Penobscot County Opioid Committee Welcomes New Members and Plans Next Grant Round

[0:00] Jamie Back (committee chair): There we go. Perfect. Okay. Welcome all to the September 26th Opioid Settlement Fund Committee Advisory Committee meeting for Penobscot County. It's kind of an exciting day to welcome some new members and hopefully we'll have more people joining us as we move along. But my name is jamie back and i am the chair of the committee for now hopefully at some point we'll elect a new chair for this committee because i don't need to be one forever but i have been on the committee since its inception in may of 2025 when the commissioners decided to create an opioid settlement committee to help advise them on how to spend the money making sure that we're staying within the approved uses of Exhibit E and creating a process by which money can get out into the community And be used for intentional purposes to remediate the opioid crisis in our area. Pat is also one of the original U of Us and just a smidge of a history before I hand it to pat so that she can introduce herself we can kind of go around right from the beginning of our process together we had asked the moth center to join us so that they could let us know what it is that they do and how they could help us and they have been pretty hand in hand with us the entire way and helping us through the process of creating a grant opportunity as well as how we would go about Disseminating that, doing some education around it, helping to score, and then appropriate the awards for last round. Moss Center is funded out of the, my gosh, the Attorney General's office worth of money that came into the state. The Attorney General held on to 20% of the overall amount of money that came into the state for opioid settlement funds. The Maine Recovery Council has 50% of it. And then subdivisions like us got the rest of the 30% divvied up over the next many years until 2038. So we are very grateful that the Moss Center, which is funded through the Attorney General's office, it has been really helpful. They do a lot of like research for us and help us to create forms and policies and that kind of thing. And they're really knowledgeable so we're really grateful that they hang out with us a whole bunch. I think I'll put a pin in it there for the moment, Pat. If you want to share hello and a little bit about your time here, so my name is Pat. [3:02] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): Kimball. I am a community member, a longtime recovery advocate. I have, as Jamie said, been appointed by the committee from the very beginning. So I was able to, in the past year, be able to work through the process of developing the grant application and scoring the grants and getting that funding out. So I'm very happy to be back at the committee again. Good work here. In full disclosure, I am the chair of the Maine Recovery Council, which is separate from the volunteer work that I do with this council, but did want people to be aware that I am the current chair. But my term ends in November. So I will be no longer a member of the Maine Recovery Council as of December 1st, because the statute has term limits. And four years is your max, and I have will have exceeded my four years end of November so but it's a good committee to work on always good to as I share with people first time in a long-standing career I have money to give out so it is something I'm usually begging for as Jamie said Moss Center is great to work with and you need to know that it comes at no charge to the county the funds for the moss center is strictly out of the ag's office so all the work that they do for us comes out of that. Money and does not come out of our money that we have to disperse to the community so thank you welcome great. [4:42] Jamie Back (committee chair): Thank you. I'm gonna let our new members go first real quick and then I'll have Lindsay and McKenzie talk a little bit about Moss and what they do you and then we can move into our next. Please don't both jump at the same time. Do you want me? [5:02] Robert "Bob" Fickett: to just jump in here I thought maybe you were going to tag us in but yeah thank you Jamie and Pat I'm Robert Fickett or Bob I'm a person in long-term recovery from substance use disorder and the executive director at the Bangor area recovery Network in Brewer Maine obviously have a very vested interest and you know how these funds are being spent across our state and you know I have to say you know I haven't played a real active role besides I kind of keep my eye on things and try to give people my input when I can so you know I'm a little excited it's hard to divide my time up sometimes I'm a very busy person but I think if I can make time for something like serving on this committee and can be of service and do some good for Penobscot County then I'm happy to do so thanks for having me here [6:06] Jamie Back (committee chair): thanks Bob go ahead John hello [6:11] John Knapp: Everybody, my name is John Knapp. I'm the chief deputy for Penobscot County Sheriff's Office. I oversee the civil division, the law enforcement division, and the jail division. I've been in law. I started in the jail in 1989. I started full-time law enforcement in 1993. I've been to Iraq. I've been to Afghanistan. I've been all over the world doing different jobs and seeing different things. The opiate crisis, to me, I've been around a lot of people don't understand that it actually started in 1999. And I've been involved with that. I