Homelessness Committee hears public input on housing, data, and strategy

[4:44] Teal Vasquez: Good evening everybody. This is a call this meeting into order for the Homeless Advisory Committee. We do have public comment tonight, so I'm going to start with Carolyn Lear to give some ground rules. I also just want to make known that we are going to skip introductions tonight in order to maximize the amount of time for folks to give public comment. If you would like that information, I refer you back to previous meetings that are available on YouTube. So Carolyn. [5:18] Carolyn Fish: All right, so for the public meeting, we're going to be following the normal rules that Council follows when we receive public comments. So if you've given public comment before, you'll be familiar with them. Each speaker is going to be limited to three minutes of speaking time. The committee has decided to do an hour and a half of public comment, up to an hour and a half. So if we complete that earlier, then we'll transition to the next agenda item. We ask that everyone give their name and whether or not they're a resident of Bangor, that everyone sort of stay on topic. So in this instance, this is the Advisory Committee on Homelessness. So topics relevant to that are what we are seeking comment on tonight. Importantly, please don't expect the committee members to respond or to answer questions. It's really an opportunity for them to listen, but not respond. There are some high level topics that are off, are impermissible to discuss, like issues that are in litigation with the city, individual employees and complaints that you may have against those employees, personal disputes, support or opposition for candidates for office, and then, of course, obscene, threatening, or overly repetitive remarks aren't permitted. The chair will certainly maintain order of the meeting, but for the committee, if at any point you're concerned about the process or procedure and you'd like to interject, the right way to do that would be point of order. You know, unmute yourself, say point of order, and then direct your concern to the chair. So for example, if you were concerned that something was off topic, you could say point of order, chair, I think this is an off-topic comment. Any questions from the committee? I will be keeping time with a timer on this screen and it will tell you quite loudly when you've reached three minutes so everyone knows. So. [7:33] Teal Vasquez: With that, we will open the floor for public comment. Nobody's. [7:42] Richard Chelsea: Going to volunteer to go first. There we go. Good evening folks. My name is Richard Chelsea. I'm a resident here downtown Bangor. Me, my former experiences as an aborted directors for Homeless Voices for Justice in Portland, Maine, when we first developed that whole new area. I was also on a voting member, the voices of voting member, the board of directors for value-based purchasing and health information exchange in our data systems, yada, you get the picture. What I'm seeing here is that homelessness First of all, I thought we changed this a little bit, my homelessness to unhoused. You see me shoot and tie, I work at a bank, you're gonna judge me or them. It's I believe it should be unhoused instead of just homelessness because it doesn't have a color to it anymore. And some of this I like to tell you, those new units we're building, 30 supported units, out of those 30 supported units I think we need to have what's called the path program or pass program, which pass, pick up, assist, shelter, and serve. We have community, so it's not just a community investment, it's a multi-player, players investments into this. And also, and those supports have to be in place before you start running or leasing, or we're going to have the same thing we have now, the housing first program, housing first program. As one of the pioneers we developed in Ohio under the Reagan administration and Bush administration, housing first, then we get with support, we find out where things are changing rapidly, we need the supports too. Thank you, thank [9:23] Teal Vasquez: you sir. Anyone else like to make comment? My [9:38] Suzette Furrow: name is suzette furrow i'm a resident of bangalore the opinions i present on my own and not those of any committee i'm a member of i do have questions i know you don't have to answer all this. I just would like to know if you all live in Bangor and you don't have to answer it. Now. I've noticed some of you compare Bangor to Boston. Please take note. We're a city of only 31,000 residents. This population is so low that most states would not even consider such a low population a city. Do you believe in housing 1st, or recovery 1st? It's important to know where the homeless are coming from. There are people coming here on buses and planes from all over the United States. I just heard from someone a couple weeks ago who was at the airport. A woman flew in from Michigan. She was sent here by her city, told that it's a safer place for homeless, and then she got a ride from a police officer to the hospital. The police could have detectives investigate where they're coming from and why they were sent here. The taxpayers of Bangor have a right to know where the people they are helping to fund have come from. I find it insulting when I hear that it's difficult to determine who is here from and where they came from. We live in a time where we have surveillance everywhere. Most of the homeless receive some type of assistance. I'm sure there's documentation on where they are from. I believe this is important. The taxpayers and our infrastructure cannot handle the influx of homeless. Homeless. These people should try to be reunited with their home state and their families. Other cities and states are directing their homeless populations to Bangor because Bangor has a benefit system that requires no sobriety, no treatment compliance, easy low barrier access to housing vouchers, shelter and services with no questions asked. The current policies make Bangor a destination city for the homeless. At last night's council meeting, the council approved the development of a TIF district for Yellen Pines, a low barrier housing facility with 30 apartments for chronically homeless people, some with long criminal records. The people that will live here will not necessarily be from Bangor. It will most likely come from other places as directed by Pebble Street based in Portland. How much do you think the taxpayers of Bangor can handle? Who on this committee will represent the taxpayer? It appears that some of you benefit from homelessness. All three of the homeless facilities on corporate drive are low barrier shelters, the Hope House, Teresa's Place and Yellen Pines. This means all of these facilities, there will be no sobriety requirements. People can be active substance users during their entire stay. There's no incentive to improve. These all follow the housing first model, which has proven to be a failure and no longer federal funded. Also, the Hope House houses pedophiles. Pedophiles. Yellen Pines is going to allow housing people with a long criminal record. We have no written guarantee that they will not be pedophiles. No written guarantee. It's concerning that all this housing in this one area allows open drug use, perhaps a one-stop shop for drug dealers. We have a drug problem and we have a mental health problem. We need to help these people, but maybe in a different way. Thank you. Thank [13:00] Teal Vasquez: you. Anybody else like to speak? Good. [13:08] Scott Party: Evening, my name is Scott Party, I'm the President and Executive Director of Fresh Start here in Bangor. And I sent you all an email earlier too today, I hope you got it. If we are serious about addressing chronic homelessness in Bangor, we have to be willing directly at its primary engine, active substance use disorder. While housing instability is a multi-layered issue, anyone walking our downtown streets, visiting our parks, or speaking with our emergency service providers knows that unaddressed addiction is overwhelmingly the root driver of the crisis we see outside. Every single night in Bangor, men and women are shivering in dark on dark paths, huddled under plastic tarps, trapped in the living hell of severe substance use disorder. We look away because it is painful to see. But let us be honest with ourselves. What we have been doing in the name of tolerance is not compassion. It's abandonment. Leaving a fellow human being to perish slowly in the dirt, enslaved by addiction, rotting from untreated infections, waiting for the next lethal batch of poison to stop their heart, that is not kindness, that is enablement, that is called institutional neglect. We have permitted a state of horrible misery to take root on our streets, and we have called it handling the homeless crisis. I tell you tonight, we can no longer afford the comfortable delusion that doing nothing is harmless. We are enabling a tragedy and destroying both the souls of those who suffer and the peace of the community we love. If we want to pull these people out of the gutter and restore their human dignity, we must meet them where the fire is burning hottest. We need an overdose prevention center in Bangor, and we need it now. An OPC is not a white flag or surrender. It is a rescue station. It takes the needles out of the public parks, puts the human being in a safe, clean, supervised site. sight. It takes a person isolated in the shadows of active addiction and places them face to face every single day with peer support, nurses, counselors who know their names and care about their survival. You cannot offer a man recovery if he is dead in a snowbank. You cannot offer a woman a second chance if she never sees a path out. An OPC is a path out. It is a direct bridge from the misery of the street to the promise of recovery. And hear this, we do not need to raise a single cent in local property taxes to do it right by our people. The city already owns the land and the buildings. The opioid settlement funds that have been sitting with the opioid settlement committee gave over half a million dollars to public health in Bangor, and those funds are waiting to be used. The dedicated staff, peer recovery specialists, are already out there working. They just need a roof over their heads and a door that opens to everyone. Let us end the silent, cruel consensus. Let us sweep away the misery, clean up our streets, bring our brothers and sisters back into the light of recovery. Thank you, thank [16:16] Steve Carey: you would [16:20] Teal Vasquez: anyone else like to make comment? Good [16:31] Jonathan Sprague: evening. I'm, I'm Jonathan Sprague, I'm a resident of Bangor and a past city councilor. First, thank you all for your willingness to serve and to invest your time in dealing with this very difficult issue. In September of 2023, I addressed the government, the council's government operations committee and indicated that homelessness had been one of the major challenges in the city for the three years that I had been on the council. That had been a major issue when I ran for the council, so that was six years ago. In 2023, I indicated that multiple steps have been taken to address the needs of our residents. Thousands of hours have been invested, millions of dollars have been spent. This topic has continued to consume unnecessarily excessive resources every year. I further indicated currently there was no written plan of the city's intentions for addressing homelessness. Thus, in the absence of that plan, after three years of frustrating effort to get the council to move on this issue, I presented a draft plan and action steps for addressing homelessness. I will send you all a copy of that. The draft included substantive discussion of various characteristics of homelessness and 25 specific action steps that could be taken within 18 months. Tonight I note that the draft was never reworked by staff or by the council. The City continued to inadequately address homelessness, and that's why we're here now. Most of the draft was based on hundreds of public comments and recommendations as well as work in progress. The Advisory Committee now has a critical opportunity, one highly pertinent to the choice of any facilitator. Not only does much of the work I did remain a valid tool, but there are other more recent assessments of the issue. I'll cite three. Councilor Fish has done extensive research, including to talking to representatives of over 40 different communities about their strategies to address homelessness, local businesses, and with the University of Maine faculty. She has used this material, my work, and her experience on the council to develop an issue paper with recommendations using a variety of local and non-local references community reference Justin Russell has developed an opportunity plan for how Bangor can address homelessness at least one other member of the committee has also developed an assessment of some of these issues and the advisory committee's opportunity is to make use of the work that has been done to develop an initial plan not to move forward from a cold start. Using four references mentioned, the staff and a good consultant could create an actionable plan within a couple to three months. This would not mean the work was done, but having the plan does mean that everything could be then figured