Bangor Homelessness Committee Elects Officers, Discusses Public Input Strategy

[1:41] Carolyn Lear: Can mute us again? All right, so it is 5:15. This is the second meeting of the advisory committee on homelessness. Would it be beneficial for everyone, I'll admit it would be beneficial for me, if to start we went around and just did names again as we start to learn one another? Yeah, and [2:45] Bruce Hews: I think that's true, that's not bad, because the people joining us don't know, don't know us, and I think we may have to do a couple of times as members, I mean community members, so I'll [2:56] Carolyn Lear: kick up, my name is Carolyn Lear, I am the city manager, I'm yeah [3:05] Jason Goodrich: I'm back here today, how about that [3:10] Teal Vasquez: Alton Bundle, director of marketing for Hollywood Casino, Tony and psychiatrists [3:17] Ben Treat: Ben Treats, director of Angler Public Library, hey now, my name is Jason Goodrich [3:23] Melissa Ann Rhodes: I am Melissa Rhodes, director of property management [3:28] Teal Vasquez: Howdy, I'm Teal Vasquez, my pronouns are they them, and I am a community organizer and the bank [3:33] Bruce Hews: city staff in the background, I am Bruce Hughes, I'm the homeless response coordinator for a [3:40] Robyn Stanicki: couple of California resources, I'm Robin Stanicki, I'm the community development officer [3:45] Carolyn Lear: second and they push in as you please, right, so the first item on the agenda is to elect a chair, vice chair, and secretary for this committee. The way we'll do it, sort of informally but aligned with council normal procedures, which are to first take nominations and then do committee vote. If it's okay with everyone, we can start with the chair, I mean I said president, did I say president, the chair and the vice chair, forgive my error. Absolutely, so the chair will generally take over what I've done thus far in the conduct of meetings, also I'll be looking probably to meet with the chair ahead of each meeting to help set the agenda, and then the vice chair generally will just step in when the chair isn't available. The role of secretary has traditionally been sort of minute-taking, fortunately for you all, we generally allow YouTube to do that for us because we're being reported and it's being saved. So, unless there's some failure, that's a pretty easy, non-controlled poll. [5:25] Bruce Hews: all. So I know we have to generate an interim report as well as a final thing. Is that requiring up to three people to write this was going to be supported to the city? [5:38] Carolyn Lear: So I could see that going one of two ways. So the I'll talk a bit about the RFP for a facilitator. I did include in that RFP, the possibility but not the commitment that we would also use the facilitator to draft if we did not choose to do that probably primarily because of cost city staff would support you with that you wouldn't be expected to originate those drafts [6:07] Bruce Hews: because i could see the three officers kind of reviewing the content having to help identify the path of content and evidence and then they review content and then it goes on Once you approve it, goes to committee review and then they tinker with that to file a draft. [6:24] Carolyn Lear: Yeah, I think given the amount of time you're already committing for no compensation, it would be unreasonable to also expect you to draft. [6:34] Bruce Hews: Because we would need a librarian to really know how to do it. [6:43] Amy West: I do enjoy writing. [6:53] Carolyn Lear: So if you'd like, we could start with nominations for chair, self-nomination, if anyone would like to volunteer for that role. [7:03] Teal Vasquez: Can I sort of like dramatically nominate someone else, like three? absolutely i nominate pat keely okay i had to try it i [7:17] Melissa Ann Rhodes: nominate alvin [7:20] Bruce Hews: yeah i will second that okay sorry it's because we like to like you oh god no seriously i can go either way no [7:30] Ben Treat: i also know you're tearing the parking committee too i am yes thanks [7:40] Carolyn Lear: do we have any other nominations that anyone would like i would say jason you know but i [7:49] Jason Goodrich: don't know if you want to do that i feel weird you can't respond like that you know like the [7:54] Teal Vasquez: only other way i enjoyed it a little bit when i you know this transportation right and then again [8:00] Ben Treat: And that would be the only issue that I have at this time with that. [8:07] Bruce Hews: I think once we identify the chair as the vice chair, it's going to be complimentary to that person. So I think in terms of that piece, I think, because they're supposed to support each other. [8:21] Ben Treat: And that I'm good with. [8:22] Teal Vasquez: Jay, would you be able to do any of this chair work remotely? [8:27] Ben Treat: That's a question that I wouldn't know. [8:30] Teal Vasquez: can we yeah can we discourse about that now how do people feel about that yeah i mean i would say just from an operational standpoint it's generally more efficient if the chair is able to be in the room like obviously extenuating circumstances i think it's totally fine but i think and this is by no means me stumping for myself because i