. [1:35:40] Speaker K (unidentified): [1:35:47] Daniel Carson: The question of safety, in which I realize that everybody has a different threshold for what they consider to be safe or not safe, and I realize that even changes for people. I know people who will tell me that they don't feel safe in their neighborhood, but will take a weekend trip to a city that I know they see far more dangerous things every five steps that they're taking in that city, you know, before they come home. And so I do realize that, you know, that's movable. It changes. What are things that we can do as a council, maybe policy-wise, maybe information-wise, to help people to feel more safe outside of the enforcement question? [1:36:31] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, I think it's really on us and for us, it's visibility, right? If you see the police officers in your neighborhood, then you have a sense of safety, and it's right back to what I just said about just a moment ago. It's a numbers issue, it's a people issue. When we're at full staff, you see us in neighborhoods, and I feel like when you see a police officer, you see a police car driving through your neighborhood, parked on the corner, and you feel more safe, and good behavior drives out bad behavior. The more things that we have going on in our neighborhoods that are good activities, it drives out bad behavior. But I don't know what I can call on all of you to do other than to continue to be supportive of us, of the police department, and help us develop new police officers and grow our staff. And I don't necessarily mean grow our to have above what you've authorized us to have just to help us get to our minimum staffing just at our minimum stack and where we're supposed to be right now. You'll see a market business last summer was a great example of that. We'll get back to it, but we're struggling. We got struggling to find suitable candidates, so you can talk us up and I mean we are the place to work. And if you want to listen, we were talking about brewer earlier and I want to say that brewer is a is a phenomenal product and some of those people work for us, but they have a very good belief environment. We just we're just a little bit bigger, we offer more opportunities, and if you want to be a police officer, this is where we want to work. And somebody's interested in watching right now, we want you, so come see us and they will very well be an awesome career just to follow [1:38:10] Daniel Carson: up or close my comment. If you think of something else that we can do as counselors in addition to supporting you and helping you accomplish that goal, please let us know. Absolutely expeditious [1:38:21] Angela Walker: yeah come to walker and then comfortable yes I'll be brief. The what constitutes an [1:38:28] Speaker D (unidentified): encampment well that's the question i don't know i mean i mean i think what you're referencing is but we have an encampment we like 10 or 12 people that 's too big you know it's not uncommon me for someone to call us and say we know that we saw i see three tents out in the field i know that's not only an encampment that's two or three people that are camping out there and will engage them and try to help them find better options you know a candidate you might think of an encampment as a large number of people all in one small area and we don't, we're not experiencing that right now. But do we have pockets? I'm sure we do. I'm sure somebody is watching this right now that knows where there's four or five tents that we do not know about. If they were to call us and tell us, we'll address it. I'm certain that is the case. Yes, so just the reason [1:39:18] Angela Walker: I was asking that is because of the park across from the police station. I'm wondering like does it have to be visible tents that are out, can it be these tarps that are going up? Yeah, we don't allow [1:39:28] Speaker D (unidentified): Allow that with so tarps and tents where we do take those down and after we see it every time. Please remember we are not monitoring. I know it's pretty much the police station that's we're not necessarily watching it every second and running over there every time you see them, yes, but we do not allow and the park rangers are on top of this. We don't allow tents, no tarps, no, you know, structured and we just don't allow structures generally in parks ever. It's not permissible and if we see it we'll we will ask them to dismantle it and move. Other behaviors are not, you know, they're not necessarily breaking the law or violating an ordinance. A lot of the folks you see at Devonport Park are indeed not without shelter. They're either staying at the shelter or the Shaw House or they live on Second Street, Third Street. This is a social event in many instances at Davenport Park. So some of the folks we engage there aren't necessarily all in the in the homeless community. Some are indeed there because they're friends. They may have been in the homeless community at one time and they remain friends with people that unfortunately still in that community. But that's a large number of people. If you go by there on Monday night when Jericho Road is there is a large number of people there and not everybody that's in that line it's without a place to go with any routine. Thank you. Thank you. A couple [1:41:01] Susan Faloon: of questions. Earlier in the summer some of us came down for a tour and then we had a nice conversation after and one of the things that we talked about is potentially doing a sorry it's slightly off topic but related just it's related to staffing. We talked about potentially offering some hiring bonuses or something like that. Would that help and has that [1:41:23] Speaker C (unidentified): conversation you might remember we approached you at the end of the last budget [1:41:27] Speaker D (unidentified): and you allowed us to carry over from funding right so that has been very helpful and it's a retention. We are now very competitive with other police departments so that has helped a great deal. I don't know speaking with others that the bonuses necessarily work and I'll share with you that I do struggle with giving somebody I don't know money versus the person that I do know that's been working with us and working for us and working overtime and coming in on the evenings when they really wanted to go to the movie. So giving somebody money that I've never met versus in you know giving the money that you all drive the boat that are actually getting the job up, done. I like the incentivizing employees and retaining our good folk. We have a great deal of money in our people. We have some sexually well-skilled people. We just got to keep them and find more people like them. So allowing us to carry over the money we did from the last budget proved very helpful. And I must say that I can't say I won't be that I just asked you again sometimes who knows who knows if it's successful we try again. But we're very competitive. Our starting wage is very competitive with what other [1:42:49] Susan Faloon: police agencies that we can compete with. How much of an issue is it for you and even other departments losing officers to ICE because they give a pretty good signing bonus? We have [1:43:03] Speaker D (unidentified): we had two