out. Many of the action steps would take a significant amount of time and effort to be implemented, But the framework would be in place. I would ask the committee not to start from scratch, but to do more and more quickly by using the currently available resources. Thank you, sir. [19:57] Teal Vasquez: Anyone else like to make comment. [20:02] Justin Russell: Since you mentioned me. Good evening. My name is Justin Russell I'm a Bangor resident Minnesota business owner, speaking in my personal capacity. capacity. Thank you for stepping up to help. I know none of you asked for an easy job here, and I appreciate your work. I want to make one central point tonight. Bangor doesn't have to guess what it needs to make progress. We already know. We have a state housing production needs study, a main housing gaps analysis, a statewide homelessness needs assessment, former councillor Spegg's staff plan, and report after report telling us largely the same things. What we've been missing is an information. It's the will to move from studying to doing. Over the past several months, I've done my best to pull all that together into a framework I think is realistic, actionable, and effective. As former Councillor Sprague mentioned, it's BangWareOpportunityPlan.com. I'm not here to ask you to adopt it as written by any means. It's meant to start a conversation, not hand you a finished blueprint. I'm here because I think BangWare is at a point where the next step should be building on what we already know, not starting from scratch again. I'd rather see this committee spend its time acting, not recommissioning yet another study. With that in mind, I want to highlight three specific concrete actions I think the city can take right now. First is a bit of extra information. So complete a Bangor specific interim point in time report. So at minimum, it should collect where people are originally from, whether they have a support system available, and what specific barriers keep them from accessing resources. It's basically the built for zero model with a little bit of extra information. This lets us decide strategy based on actual data, not assumptions or shaky individual accounts of what people have heard in different places. It becomes a foundation for a real time by name list at best, which is what functional systems in other cities actually are built on. Second, a quick win, add sharps containers around the city with a real policy to empty them regularly. People dispose of things properly when they're given the opportunity. That's why trash cans work. Other cities have seen meaningful drops in syringe litter and real improvements and how safe residents feel just from making disposal easy and low barrier and I know personally seeing this on the Kanduskay trail with sharps containers it has made a real difference third create what I call the Bunion Brigade which is modeled on Portland's Opportunity Crew which would be paid work for people experiencing homelessness cleaning out public spaces and helping out with other work where city staff is stretched in Portland's program found nearly half of participants went on to find other employment and it can also serve later as a potential diversion option instead of the criminal justice system you all know this landscape better than I do that's exactly why I trust you to move on this rather than wait for more studies Bangor has what it needs to take meaningful action and I hope you will thank you very much [22:56] Teal Vasquez: Thank you sir anyone else like to make comment Hillary [23:12] Simmons: Simmons, resident of Bangor, continues discussing homelessness, housing, and how we spend taxpayer dollars. I believe we need to change that part of the conversation. We need to talk about not only about what we can give people, but about how we can, how can we help people become independent. There is an important difference. Providing someone with food, shelter, or emergency assistance when they are in crisis is compassionate, and necessary. But if our programs stop there, we have not solved homelessness. We have simply managed it. Bangor should be working towards a model of compassion with accountability. That means providing a hand up while also creating a pathway forward. For individuals who are able to participate, assistance should be connected with opportunities and expectations, job training, education, employment services, budgeting, and financial literacy classes, tenant readiness training, substance use treatment when needed, mental health services, and regular case management. In fact, Bangor already recognizes many of these needs. The city's homelessness programs refer people to employment services, job training, educational support, life skill programs, treatment, and care and case management. You're doing this, but I believe we should build on those programs and make them central to our homelessness strategy. When someone receives long-term supported housing, there should be an individualized plan. What's the person's goals? What barriers are keeping them from employment or independent housing? What services do they need? What progress is being made? And when someone is physically or mentally able to work, are we helping that person obtain the skills necessary to return to the workforce and accountability does not mean treating everyone the same. Some individuals have serious disabilities, mental health conditions, substance use disorders, and other circumstances that may prevent employment. Their plan should reflect these realities. But accountability also does not mean that we should expect nothing from anyone. Success should not simply be measured by how many meals we've served, how many nights of shelter we provided, and how many housing units we built. We should also be measuring how many people became employed, entered treatment, completed job training, obtained identification, learn to manage a household, maintain housing, and ultimately become more self-sufficient. And Bangor cannot do this alone. Homelessness is a regional problem. Bangor should be demanding greater participation from surrounding communities and the state, nonprofit organizations, healthcare care providers, educational institutions and employers. We would like to see Bangor partner with local employers, trade programs, community colleges, adult education, workforce development organizations to create real pathways for homelessness to employment again. Housing doesn't solve all. Thank [26:25] Teal Vasquez: you. Would anyone else like to make comment? Adam [26:36] Baker: Baker, Bangor resident. All my words are my own and do not reflect any committee I'm a part of. I just wanted to start out thanking all of the members here being on the committee, taking your time to do it. I am a lifelong resident of Bangor. The homeless situation here is very near and dear and close to my heart. [Speaker L (unidentified): And my] perspective is that I do volunteer community outreach for myself every week, helping these individuals, cleaning up trash, giving them food, water, whatever they need. And it just breaks my heart when we start putting nice tags on these human lives and not really getting at the root of the issue and actually helping them, helping them. I believe that Housing First is a good model. I think you can't do anything to get your life back on track if you don't have a stable place, environment that you're living in, or a roof over your head. I think that's not the end-all be-all. Just having a house, you need resources and help with either life skills, drug addiction, or whatever they need. And I just hope you lead with empathy and not get caught up in the politics and just playing with people's lives because they deserve our help as a city. [28:14] Richard Chelsea: So thank you. [28:25] Trisha Cork: Trisha Cork, also a lifelong resident of Bangor, Maine, and I do want to echo the thanks that I'd like to give each and every one of you. I know that time is precious. I also just have had a chance to speak with some of the BCAT team and I want to bring that crew to your attention first and foremost because members of that team have a great experience with homeless in cities like San Francisco and in just speaking with a few of them on occasions that they've come to help me with, you know, with campers, or really anytime I've called, they've been great. And I and I would like to just bring your attention to that group because they're the ones that are on the ground and many of them have great experience with fixing or helping homelessness in other big cities. Thank you. Thank [29:33] Scott Party: you. Would [29:36] Teal Vasquez: anyone else like to make comment? My [29:45] Boyd Cronin: name is Boyd Cronin. I'm not from Bangor, but I do work here. I'm the executive director of the Bangor Air Homeless Shelter, and I just wanted to thank you all for your time, and I want to remind you of a of a movie Apollo 13, and Apollo 13 on the way to the moon, all systems are broken down, and when they were asking for status reports, somebody said don't tell me what's broken, tell me what's working. We have a lot of good things that are working here in Bangor. Our shelter is one of those. Yes, we have a sobriety requirement. We served 453 different people last year through our overnight shelter. Only 26 of them had come from out of state. We focus on Penobscot and Piscataquos County. It's our hub where they're built for zero. And we try to work with the city to help. We know it's a big burn. Bangor is a service center. We have a pilot project going to Piscataquos County to help local municipalities develop their own homeless response system. So therefore, that takes a little bit of the pressure off. A few years ago, we partnered with a city in Fresh Start and opened up a Fresh Start Sober Living Home, and it has 11 beds. And like the conversations I heard last night, well, that's only 11 people. That's 11 people that you don't have on your streets right now. More importantly, we have a diversion program, and we call it homeless prevention, homeless problem solving, it's called different things, but 90 folks last year, 90 not folks, 90 households that we prevented from having to experience homelessness, and when I dig down into that data, 70 of those had Bangor zip codes. It wasn't enough to have the city give us any money to help with this program, but it's still, that's 90 households that you won't see on your streets. People say well, you're not being successful because you look at the streets, look at everyone on the streets. We're just a small organization doing the best we can. I would urge you to break up into teams or however you want to do it, but get out and look at what the programs are doing well, how they're working well together. Oftentimes when I'm listening to some of these meetings, I hear a lot of fallacies up here about what it is and what it isn't and who's who's doing this. And nobody really corrects them, but there's, there's some good data out there. I think recently they were talking about Built for Zero, and there's no one to get reports. There is a Region Three Homeless Council meeting that meets once a month through via Zoom, and the city hasn't been attending lately. For a while they were attending, but that's where you get your reports and what's happening with Built for Zero. So I think there's some, there's a lot of good things out there, and Lord knows there are a lot of things out there that need to be fixed, but let's concentrate on what's working and invest in some of the projects they're doing well. Thank you for [32:27] Richard Chelsea: your time. Thank you, sir. I [32:33] Teal Vasquez: believe I saw somebody else that was getting up just a minute ago. [32:38] Steve Carey: Excellent. Hey, good evening. My name is Steve Carey Banger, resident, and I really just wanted to follow up with this gentleman he has said, because I think he raises a good point, and that's relative to the count. You know, we have this count that they did, this point in time count that they use for catastrophes in Penobscot County. And that shows like 362 homeless, 89 unhoused. And I would challenge that count isn't even close to what the actual is. And if you're gonna correct an issue, and it is obviously a crisis situation that we're in here, we should be working with accurate numbers. And I would just challenge you that you should reach the city and the county, get the resources you need to get an accurate count ASAP as you start this adventure, because we need that. The second thing I would say is that HMIS system with the system has available once you get an accurate account. We had that system available to kind of track the transition of those that are going through that to see where we're at. That's not being really used today. It's not. It's not. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not being used. So the accounts now. Right. And then we're not using a system to kind of track the transition through that. And I guess the third thing I was had to them up here is, from the fund standpoint, it is really is mind boggling to try to get a handle on the money that comes into Penobscot County in the city of Vancouver for homelessness. And somehow it's going to be centralized. So you have some accountability to the funds that are going toward it, because it's, there's a lot there. Thank you. [34:06] Teal Vasquez: Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. And just a reminder for those in the gallery, please no comments while somebody else is speaking. My [34:23] Belinda Ganim: Goodness. Hi, my name is Belinda Ganim, and I'm just a member of the Bangor community. But there are a couple of things that I did want to say about the situation that we're in. It is horrible. People are living the worst possible human lives on our streets. Horrible lives. Two things I noticed in the past. Much was said about the waterworks, that it couldn't be made into housing for low income. Well, it was made into housing for low income. Why can't Dorothea Dick's Bangor Mental Health Institute be split? Why can't the back end of it, which has its own entrance and exit to Garland Street or Mount Hope Avenue and has bus route, the front part of it where they're doing mental health care, that has its own entrance and exit to State Street and bus route. Why can't that back end be utilized, carved out into bedsits, but reasonable bedsits for people? We spend a lot of money in this community trying to make it really attractive to people with a lot of money. And for every nickel that's being spent making this community attractive to people with a lot of money, I really think 10 cents should be spent on making it hopeful to people who are living the most horrible lives we can possibly imagine, so horrible that we don't even look at them. Now thank [36:03] Teal Vasquez: you. Hi. [36:08] Kevin Yates: My name is Kevin Yates, resident here in Bangor. I've been doing outreach for the last seven and a half years on my own with a lot of the homeless here in Bangor. One thing that I've seen a need of and is when people want to get clean and sober who are homeless, oftentimes there's not enough bed in detox centers. So that's one thing I think Bangor needs is more detox centers with access to some sort of transitional housing, so that when they get out of detox they have a place to go where they're safe, where they're not around other people using. Another thing is so many of the homeless that I know that have addiction issues, they get arrested and they go into the jail, they stay in jail for a while to get clean is over, they get healthy again, then they're turned right back out on the streets where they're around the same people that are using, and they fall right back into addiction and back into the same lifestyle. So I wish that there was some sort of transitional housing. I think that is Something that we really need in Bangor, and I hope the city will start looking at that more, that we need more transitional housing for people so that they're not just turned back on the streets and back right back into the same environment with people doing drugs and things, and they fall back into it again. All right, thanks. [37:27] Dr. Anthony Eng: Thank you, or [37:33] Teal Vasquez: anyone else that would like to speak? Yes sir, real [37:42] Richard Chelsea: quick, just comment. My name [37:44] Ben Treat: Art Dylan, I live in Bangor, comment to the committee if we have time, and I'd appreciate [37:50] Doug Dunbar: knowing your names so we can put names to faces as we work together to address this issue. Thank you. [38:11] Teal Vasquez: So here's what we'll do. Does anyone else, would anyone else like to speak? If we have time at the end of the public speaking, we will do a quick introduction. Otherwise I refer back to my original comments of if you'd like to put those faces, names to faces, it is available on the YouTube channel from the previous meetings. Go ahead, sir. Thank you all. Thanks for volunteering your [38:30] Doug Dunbar: time. My name is Doug Dunbar. I was born and raised on Maple Street, went to school in Bangor for many years. I worked for John Baldacci. He was in Congress and a governor and focused a lot of my time working, trying to help Bangor for during those years working in Congress in the government's office. I now live, the point is, I now live just over the line into Hermann. But anyway, I devote a lot of my life to Bangor and I work every day in Bangor for the non-profit that I started with a friend called Penobscot County Cares. Some of you may be on the email list. Before Jonathan put a plan together and before others got involved,. I became very concerned about homelessness and so Panopka County Cares just very briefly focuses on homelessness and substance use disorder and overdose deaths and other mental health concerns in our communities. As you know, Bangor has so many crises right now. Our overdose deaths, which I know is not strictly related to homelessness, but there's a connection, infection is worse than any other city in Maine by far, month after month. More people die sometimes in one month in Bangor from overdose than die from all other preventable causes in an entire year combined. We obviously have an out-of-control HIV crisis, but I actually wanted to get up to just correct a few things first you hear a lot about where are people coming from why don't they go back if you just google for a couple of minutes and some of you know this as well or better than i do google for a few minutes do people in portland do people in boston officials and others do they complain why are people coming here from bangor yes they do So that's a universal problem. Again, if you talk to officials even in Augusta, but Portland, Boston, any city, they say the same things. Why are people coming? Well, they come because we offer many good things in Bangor. Our shelters are here, healthcare providers. To some extent, we want to have all the good things, but we don't want people to come here who [40:57] Richard Chelsea: you know, are struggling. [41:02] Doug Dunbar: So much data already exists. And a lot of the conversation is about unsheltered homelessness that we see on the streets. And I work in the parks every day. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. I was talking with Stephen, who's with the Bangor School Department earlier today. There were 114 children, 114 children during this most recent school year who were unhoused. Think of that. Now some of them are siblings. Anyway, the point is data exists and you'll get it, you'll get it over time, and some of you know it already exists. Thank you, thank you sir, would [41:42] Teal Vasquez: anyone else like to make comment [41:47] Trisha Cork: My name is Jackie Solid. I don't really have anything prepared tonight. I just wanted to make a couple comments. I took the time and listened to your last committee meeting and it was actually really good conversation to listen to. You can learn a lot by listening to what people do and how they handle these people on the streets, and it's clear that you all work in it and you are passionate about it. One of the things that always sticks out to me is the amount of care that is needed to get somebody who off the streets and into an apartment and the number of people and hands-on that it takes just to keep them there and be relatively successful which for people that you know think that treatment should come first before a house it 's kind of it's that's where I kind of get tangled up with it all because I listen to how much care it takes for success but is there do we ever get to the point where we really have success? And can we treat people first and then offer some care along the way? And there just doesn't seem to be a strategy. You're clearly all dedicated, but are we coordinated? There's so many agencies out there. There's so many nonprofits. Are we duplicating services? Do we have holes in the system? Are people recovering or are they just surviving? One of the things I think that Bangor is lacking right now is a strategic plan. I've been coming to meetings for months and we just keep throwing money, more ideas, every month, every week, every subcommittee meeting, it's a new idea, it's a new program, it's this, it's that, we're going to throw it all, throw money at it, vote on it, and it's done, and we don't even know what we're doing, and it's, we're not succeeding, we're failing, we're failing everybody, we're failing the homeless people, we're failing the citizens that you're asking to pay for this. So I think we need a strategic plan as a city before we go any further. What are our goals? And part of that plan has to be a gate to stop, so we take care of the people that we have right now, but stop bringing more people in until we get a handle on it, and we have a system and a place and a core strategy, because we're lacking that. Thank you. [44:14] Carolyn Fish: Thank [44:16] Steve Carey: you. Anyone [44:21] Teal Vasquez: else like to make comment? Hey, [44:29] Sam Cross: how's it going tonight guys? My name is Sam Cross. I'm a resident in Bangor. I actually bought my first house here in Bangor a year ago. I was pretty excited about that. I'm only 30 years old. I'm actually below the median age at this point. So I would also ask the advisory committee to have empathy for young people like me who are trying to stay on the right track and have said no to drugs over the years. So I think that we really need to maybe create some sort of map of the city. I think that would be good for the team if we have a map of our problem points throughout the city, where we have high concentrations of drug use in the open, where we have high concentration of homeless people, which seems to be for me. Me, I ride my bike through town. So today, Alton, we had somebody smoking a cigarette right in front of your entrance to start it off. Then I go down on the path. There's maybe another 10 people down there all just hanging out. I went down the Conduska Extreme Trail today. There was probably 10 individuals all openly shooting up. I would never want a 14, 16-year-old kid riding their bike on the middle of the noon. This was noon, midday. If I was a 16-year-old, I wouldn't want my 16-year-old riding their bike down that. That's too much. So I think that we need to just kind of get a map of where the problem points are, and then maybe BCAT, BPD, you guys can come up with solutions to get this outreach to understand who these guys are, what they need for help, and things like that could be really helpful. I know the Alden Road section is pretty hairy too, so the fact that we're putting HUD housing out there, I'm not sure if we have a bus route that hits out there. But if we don't have a bus with the hits out there, that's gonna be a problem, because it's a food desert. So I think we should think about those things too, and that's ultimately my points tonight. So I really appreciate you guys doing everything you're doing, and hopefully we can find some solutions, because it is very heartbreaking to see what everyone's going through. Thank you. Thank you. They're [46:33] Teal Vasquez: gonna make me say it again. There we go. [46:37] Tyler: Hi, my name is Tyler. I'm a resident Bangor. All right, I want to speak about a critical gap that keeps people on the streets. Individuals with serious mental health illness who fall into a gray area. They are often too high acuity for programs like Fresh Start where I work, yet they don't qualify for or can't access the limited specialized mental health housing or treatment that exists. Many also have co-occurring substance use disorders, which makes the situation even harder. These are people who need more support or then a standard sober living or low barrier shelter can safely provide. But the system has almost nowhere else for them to go. Hospitals frequently discharge them after very short stays, sometimes just days, back to a shelter or the street, even when they cannot manage basic self-care, medication compliance, or safety. We saw this recently at Fresh Start. One resident became so impaired by their mental illness that they could no longer get out of bed to use the bathroom, bathe or eat. They were not able to engage in the program. They went to the hospital for a short stay and were discharged to the shelter. They never made it there. The voices in their head told them not to go. That person ended up back on the street. This is not primarily a substance use issue. Though many of these individuals do have active addiction, because there's no appropriate treatment or housing pathway, when people with serious mental illness are repeatedly discharged without a realistic plan, the cycle of crisis, short hospitalization, and return to homelessness continues. Shelters and recovery houses are left trying to manage needs they were never designed to or staffed for. Housing is foundational for mental health stabilization. Without safe, appropriately supported place to live, medication compliance, therapy, and basic functioning become nearly impossible. The strategic plan this committee is developing needs to explicitly address this gray area population, people whose acuity is too high for existing recovery housing, but who fall outside the narrow criteria for few high level options we have. I urge you to prioritize strategically expanding specialized mental health housing with adequate staffing, stronger hospital discharge planning that includes real housing and care coordination, not just a shelter referral, better integration of mental health and substance use treatment capacity in our region so people aren't left with nowhere to go. Thank you. Thank [49:30] Teal Vasquez: you would. Anyone else like to make comment? My [49:44] Beth Haggerty: name is Beth Haggerty and