had other names in my head but myself but i do think that for a chair to be fully effective they should it's best if they can be in the room as often as possible the only time i've seen that [9:03] Bruce Hews: Work so remote is, but everybody, yeah, exactly, continuous report, that's the only way to do it, but if you have a hybrid like this, you really have to have a good person, so Alton. [9:14] Teal Vasquez: What's your capacity like, do you want to do this, I mean I certainly can, I personally think that you know we have some other folks that I would have nominated, honestly Tony and Amy, you guys are both subject matter experts and well respected in the community, and I see a lot of value in the chairperson holding those qualifications, by no means do I put that on to either of you, but certainly should I be nominated, I think it would be awesome if one of you would be vice chair to help provide to your. Point that complimentary knowledge, so I think it's important for that balance, and where I'm not coming from a perspective of subject matter. [10:04] Carolyn Lear: expertise there is some drawbacks to that i also think there's benefit to it because i think there 's a way to be sometimes more neutral and so I mean I personally don't think there's any downside to not necessarily being a subject matter expert as a chair you've been a chair of other committees so you kind of understand like the structure that works well and flows that work well and navigating kind of like how does a meeting usually go like I don't have any of that experience so i would Support that having you as chair and then vice chair certainly being whomever we decide as a as a team would be a good support, I. [10:57] Ben Treat: I mean. [10:58] Bruce Hews: Perspective as well too, because I think while we've all you know this committee and stuff, I think because you're not in it like being deep so to speak, I think it does give a perspective that when you need to you cannot see so wrong, sure, and that's where we're supposed to. [11:19] Teal Vasquez: Keep that feedback, so okay I think I suppose we could also use a format like you chair or a period, and that would give a chance for like other parties maybe like Jay or I sort of see what your experience has been like from your other committees, and then maybe we could step in to help, is there a term on this chair, annual, is it safe for the whole duration of one year or is it your entire term, different boards have different, yeah well right now we only got we only got one year term in here, I. Actually don't think the ordinance specifies a term. [12:00] Bruce Hews: I would revert to like my social security, which one is it. [12:04] Teal Vasquez: People here have been appointed, it's a different term annually, that's what I thought, yeah so. [12:08] Bruce Hews: Therefore, if it's annually next year, we know you may change over the one thing down the road that you may want to consider is changing that to split the, if the plan is continued beyond that one year, is to maybe split it in a way that you don't lose all the brain trust at one time. [12:29] Teal Vasquez: Well, so the terms themselves are three years staggered, so they some, okay, so some of us I believe have the full three, some of us are on two, and some of us are on three to create that staggering, but I just didn't know about the chairperson that was really to be at least one. [12:49] Bruce Hews: One in Europe and you can't have a six one, so I don't know how this would be. [12:57] Carolyn Lear: So is, you said you would nominate, what's that, you said you would nominate, I would, Amy, I would have seen, you may decline, I may politely decline, yes, yeah, as you can see, even me just like screaming in here at 5 15, that's like a typical day in the life of a clinician, you. [13:20] Bruce Hews: I mean, you get it, you never know, I'm I'm open to being, if you do this I'm open to mainstream, yeah, so I think that, no, I'm just like, yeah, just don't get this disgusting, okay, yeah, but I think if you know we should just take them all and see, okay, so somebody has to put that in, oh. [13:39] Carolyn Lear: So motion and a second and then we'll call, okay, second. [13:47] Carolyn Fish: Yes. [13:54] Bruce Hews: Yes, Jay, Jason, the motion. [13:59] Carolyn Lear: Is for you, yeah, please Melissa, that's fine, I'll answer, teal, yes, all right, is a unanimous eight to zero, now do you want to take us over for the, I can certainly give it a shot, so obviously. [14:18] Teal Vasquez: Next is his vice chair, so we'll open it up for discussion, does anyone have strong feelings. [14:26] Jason Goodrich: Feelings about who should be nominated, by sure, I'm like, I would say Jason, I know Jason's been in this for a lot, the only reason why I didn't say you is because I know that you're overworked, no, I've seen you about, I know what you're doing and you have the time, I've seen you 're close, I know what's up man, so you're gonna nominate Jason, anybody. [14:50] Teal Vasquez: Else have strong feelings, nominate, so should we do motions or, but we'll need motions and second, okay, I introduce a motion to appoint Jay as the vice chair, all. [15:12] Bruce Hews: Right, so we'll do a vote, start to my left. I'll