did three years with main drug enforcement we at the county because we have a jail and we look at programming within the jail and try to find the needs of the inmates and try to you know help as much as we can when they leave our facility and try to give them the sport i spent a lot of time with chcs and brian moyhan and vanessa scott i was part of building our mental health liaison program within the jail and also on patrol so there's a there's a massive need for services in our area Obviously, the biggest thing that I try to stress to people is, I'm a cop. I'm not a mental health worker. I'm not a social worker. I know there was a push a few years ago that all the cops were going to become CIT trained and all of a sudden we're going to be this great social network for people on the street, and that's just not reality. So the thing at the county and the way we view things is it has to be a balanced approach when it comes to the issues that we're dealing with on the street, and one... Of the biggest things that we do in law enforcement is obviously targeted enforcement at the traffickers. So that is one of our big initiatives is going after the people that are poisoning our people and killing our people. It's not to go after the drug addicts and the users. And we're different than a police department because we do have a jail, so I spend a lot of time in the jail with the people that are in there trying to recover within that facility. You know, so we see it on both sides. So I... think that's why the county kind of threw me into this position to be here as a representative for the county and just kind of give some of my opinions and some of the objectives from the commissioners that i've been and told directly to try to communicate to you guys. So I'm here to learn and help as much as I can. [8:46] Jamie Back (committee chair): Great, thank you so much. I already can tell that you're gonna be a wealth of information and knowledge to help guide us along the way. So thank you. Ashley, go ahead. Thank you for letting us know who you were. [8:58] Ashley Mitchell: Of course, we all share Zoom here. So I'm Ashley Mitchell. I'm the director of Save a Life Recovery Resource Center up here in Lincoln. I don't know. I'm happy to be on the committee. I'm really excited to learn about what we do and what I can do to be helpful. I'm a person who has tried to parent children with substance use issues and taken my niece, adopted my nieces and nephews. Two of them came with substance use issues, so I have experience attempting to navigate that. I've lost quite a few family members to the opioid crisis, and I'm just happy to step in and do what I can. [9:42] Jamie Back (committee chair): Great. Thank you so much. We're really glad to have the three of you joining us. We do. Looks like Randy wasn't able to make today our other one of our trio that's been here since the beginning. And then we are supposed to be having another person appointed by one of the commissioners, but that is still TBD. But I would love if Lindsay and Mackenzie want to introduce themselves really quickly and kind of like share with us the work that you guys have been doing so that we have a little bit of background. [10:15] Lindsay Smith: Sure. Hi, I am Lindsay Smith, and I am the Director of Substance Use Research and Evaluation at the Catherine Cutler Institute, which is situated within the University of Southern Maine. And within that, I'm also the director of the main opioid settlement support center that Jamie and Pat so eloquently described. The center was really formed and foundationally states have been infused with the settlement dollars, but there was no clause in the MOU that actually had funding set aside for infrastructure building. So all the states are kind of handling this differently. We chose to use—I'm a community engaged researcher. That's what I have been doing for 30 years, solely focused on substance use disorder. And so we thought with the help of the legislature and the AG's office that the best strategy forward in Maine was to kind of create a centralized source resource that would support transparency, that would provide technical assistance driven by the communities at no cost to the subdivisions, and also support kind of collaboration and coordination across the various entities, so the AG, the Maine Recovery Council, and the subdivisions. So that's a lot of what our work is. I'm not sure if those of you on the call have checked out our website, but we have a spending dashboard. We recently launched this week our engagement dashboard so you can see what we are doing. So it's important as a center that we are holding ourselves accountable and at the same standards that we expect in terms of transparency and reporting that the other entities who are receiving funds are expected to do. So our engagement dashboard shows the work that we're doing, who we're working with, and provides another tool to kind of keep the broader community in the loop about what's happening at their county, city, or town related to settlement funds. And as I just said, all of our work is really driven by the subdivisions. There's no mandate to work with us. People come to us at various stages in the process as I'm sure everyone on this call knows every city, town, and county has varying levels of infrastructure, so there's some people that we're not working with because they have the infrastructure to do this or they're doing a kind of a large and capital project so they don't need the support of