I've been living here in Bangalore for almost 30 years and I really love this city. Obviously all of you do as well because you've stepped up to take on this responsibility and I'm very grateful for that. I didn't prepare anything formally, but one thing I would ask, I think that there's a lot of division, there tends to be a lot of finger pointing, and I think that we need to all work together, because some citizens have questions or raise concerns about certain things that we've been doing as a city does not mean that those citizens lack compassion. A lot of the people I see on the street could be my children. They're the same age and they have, but for the grace of God, and so my heart does break. That doesn't mean that we have unlimited resources and that what's happening isn't also impacting the citizens, the taxpaying citizens of Bangalore. I think that the majority of folks on both sides of the political spectrum and on both sides of the table, we all want the same thing. We all want to take care of those who are most vulnerable. We want, no one should be living outdoors, but we also want to spend our dollars responsibly, have them be monitored and have real measurable outcomes. Outcomes. So I would just ask you to keep an open mind. I know it's difficult. I think it's very easy to point the finger when someone doesn't agree and chastise or judge. And I think that will be much more effective because I really do believe that the vast majority of people in our city want the same things and that we are a city full of compassionate, loving, and kind people. So I think it's time that we really start focusing on that rather than our differences or the fact that we don't all see the same path forward. So I am for you to do that. [51:42] Jamie Beck: One more time. There we go. Jamie Beck, resident of Bangor. That was actually a beautiful segue to the comment that I was going to make. I think you've heard a lot of information, some of it helpful, maybe some of it not so helpful tonight. It seems to be an overlaying idea theme for this evening of communication. I think that there's a lot of misinformation, a lot of incomplete information that has been shared that you guys may be receiving that isn't the full picture. And I know you're working dedicatedly to this and I appreciate it. But I think that as stated in one of your previous meetings, that communication with the community is gonna be really critical in order to get buy-in and investment from the community, not just financial, but allowing things and projects to move forward because we've answered the questions and those questions have those answers available anytime. You don't have to go back and watch an hour and a half YouTube video to make sure that you caught that one comment. Is there a way to create on your page on the city's website? This is the city's dashboard. We know we're pulling information from these places, talking about Built for Zero and the point in time count. Yes, those are very inaccurate. That's what we had. That's HUD standard, but we also know that we have the main homelessplanning.org, which gives monthly updates and it breaks it down even better. Many of you at this base know that if that can be shared with the public so that the public knows, go to the Bangor main website, you can see these, this is the information we're drawing from in order to help guide our decisions. These are our preliminary thoughts, a draft plan. Once you get there, it would reduce, I think, a lot of the issues and a lot of the misinformation and the opinions guised as facts, and be able to do your work well and efficiently. [54:08] Teal Vasquez: So not at this time. You're welcome. Would anyone else like to make comment? Yes, ma'am. [54:31] Emma Sands: Hello, my name is Emma Sands. I am a Bangor resident. I've lived here for the last 20 years. I was originally from Texas, but I've lived here since I've been in middle school. I'm a PSS worker, and I work at Shaw House, but my opinions are, of course, my own. I want to echo some of the previous sentiments that I've heard about how there are a lot of gaps in the current systems for people who are struggling but don't fit into the current programs. I think there is an unfortunate hypocrisy in society right now where we see people on the street with distaste and fear, sometimes understandable fear that they're just doing drugs on the street, but we also don't provide alternatives. We don't provide enough support for people who are struggling, and apologies, I didn't come prepared with notes, but I struggled myself when I was younger as an LGBT youth and was nearly homeless myself, but thanks to my friends and support network I was able to get back on my feet, and now I'm very thankful that any tax money that I do provide to the state and whatnot goes to other people who are struggling, and for my own personal experiences I've seen some of the homeless pass away due to lack of help, for obvious reasons others have moved away rather than come here. But even if homeless have moved here due to our services available, I think that's just tragic that they don't have enough services elsewhere, not that we should have less services here. And while I can't do anything in those places because I don't live there, I can at least express my support here for having something done. [57:13] Teal Vasquez: Would anyone else like to make comment? A final call for comment before we move to the next agenda item. Seeing no response, we're gonna move away from public comment and move back to the agenda. Item number two, which is committee discussion of public comment. Able for that portion. [57:41] Carolyn Fish: Would that make discussion easier? [57:43] Teal Vasquez: I think so. Does anyone on the committee object to moving back to the. Yes, we're going to do a real quick round of introductions since we did wrap up the public comment a little sooner than planned. So, I will start. My name is Alton Buzzle. I am the chairperson of the committee. I will move to my left. Hello my name is Teal Vasquez I am a Bangor resident for those who are curious I am a community organizer and I focus a lot on outreach and building connections with our local unhoused and just to keep it short but give you something interesting about what I believe and what sort of ideas I'm trying to provide to the city I don't think that Bangor's story is finished being written and I think that the unhoused whether they're from Bangor or whether they're from what a lot of folks would call Away I think that they have a lot of to contribute to this city as well and my viewpoint is trying to find a way that gets them all on board and gets them all unified and connected so thank you hi [58:59] Jason Goodrich: My name is Jay Goodrich I want to start by saying that I think that the work in front of us is important, not because Bangor needs another committee or more reports, but because we have a real problem in front of us. We have an opportunity to take the hard and honest look at how we are responding to it, and that starts tonight. Our job is not to decide tonight what all the answers are. Our first job is to understand what the problem is. That means by looking at the data, understanding what programs and services already exist, identifying where the gaps are and listening to the people experiencing homelessness, as well as people working as well as the people working every day to respond to it there are a lot of good people doing a lot of good work in this community we have shelters outreach workers housing navigators recovery programs health care providers faith organizations volunteers and people with lived experience who are Filling in gaps every day but we have a lot of good we have a lot of good programs but that doesn't necessarily mean we have a good system we have a lot of programs but we need to make a system out of it that distinction matters we're going to remember we're going to recommend a strategic plan to the city council I think we need to understand how all those pieces fit together so I'd like for us to approach this work with curiosity before judgment let's ask what let's ask what isn't let's ask What people are feeling through. Let's ask where people are falling through the cracks, and let's be willing to follow the evidence even when the, when the answers don't necessarily, aren't necessarily what we expect. Most importantly, I hope you remember that homelessness isn't just a number on a report or a problem happening somewhere else. It's happening here in this community. These are people in our community. These are people with lives in our community. Some people are here temporarily. Some people have been homeless for years. Some are families, some are older adults, some are working, some are dealing with substance abuse, and some are dealing with behavioral health challenges, and some simply can't find a place to it that they can afford to live. So we're going to, if we're going to do this right, I think we need to look at the whole picture. Our goal should not be simply to manage homeless, homelessness better. Our goal should be to understand what it takes to reduce homelessness, to help people move into stable housing and to build a system that will actually do just that, help people move into stable housing. Thank you. Hi. [1:01:21] Melissa Rhodes: Good evening. I'm Melissa Rhodes. I'm the director of property management for Bangor housing, and you're really going to make me look bad because mine's short and sweet, but I am here. I was born and raised in Bangor, went to Bangor schools, raised my children in Bangor. I do currently live in Herman, but I do work for Bangor housing, and I'm dedicated, and I'm excited to work together. My [1:01:46] Brittney Dunham: name is Brittany Dunham. I'm one of the senior directors of social work for Prebble Street, also born and raised in Bangor, lived here post-college, moved away for a bit, and back in Bangor now, overseeing the operations of the Hope House Shelter. [1:02:01] Teal Vasquez: And with that, we'll move to the other end of the table and work our way back this way. [1:02:05] Dr. Anthony Eng: Hi, good evening. My name is Dr. Anthony Eng. I'm a psychiatrist. And I've been here, even though I'm not from Bangor, but we've been here so much, and my son often jokes that I spend more time in Bangor than actually outside of Bangor. But I wanted to say, kind of reiterate some of the earlier thoughts, it's everyone has a commitment to help making this better. It doesn't matter where you are, and that's why you're here. And so we really appreciate you taking time to do this, and also people can make it and sending us comments as well too. And you know, some of the comments you folks made from what I heard, at least, I apologize running a little late, resonate home a little bit, and something that I can't anticipate when other places too is there's some similar core issue of communications, collaborations, communications, and incoordinations. I think there's a lot of great ideas in the community, and we just kind of like having to pull it all together into a coherent pile to figure out how to help the people of Bangor. Hi, [1:03:10] Pat Keeley: my name is Pat Keeley. I am the certified peer recovery coach in Opscott County Overdose Response Team for 30 hours a week. The other 20 hours a week I spend at the Together Place Peer Run Recovery Center on 2nd Street in Bangor. I am somebody with a large record from far away. I'm also living proof that we do recover, right? I'm here because I've been out there. I've felt that in a mountain it every day. and you guys I haven't been here for that long right but let me tell you guys got a really great city and the last person who was talking about how friendly Bangor is and everything like that I'm looking around this room right now I'm seeing a lot of a lot of friendly faces right I would ask you to trust us I'd ask you to trust us I'd ask you to start coming from a place of curiosity like everyone's been talking about right you ask me anything I'm gonna I'll answer it to the best of my ability right please this is a great beautiful city you guys got here right let's help clean this up in a humane in you know hopefully fiscally responsible way let's do this right that's me [1:04:41] Ben Treat: I'm Ben Treat I'm the director of the Bangor Public Library I grew up way away in Brewer and moved away and came back been director of the public library since 2018 with the tremendous changes that have our cities seen during and since COVID. It's really changed what my experience of working at the library, of directing the library has been. And, you know, at first I saw this committee as an opportunity and said, boy, that's the last place I want to be. That sounds really frustrating. And then I said, no, this is exactly where I need to be right now because of the opportunity to start to move the dial on the situation. So I really appreciate all the comments tonight. Yeah, there's a diversity to what you had to say, but there's a center that I think we can really work with. So thank you. My [1:05:48] Carolyn Fish: name is Carolyn Fish and I am on City Council. I probably have the least important role on the committee and I'm honored to be here as the liaison on between this homeless committee and the council. For those on council that can't all be here, I hope to be a communicator for what this committee would