say yes. Yes. [15:24] Carolyn Fish: Yes. Yes. Seven yes. Sorry. [15:32] Teal Vasquez: I will vote yes. I think it sounded like it was going to go either way or go that way. So then we have secretary, which as Carolyn mentioned earlier is not the heaviest of lifts because youtube does the bulk of the work, everyone's looking at you ben, yeah, I know ben, it's just something about being a librarian, it imparts trust. [16:05] Ben Treat: So I've seen the movie too. [16:12] Amy West: The secretary or the librarian. Yeah, so basically it would just be like if tech failed, then I would need to record motions. And yeah, I'm happy to do that. Does anyone else have any nominations? [16:31] Teal Vasquez: That's doubling down on that. Seeing no more nominations, we will put it to vote. [16:37] Bruce Hews: Do you need a second? Oh yes,. Just got well and told take better notes. [16:54] Carolyn Fish: All right. [16:57] Teal Vasquez: So with that we have elected our chair, our vice chair, and our secretary. And the next item on the agenda is to update on facilitator selection RFP. So I will hand that back to Karen. [17:09] Carolyn Lear: So we posted an RFP on the 16th, which was lightning speed in city business. And that RFP was soliciting a facilitator for this work. As I mentioned, it also included the possibility of drafting assistance. It closes on the 29th. We did get one question from a potential bidder. It was a professor from Texas that was interested. And his question was two-part. It was would we be interested in a facilitator participating remotely for our meetings, or would we be interested in a facilitator who was only able to participate twice? So we would only have them for two instances, perhaps for longer meetings. And I will say that I did take the liberty to say I didn't think that was going to be the most effective way for the facilitator to participate. I hope you'll forgive me on both accords, or just on the two visits. I said no on both, that I didn't think that it would be effective. Yeah, that's [18:50] Bruce Hews: actually just going to put a lot of work on it for sure. [18:55] Carolyn Lear: Yeah, but it sounds like we still have time for other bidders, correct? Yeah, and that was just their bidders had until I believe Wednesday of this week to submit questions. And so we only got no, they're just asking questions. They were just asking questions. But I'm going to do this and I don't know, they don't tell me whether we've gotten any yet. And how long do you open that window? So it was posted the 16th, closes the 19th, so two weeks. Two weeks, which you know if we don't get the types of responses we're interested in, the 19th of the 29th. Yeah, we can open it back up, you know. But I figured we'd start with a really brief period in hopes that we can get someone in here really quickly to help facilitate. And so my hope is because those the RFP process will be closed this week, by our next meeting I'll at least have some recommendations, if not a selection, depending, you know, I think it kind of depends on what we get, whether we just want to and you sort of authorize me to sort of make the decision. If it's close and there's some really good candidates, I may ask for your input. We have that situation where we have lots of really wonderful [20:21] Bruce Hews: candidates to choose from. Awesome. Any other updates on the RFP? Does anybody have suggestions? [20:31] Carolyn Lear: There was a great facilitator that the state used for strategic action plan around the HIV B response that I could get the name of, but I also think they're far away, so I don't think, I think it would be another situation where it'd be like one or two meetings because they traveled all over the country. But if I mean if we get to the end of the two-week period and there's just like nothing and we want to extend it, I can always try. How many hours? So we estimated that at minimum it would be the two hour participating in the meetings plus we explained work to repair to prepare, but we didn't sort of set an expectation on how many hours. And what we asked for was an hourly rate, so they're not being asked to bid, you know, ten thousand dollars. It's, you know, [21:26] Teal Vasquez: my hourly rate is X. I mean, if we don't get any candidates, we can also maybe revisit whether or not we think trying somebody who is remote just to at least have that person in the room. Yeah, if nobody comes through in the RFP process, maybe that's a conversation we have in the future [21:45] Bruce Hews: meeting. The other thing also is by the time we make that decision, I have to consider that I'm guessing put us in two meetings into it, so we will also have a good idea of all that too. Yeah, so we can say oh wow, we may not need one because the fact that we actually But like I said, the important thing is to get to the meat of the work as quickly as possible. Because that's, I think, the city wants it, people want it, we want it. [22:19] Amy West: I think the University of Maine system has in the chancellor's office some sort of function that trains facilitators. So they may have like a list of people they've trained and they can send it out to. I'll see if I can find contact there and forward it to you