the MA Center, but we're really here to provide our expertise and help communities get to where they need to go and get these funds out into the community in an evidence-based and data-driven way so as Jamie pointed out earlier we help kind of collate data on communities to inform decision making, we help communities collect data to inform decision making, we support community engagement, but a big piece of what we have been doing since the center was formed two years ago outside of the collecting all the information for the spending dashboard has been supporting communities and setting up processes to get the funds out using standardized, no-faux, competitive processes or processes for a combination, in this case, of discretionary funding and, you know, notice of award kind of RFP processes. So, that's a little bit of who we are and we're always happy to meet and have further discussions if you'd like more information on us. And I will turn it to Mackenzie. [14:20] Mackenzie: Thanks, Lindsay. I'm Mackenzie. I am the research and evaluation coordinator for the Moss Center. I support a lot of the technical assistance work that Lindsay talked about and the resource development that if it's not something we have right on hand to share with you guys, we figure out how to get it together and make it. and I think that's one of the best parts of the center is we are very reactive to the needs of our subdivisions. I'm really excited for this, so thank you for having us, Jamie. For sure, thank you, McKenzie. [14:54] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): Can you turn your volume up a little? Or is it just me? Not just you. Okay, it's not you, McKenzie's. [15:03] Lindsay Smith: computer since day one has a strange audio issue that we have not been able to resolve with it and [15:11] Jamie Back (committee chair): it's the bane of our existence a little better okay great i was going to say that was a nice segue, Mackenzie, talking about resource development. So we are at a point where we are looking at what does the next round of Opioid Settlement Fund awards look like? How are we going to move through this next process of doing an RFP? The first round that we did, we left it basically open to anything within Exhibit E, and I will make a note for myself to forward that to everyone again, so that you can all take a gander at what that is. But Exhibit E is part of the MOU that the state had to sign in order to receive the Opioid Summit funds. Oh, Bob, go ahead. [16:13] Robert "Bob" Fickett: Sorry. Sorry. I wanted to jump in before you got too deep. Do we receive a link to the recording, [16:20] Jamie Back (committee chair): recording or does somebody take minutes so Pat takes minutes she's our secretary for the moment but yes this meeting is being recorded and it will be posted on the county's YouTube page after this so I will send it over to them after this so yes you can go back and watch so I will remember to send out exhibit E again to everyone so you can take a look at that but this first the first round that we did we kind of left it open to everything we have parameters around we wanted to make sure that all four of the pillars were covered between prevention harm reduction treatment and recovery we also wanted to make sure that all areas as much as possibly conceivable of the county were covered for each of the pillars so making sure we had a prevention project funded not just in Bangor but somewhere else in the county as well because we are for the entire county not just bangor so we were able to fund a lot of really great projects and you can check those out i think they are on the county website as to what we funded but it was the general idea and kind of questions from the commissioners that prompted us to want to focus our rfp a little bit more this time still offering an opportunity for each of the pillars to get funding but a more targeted and specific type focus under each of the pillars and kind of how we've decided to go about that to this point and we're in the middle of mckenzie has helped us develop along with several other people at moss centers helped us develop a survey that has gone out, and I will also link that to you all so you can share it out, but essentially it is a community survey to get a little bit better handle on knowing the people in the community who have direct impact and work directly with substance use disorder in a multitude of ways. What are they seeing? What are the gaps that they're seeing, and that kind of thing, so that they we can get a better sense of what are the needs and the gaps right this minute, it. We've had several analysis happen at like a statewide level over the past few years, but nothing specific really that we can narrow in and get some really good information for Penobscot County specifically. I know that we all have pretty good experience and anecdotes about what we see in our daily lives, but we wanted to get a better snapshot of the entire community, not just our own little sectors of it. So we're moving forward with that. And hopefully we will be getting the results of that semi soon. I know we were supposed to meet earlier this month and comedy of errors, y'all. This has been a month. Pat and I had a brief conversation to look at like a timeline that might be a little bit more feasible as far as getting this accomplished for having the survey out in the community long enough giving Moss Center enough time to analyze, compile the results, and then share with us so that we can have a more