officers that moved into federal employment but not necessarily with ICE. We've not lost anybody to that type of employment. Sometimes we lose officers they want to go work in a smaller agency. They're not necessarily enamored with the type of call you know the vagrancy calls and those related calls or some people just leave the profession altogether. They just they go into you know carpentry work construction work they you know do something be totally different. The game right now is retention. That's where we need to focus. We'll find quality people as time goes on but retaining our good people is the objective right now and I think we will. [1:43:51] Michael Beck: I want to be mindful of time because I know we already put counter-officious stuff off us on that one but I just wanted to say I hear you loud and clear about the system being broken about us and you know talking with the legislative committee it's work what we can do to tell Bangor's story to our legislators and really make some changes at the state level to help us out. And I appreciate all that the police department is doing. I appreciate everyone who's doing you know work people are doing in this space and it's a struggle and certainly you'll appreciate the opportunity to review this and discuss it. I don't think there's anything we need from the committee at this point. It was just a discussion. Okay let's move on to the next item. Thank you chief. Thank you. Thank you. All right and so let's discuss now the counter requested items of consideration. Counter fish because our fish is okay with you can we do one at a time and pause with questions and move on you [1:44:49] Carolyn Fish: Yeah, it will be one of the topic at a time. Sure. What I, what I think I'd do, just kind of maybe abbreviate this if you don't mind, and I try to, I got some notes on you, but I can follow up with an email for everyone we're going to share so that you have, you know, this kind of got a one sentence. So take it away, and where would you like to start? Sure. Well, the first item on the memo here is a [1:45:16] Michael Beck: shopping cart accountability ordinance. So in my research, some of the other attempts [1:45:21] Carolyn Fish: And we've talked before about the shopping cart being sort of trashed and debris. And our city works are picking them up, or the businesses don't know what to do with them. There's been different policies and ordinances. And I will, again, provide these in an email to you that prohibits taking shopping carts. So an ordinance prohibits taking carts off store property without authorization, or it requires our businesses to retrieve their abandoned card. So if they're given notice, they have 24 to 72 hours for them themselves to go retrieve the car instead of just saying no, I don't want it. If there's an impoundment where the city can collect the abandoned property and then charge a minimal fee, if the cart has an identification on it, there's a potential registration or fee registration fee, so that anyone that has 10 or 15 parts or more, so small businesses that just have a few wouldn't be burdened with a fee, but the bigger shopping centers, what have you, would have a fee associated with the cart. Sometimes a fee, and some of the towns they told me the fee is waived. If that facility locks them down and controls it a little bit better. So I can write these, and I like the one not hurt our small businesses with a minimum shopping cart. But I will give you guys a little more information with the different ideas other towns had on shopping carts, but they came up before. And I think that was it on the shop. [1:47:09] Susan Deane: I'm not opposed to cracking down the shopping carts. They are a problem. But in this research, once the shopping carts are taken away, what are the in house utilizing to move their possessions from place to place? [1:47:24] Carolyn Fish: Good question, and there was some ordinances that if there's personal belongings, it would be handled similar to what we do now, where they are taking to a place, maybe the police station, for so long. Sometimes there's a notification left where they picked up the car, and if they've taken the card away, they also have to search the item sometimes, because sometimes there's dangerous, there's items within those contents. So there are a couple of really reasonable and short policies about what to do with personal property. [1:47:58] Susan Deane: I know I mentioned it was sort of a joke, but if you don't have a shopping cart, you probably need a suitcase or something. How are they going to move their items? [1:48:12] Carolyn Fish: These are, these are a bit, but when people are actually using [1:48:17] Susan Deane: them, it's the same thing, they're walking through town, they have a shopping cart, I'm assuming that [1:48:21] Carolyn Fish: we would crack down on that as well, Sue, that, because I think we don't want to make a vulnerable person suffer more. Great, these, this was primarily the abandoned cards that I couldn't accept. [1:48:37] Susan Faloon: i guess my question is and i don't know if we have this information and i don't even know who this question is for maybe chief hathaway but i'll ask it like how much of a problem is this and are we finding a lot of abandoned parts and are we getting a lot of calls or is it you know just like a cart here in a car there just put a lightsaber i knew that 's why there's [1:49:11] Speaker D (unidentified): shopping carts, and I understand that in some cases the shopping carts is the only form of mobility for some of these folks, but it is indeed a problem. We receive a lot of complaints about shopping cars, well certainly when they're abandoned or seem abandoned, the person leaves it, say, at the park, or on the, on the F1, that comes in with the tech, with a guitar, would indicate they're coming back for it, but if it's not pleasing to the eye, certainly we get calls about it, so it is a problem. [1:49:39] Susan Faloon: Can I follow up? So I guess my question is like, I mean, when I think of an abandoned in cart, I think of like an empty cart that's, you know, thrown in a stream or something, but sometimes that's not the case, and they may be coming back, and so the issue to me is that it's an eyesore that people don't like, but if we enact something like this, those carts are just going to get replaced with a wagon or a suitcase or something, and we're still going to have that problem of people complaining about it, because we're just replacing one issue with another, and the issue is that it's unsightly. [1:50:18] Daniel Carson: Comfort cart sets. Yes. So for me, and I appreciate Councilor Fish just mentioning, we would not wanna take a cart away from somebody who's like using it to move their life around. I recognize that my opinion on this is that I think that one of the primary drivers is that places with shopping carts do not want to be a victim. So there is no theft of a shopping cart. That's not a real thing that can happen because for theft to happen, you have to have a victim. So if you come to my house tonight to steal my car and I call the police department and then I change my mind and I say, well, actually, I don't really care, there's no victim. And they're not going to go retrieve my car and they're not gonna press