like me to take back to council to discuss and also to bring back to the committee any information they requested me from the council. I am also very happy to participate in collaboration and cooperation with this talented group that has more experience than I do, but I do want to tell people that I've been a longtime resident of Bangor. When my dad retired from the military, originally from Bangor, in fact being homeless and walking those same tracks that we had a recent encampment and when I would go down there I would think about my dad and what it must have been like at 13 years old walking those tracks and when he would tell me stories of Bangor at that time, Bangor was a very poor city and it had a lot of problems not so different than what we have today. It's just that I think we had a few decades of some you know bounty, you know joy and not the problems that we have to the extent that we have them today. So I passionately want to be part of this solution as best that I can. I'm here to listen and to learn and try to figure out how I might be able to participate with the rest of the council in the city of Bangor to help figure out where we are from the information we have, the resources we have and how to hopefully get our act together. [1:07:33] Teal Vasquez: Thank you. With that I'd also just like to point out in sake of time we have a wonderful group of technical advisors assigned to the committee as well from the city staff, so thank you all for joining us as well. With that, we're gonna move to the center table for item number two on the agenda, discussion of public comment. Oh, wait, no. Please tell them just a little bit more. Okay. Actually, thank you all so much for coming back. We obviously just heard some public comments, great feedback. [1:09:05] Jason Goodrich: Communication, I heard it clearly. I heard it repeatedly. I've heard that people are not feeling like they're communicated with. They don't have a full picture, all idea of maybe what the whole picture looks like, and I've heard that people are frustrated because of that. One of the things that I took from that can [1:09:25] Teal Vasquez: I tag it. I heard a great comment from like one of our community members about a dashboard forward, and I think that's a great idea, and I think it's going to save the committee a lot trouble if we were to implement something like that, just so that we could see what our positions on data are at any given time, so that when people are giving future comments and when people are creating future criticism as well of the committee and its work, they're not going to have to be, endlessly repetitive or, you know, they're not, they're not going to feel pulled in every which way, by different straw man, because there were a lot of those, happening that, you know, I mean, there's some pretty fantastical things about like the unhoused draft tube, in our city. And if we can just point to that data on our website and be like, well, you know, there's a lot of what we're using. Obviously we use our own insight and everything else as well, but you know, here's the baseline. So if you're gonna come to, if we did another future public comment, or if you're gonna send an email, you know, before you craft an email that says that we're giving every member of the unhoused a free limousine, you know, let's see what's on the dashboard. Is the limousine on the dashboard? Because if it's not, maybe you can focus on something else for your email and save yourself some time. Of time, you know The thing about that was one, we haven't finished updating. We can't have updated the other thing too, is I'm wondering dashboard gives you the data, but I think what happens is it doesn't give you the message, and I think folks need to hear what the message is, well, because like, you know, for example, what are we doing, right, we can say we have to dash my data to show up and recommend this, so I think it's, it's, it's a, it's a combination. We need to have that and also how to measure, how to say it and We're just like, so if you pass those, then you can figure out the journal And the person that gave that comment said that a dashboard would be a good place to consolidate yeah i think you said you need it but you just can't i think you know we used to have a dashboard all kinds of medical stuff everyone look at it 's like oh looks great but everyone looked at differently and it's okay but the thing is they still got the message that comes out of that dashboard otherwise they woke up with all the different things and then and then you end up people saying well i got this dashboard data so therefore i'm going to initiate this program but no one ever discussed with this other group basically having the same dashboard data, but they came up with something else. So I think that's just a bigger way to tie things together, because I think what I did here too, on top of the messaging, is I don't know that we do have a lot of things and people are doing things, and actually this is a comment that you've heard in my own area of mental health, where people from other states said, you know, you guys have a lot of stuff, but you guys are not coordinated into living up here So it's like, you know, Conan Ramsey going the kitchen with all these good readers not knowing what to do with it, and I think that's where the frustration comes in, and that's where people say, well, that feels, I can see why, well, we don't spend more money on something, but we didn't even realize like he was already doing that whole box of it, and how can we combine that to make it more efficient? So I think that's the piece where not knowing how the pieces play well will be helpful, and part of that messaging with that portal from other database, we need to I [1:13:37] Speaker L (unidentified): feel we should get everything down right. A lot of, there's a lot of repetitive stuff. I mean, there's a lot of going for with We, yeah, we need to, yeah, [1:14:04] Teal Vasquez: possible [1:14:09] Carolyn Fish: to speak up, it's hard to hear you folks. Sure. I'll try. [1:14:17] Ben Treat: Yeah, I, my thought is, we could spin our wheels a lot if we try to get the perfect dashboard tonight. But I think there are, there are five things that came to mind for me as data points that be really useful. I think one would be inflow of flow data from the main homeless planning site that is back referenced. Another would be service capacity, thinking of Boyd's comment about like the banker area homeless shelter, we know how many shelter beds there are, we know how they're being used. We have data so like shelter, and warming center capacity and usage. One that might be controversial, but I think that the BDN reports always say that there's a strong link between the HIV cluster and the unhoused population in terms of who's part of that cluster. So that is data that I think is important. That might be a good one to include. Funding, I think is really important. And I know that's hard to draw a line on, like what is that funding? My three minutes, no, I'm trying to say that. And then the fifth was police response. I just think knowing like the amount of work that our police department is doing both as a as bcap and as officers is important to know so that's that's different from funding that's that's resource capacity that 's a i think useful to see so those are those are five things i'd like to see i'd be happy to be part of a small subgroup that just works with city staff on seeing if what kind of version of that dashboard could be put together fairly quickly if other folks like that. [1:15:56] Teal Vasquez: And I just want to echo that, sorry, want to echo that about the data, that it should not all be on the data, like how many people are homeless, how many people are arrested or in prison, whatever. I think there's a lot of good work everyone is doing in terms of how many people they are able to help, how many people the police department is able to divert from, you know, home to do something else. But they need to see that data as well, because then they can see, you know, yes two or three may look horrible but they didn't see the 15 over here that got help I know you had just thought real quick are you guys getting this because I know we have had a conversation with you about of the data [1:16:38] Robyn Stanicki: Data assignments we're writing them all down keep it perfect [1:16:42] Teal Vasquez: I want to make sure we weren't losing track of that thank you [1:16:46] Brittney Dunham: You. I'm sorry. Yeah, I think no, it's okay. I mean, I happy to support the idea of a dashboard. I think that before we like have these larger conversations about what exactly we're going to do, we need to have I mean, like the communication amongst ourselves, and there needs that we need to have like a bit of a plan of strategy. So like, it's great, we can solicit public comment. And if we aren't like taking that, take really taking the data thinking about what our own timelines are, we're not going to be able to timeline for anybody else. And I don't know that what I heard is that a dashboard of data is what the city is expecting. I think that like it's going to be really great for people to be able to have information to help maybe like current narratives, but I think it's like our job is to think about like actionable steps that are going to help reduce both the experiences of the housed community members in Bangor and then how we're also coming together to think about how we're coordinating or how. This is hard because we're this homelessness task force that has been elected by the city. What power do we have to say, Ben, you need to work with these people and these people need to work with these people. It's like that's sort of an impossible task. And so before we embark on these things that are real large, I think we need to have very actionable steps and benchmarks that we're going to meet here. And so we can spend our time tonight thinking about ideas about a dashboard. But I really think that maybe, Ben, you just called this out, we need to think about how real work is going to happen and what that means, and what an honest conversation about commitment and capacity from the individuals, like we've chosen to be a part of this, we've been elected to be a part of this. And what does this look like for dedicated time that we're spending doing work and not just the time that's happening every other Tuesday like sitting here having these kinds of conversations right like nothing actionable comes out of that. And so you know I think that we need to start by like looking at data. There were multiple community members who talked about things that have already been like put into place, you know, former city councilors that have already done some work, other members of the community that called out some really important information that I think it's important for us to probably take a look at and commit to like commit to reading those and commit to like bringing back information from those and like have a plan for two days from now to be able to actually bring some ideas of our own from what we've seen, whether or not they're going to be things that work or don't work. And so I don't know, I don't, I'm not comfortable just like saying all the things I want you to pull for us, but I mean there was Mr. You know, Mr. Russell had some things that were called out. I have like names and things written down here, but a lot of notes. I mean, it would be helpful for some of these things, but I'm also happy to find and share with both. But if the city has also already spent some time putting those things together, and we have them, I think it's really important that we get those sooner rather than later. Another thing that I just want to mention is I don't know if everybody else got, I know that email address was set up. I don't know if anybody else seen anything from the email address, or like have been able to have access. [1:20:03] Teal Vasquez: So I will see the plans that those emails are going to be attached to the packets moving forward, correct. That's right. [1:20:09] Carolyn Fish: Right. We'll include, I mean, we've probably gotten a half dozen to a dozen emails to that email address. We'll include it in the packet. I'm going to ask you, though, because you had indicated you hadn't received an email from me. Yeah. Someone from my staff sent you all an email with six of those attached. Did you receive that? Six of those emails? Yes. OK, so it sounds like there might also be a technology issue happening where you're not getting the emails. else. Okay. Yeah, no, it would have been two or three days ago. So I'll track down, it seems like something's not working with that listserv we created to get things to you. [1:20:49] Teal Vasquez: Or maybe they don't. So we'll certainly work on that. I also just want to make sure that everyone is understanding, right, that this committee has no power to actually interact anything. Our role is to provide recommendations to the council that they can then act on, and so to your point, I think absolutely getting more information and getting a hard plan, roadmap if you will, of here are the things that we're looking to tackle first, here are the things and the plans, like we're going to develop the plans to help city council make those, but I just want to make sure it's transparent to everybody that this committee