dedicated conversation about what we want to do for those really focused RFP requests under each of the pillars. So kind of where we, oh my gosh, my dog is going to be annoying because she got shut out of the room. Hang on just a second. Pat, if you want to let them know what we were talking about. [20:12] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): Okay. So we, again, are you back, Jamie? Yes. Sorry. Okay. [20:26] Jamie Back (committee chair): So that we could get enough people to respond to it. Mackenzie, I don't know if you have an update on how many people have responded yet. [20:36] Mackenzie: We have 22 responses so far. Yay. [20:43] Jamie Back (committee chair): We would love to- [20:45] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): That was double from the beginning of last week. [20:49] Jamie Back (committee chair): Yes, for sure. And really, we are looking for people kind of across sectors to answer this survey. It shouldn't take more than 10-ish minutes to answer. It's not like really, brief because we do want to get some decent data, but it's not 45 minutes of a survey and long essays. Go ahead, Bob. [21:12] Robert "Bob" Fickett: Can we help to push that out for you or you want to keep it more targeted? [21:18] Jamie Back (committee chair): no i think you were in the original list of people to get that but yes we definitely want to share it out to as many partners and things that we possibly can to get a bigger pool of [21:33] Lindsay Smith: information to pull from because we don't have so we did pull from some bob we did pull from some like lists that we've had from previous projects but that's largely a pool of like health care providers or community-based organizations that we worked with and so really you should have gotten i think we can resend it there's a flyer with a qr code there's a shortened bitly web link but we really are asking partners i've i've i've sent it out to people and ask them to distribute it so really we're doing what we call snowball sampling which is you know getting it into the hands of people that we know and asking them to help us get it into the hands of others to really raise the visibility of the survey so please review [22:28] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): widely and ashley involved both of you if you know get those out over at your centers You know those are the people we want to have voices to be able to hear from them where they are. So if we get you the information you just dispensing it to the members who you know attend regularly to your centers. [22:49] Robert "Bob" Fickett: That would be great. Yeah, if you could resend Lindsay just to make sure I still I know I completed the survey, but I may have overlooked. look the email with the flyer and the qo code qr code and everything thank you and for that [23:05] Jamie Back (committee chair): better oh sorry lindsay i just say for that matter john if you have others in the department who regularly have contact and can speak to what they're seeing that would be a great place to share that as well or even if you're involved in other organizations in the community that do volunteer work and that kind of thing that wouldn't be a great place to share as well [23:32] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): so john the question i have is the jail has the laptop project that they have those the laptops you can't put that survey tablets the tablets the tablets you couldn't put that survey on those [23:46] John Knapp: tablets we might be able to i'd have to check with lieutenant avery he's kind of a guru on that [23:53] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): that but that may be a voice from people who are incarcerated right which could talk about [24:00] John Knapp: barriers yeah I think the biggest thing if you don't put it on their tablets is communicating to the inmates that it's there too so they know what's available to actually do the survey so I think it's two parts one to get it on there and two to communicate it to them that it's there if they want to participate but I can check with Lieutenant Avery on that all right thank you [24:25] Lindsay Smith: And I'm just, you know, I know Jamie already said it, 's short. And our analytics on the back end tell us that it really shouldn't be taking people more than like five to seven minutes to complete. So, and that's if you answer every single question. So people might skip out of certain questions. So it really is less than 10 minutes, like Jamie said. [24:50] Jamie Back (committee chair): That. While we're here, I wanted to also welcome Randy into the chat. Randy is our other long-term member of this committee. Randy, I don't know if you want to just unmute and say hello to everybody and share a little bit about you and your background. You're muted still. [25:14] Randy Jackson: Okay, so my name is Randy Jackson. I was a PA for 40 years in Millinocket. When I got done, I started the recovery home for women with Heidi Wheaton in Millinocket, breaking the cycle. We're now a treatment facility. So my interest, of course, in the opioids and drug is, you know, I was actually part of the problem prescribing these. So part of my reason for joining is to help those that did become addicted. I, you know, I feel obligated to, you know, pursue this role. Thank you. [26:09] Jamie Back (committee chair): thanks randy appreciate it okay so that's kind of where we're at with the survey i forget what our closing date for that is but we've figured about 30 