forward on that. and so that's what's happening i think with these shopping you know anywhere that has cards is they do not want to be a victim right officially that's a public image problem that's a branding problem and so i also you know live on a street where there are a lot of abandoned shopping carts people use them to transport stuff and then they don't use them ever again and interestingly enough like i live next to a house where people will go to the store and get a shopping cart to bring their groceries home but never take the grocery cart back when they go to the store again to get more groceries. So there's like 15 carts on my street if anybody's looking for them. So for me, I think that the way to go about this would be to enact of a registration or a fee system, you know, where a fee can be charged, a fine can be charged to the company. If there's branding on cart, it would help us to recuperate the cost of public works actually going out and doing this work of collecting them or if it's the police department, whoever's collecting them, there's a staff cost to that. So I think that would be, for me, I would, I would support something like that because it would help us to fund the cleanup that's already happening. [1:52:23] Susan Faloon: I guess my only concern with that is that we are penalizing the victims of a crime. [1:52:28] Carolyn Fish: Time by doing that, I think the point of it wasn't really more or less, you know, punishing your victim is accountability, responsibility, accountability to the businesses themselves that seem to be negligible about participating in cleaning up the carts that they're supplying, and then it's left the public works and a lot of residents have complained. We've had, we had what prompted this was months ago, if not maybe last year, we had a pretty lengthy at the conversation about the abandoned shopping carts. So I felt that this was a mild, yeah, we were taking responsibility as leaders to provide an ordinance to give guidance as to how to handle this. [1:53:09] Michael Beck: Well, what I would say too, is when we had the coming the last year, I was looking into it, what I found fascinating that other communities have done is they say, hey, if you wanna have a shopping cart, there's a registration, but they require the business is to have some kind of anti-theft like you look at Shaw's where their cards get shut down when they go over that magic line and you know again I'm not everywhere in the city but I've not seen Shaw's cards get pushed around you know even the dollar free at you know Third and Union you know like they got the big long pole that you can't let you work it out the door you know it's only gonna notice you're trying to make off with a card so you know I'm I like that kind of idea and you know it's a way to work that new ordinance of you know if you want if your shop is so big that people need shopping carts to get around and shop well this is part of that whereas if that's not going to work for you can't afford to register them well then to hand baskets and I think that you know that way there it also doesn't you know we've all agreed that we don't want to penalize the person who's just using it you know the moment we're just worried about the once an abandoned then it becomes a safety issue in a in a in a you know in blank and I think that you know we did something like that you know that we would slowly see as these abandoned cards are taken away they're not being replaced by new cards because everyone's doing something to protect them from theft so I'm certainly open to that avenue okay [1:54:33] Carolyn Fish: in my email I'll kind of categorize these in bullet little things that I found from other [1:54:39] Speaker C (unidentified): municipalities for future consideration any other questions or comments on this item just a quick [1:54:45] Susan Faloon: Thought algae down in Portland has a system where you put a quarter in to get your cart and you have to bring your cart back to get your quarter back, and I think they don't have that much of a problem with the carts not being returned, and it's only a quarter, okay, so [1:55:08] Carolyn Fish: The next topic is the out of town on house placement policy, okay, so there are if there are a number of parents that have or who visit our state, if they're drilled in certain state and federal laws that kind of give you know human trafficking and applications through GA and those that are on house that need assistance, but I was looking for something that we could at least impose, it might be hard to enforce, but at least we're sending a message, so you know it's called prohibition of government Sponsored unsanctioned transport of homeless persons, and that's it on sanctions, so a lot of communities that either are participating somehow, even if they might not admit it, somehow participating in transporting people here, and they're not first making a collaborative effort with the city, and then these it's it's no different than human trafficking in my mind, if they send somebody here when that person thinks they're going to get services and they only get off the bus to find out there's no Services, maybe even less, that maybe we can come up with some ordinances that you know gives us some teeth, and a couple of them that I want to highlight is, it prohibits an officer or an agent from another city, county, or government entity from transporting a non-house person and dropping them off to public another municipality without further having collaboration. And then it goes, I believe, some state laws and ordinances already say that if another community does collaborate, there's a six-month rule, so that if a small a small town Clifton called up and said we can't service these individuals, there's six months GA, and then I don't know how it works, but there's some type of GA assistance that could fall within the ordinance to just clarify how long that GA who's responsible for it and some protocols we call the town up and we say hey you have two Residents from Missouri that just got bused here, and you know, we're going to need to send them back, or there's some type of penalty when there's not collaboration that way. When we have the smaller towns that do need us as a service center, they're at least having an obligation to collaborate. I also thought this would be a good opportunity for us as a council to reach out to our bigger neighborhoods and say, hey, we're going to come up with some ordinances, but we'd really like to have a communication collaboration pipeline between us. So this might help perpetuate and fuel greater communication in a more amicable way should get those communities to come. And then maybe for those that are out of state, a little tougher, but again, I'll kind of bullet some of the highlights that I found that I thought were good ideas and put that in my email that we can share with the public. [1:58:10] Michael Beck: Questions? Councillor Carson. [1:58:11] Daniel Carson: I don't necessarily have a question, but I do have a comment on this, and I'm very interested in engaging further in this discussion. I've been following along with the homeless committee's continued meetings, and this idea of sort of like the hub model, things like that, I kind of hear being tossed about. And so I