has no power to enact anything. Our role is to be the advisors users and to send recommendations off to council, which is what I usually do [1:21:40] Carolyn Fish: I think that as much time and conversation as we've had as a council may shock you, but we really don't even have the basic foundation of how to be able to assess what each roles each service provider rather profit a non-profit. We are not sure where the strengths and weaknesses. We know that they work a lot, but we don't know exactly what they do, how many people are they servicing, where is their overlap, where are they weak, where are they strong, how does that collaborate with maybe or PCHC or any of our other providers. So I think for us, a grid sheet of some kind of all of our service providers, what they do, because I don't even know that the public really understands how one differentiates and what services they provide and what they don't provide and so I think we could solve it happen that we might even be able to understand how we could be better partners and we as a city we've been reacting because we've been in crisis mode. I'm not sure that we have really sat down maybe I'm wrong but identified what extent our resources we have like I don't know that we have limits because we've been so fast and furious with the crises that I think it would help us to better look at our departments and our resources. And once we know where the weaknesses and the holes are, to maybe see, well, what do we have in our police department? What do we have in our GA? What do we have in public works? Where are we overextended? Because I think right now we're all sort of reacting to the crisis. So I think we're kind of hoping for some collaboration to understand where the strengths and weaknesses, where the holes are. are what we do have for resources and have a better understanding for our partners of what resources we don't have because I think the public thinks we have all the resources or we have more resources you know than we're providing and we don't so I think we're looking at you all to help us determine you know where we can make better partners as a result of [1:23:54] Ben Treat: the holes with what's already existing so I just wanted to follow up on Brittany's comment and so it sounded like you'd like us to make some time commitments tonight is that I mean I don't [1:24:06] Brittney Dunham: know that it needs to be like we are going to be able to make a commitment tonight I mean I think we could be sure that we make you know come next to two Tuesdays you know and say like this is and [1:24:17] Ben Treat: And also to take actions, not a dashboard, but to take actions and say what those actions are, and then also to read, I think you'd reference Jonathan Sprigg's plan and [1:24:32] Carolyn Fish: is that one of the emails that no i have handy the three plans that mr sprigg spoke of and i can get them to the committee via a hopefully operational listserv at some point yeah but [1:24:47] Teal Vasquez: I can get those to you shortly. Thank you. Just to clarify whether we identify just the same, we don't have to come up with the operation, like we basically recommend to the city and the city will take it from there. We'll have the one that views that, right? Yeah, so that's Something that, okay, it keeps keeping in mind that all of our recommendations have to be data-based. No, right, I do have something, ah, something that I think we could probably [1:25:20] Jason Goodrich: Manage tonight. I heard clearly from one of our providers who came and spoke with us that the city isn't engaging with the region three homeless council on homeless committee. That's a concern. The COC and the region three homeless planning committee are the mainstay of what happens when it comes to shelter and housing here in the region. There are two of the major players when it comes to planning. And if the city is not at that table so [1:25:55] Teal Vasquez: I wanted to say something, you know, I'm getting this impression, or at least I have trouble with the languaging that the dashboard isn't an actionable step. I mean, not at all, I'm just saying, okay, I just personally speaking, even if that isn't what you mean, from a personal perspective, I believe that communication strategy and I believe that challenging the narratives is actually something that not only actionable but crucial for this committee to address. When I was nominated for this position that Was the main focus of my interview, was how we could build trust between unhoused and housed. So I mean, I guess just again, you know, I got an impression and maybe it's not correct and I'm you told me that's not correct, so you know, I'm going to trust you and take your word on that. But you know, I heard from some folks that they would like to see us have an easy win, and in one of the earlier meetings they said that the structure of the mandate had been revised, right, that initially we had this 12-month timeline to solve homelessness across the globe, and that has been changed so that if we wanted to, we're now empowered to make an advisement, I don't know if that's grammatical or not, an advisory [1:27:18] Carolyn Fish: We can make. Stabilization plan is what was in the ordinance itself. Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to. [1:27:26] Teal Vasquez: So I think that, you know, if we did want an easy win and if we didn't want to change narratives right away, something that would not take a lot of capacity from this committee, something that, like you said, could be done by a subcommittee of some people with some expertise in that matter, might be a dashboard. And I do agree that, you know, we need to be less nebulous with our, goals. And I want to make sure that is for you. And so is your is your kind of thought maybe that in our next few meetings that we should come up with a roadmap for our own and I'm sorry, I'm behind that pulley. [1:28:11] Brittney Dunham: I'm behind that pulley. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's always really important that we have, that there's access to information for people. I think that if we spend nine months trying to figure out how to launch a dashboard of information, or if we even like in this conversation directly after hearing public comment, if all we talk about is the idea of building a dashboard, I don't necessarily know that it is reflective active everything that people who we heard from today is saying, I think that making sure that there is a dashboard that you know, people can get easy information from to correct narratives. I think that is a crucial part of this role is really important. [1:28:48] Ben Treat: I'd love to not talk about the dashboard anymore and committed to a subcommittee, so that we can get it done. But that was [1:28:54] Teal Vasquez: what I mean, why don't we just table it entirely and focus on the roadmap? I'm not saying that we should. And I think it's to me the dashboard is I think agreed I believe the work of this committee and also it's also the human messages and the dashboard without going specific what the data is in there I think it's one of the more tools I think the inside of the city's role quickly Yeah I mean we can always make a recommendation that the city create a dashboard without diving into all of the mentorship ourselves right if we really think that a dashboard is important I mean it is well within our purview to say to counsel hey we think you should evaluate having a dashboard that shows some of the data makes it publicly available and readily accessible for those folks that are passionate or interested in this issue and leave it at that I think as far as us getting into the minutiae of what data is there, and I agree with what's said. The other thing that I just wanted to say too is one of the things that I heard during public comment is that there are a lot of services out there. 's overlap there's maybe it doesn't seem to be like a map or a web that shows us who is actually doing what, and so if we don't have that, it's going to be hard for us, in my opinion, to really be able to put together any type of plan of collegiveness and communication, because we don't know who to [1:30:23] Brittney Dunham: communicate with about what, and something like that might actually exist from some recent conversations that were happening with, I think, some maybe some grant funds that someone outside got to work on, like mapping out some services based on the HIV clusters. So I'm also happy to just like dig into that before next week to see if there's something that is already in existence. [1:30:46] Teal Vasquez: Robin, do you know if anything like that exists currently? It does. [1:30:52] Robyn Stanicki: So at our last meeting, I discussed that we could, at your request, put together an eco map of services, but we had not put that on our to-do list at this moment. If there's one that exists through coordination for the HIV response, then that might be a good place to start, but we're certainly welcome to help with that. Okay, and Jade, to answer your question earlier, I've recently been installed to join those region three meetings, and I'm going to bring David with me. Thank you. The other thing I always like to [1:31:36] Teal Vasquez: guess this is watching and listening what happens today. I think there's a lot of passionate energy in the people as well, and I wonder if there's an avenue to have maybe a little, not even that's not good for us, but some opportunity for them to give their input, because they have the same voices going to tell us, hey, the strategies that you guys are doing, I mean, those are things that, oh, that they don't have to do in this, but rather pop shots, you know, because it's the current format, like an email here and you know comment there and things like deaths, and there's no way for the community to also work together in this format to, and I don't know if you can build that into a recommendation someone down the road. Well, I do know at the last meeting we talked about having regular public comment, but at this point we wanted to focus on, we wanted to have this one together. Yeah, I'm just saying, so I guess what I would challenge our Community members here to do is, if you want public comment to be more represented, especially if you're feeling underrepresented, use the email and let us know. I mean, we're going to be most empowered if we have a direct resource to cite and say, okay, well, the public want us to do this. It's part of the strategy. And a lot of us here are not just invested in this issue, but also professionals working full-time in this issue. Issue so we have to budget our time closely and I think that you know when we're developing roadmaps and stuff like if we did have public comment about the amount of public comment the circular as that sounds you know we would know that the that is somewhere that needs to be included in the roadmap because I mean I got a lot of feedback personally which I still don't really know what to do I mean do I deputize myself and say I can't say anything because I'm on the advisory committee but I've Received a lot of comment that you know there's an appearance that you might not be that interested in public comment or I heard from multiple people you know unhoused people are probably not going to speak there or probably not going to be solicited in the commentation process and it seems like maybe that did happen and not you know due to our intention but well it's five o'clock yeah transportation shelters are full you're not [1:34:12] Jason Goodrich: Gonna come back out of a shelter you're not gonna get on a bus to come here so this is very [1:34:19] Teal Vasquez: Limiting for folks who are unhoused and we have I feel like previously talked about ways to engage that committee as a committee right and I think maybe that's a good segue to you know to how do we as a committee engage with that audience and what's our capacity like to well what is the capacity for committee members right we're already committing quite a bit of time and I think everyone here is willing to commit the appropriate amount of time we also need to be [1:34:53] Jason Goodrich: Be respectful to everyone's time so this continuum of care has a process called people with lived experience committee every month people with lived experience get together and are heard by you know would be interested in knowing if there would be a way for the city to extend listening sessions out through that through that process so we're not just having We're having an extension of people with lived experience committee through the continuum of care and through the region three homeless Committee, homeless council. There are basically four entities. There's the feds that fund things. There's the COC that grants, writes the grants for the funds. There's the main state housing that takes the money in after they're directed where to spend it. And then there's the office of behavioral health, which is substance abuse and mental health. There's all the players. Those are the players on the table. Each one of those folks have people with lived experience, groups that they actually can, we were to take. Somehow this committee were able to go to the Hope House and have maybe a town hall meeting every now and again. Go to the bank or shelter and have a town hall meeting. Or the Together Place. Yeah, or the Together Place. Taco