if it's appropriate. [22:41] Carolyn Lear: And also, I mean, our staff has worked with facilitators in various professional functions and, you know, they've freely forwarded the RFP along to them. Them, I reached out to someone in Brunswick, just said it was too far. So I think, you know, to the extent we know people [23:01] Carolyn Fish: locally, who are willing to do the work, that would be wonderful. [23:05] Amy West: Tom P., information is like eight to 10 years old. So they may have completely reorganized, but you know. [23:15] Teal Vasquez: Tom P. Any other comment on facilitator? Tom P. Seeing none. Next item on the agenda is to discuss public comment structure and schedule. So bullet A is public input email. So you want to start with the email? Sure. [23:36] Carolyn Lear: So staff have created an email that we can give to the public to receive emailed public input. It is homelessness.committee at Bangor, Maine. Is it up and running yet? It is, yeah. And so myself and two members of my support staff have access to that, and so our plan will be to periodically provide you in your packet at the input that we've received to avoid you getting, you know, some emails after emails to your personal email. And my question to you is, I wanted to ask you before we just did this, are you okay with me asking city staff to do some public outreach on your behalf to, you know, post to social media and put out a press release saying this is a place that you can go [24:48] Teal Vasquez: to provide the community? Okay, my understanding from the previous meeting is that the email would be established and posted to socials in the interim, and because that seemed to be how the proposition of the email was phrased, is this way to collect the public input while we didn't have a format. So I'm all for it. Okay, I did have a question about the city's agenda as well, and maybe it's just another misunderstanding of mine, but I thought that we would have some of the research that we requested just later. Yeah, it's in the agenda. So public input email, city staff make sure the one who's on the same thing, city staff is going to promote that, put it on our press release, put it out to social. We're all in agreement with that. [25:45] Bruce Hews: It's, but one thing also is it'll be helpful if some of the feedback that goes to council people is probably that way too, because people miss emails, specifically let's say Angela Walker or something, that they'd be encouraged to centralize the same way around shooting a separate email to [26:03] Carolyn Lear: Okay, absolutely, and I can, I think that's actually a good point. There may be instances, generally really the public emails council collectively, and I also get a copy of that, but if the public emails a counselor directly, I don't get a copy of that, which means that they may be getting input that they may want to pass along to you, and I will communicate to them, and we don't want people to [26:29] Bruce Hews: think that we dismiss them because we never got it so i think that we know that 's [26:34] Teal Vasquez: way to get to. Okay, so that's a good segue. I'm gonna go a little off agenda here. Do we have a [26:43] Carolyn Lear: Council representative, at this time we have not had a liaison assigned yet. We haven't always, so sorry. And I've heard Tony's question. Yes, I believe that, I mean, I'm not sure if the ordinance actually directs it or not. It does, so yeah, the council chair should assign a liaison. We've chatted about it. She has not yet made that assignment, so I will take that as a takeaway for my next check-in with Council Chair Hawes. [27:19] Teal Vasquez: to assign the liaison i think it's important to your point earlier tony about they may get messages and things that 's the whole point of having that liaison here is to be able to help articulate those things but also to be able to articulate back to council as a whole the things that we are discussing so i think that would just be a good thing to generally educate the council on is that we have this email now and so if people are getting concerns from constituents you know maybe when you're responding to them, maybe the top level comment that you make should be, hey, we've got an email, you know, not to dismiss your point, but it might be more adequately received if it comes through this email, so we don't have an ETA of one there. [28:07] Carolyn Lear: I will prompt that more, and if I might, would you like us to craft a response acknowledging these emails on your behalf, and would you like to review that before we start using it like a canned response? Yeah, like this [28:30] Teal Vasquez: technology, they've received the emails, so that so that people who email in under know that it's been received. I don't think it just went to a black or a good idea. I think absolutely you guys should, and I mean, I'm sure you do it for other yes email addresses, so I don't think we need to review it, okay, unless somebody feels strongly otherwise. So that was the email. However, the first primary bullet point was actually, and I started there just to make this clean public comment structure and schedule. So we talked at our last meeting about having public forums, if you will, for