do feel like this kind of a conversation really could go hand in hand with what I see developing there. There for me, and I want to agree with you, use the human trafficking terminology, I want to agree with that. I want to share a story, I think I've shared this story with you, but I'll share it with everybody. When I first started my banking career, I started in Cleveland, Ohio, and I was there for a number of years downtown on Youthwood Avenue, and I got, you know, we get to know our customers, we had a number of homeless customers downtown Cleveland who were very close to a few of the shelters, food bank, and so we get to, we got to know all of our customers very well. One in particular, his name is Jerome, and after this meeting, I'll show you a picture if you'd like, but Jerome and I share a birthday, and he was one of our favorites. He was in almost every day, and he clearly had some mental issues, you know, we became accustomed to those. We could tell after many years when Jerome was eating, when he wasn't, when he was on his meds, when he wasn't, when he was in a shelter, when he wasn't. And we came to love him very much. And Jerome, everyone would go off of his meds and he would get in fights. And then he would disappear for a few days because he'd been captured by the police or whatever. And so one, near the end of my time in Cleveland, we stopped seeing Jerome in our branch. And weeks went by and we started really looking for this person. I mean, calling banks around the city to find out, did anybody know where this person went? And we couldn't find Jerome. Then I moved to Boston and I was managing 125 High Street for Bank of America. That's right across from International Tower for people who are familiar with that area of the finance district. In my first week of being employed, Jerome walked through the front door and he recognized me and I recognized him. It was a really wonderful moment because we had been looking for this person for a long time but 700 miles away from where I was looking for Jerome there was Jerome. So we went into my office and took pictures, at least I sent them to all my old co-workers, and we called a hundred people because that was like family for us. But I asked Jerome what the heck happened here. We did, he went off his medication, he got in a fight downtown Cleveland, and a police officer picked him up, drove him to the bus station, bought a ticket, stuck him on a bus, and said you're going to Boston. It's okay. Was there any discussion about that? No. Did you have any connection to services? No. Pre-planning, nothing was arranged for Jerome. It turned out okay for him. He was able to find services once he got to Boston. He was able to get into a shelter, was able to get himself fed. But this is a person who was picked up during a legally dubious situation. They were having, they were fighting right in public. There was a reason for a law enforcement interaction and I, this is not the only story I've heard. I mean, this is mine that I have, but I hear this all the time from people in different cities and I'm very concerned about it because I think when you are outside you're already living a legally dubious life. You are at a higher risk for being transported against your will between places. And so I appreciate that you're thinking about this and I do see this being connected to the work that the homeless committee is doing but I just wanted to share that story because I think it's important. I don't think we talked about this enough. Thank [2:02:20] Susan Faloon: It's been a while since I've looked at this, but there is, so there is a state law and I think you referenced it, and then last year there was an effort in the legislature to strengthen that and it didn't pass. And so actually I believe you testified on it, so you could probably speak to it. But so I know there's been work and there's been attempts to do this, and I do think that this is something that we could really engage our legislators on it. [2:02:48] Michael Beck: Yeah, well I wanted to say, you know, I really like this idea because, you know, I was looking out, there's actually a model in Riverside, California that they did it and the penalty is never on the person. Anyone is free to travel to Bangor. No one's saying you need permission to come. It's saying, hey, you as the organization, you can't just transport people here, you know, and do that to them. And I like at Riverside, as you look at their website, they actually have a portal that you go, you can click on to alert the city, hey, make the arrangements all on there, because it then becomes, you know, preparation rather than reaction. And you know, that's not fair to the people who are getting dropped off and it's not fair to the city who were already stretched in. And also I think it also helps create a paper trail for the double indemnity for GA, for those communities who want to shirk their responsibility rather than coordinate. Now we've got a paper trail. I think that was a challenge is it's taken more effort to try to backtrack and prove the case than it does to, you know, to just deal with it and get reimbursed later. You know, and I'd like to see, you know, these other communities be collaborated with and come to and say, hey, let's figure this out. I like the idea of, you know, hey, for six months, it's on you because you're a resident, but let's work together. And that's, you know, better than paying double. You know, so I think that's a nice carrot that we can use. years. Yeah, so I'm excited to learn more. I think that, you know, it's something that's going to help people. And so yeah, definitely looking forward to seeing you on. And I just want to give you that 's the Riverside model. Yeah. [2:04:21] Carolyn Fish: Similar to the one I got in Santa Cruz. Yeah. So it's voluntary someone resides on their own. Hey, I heard Bengals got great services. I think I'd be better off there. They volunteer. It doesn't touch it. It's about it's just about some community putting somebody on the bus and saying, or putting them in the car and just dropping them off with no collaboration. [2:04:43] Michael Beck: One area where maybe even this conversation could be expanded is obviously we can't stop hospitals from taking people. I mean, it's healthcare, it's emergency, people have to be taken. But when they're being discharged with no plan, no anything, there needs to be some kind of a plan. can and you know we need more partnership with our you know local organizations to make sure there's a plan for that piece of it because it's also hurting us you know so I'd be interested [2:05:11] Carolyn Fish: in you know expanding it that way I didn't want to add that on there but there was a sub chapter to this for exactly that for other service whether it's for-profit or non-profit when they provide a service and they know this person is homeless but they don't they don't at least offer service they don't make an effort to collaborate with a health provider service when they just put them out on the street so that you know i know that we've got eight of them coming up tonight but believe it or not a year and a half ago i went to the former manager with these so I'm just happy to be here tonight but I will add that bullet for further consideration moving [2:05:53] Michael Beck: forward the other questions are coming down this item okay moving on the private public [2:06:02] Carolyn Fish: private infrastructure partnerships I was kind of already do that you know we're lucky with the Davis I know who's pretty savvy and I think our public works all of our departments are pretty savvy about this but this just kind of gives a little more clarification and basically we have tiff we have the tiff projects which is a sample of this idea of collaboration but i just thought maybe to build a little bit further on that if the city whether it's the manager or any other department maybe economic development if they see a way where the city can assist with measurable public benefit for taxable jobs, housing, redevelopment, underused property expansion of water and sewer services or infrastructure that we could come up with an ordinance that just expands a little more. Because I know now they're doing it voluntarily, but it would just be nice if we had some type of guidance for our departments to kind of maybe be more mindful to look for these and there's some specific language I found from some other municipalities that in my little bullet email that I'll pass on for further considerations. Questions, comments on this item? Okay, restrictions on the sale of city-owned land. This again was I looked at some others and I thought the council should consider some language for restrictions or ordinances for preferences. It doesn't have to be necessarily, I think sometimes if we etch it in stone and we don't know what the future is gonna bring, we might be shooting ourselves in the foot. It's sort of some guidelines for preferences that we restrict public property to support economic development, hopefully keeping it under the city ownership, but somehow being able to benefit an economic financial benefit for the majority of the community and anything that might be able to do with the retention of the property yet still increasing an economic benefit and if we are going to sell it to have a property appraised and have it sold at fair market value unless there's another economic benefit to the city. So I'd like to do see us, you know, make a resolve or an ordinance that our first preference is to keep it, keep the property and keep it mindful for a benefit to the majority of the population and if we have to sell it make sure that it really has an equal benefit for not just today but for the future for the city of Vancouver. So that and again I'll I'll get this a little more professionally [2:08:56] Speaker C (unidentified): actually written with some bullets for further consideration. Oh I'm just having a great time [2:09:03] Daniel Carson: loving all these bullet points so far. So I'm I mean I think as you know counselor Fish I also really care deeply about city-owned land and I do think about that a lot as Bangor grows we're gonna I mean we're gonna need those places to grow the city and so I think I think anything that we can do to protect our city land and our investment is a good idea. My one concern about this would be I'm trying to think maybe actually council chair Hoggs I think maybe stole this line from somebody but says It really well, but which is, you know, we as a council, and not, we cannot hold a future council to anything that we decide now, but of course the reverse is true. Neither can the fact that there will one day be a future council hold up, you know, hold us to anything. And so I'm wondering what maybe you think about, I mean, I don't know whether ordinance or resolve or whatever, but maybe what you're, what you think about having or creating some staff, like some guidance to staff around as they're exploring. You know, these opportunities, you know, maybe here's like a quick sheet on some guidance of things that the current council thinks are. [2:10:19] Carolyn Fish: Important, because I was worried about this of coming up with an ordinance or rule, as I mentioned, didn't want to shoot ourselves in the foot that we made it too strict and too limited, where if we gave guidance, then we could listen to the recommendation by staff and look at it by, you know, situation by situation. If I may, I think when Counselor Fish and I discussed some of these, I believe I made the comment that the public private partnerships restrictions on city-owned land and probably also the. Grant accountability requirements might just be policies as opposed to formal. [2:10:58] Susan Faloon: Ordinances. Yeah, thank you. I know that Director Krieg had said at one point that it's sort of unusual for city to own a lot of property. And I'm wondering, is it kind of overall, and I know each property is gonna be a little bit different, but sort of in general, is it more beneficial to a city to have more property or to have a property that is generating tax revenue? And do we have any stats on that? [2:11:32] Carolyn Fish: I think that's a policy question based on how you value, right. I mean, tax dollars are valuable, but enticing a desirable business to come in or entity might also be valuable for other reasons not related to tax revenue. So I don't think it's an easily quantifiable analysis. [2:11:58] Michael Beck: Analysis. Questions or comments on this side? Okay, grant accountability requirements. [2:12:08] Carolyn Fish: Yeah, I think, you know, since post COVID, with all the grants, you know, and I think also from pre COVID, with almost 300 nonprofits too. And it's not just nonprofits, grants can go to profit businesses as well. But I think that there's a lot of pass through us as a municipality, just as the way we receive them from government or state. And I think sometimes too, we could partner with maybe, at least with a profit or non-profit, where as a municipality, we might be able to receive certain grants that would be beneficial to the community. And I think right now we just don't have any guidance for auditing the grants that we have. When we get a grant, I don't think there's any law with us applying our own standards of what we expect as a result of the recipient of that grant for accountability, expectation, reporting of where they are with the uses of that grant and to make sure that the grants, I think we have a certain responsibility to make sure that the grant in fact was applied to how it was supposed to be applied. So again rather than take up a lot of time I think on the back of that I had like three or four pages and they were all pretty common sense but at least it gave us as a municipality some guidelines for those applying and receiving and passing through us for grants just you know where we could to make sure that they're financially in good standing you know when we have grant money it's an opportunity for individuals in our community for whatever the directed you know directed source for that Grant and if they end up in the hands of someone that really doesn't have good management or good fiscal responsibility I think it's not you know very responsible of us to just hand that out with some type of verification validation that we're putting it in the right hands so we just would like to see us expand a little bit more with some guidance and maybe again rather than ordinance it'd be a guidance maybe we could work more with the departments to get their input