days to collect all that information and then give moss about a week to analyze the results and share just because it's already kind of coming in as it there isn't any hand tallying people there shouldn't be any hand and tallying, but essentially to get together at a report for us in order for us to review it and then discuss, okay, what did we See? What are some trends that we can really latch onto and start to focus in those pillars for a more specific RFP? Then we figured that the committee will take about two weeks to get the report and then have the conversation about how we want to focus those RFPs in and then make sure that we have the RFPs in order so that they can be posted and shared out. And then give people about six weeks to respond to that and then about 30 days to score and send the recommendations to the county commissioners for their approval. So we don't directly approve an award. We do all the back end work to select the awards or select the projects for award. And then we hand our recommendations to the commissioners and then they approve it for disbursement. So we have gone through our first round of reporting out from the first RFP. And then the second round will be due at the end of this year, probably by January 15th again. Yeah, Lindsay. Yeah. So that all information goes to the Moss Center for them to put on their website so you can check out their dashboard, which is freaking awesome. And you can find out a lot of information from how much money people have gotten as far as subdivisions, what they've gone to, that kind of thing. So it breaks it down really well. So we can kind of see some trends and know where we're at in the grand scheme of things. I'm going to pause for a second because we just did a lot of talking. Does anybody have any questions about any of this? [28:42] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): So just so everyone knows, Jamie, this is Pat. We do have about $400,000 that has been awarded to us by the commissioners. That's the amount of money they expect us to disperse. And when you look at the dashboard, always remember it's money that has actually been given out. So even if we have the $40,000 we're setting aside to get out this year, unless it is out the door in December, it's not counted. So the money that we dispersed last year will be in this year's report. It's just the way that the legislature decided to have the money reported. But it is mandated that the counties report. So we have a good view of how other counties are spending their money, and we can see the impact that it's doing. But we have approximately 400,000 this year to disperse. [29:41] Jamie Back (committee chair): Yes. I wanted to also add, so over the course of what we know right now, I know that there's still some decisions to be made and shared with us about what's happening with the, I think it's the Sackler, right, settlement that happened early this year. We are going to be getting at least 4.5 million dollars from start to finish. Right now we have about 1.4 million in the bank, so we're the commissioners have chunked off another 400,000 for us for this year, but I think part of the work that I'd love for us to do, and we can actually, we can have this conversation probably after we get this RFP through, of thinking a little bit bigger, beyond whether or not continuing to do piecemeal small awards to different organizations to continue doing the work that they do, or expand the work that they do, or if there is a larger project. That we might want to partner with other subdivisions on some preliminary conversations and options that we could think about, just to kind of like tickle your imaginations. Are potentially partnering with the city of Bangor, who got their own allotment and they had spent all their money, but they're starting to get this year's money in again, of partnering to staff a Opioid response coordinator. So this person would not be doing any sort of like boots-on-the-ground case management type things; they would be the centralized hub of where all of the information lies. If there are like all of the detox beds, they know what's going on. All of the recovery houses, they know what's going on. All of the treatment centers, all of the recovery spaces and peer support spaces. And how are we doing with recovery coaches? And they're the ones that are kind of like keeping their brain on the entirety of the county of what's going on. So that we would have better resources moving forward on how do we spend the money, because they're the one that is the information data holder, but also being able to refer people, oh, you didn't have luck there, try this. And by people, I mean organizations and case managers helping people. So that's kind of an option that we could think about. Another option that came up during the Opioid Summit would be something like an Uber Health program that's happened in other states that have been funded by Opioid Settlement Funds, where this is not links. This is specifically for people with substance use disorder that help them get to MAT when MAT opens at 5 a.m. and there is no bus and they live in Milford. Those kinds of things. Or getting to the courthouse for a court date when they don't have transportation and that's not something that like links would cover. So those kinds of things, that is there a way that we could collaborate in like a regional way with other subdivisions to help fund a pilot program of that. So those are just some ideas to tickle your ideas brain that we