folks to come in and share their thoughts. Does anyone have feelings strong or otherwise [29:15] Ben Treat: on what that cadence looks like? We talked about having either a separate forum time or 20 minutes [29:22] Teal Vasquez: before each would be. I think we tabled the 20 minutes. Yeah, I think 20 minutes, okay, not enough time, in support of a independent forum that is purely for collecting feedback and, you know, sort of feeling out the community and what their feelings on the a the issue is and b [29:47] Bruce Hews: The advisory there's a farming that wants to have like two separate, you need one like soon to get some public feedback, and then one halfway through just to see where it just gives, give us a gauge of the temperature and how they see me and how they, well, they can hear because they're hearing what we're doing anyway, so because that would be a nice way, and then you know you're gonna be self-compliment with the middle part of the email stuff, so I think that would give a chance to do you one thing. Though is we do this, especially we do a whole meeting, we do have to put some structure in it because I honestly I worried this because it's so people so passionate about this topic, it's going to turn into an unfortunate schoolboy meeting that you don't want to have, can also say nothing is done, other people just really taking an anger out at each other or whatever, so we got a way to support their feedback and yet also giving people some opportunities to. [30:45] Teal Vasquez: Feedback, so what are, what are the rules on that front when it comes to public comment? Are we as a committee allowed to say everyone gets three minute and I'm just throwing them right and you. [31:02] Carolyn Lear: Minutes three, so three minutes, and it would also be appropriate if you were interested to set a maximum duration, so for example for a city council meeting they'll do more than an hour, if you're holding a meeting specifically for republican, but maybe you want to do more than an hour, but yeah, it would be certainly within your purview to set parameters and then we could communicate that proactively as part of the notification so people's expectations are met, they don't come in thinking they're. Going to have 15 minutes and they only have three. [31:35] Bruce Hews: And then of course I'm guessing there would be guidelines about like nothing derogatory, now the other thing too is would there be the chair have the authority to say okay appreciate your time but that has nothing to do with the homeless community, yes, so we have a whole. [31:51] Carolyn Lear: Public comment policy and we would just deem if you, if you wanted to follow that policy we would deem that policy would apply and that would give the chair the authority to, you come in and start talking about something completely unrelated or use obscene language. [32:09] Teal Vasquez: Just gonna ask if we could have that policy distributed to our emails, at least mine. That would be helpful for us to take a look at it. I mean, that way it doesn't take up actual like advisory time, but we can just pour over it, and if we find anything truly heinous in there, we can be like, oh, you're not that bad. No, I suspect there won't be anything like that. You never know. I know the city of Bangor. You never know. Okay, so it sounds like we are pretty well in agreement that we want a separate meeting. So talking about cadence, and I know you mentioned maybe one and then six months, but as far as that first one goes, respecting everyone's time as we talked about a little bit earlier, do we think it makes sense to use our next, what would be our next scheduled committee meeting to hold the public forum? Should we go two in the road, or should it be a completely separate time for people's thoughts, if we can avoid a completely separate [33:12] Carolyn Lear: time? I know that when I was asking when the position was offered, and we were talking, one of the questions I had was like, how frequently are we expecting the committee to meet? It was not the frequency that we're meeting now. It was significantly less. So I can tell you, I can't accommodate certainly more than what we're doing now, so I would not be an additional meeting. [33:41] Bruce Hews: I think also, especially in the summer, and I think I'm hoping that because it's this early infancy, we try to get all the logistics, get some data, that we can start divvying up that we don't need two weeks to do this stuff. We should have a touch base meeting, maybe the exec group every two weeks with some key this week, I may need Amy to come in or something like that, this week, I may need someone else to come in. So I think that I could see that happening, but right now, at least with summer, I wouldn't separate meetings just because I don't think it is. [34:20] Carolyn Lear: I know I support that totally, Tony, because again, if I'm not at work, I have three kids that I'm taking care of. And when I am at work, for instance, today in a four hour period, I saw 17 patients because I have walking hours too. too. So yeah, the less frequent, the easier it is for me to make sure that I can get here and get here on time. [34:48] Teal Vasquez: And so Amy and other advisory members, how