but I think right now you Know I think we've seen some mistakes we've made and I just think that we as a governing body should apply some types of expectations. [2:14:28] Susan Deane: Is it that we don't have anything in place now for accountability or is it that we do have something and it's not be followed? [2:14:41] Carolyn Fish: So it's I think it's more that it's ad hoc I mean granted I wasn't here pre-COVID but my sense is that prior to ARPA and all that money coming the city wasn't generally in a position to be administering grants to some recipients we were the recipient of grants. But we weren't administering grants. And then we got millions of dollars in ARPA funds. And for the first time, we're now in a position to administer those grant funds and hold grantees. [2:15:17] Susan Deane: Accountable. And it was sort of a learning on the fly exercise that then repeated itself with the opioid settlement funds. [2:15:24] Carolyn Fish: So I wouldn't say that there's no accountability measures in place, but when we received all those money. So there was no one in place that was expert in grant administration. [2:15:39] Daniel Carson: Yeah, again, I would be supportive of an idea like this. I think we're, you know, in compliance with grants as they come every grant that comes through sort of has their own stipulations. And so we're whatever the flexibility we would need to. But I agree with this, when I first got to the council so this is one of those things you know you're coming in the after some of those things happen or in the middle of other conversations and some of those grants that go you know went out early when I was elected you sort of just have in your brain like there must be right there just must be reporting there must be accountability like that just makes complete common sense and then you find out well actually no like it's not and it's not Because we're stupid or laser you know we are learning this was new you have hindsight you sort of learn what you need to do better and so yeah I think wherever we can provide guidance or even wherever we can push grants in a direction where there actually is a city entity that can really control how those are dispersed and you know compel that type of responsibility [2:16:49] Carolyn Fish: And so I will add that to my email with some bullets of some things I found and ideas for everyone to collaborate on. [Michael Beck: Nonprofit registration requirements.] Okay, so this was interesting. I picked this research back up even though I may be off-council, I will continue to communicate. I think I dropped this project when I got into the homelessprojects.com and then we got okay so it was interesting when I started working with some resource of research people's university I thought 1300 non-profit we did do we really have them and we started finding some interesting, you know, kind of concerning things going on. Some nonprofits were registered as having services in Bangor. But when I was working with these other resource, research, independent counselors, consultants, we found that in fact, they really didn't have any ties to Bangor. So why were they why was Bangor in their radar? And one of them, I'm just going to use one city because we found this curious, Missouri had no ties to Bangor. But this particular non-profit was saying they had services in Bangor, but we couldn't really find that they really had any services in Bangor. Yet around the time of this discovery, we also found that the two or three people had gotten off the bus in the middle of winter from Missouri, and yet there was no collaboration and no resources for them here. So the question for arose, well what is the benefit and somehow do they have financial benefit by claiming their services and sending people here, but in fact they really aren't. So I thought one measure we could do is as a responsible municipality is perhaps have non-profits register, and then we at least know who they are, and if they don't have bricks and mortar here, ask, you know, given, you know, I have, when I have an office and I have inventory and I have machines, every year I have to do a report of my personal property and how many computers I have, how many desks I have, and what I bought new, and I have to provide a report so that I can get a personal tax, which I haven't had my personal office lately, but I did every year for 25 or 30 years. So I was thinking similar to that, a minimal registration. We don't want the nonprofits that we're working with that are struggling to be burdened, but we also want to make sure that we know what's going on in our city. So again there was a lot of, a lot of municipalities and towns do have that they register, they provide form 990, they disclose a lot of it's public, but this is even one step further, give a brief description of what their services are and exactly how they do participate in services within your city limits. So again, rather than take a lot of time tonight, it's getting late, I will, I'll provide these bullet things that were the highlights of that type of thing. I just want to [2:20:02] Daniel Carson: again signal I'm not on this committee and I keep raising my hand, but I do want to signal support for this as well, and just comment that I would support a version of this that's consistent with, if you know businesses already have to register with the city of Vancouver, that's not abnormal. So I think it would be fully appropriate to have a policy that nonprofits register, that's consistent with our other policies where businesses register with the city. Another question to come to that [2:20:33] Michael Beck: I was just going to say, where, I guess I look at this as, I'd like to see it really hone in on those are claiming tax exempt status under the state law. This the assessor can request yearly reports and show they're still, you know, eligible before they make that, you know, determination again on April 1st. So that's a good conversation to invite the assessor to and just kind of see where things are already at with, maybe that's already happening, maybe it's not. Yeah, because if there's non-profits who are getting tax exempt status and then, you know, they're not operating in, under how they originally got it, you know, we need to know that and, you know, that, you know, if they're no longer eligible, then they should be paying taxes. So, you know, that's, that's, that's [2:21:16] Carolyn Fish: the angle I'm, I'm interested in for this one, and for clarity, it's not for us to take any regulatory position on it. 