could think of as like a larger project to really have a larger impact with the funding that we have. So yeah, I'm doing a lot of talking. I don't... I try not to do this too often during meetings, but this is kind of an intro meeting. So as far as where we're at, go ahead, Bob. All. [33:34] Robert "Bob" Fickett: Right. I'm very... I'm very much of a hand raiser there. I don't like just jumping in. Just a couple things I think I like. I really like those couple of ideas you threw out there, Jamie. I think some folks may be on to something. I've always been saying, as monumental as a task it is, that like some sort of you know overarching coordination and communication between all of us doing the work and what we're using this money to further our efforts for is much needed. It's a big thing to try to put something like that in place, but very worthwhile, I think. But the other thing is, I was just curious, kind of being new into this, is where did, what kind of method brought the county to the $400,000 kind of tag? Just out of curiosity. [34:33] Jamie Back (committee chair): curiosity that's a really good question that's a good question don't have I don't really know where they kind of pulled that number from I know that there had been a portion of funds that had been allocated before and awarded before we became a committee that worked to kind of offset some of the funding that was necessary for mat in the jail the thing with exhibit e is that they while it's not a mandate it is a strong recommendation that we do not use the funding to be a funding stop gap for anyone so if there's a funding shortage that's not what this money is meant for it's meant for expanding or creating new programs. We do want to continue to support where we can, but this is really meant to be targeted towards not just being a budget line item filler, if that makes sense. [35:39] John Knapp: I'll make a comment on that just real quick. Even if there's more money than the $400,000, I can tell you through the ARPA situation, the county has to have controls in place because you're seeing the abuses of the arbor funds starting to come up now because the fraud and so on and so on so the one thing i think the county did well when we were dispersing the arbor funds was we did come up with a grant project or a we streamlined the project where we didn't just write checks you had to come in with justification what you're doing show us the results if you want to come back and so on so on so i if i had to guess if this is probably just a piece of those controls and so they know where their investment's going if i had [36:27] Lindsay Smith: to guess, I would also note, Bob, many people are not spending their full allotment. So the money, your annual allotment, actually decreases over time. So many communities are saying, "Okay, well, we have 500k in the pot this year; we're gonna put out 200 of that because next year we're getting half of what we got." And then we'll have, you know, so, it's a strategy that many of the subdivisions are using. I think there's a misconception, but most people on this call, I think, are on the same page as me, that this is a tremendous amount of money. It actually isn't. And it's not even remotely close to what we draw down annually from the federal government,. So, you know, we do need to be judicious. Like when we're setting up a process like this RFP process that the county spent a lot of time going through. You don't want to get to a place in 10 years where you don't even have any money to do that. You have $20,000 left in the pot. You really can't even fund any viable projects with that. So I would say this is, while we don't know the exact reasoning, it is in line with what other county commissioners are doing. [37:47] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): And I can share with you, Bob, the Recovery Council does the same thing. We know that there are, in the 20-year span, the 30-year span, there are shortfalls. And so in order to continue to be able to do that, we have chosen to spread the money out. So we don't spend everything we have in order to, when we reach one of those years, there 's a shortfall, we can say, "Oops, we don't have," we can't support as many organizations as we did. So we're trying to even it out. It's, it's sort of like this, the money is dispersed, and there, I think someone put the chart on where you can see how the money is dispersed, but we don't get the money in equal payments, and it's from, is it seven different pharmaceuticals, and one, as Jamie had shared earlier, has not even been settled. The largest one has not been settled, so that money is to come, okay, yet to come. But the county never gave us any reason why the 400 we got, 400 last [38:50] Robert "Bob" Fickett: year, we had 400 this year. Yeah, I think it's smart too, and I thank you guys all for your answers. I think it's smart. I was just curious if there was any, you know, formula or function or whatnot behind that. [39:03] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): I was curiosity. It's one of the pitfalls of the opiate settlement money. It doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to it. [39:13] Jamie Back (committee chair): We're trying to create order out of chaos. [39:16] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): Correct. And so the state is trying very hard that it that the investment to all the little pockets that it goes to. And that's again that's why I admire the attorney general for putting the most