Tuesday. Taco Tuesday up at the Union, at the UU church if there was somebody that could go out to these outreach areas and maybe be able to gather the voice of the folks that were in there. [1:36:30] Carolyn Fish: We were interviewing and we were speaking as a council and we talked a lot about those with the experience and we talked about exactly those, you know, they may not feel comfortable to come and speak, they may not have the access, the timing may not be convenient and therefore that's why we had a diverse group. group, we thought that even one person coming in with their lived experience, that would be one story. But some of the individuals that work a lot with multiple people, and if not hundreds of them, that we would be bringing to the table through you guys as experts, feeling every day, you would be bringing those stories on your behalf. And that's why we tried to have the diversified group so that those stories even though they couldn't physically be here, we're getting here through you. yeah [1:37:19] Ben Treat: so i'm thinking about like the rules that are in place because we're a public body and so we can't have a meeting of this committee at together place because that would be an illegal public meeting without notice right so but we could have four of us or fewer show up and so i think four is a lot to try to get someplace i wonder if we want to just have a couple of pairs or a few pairs who agree like we're gonna find a couple of places to go to during the next two months and that way we're Not sending emails to everyone saying, hey, who wants to go, and then somebody responds, and now we have an illegal public meeting again. And you know, we can just now identify like, or even just after the meeting, identify a couple, a few pairs of people so that, you know, you're not going alone, which could feel like, well, I don't really know, and you know, or oh, I said I'd go, and then I got sick, and so nobody showed up, which could feel like a real slap in the face. So, just thinking in terms of identifying pairs that will identify places to go so that we're doing that work of getting that community but also not flooding public meetings. A lot, I agree with that, and the point of those is just like [1:38:40] Brittney Dunham: like sort of solicit what they think the gap areas and services [1:38:44] Ben Treat: are? Yeah. And I would say like, the expectation should be set fairly low for the time commitment, right? Like, we would be going to meetings that already exists that have work to do. And so if we went to together place, and they had a particular program that we were going to, they already have work they do during those meetings. So it's just an opportunity for us to be there for whatever period of time we're we're we're granted, you know, like a center, yeah, just we're here to listen, you know [1:39:17] Teal Vasquez: I'm specifically thinking like dinner at the break so like, you know, like two people going over there to the side of, you know, places like when you said talk on Tuesday or something wanted two people just getting over to the side and asking a couple of people like, how would we collate that [1:39:34] Speaker L (unidentified): I would collect all that, I mean, so is it going to have to be like, hey, this is what the people said generally, right, or are we going to have to fill stuff out, because like I've been there with like you a lot of times, it's hard, and a lot of times people are really expecting, you know, like again, god, if it was something, you know, it's hard being realistic, right, all the time, a lot [1:40:00] Teal Vasquez: of the times people want, you know, and if they don't get it, well, and I wonder if that's sort of what Counselor Fish was kind of alluding to, right, it is that we have members of this committee that are already working in those areas that you, that are already having those conversations and seeing these people on a regular basis, right, and so rather than some like committing something, right, when you're out there and you're chatting with people, have that conversation, they know you, I know them, right and it's just the you know teal when you're out there doing your outreach right it's it's just having that conversation okay what where are the gaps where are the opportunities that you see as somebody who's experiencing it and then you guys bring it back to the committee rather than committing additional time from everybody or rather than trying to over complicate it we already have folks that are that are doing this work essentially and you guys just bring it back to the committee [1:41:01] Speaker L (unidentified): I guess that's what I was kind of wondering is the, you know, yeah, can I do that, like as a person? [1:41:15] Jason Goodrich: That could be a standing item on the agenda at the end of the, at the end of the meeting. What has everybody done for outreach this week? What have you done to reach out and talk about? Could you see the simple question on the other end? [1:41:30] Teal Vasquez: We've got a place closed. [1:41:32] Speaker L (unidentified): Yeah, but I'm still out there. [1:41:34] Teal Vasquez: I'm still out there. Yeah. I'm working on it. And it could also just be a, you know, what have you, right? Rather than making anybody feel like they have to be out there again. Exactly. But bringing that feedback. back bringing those things that you get that people are hearing and bringing that and it sounds like the gaps are something that we really need to identify so that we can share that with council like here are the gaps and here are some recommended policies or procedures to help close those gaps so that we can kind of start getting a better picture at least that 's that's my understanding of kind of what this conversation has been? So a lot of these things have been sort of things that we could discourse on at a period that we defined in our roadmap. And I realized that was a lot, you know, because of the sort of tangentiality that I tend to go on. You know, I get like sucked into a portal of passion and I feel that it has to come all out. But I think that like, because we just heard public comment, because that was an outstanding problem, because it's fresh with us, like how did we feel about the public comment process? You know, there was some questions raised about what our continued availability for public comment sessions would be, if we should have more, we felt this would be enough, if we felt happy with the email structure. So is that something that we maybe want to address now with our personally? and i'm obviously open to feedback from i think that future public comment is probably not something we want to determine today right that's what we have that email address for is to fill that gap it will come but i think we 've got to make sure we're focusing on the road map and focusing on the really right now i think we've jason somebody you said and we're really that data collection point right where we need to understand which what data we're looking for to ask for the right data we didn't understand the problem. You guys know it's a mess, but I think the frequency of public comment probably is not something that needs to be determined. I guess i just thought that like i you know i didn't think there'd be any outstanding opposition to a roadmap i think we all agree that we need to budget our time well and that our time matters as individuals and i thought that you know with 30 minutes that we could at least have a friendly conversation about the public comment or you know but if that is not how everyone else feels i 'm [1:44:37] Ben Treat: up to that. I mean, my feeling is there's a lot of stuff that was said in public comment that we haven't really even talked about yet, and I'd like to talk about what we just heard. I'd love to think next time when we don't have only 20 minutes left about scheduling the, how frequently we have public comment. If we did it, did we, did this frequently where we spent 90 minutes listening and 30 minutes trying to talk about, and it didn't end up split like that, but you know, just use those numbers. We'll, I'm worried about us spinning our wheels on that too, so that's why I am kind of leaning towards talking about what we heard and then next time talking about the frequency. I get the sense that there's a general commitment to hearing from the public more than just an email. It's not from this group. It was better than I expected it [1:45:31] Teal Vasquez: to be. Yeah, that's what I was looking to hear. Like, I'm sorry if I gave the impression question that I was trying to, yeah, but yeah, that was, that was helpful. True. Yeah, so I think I [1:45:44] Ben Treat: think if there's a general commitment, like I'd love to talk more about, yes. Yeah, well, [Brittney Dunham: so there] were several times when people named specific things, specific actions we could take to either learn more or to better understand the issues. And so I think I took like, pretty heavy notes. I don't know how thorough they are. Heavy note. And, so I feel like there's learning more about the Bunyan brigade. There's more of a, like, sharp containers, things like that. There were like practical things. There were also more philosophical positions, and I feel like sitting with those as well and talking about those. So I thought Hillary Simmons gave a lot of like really kind of more philosophical kinds of positions that might help us think through different ways of talking about this issue. And so there were other folks who did that as well. It's just that's the page I'm on right now. And it's not that like her comments weren't practical or other people's didn't have any philosophy. It's just that I'm saying that there's both kinds of comments and it could be really useful for us to talk about that. Do we want to name specific practical things that people suggested and say, yeah, we'll go read that. [1:47:18] Teal Vasquez: That and, well, I mean, I did, I'm personally going to try and read it. I every resource since it was online or whatever, I took careful note up and I will try and find that in my own [1:47:28] Jason Goodrich: time. I would like very much to have a copy of Spread's draft report, yes, that you know [1:47:36] Teal Vasquez: Carolyn did say she was going to send those three reports or those three proposals. I'm, I'm happy, I [1:47:42] Carolyn Fish: kind of did mine as an informational data just from my 40 calls from other communities and working with the University of Maine. I'm happy to share that. I might be able to extrapolate whatever evidence I've found and don't use whatever's not helpful, but I'm happy to share [1:47:56] Robyn Stanicki: what I did do. Yeah, that would be really one [1:48:00] Teal Vasquez: of those sort of philosophical things that I heard trying to comment was, and things that we pointed out in our previous meetings too, was a lack of centralization. And I felt that I was alert fish when you were when you were sharing your own story about the city taking stock of its own resources, but I feel like it's being echoed by the city, right, like that there's a lack of centralization and that maybe there are partnerships between these organizations that we don't understand and there is unification of the systems that we don't understand, but we should endeavor to understand them if we don't, because how could we advise anyone, you know. That's a good point and I think that's where we [1:48:50] Carolyn Fish: stand as a city. We don't understand the partnership. So if we don't understand what you guys are all doing to help each other, I don't think that we fully understand where we can jump in and help. [1:49:00] Jason Goodrich: There's a million layers to being a partner in homeless services. There are folks that go out on a daily basis out of the goodness of their own heart, and they're doing this individually. There are folks that are connected to churches. There are folks that are connected to organizations that are non-profit. There are, there's every level of service going on, and there's, there's a big gap in that we have, you might see three people going out on a Tuesday passing out water because it's a hot day, and then on Wednesday there's nobody. As simple as that sounds, it's a gap in services where you hydrate everybody every day. So we have a lot of, we have a lot of coordination needs. So when it comes to those services, a lot of people have done very good ad hoc kind of arranging, you know, well you'll be there on Tuesday for dinner, so we'll do Wednesday for dinner, but there's nothing that says here's, here's all five days worth of dinner plans that you know [1:49:58] Teal Vasquez: somebody would have. There's nothing like that out there, and I think some folks just not fully aware of all the whole thing, because I think when we're out there, we're all broken, like you know, I'm seeing you and okay, hey, you know, I can connect you to this, and then I become that linkage to that person, right? Now people giving a great, but they don't think, well, they just don't know that knowledge and say hey, I can send them to, you know, somebody else or this and that kind of stuff, and we missed an opportunity. So I think people not knowing, we need a menu. You, we were seeing one bro, I think she pushed you last week, the or two weeks ago, that card that had a list of some of, yeah, but I think to everyone's