's more of an accountability, transparency. I'm all for the accountability [2:21:28] Michael Beck: and the property taxes here, you know, getting back to them. We have an absolutely huge deal [2:21:33] Daniel Carson: would say they're going to be doing come for Carson. I would just also say you see one additional benefit in this, which is that, you know, non-profits, by their nature, non-profits, faith organizations receive their taxes of status because they're supposed to be doing some kind of good out in the world, and with a number like that, and I buy that number, 1300, can you think about all the different types? I mean, there's veterans organizations, help people cut their grass organizations, to help people build homes, there's, you know, if you have leukemia, others. But this would also help us as a council, as a city, to have that data to really know the scope of what is actually available out there. I think we as councillors run into people all the time who probably would be great candidates for one of the many non-profits out there that are offering things, but we don't know about them. We don't know that they exist or even how to refer somebody to those places. So I think having that data up, it's just creates another pathway for us to do some more good also, you know [2:22:36] Michael Beck: the older piece I would be curious to hear about to just you know the registration process just making sure we're not putting any undue burden on staff you know there's a lot of work such as there's 1,300 you know how much effort that's gonna take from staff and you know playing recording lens but yeah definitely interested in having a further conversation about it any other comments on this side that brings it to the needle redemption program and again i just i think [2:23:05] Carolyn Fish: when we hit the same state support, just come in with an audience proposal, so it would bring these up from conversation to have collaboration and input from everybody, you know, some of the towns, and some of my research, there's a lot of different SSP ideas and guidance and guidelines, rules around it, and I think we need to come up with something more with the situation we have on our streets. Some of them are, some couple of towns have ordinances that the only ones that are able to distribute needle district distribution are those that are certified, and I know right now we only have two certified, so it would be interesting to get some input maybe from our health department, which is to just the certified service to range distribution, sense be enough, SSPs be enough, but there's also a lot of other people, there's no law that presents, you know, a quantity of needles to people that I think they think they're doing good service, maybe they are, but I think our SSPs get a lot of the bad publicity. I think they get blamed for all of the needle phones we have, when in fact I think there's a lot more distribution going on that aren't even recognized, so I just don't know how we can get more accountability, maybe with some guidelines that if they're not certified, maybe they register and tell us who they are, you know, are if they're the faith based organizations and they're every Sunday giving out 5,000 needles, maybe they should tell us, well, what are you doing to try to follow up with a cleanup or what are you tune with that, just some type of guidelines and responsibilities for that in the needle exchange. I would really like to see some kind of limitation, you know, some type of exchange, you know, one for a hundred, things excessive, I know we've got debates either ways, but I'd like to really see that conversation come back up, one for 20, you know, or when some people have so many in 24 hours, 20 or 30 to 24 hours, and again, I'd like to get some input from our public health and community service gen, but it just seems like right now the amount of needles that are out and on the streets, we got to come up with something better and something more to expand on there was, and I know this hasn't been very popular, and I think Portland started recently having in compensation, and I heard it started out as a nightmare, but I've heard some positive things about it. We certainly wouldn't want the public going out there and trying to collect needles, but I think that this again could be restricted that only the nervous service providers are those using the needles and going and collecting the needles, using the needles that they might be able to get some minimal compensation just to give them the incentive to help to clean the needles out. These were different ideas again that I will, because it's getting late, I'll just put the key bullets that I learned and cut some things that I thought might be worth furthering the conversation, putting those together for the rest of the council's feedback for or against or other ideas you all might have. [2:26:23] Michael Beck: First on this one, I just want to say I sign you up for the needle redemption idea. Yeah, because I think the last conversation we had with the Law Binocular MOU is it works out to be about 250 a needle, but they're getting paid to pick them up, whereas if we're offering a dime, 25 cents, you know, that's a far cry, and, you know, the feedback I'm getting from conversations I'm having is you incentivize it, and people will go everywhere to clean those needles up, and, you know, that's, you know, that money hits up quick for folks who need it, who are you know have no other means right now, and you know they're happy to help clean up the city, and I don't see why we couldn't give them a little incentive to for doing so like council [2:27:06] Susan Faloon: flew in the council person. Thank you. I like the idea of a needle redemption program. I don't know if you like had any conversations with Portland, like I it would be really good to know like how theirs is going, however it's been a while since I researched it, so I forget where, but in one municipality where they did this, people were going and get you know turning in needles, getting new needles, but they were taking those needles and they were opening them and they were like dumping soda on them and then they were turning around and they were bringing them back in and they were redeeming them so it looked like they were used they hadn't really used them but they were just doing it to get the so i'm not saying that 's widespread but i did read that was happening in one community so just something to keep in the back of our minds and i don't know how you get around that like maybe you just like limit the number that can be returned in a day or something like that [2:28:09] Michael Beck: Counselor being like under Walker and we're able to like that's [2:28:12] Daniel Carson: A cartoon, sorry, Carson's first. Well, I've talked a lot. Why don't you put me all the way at the end? [2:28:18] Susan Deane: Up, okay, well, I like this idea of the needle redemption, but I'm also thinking of people who have jugs and jars of needles in their own home that they've used legally, and I think that they need to be in on this because it's terribly unfair they have to pay to have them disposed of when other people may be paid to bring them in. So I think if we do anything like this, we need [2:28:44] Angela Walker: That as well. That was one of my two things. My other one was I don't know how, I think that people just out collecting needles is going to be a health concern. [2:28:59] Carolyn Fish: Like I said, we'd have to have restrictions that the public restrictions, yeah, kids can go out and, you know, right, we just can't be out. We would have to say these are the people that some, yeah, some [2:29:09] Angela Walker: Some type of, yeah, not a health concern for sure. And then I was concerned about people just having them that use them legally for certain things. I'm not at the insulin level yet, but I do have type 2 diabetes and like, you know, fix them back, but I'm just saying that I think that people just willy-nilly out need to be trained or watch a video