do you feel about like a format where there are some of us who are sort of like designated members of a forum group who attend like this forum meeting that would not be part of the regular schedule, and then like a public comment, yeah, like a public comment, and then that information would just be consolidated in the packet for you to review. How often is that going to happen? Well, I would want to know if Amy is, you know, [35:27] Carolyn Lear: is okay with it. Yeah, like if what you're asking is if we were to have a separate meeting differently from our regular scheduled Tuesday meetings, is it okay if some of us are not able to attend? I'm fine with that as long as the group is fine with that. I [35:42] Bruce Hews: don't know, I just don't, I mean my thought is I wish, I was hoping that would be few because really it should be the group, entire group listens to comment, that's just fair, so once in a while, yeah, but I don't want, I don't see, the plus side in terms of us have to go missing the comments and meeting it because, you know, because I'm guessing to some degree we can even ask questions from someone making comments and we can take, can you clarify what that means, I can't get that through reading a transcript. That's true, yep, I think [36:18] Carolyn Lear: that's a very, that's a fair and valid point, so I would say if we think everyone should be there, which I'm also totally fine with, I would just personally ask that it be on a Tuesday [36:28] Bruce Hews: and this doesn't stop chair from any of us at some point say hey, you know what, we need a special meeting just ask specifically about this dimension, people can come and give that feedback, whether that's private, but just for the general piece because, you know, it's also, it's helpful to comments, we need to get the work done so the comments won't give us some guidance with something working and, you know, do what they put forth and again, you know, you may not hit every comment we knew and I said so at least I give us a [37:04] Teal Vasquez: a problem. Oh, we won't make it. No. I think we know that. That's the one thing we can [37:09] Carolyn Lear: block away. As much as we can like open it. [37:13] Amy West: I think I suggest we do this like in two weeks. Like that we just. [37:21] Carolyn Lear: Let's do that meeting for that. Especially knowing that if the hope is to get a facilitator, we're not going to have one here in two weeks. So we might as will be efficient with their time and utilize that to get public comment here, do we think that [37:34] Melissa Ann Rhodes: I was just saying, do we think I'm putting a timeline on that, like an hour, like you were saying? I feel like normally if we're here two hours, like I feel like two hours a long time, you know. [37:49] Teal Vasquez: That's just, and I think it depends too on the cadence, right, where this is the first one. We may want to have that extra time. I mean, just because that this is going to be the one where the most people will likely show up, and you can also encourage people for the interest of time. [38:06] Bruce Hews: Where they're, you know, wherever they can submit their comments using this, right, get it out, you know, and then we get, and then that takes, it may not be in a whole hour and a half, two months, I. [38:14] Teal Vasquez: Don't know, so well, I mean, if only 10 people show up, yeah, it might be shorter, but I think from a, from a scheduling, I'm just being optimistic, come on, from a, from a like public perception, probably need place, I think having that two hours probably make at least for the first one, but that would bring me back to do we think that the next scheduled meeting is the right time, and is that enough time for city to get word out and feel like we can make sure people know, so that's something that I have a lot. Of strong feelings about. I feel like if we just do one sort of introductory public comment meeting, we are at risk of just soliciting the most tokenistic, most accessible opinions, because people who might have scheduling issues, people like Amy who have children at home in a full-time job, are not going to be able to attend that one meeting that's in our regular format, you know, we're not, we're at risk of not capturing a wide enough or, you know, heartfelt enough group of public comment. I think that's. The value of the. [39:33] Carolyn Lear: Email too, but I also understand majority of the folks that I'm caring for don't have easy email access or reliable email access, and there's a fair amount of work that goes into needing to get to a computer and get someone's computer and then checking the computer and all the things, so. [39:51] Bruce Hews: i think that's a i think that's a fair point i mean the other thing else is use this first meeting get a gauge what it's like before you decide if i know i 'll agree with that yeah because that way you can see okay one person show up and okay then we deal with that but if we had kind of like you know line packed up it was okay we really have something separate on top of that yeah i agree [40:12] Carolyn Lear: With that, you know, the other thing I'll say, I don't think we need to workshop this to completion here. Is the committee may want to do