point, right, that wasn't all encompassing, and but it's a nice starting point for sure, and having that map of like hey, this is this organization does this, and this one does this, and this one does this, and I'm sorry, I know from [1:50:59] Melissa Rhodes: from what I do, like I get called daily from, you know, people that can't get housed or on the wait list, or they said that I end up talking to for an hour, an hour and a half or more, you know, just one talking them sometimes down, and then they just don't know where these resources are either. And so, you know, not a, you know, Bangor housing tenant, but I am supplying the resource card that we created, or we have our Bangor PD liaison officer that assisted in creating one, right? So we've got all these things in there, but could be something that they don't have, you don't have, right? And so combining all these resources together to have something when they're on these websites that is visible. So yes, a dashboard's great with all these numbers, but in reality, people need to be able to go to a centralized place to say, here is everything because there's that gap. And it in honestly my day is spent like trying to give everyone what I can find for resources and what we have found so I think instead of like yes that is great but also reality is people are in crisis and they need to know where to go [1:52:08] Teal Vasquez: And what to get what to have it's almost like you need a combo like a 988 yeah you have you [1:52:15] Melissa Rhodes: Know and again like one is great for united way you know united way is back oh you know what [1:52:20] Teal Vasquez: Sounds like what you need is this i can i suggest that you talk to one right yeah whatever yeah and just have that person like a concierge for like right because it's just so complex i mean even from the regular world i mean that's you know it's not for people i still would prefer that [1:52:36] Carolyn Fish: Of stuff they don't want to talk most of the time right one of the chairs of a board i think on the west coast i can't remember was washington in orleans state but they came up with a central hub and they were a population of around our size but they weren't the service center but they were the receipt they opted in to participate in the service center and the service center had a calling 24 7 of a qualified staff almost like a dispatch when you call in for an emergency they would take the call Whether it was from an individual themselves in crisis or another service provider that had the patient they would call and explain the situation like a triage the dispatch person had the whole smorgasbord of services and would do an assessment and be able to almost immediately connect and that's in my report you and I think that would [1:53:31] Teal Vasquez: Create so much low-hanging fruit in the sense because the stages is out there we just I was not hospital or somewhere on the street up which because number it's a hey I got this guy here or this woman here the service oh yeah why don't you call you know agency b because they have this available that would just makes it so much you know easier there are a lot of them and there Are a lot of unhoused folks that would take advantage of services. They fall into this category of person who is hungry for recovery and is really ready to do something actionable, but they're not aware of the services, or their case manager is not aware, or their housing navigator, or their, but what's nice about that also from a behavior Perspective, when someone is in a crisis or getting to that's when they need something the most. They can call and get help, but if you say your crisis but you have to do this dancing before you get to this, the place is over. I don't have the investment to get to the services, but if I can call right now, we got feeling really horrible, and well, we can steer you directly to your program or whatever it is, that's what you'll remember, that I got help when I need it. So in the interest of time, because We only have 10 minutes left, it sounds like we're gonna have an action item, if you will, to review those three plans that were talked about during public discussion, and we're going to get those sent out to us, and then I think what I heard was that we're going to start building that roadmap and start working through that, but first we want to look at these plans and see if there are actual things or actual data points within them that we bring to the next meeting for [1:55:25] Melissa Rhodes: Discussion, is that yes, if we don't get like how long before we reach out, if we're not getting that [1:55:33] Carolyn Fish: Like so I'll look, if there's an error right, yeah, there must be some sort of technology issue that I'll start managing right away, and a worst case scenario, we're using a listserv, I'll just enter all of your emails individually and make sure it gets to you, yeah Each person, I think one day when I talked to her she had a list, I think she did acquired it on her own, but just through experience she had a list of 35, 38, I mean it was astounding, maybe by now [1:56:02] Ben Treat: It's ever changing, so I mean I can, I'll talk to her and see if it's like a list or if it's it, if it's just like in her head, basically like I don't know if I have something I can provide [1:56:19] Teal Vasquez: I think there's a lot of these services right, I know a lot of what the heck they do, I know where [1:56:24] Speaker L (unidentified): I refer my people, you know, almost, so it is, if you write it down, it sounds like a month later [1:56:31] Teal Vasquez: So I think we may want to put on the agenda for the next meeting to have a specific talking point about how do we, how do we correlate all of these resources, and is there a way, is there something this committee can do as a recommendation to council of hey, this might be a best practice [1:56:51] Robyn Stanicki: for the city moving forward or something. Sounds like a lot of us have all of this, these resources, [1:56:56] Melissa Rhodes: our own separate resources, right? So we bring it to the table and say okay here, and you know, I mean, I would, someone be willing to like okay let's put all of PD's, mine, yours, like down on one sheet and say if it's duplicated we know, right? But at least we're getting, we're grabbing and finding the ones that you may not have, you know, and then yes, and that giving, you know, you're out there on the street giving you those resource cards to be able to hand out, but now you know you've got some of those gaps being able to give it to, you know, so let's, yeah, which but [1:57:30] Teal Vasquez: let's go ahead and make that a, an agenda because it sounds like it warrants even further discussion, and then if people do have those resources within your organization or within things that you work in, if you want to bring those to that next meeting for the rest of the committee so we can kind of review that and then add to that. Bill is like yes, we could follow up with those, but I think we need to charge the agency that you have to change your program to call an update because otherwise that, the list that doesn't work and that's as frustrating as anything else that's not, and I think that's a great thing for us to discuss as part of that meeting, that follow-up meeting, right, because again we have five minutes left and we do have another agenda item, two agenda, so Can I ask a question? A quick one. Am I allowed to ask organizations that I work with or that I know to give me their resource card, their compendium of resources to bring to this meeting? Unless for some reason it's some kind of proprietary information on their book, but most of it is like a HIPAA thing. It's like a trade secret? Yeah. Can I ask them to send trade secrets to us? Please don't. Okay. With that, I'm going to pass it off to Carolyn for an update on the RFP thought process as far as the monitoring. So [1:58:48] Carolyn Fish: I wish I had a better update to give. We only got one response to the RFP, and that response was from a respondent in New York. And so I think that there are some logistical challenges for that respondent to provide robust in-person facilitation services to us here. In a conversation with Ben subsequently, I think, Ben, you were going to reach out to University of Maine. [1:59:24] Ben Treat: Yeah, I reached out to one person I knew who was involved with the program and he was on vacation. I then checked for where the University of Maine used to house that, and they have moved that to online credentialing programs that they offer, so they don't have the same program or a person who answers emails. So that would say, yes, we have our list of people who've done this. It may be that person exists somewhere in the University of Maine system, but I struck out on all my attempts. [1:59:53] Carolyn Fish: Okay. So I think we need to sort of go back to the drawing board on that one. It might be worthwhile for me to do some more targeted outreach to some of the other universities to see if maybe there's either a faculty member or a student in this space who would be interested in offering their services and I can work with the city staff Robin in particular on whether there could be any other options and bring that back to you for the next meeting because at some [2:00:18] Teal Vasquez: Point you don't say well we're so far in the worker yes and I think that's a great point I think I would hesitate at this stage just put a time on it personally but obviously if others feel this differently please voice but to your point I think they're going to get to it again I think it All depends on whether she has takers I mean if she has takers and then okay that's I can't move with that but if let's say not being the two you said I still can't find anybody okay that's two months ready to go I'll be in charge and you still have to take so we have to think about I actually maybe the thing to say is in the next two meetings if let's say Carolyn cannot find any identifiable you know potential candidates then we may just have to think Okay, let's keep the train and well, and I think the other piece to it is how our, how are our conversations going, right? This person has been brought in to help make sure we don't stall in conversations. However, if we in two to three more meetings feel like sense, yeah, we'll have a better sense of whether or not it's honestly whether or not it's even needed, and at that point we can make that call of hey look, we're kind of keep hitting a roadblock, so we really do need this facilitator, let's keep pushing forward, or we say you know what Carolyn, things are moving really well, let's go ahead and put this on pause. If we need them, we'll open it back up again, but I think I think that's probably in my opinion more important than that Awesome, I agree as well. You can just throw it up to throw it up to a vibe check, yeah, you know, when the vibes are in. I agree that if we're facilitating our own meeting, we shouldn't pay someone else, so great, awesome. So the last agenda item, unless anyone has any questions on the facilitator, just to schedule our next meeting. Right. So we've been every other week on Tuesdays at 5.15. [2:02:18] Melissa Rhodes: I think that was the one message that came out. It was scheduled, right, for the 25th at 5.15. [2:02:24] Carolyn Fish: Yep, so the next, if that works for everyone, we can stay with the 25th at 5.15. I did have one note for you about a possible additional agenda item, so council has referred something to you to take a look at and provide feedback on. So earlier in the summer, really the spring, when the warming shelters closed and we sort of as a community started to feel the impact of there not being a place for folks to go at night and during the day, council started talking about potentially or asked city staff to issue an RFP to get a proposal for a day center, and we did receive one proposal in response that council has seen, but they are interested in you reviewing as a committee and providing feedback on that proposal. Do you think we can fit that on the agenda for [2:03:25] Teal Vasquez: the next meeting? Absolutely, yeah. Would it be possible to get it before the packet? Sure, so we have time to review it. Oh yeah, I know, sometimes no, I guess I'm thinking you're sending that along with the three reports that we're getting. I can I can send it in that same communication, yeah. Any questions, concerns, or anything else that we need to address before [2:03:48] Speaker L (unidentified): We adjourn. I know, I wonder if I have, like, myself, that RFP that come in. I just want to let everyone know that, well, I'm pretty sure nobody had to say it, that the organization not put in the RFP, and is actually, I'm an independent client, so I'm employed by them and my other jobs hosted. [2:04:10] Teal Vasquez: There, so I am obviously biased. I will also be refusing myself from that RFP because it's where I do most of my organizing, and during the warming season there was a point in time where I was paid volunteers, so you know, awesome. Hey, if nothing else, meeting adjourned. I don't, might get a little nasty. If you're looking for the absolute most updated food resources, pantries and hot meals. [2:04:46] Jamie Beck: This, it has a QR code on here, but the faith has been an active website. I can bring more of these cards to the next meeting should you want them.