or something. I'm just coming up with, it's [2:29:38] Carolyn Fish: Late, I'm just trying to come up with something. Yeah, so there has to be guidelines about exactly [2:29:42] Daniel Carson: yes well so a couple of thoughts i love this idea you know i hear and i hear it from our residents the frustration finding needles in public finding them in the parks and i recognize that's difficult and i recognize also that people without data are going to answer for themselves why they think that 's happening and of course we do have some data we know how many needles went out last year we know how many were collected or about how many were collected what we don't have data on is what happens to the rest of them and it's easy to assume that well you know 200 000 needles are being just thrown on the ground or thrown into the river or whatever but we actually don't know that. We would have to study that question to really write to track those goes down and really come up with a policy to address that. And I think that is a huge mountain to climb, to try to track down a few hundred thousand needles, figure out what happened to them and how they ended up where they ended up. Where instead of trying to go that way, creating a redemption program would create the incentive for people to bring them in. I agree that we'd have to have guidance. I think that would be a really important conversation. I would abandon my car as it's moving if I see a soda can on the side of the road just to get that five cents right so I'm really at a high risk here for being one of the people who goes out and pulls things up you think that 's funny but you'll I mean really I mean I've pulled over to why not okay leave me alone but so I think this is a great idea I can see how that incentive would be impactful and to the point that was just raised by councillor dean and councillor walker i'm thinking about something that we could do with you know this redemption program but there are devices actually out there I think for about fifty thousand dollars we can actually purchase a piece of equipment that crushes needles in a way that they can be disposed in the regular trash so there is there are opportunities out there to find pieces of equipment that can help us do those things and so thinking about that question that you're asking about people who have diabetes or people at home who are already paying to do something like this there are solutions out there and I think that if we're creative and we put funding together for this that could be something else that we could bring into the conversation and just you know so that you know I'm not lying Director Gunderman has a picture of such equipment. So the only thing that I would one concern that I have, I think that we would need to fill feel out besides the things that you've already raised, like the public risk and such is would implementing a redemption program in some way be disruptive to the SSP providers if they were the ones that had to be the ones that administer the redemption [2:32:54] Carolyn Fish: Program. So we have to get some feedback on how to implement this and how we could help them help bring this to fruition. But yes, from my research, initially, it was somewhat burdensome on them. So we'll have to be creative about that. But that's a good point. One thing I didn't along with this is needle manufacturers. This would have to be probably a legislative thing. I think we've talked about this before where there's a tax for the needle manufacturers where if in some states have and I got a little bit of research on that. It's called the needle tax and it's actually called sharps and syringe cleanup fund and someone and then others call it a plastic and sharps cleanup fund and some states have initiated some legislation where they actually tax manufacturers who sell products in their state and this would probably fall under that and then this tax goes back to the municipalities to help clean up any of these plastics or in this case and a lot of them were really specifically directed to the needles that are being disposed of but they were thinking of the future world today it's needles what would it be possibly maybe it'll be plastic cups 10 years from now or you know so they kind of broaden the term a little bit with whatever it was I just said so I think that I read that there's something that was or is coming there's some kind of talk I think in Augusta right now with something similar that maybe we can find out about and help push or pursue. Then when those tax monies come in, just like I think with the opioid money, some of the money is distributed back to the municipalities to help them with the cleanup cost. You [2:34:55] Michael Beck: have a comment or a question on this item? We'll make you all sad to know that we've come up to the last item of the night. I know you're all excited about this. [2:35:04] Carolyn Fish: Before we move on, so on sort of the last conversation in total, I think the goal was to sort of have a really surface level initial discussion to gauge interest. I think what I heard was a high level of interest in all of the items. So I think out of necessity, we need to have a follow-up conversation about prioritizing because I think it's you know seven or eight policies to develop, ordinances to develop, programs to develop, which can all happen concurrently at the same time. I mean, as we talked about today, our finance department is just struggling to do their basic functions, and there's you know our police department is understaffed. So I think we have to prioritize. Would you like me to schedule a follow-up conversation on priority or do we want to maybe send that feedback to me? I think you're going to send out an email, and then maybe folks could weigh in on sort of what they see as priorities, and then I'll start scheduling them that way. Open to either [2:36:13] Susan Deane: method. I'm like that second choice. Okay perfect. Now I will work on this within the next 48 hours. [2:36:26] Carolyn Fish: I think Thursday I'm pretty free. Within the next couple of days I will get you all an email. Should I just send that to you Carolyn to distribute, and I'll kind of provide an overview of my research and all the bullet points so you all get it, and then and then it might be easier to let Carolyn know what your priorities are, and I apologize but believe it or not I actually went to the former manager with a lot of these, but we just had a lot of other crises and things happened. So thank you all for your time tonight to let me be able to discuss. [2:37:10] Michael Beck: And that brings us to the last item, voting delegates for Main Municipal Association's [2:37:15] Carolyn Fish: annual convention and business meeting. Yes, so MMA meeting is Wednesday and Thursday of this week. A part of that will be the official annual meeting where the only item to vote on will be approving the minutes from the last annual meeting, but nonetheless I need you all to formally delegate me to vote on your behalf with Courtney as an alternate, so it requires a signature of the majority of the electing which I think we still have here, so long as you are okay with me voting side away. Okay and that [2:37:54] Michael Beck: is it all right? Any question comments? Believe we are adjourned.