center together because the Moss Center keeps us accountable and that's what we need to be is accountable for the funds we have and that it's spent and made sure that it has impact, hey. [39:43] Jamie Back (committee chair): Randy, if you get a second, can you mute? If you're thanks, yeah, so it is. We definitely want to not spend it all down every year, but I think that if we were able to get through this RFP process and show the outcomes, not just of the first round but of the second round, we could start thinking about how we might offer a like one project that we would fund for a larger amount versus the previous projects which had a cap of 449,999. That's also something that we'll have to talk about for this round if. That is our cap for each one of the projects that we would want to fund, although, yeah, it's going to come down to what the results of the survey are. If it is one like project that we want to fund under each pillar that addresses a specific need, if we want to address like fund two, or if we don't want to, if we want to just have people give us a budget and figure it out from there because there may be some larger projects that you know, this is the one harm reduction project we want to fund in the. County for the year and a hundred thousand dollars is what it's going to take to fund it. We may end up like that. We've got to make those decisions as a group of how we want to move forward with that because that is not something that I personally get to decide, so we get to have those conversations. Does everyone feel okay about waiting until we see what the results of the survey are in order to start having those conversations? [41:21] Randy Jackson: Do we have any idea when we're going to put the current grant application out? [41:29] Jamie Back (committee chair): So, yeah, before you hopped in, Randy, we were kind of talking timeline and Mackenzie, I apologize if you put it in the chat. I don't remember what our closing date is for the survey, but essentially our thought was that once the survey closes, we were going to give people 30 days to fill out the community survey. Moss Center would take about a week to get us basically the summary of what the results were. And then in the two weeks after that, we will schedule our meeting in order to have the conversation about these are the results. This is what we want to do as far as creating those targeted RFPs. under each of the pillars and then we would put out the RFP. So hopefully again, I don't remember what the closing date is, but we would be able to put out the RFP before November [42:20] Mackenzie: one. Thank you. 30 days would be October 9th. And that is nice because it's a Friday. [42:28] Jamie Back (committee chair): Nice. Love that. So if we could, which honestly probably is the best use of our next few minutes here, decide on what our next meeting will be if we have October 9th is when it closes and then you guys would spend the week of the 12th to analyze so we would have to figure out when to meet between October 19 and October 30. i guess there's a couple of ways we could do this everybody could share what their availability is and we could post this online and people could know exactly what we're up to over the next couple of weeks or I could just send out another when to meet and have like these are general like I'm generally available from three to four on the third Monday of the month those kinds of things does that feel okay to everyone sure okay so we'll plan on then meeting sometime in those two weeks to have our conversation about this is where we want to go. These are the details. And then the way it worked last year is that we decided on those things and then we had another meeting to just go through and approve the new language of the RFP because we started with a draft from Moss and then had to adjust it we could do that so that you know if we met the first that then during the week of the 19th and then the next week we could just do a brief like 30 minute meeting and just say yep this is we're going to approve the language that we had drafted and we will send out to everyone to for their comments in the draft and then we could aim for November 2 is our release date for the RFP. [44:26] Lindsay Smith: Does that sound? Jamie, I was also going to say we can pre without knowing the topic areas, the Moss Center can kind of preload a section into the RFP template that you guys have been using, essentially loading it up in this round, we are focusing on X and X like we do in our templates and leave it blank so that we're not like rushing to add a full new section into that template so we can get that situated emailed out to the group to kind of just approve the generalized language you know that explains that we gathered community input through a survey, and these are the areas that we're focusing on. So, if you'd like us to start that, we can start doing that. [45:17] Jamie Back (committee chair): That would be splendid. We also learned last time that we do not want to use Google Forms. So, I think perhaps we would do what other subdivisions maybe have done and ask people to send a PDF of all their stuff in a packet. [45:34] Mackenzie: I can make a fill. Once everything's finalized, [45:37] Jamie Back (committee chair): I can turn it into a fillable PDF for you. Perfect. Because that would be awesome. Because it was not fun getting all those 11:30 p.m. two emails. I can't get this to submit; it's got too [45:52] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): many words. I did not look. Randy, I don't know if you were on the phone, but we're allowing six weeks for agencies or individuals—six weeks to complete the RFP and get it to us. That's fine. Yeah. [46:06] Jamie Back (committee chair): So that would put us mid-December, and then it would give us time. I don't think it's feasible, especially at that time of year, for all of us to do all of the scoring of however many submissions it will be for each one of these, and we'll figure out the plan for that. But I think that it would not be outside the realm of reality if we say that we won't be able to recommend award until after the new year, which [46:40] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): is still record time. It is considering how short of a [46:44] Jamie Back (committee chair): timeline it is to try and make all this happen, and it would never happen because those awarded [46:49] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): and out by february that would be that would be record time yeah i also think unlike last time [46:59] Lindsay Smith: the review will be easier because you are slotting it into—again, we haven't decided yet, but like you're slotting it into some very distinct things. So you're not going to get like this first round 20 applications that are just completely all over the map. You're going to—and again, these are random examples—you're going to get five that are in transportation if we didn't trade right, or five, and so it 's going to be a lot easier than doing a generalized catch-all RFP process because you're going to be slated into particular topics, which makes the review and comparison and scoring a lot [47:37] Jamie Back (committee chair): easier for you as a group. Absolutely. Yeah. It did take quite a bit of time last time because the projects were kind of all over the place, even within each one of the pillars. We have had several requests that have come through that have been forwarded to me of varying types. And so, yeah, I think people are anxious for us to have the RFPs out and to figure out whether or not they are going to be able to apply for the funding. So, yeah. Does anybody have any questions about anything that we've talked about today? day any comments any responses no if you can just get me a copy of that survey or the link [48:24] John Knapp: so i can get that forwarded to the jail staff that'd be good and then i'll i'll send an email if for some reason they cannot do it i'll let you know perfect i mean the other thing that we're [48:38] Lindsay Smith: mckenzie's probably going to kill me right now but you know i, my undergraduate degree is in criminology and I'm always trying to collect data from the jail because they think it's perspectives are missing. If it would be easier to do this on paper, we are willing to translate it into a paper version, as well. But I, you know, obviously that's more labor because we'll need to enter it, but just throwing that out there, we could do [49:07] John Knapp: that no i think they i'm not an i.t guy but i suspect they should be able to do it 's just a matter of how is it going to get to all their accounts yeah and how easily they can access it and do they have the time to do it so they should because they have their tablets most of the day so [49:28] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): okay don't forget the staff the staff at the jail is real important too it's it's the people who reside there as well as the staff but some important perspective for what they see and hear from people that are residing at the jail for sure well all i think this [49:50] Jamie Back (committee chair): was a pretty decent first collective meeting after adding our new members we very much appreciate and are so glad that you're here and we don't have to worry about whether there's a quorum because the only two of us showed up so i will get that email out to you all in just a few minutes with exhibit e linked the survey link as well and the when to meet so that we can pick [50:20] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): during those two weeks can you put in the conflict of interest to people too yes because i'm looking at two individuals that maybe their organizations may be applying so it doesn't exclude you from applying but we do have a thing declaring conflict of interest so we probably want [50:41] Jamie Back (committee chair): to make sure that they have that absolutely I'll put the whole policy in yeah I think I were I was [50:46] Robert "Bob" Fickett: I was awarded last round that so I think my understanding is that we can't apply this round [50:53] Jamie Back (committee chair): round anyway well that's something that our group gets to decide whether or not people who were awarded last round are eligible to be awarded this time so that is not set in stone yet it's just when we get to that point what do we do about the people who have organizations who [51:11] Kimball (community member/recovery advocate): Do want to apply? So, yeah, and we just again, we just need to follow our conflict vendors because we know in Maine it's so no one is without a conflict of interest working in this space. There's some degree of connection somewhere; you just have to declare it. [51:33] Jamie Back (committee chair): Yes, all right. Well, if there's nothing else for the good of the order, it is four o'clock, and we are able to say goodbye for the day. [51:43] Ashley Mitchell: Thank you all. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. See you soon.