some amount of meeting people where they are and getting comments, and so we don't have to do all of the public comment gathering here. We may want to reach out to maybe some stakeholders who are interested in hosting, maybe not all nine of you because that might be overwhelming, but hosting a contingency. We do have some outreach experts here. I fully support, I fully support going and meeting people where they are. Obviously it's [40:50] Teal Vasquez: pretty much my entire job, so yeah, I think that's a great idea. I had somebody reach out [40:57] Amy West: about a meeting that happens every second Monday, you know, leadership committee. Jesse Archibald is the person who reached out, and so I, that might be a good opportunity for a group of four of us, like whatever it takes to not be a public meeting that we didn't advertise that, and you know, so that we're not violating us, so like three or four of us could go to a meeting like that and hear what folks have to say. I'd be happy to reach [41:28] Bruce Hews: after her. That wasn't tough. The only, the one thing I was Monday, the one thing I would do then, you can just behind the scenes, is like set up some guidelines what we're going to do if you don't send me and him out, but what are the things that we can do or shouldn't do because we don't have the group to back us up. So that's true, so you can set up some guidelines. Hey, we only listen to feedback, they're not giving you opinions about anything like that. They're really good. I literally [41:55] Amy West: really has a thing that the city solicitor told us to say up on my computer screen [42:00] Bruce Hews: that will please the city solicitor, and it's on record. [42:17] Jason Goodrich: This is just my opinion. [42:23] Teal Vasquez: You, so it sounds like we're in near agreement that the next meeting should be a public comment meeting. Is that no, yes, it's accurate. We need a motion to make that happen, or is that a, I don't think so, but can we bundle the one hour time frame in that motion? So are we 're thinking of limiting it to one hour, or are we thinking going our scheduled two hours? I'm okay with two if we could do, sorry, no, you go to your like, yes, I was going to say we could do a split difference, the one hour comment and then one hour of discussion of the comment. It doesn't get [42:59] Bruce Hews: I'll do it, I'll have comment on 30 minutes. Sure, that's perfect, love it, yeah, we're nothing if not [43:05] Teal Vasquez: Amenable if we publish that we are going to take public comments until 6 30 and we get one person that shows up at opening, do we have to remain until 6 30 or is that we'll publish it [43:30] Carolyn Lear: to be up to okay a particular amount of time, so i'll say up to an hour and a half of public but [43:37] Bruce Hews: you know we can print out any email feedback, so if we have let's say you know a loan, this is where [43:43] Carolyn Lear: you can read off a comment or something, so i actually have a question about the email feedback, just appreciating that volume and management of that, like is there an expectation that each email gets acknowledged and addressed, and if so, if we're getting a very large volume, how we want to navigate that, or do we want to cross that bridge when we get to it, so if i understand [44:09] Teal Vasquez: correctly, when somebody sends in the email, they'll get essentially bounce back or not bounce back with a response, automated response you're saying hey do the knowledge, and then city staff is going of bundle that into a packet and just send it to us in bulk, right, and then once it, sorry [44:26] Carolyn Lear: did you have more to say once we get that in bulk when do we do we review that at the next meeting do we review those at a public comment meeting like when do those get looked at by us because i can imagine if you know say they're 20 emails every couple of weeks that's a lot of public comment for us to manage and sort through each meeting can we have like how does [44:53] Teal Vasquez: that, can we have that information archived and it's all kind of has to be, yeah what i mean is like for the express purposes of you know like our review, you know like outside of that way we are truly capturing everything, but if we're getting like 15 hate comments and five comments from you know stakeholders, you know we can you know look through that database yourself and say okay well that's a hate comment skip, you know i guess i'm hoping [45:31] Bruce Hews: that i don't as a committee we don't have to deal with emails that don't apply to us, you know if it's something that's inappropriate, something that you know just talk about parking committee doesn't come to us, and we just deal with what's here, and then yeah and then and again my i was wondering if it's possible that if you went around talk separately, i'm actually more interested in the themes that come out, sure, if 12 50 emails paul has the same theme about you know homeless individuals on you Know C district, okay, then that's a different discussion than reading every 15, you know, 50 emails, right? So that could be a way for you to figure out process, identify, hey, we've noticed both themes that came out all this feedback, so I think you're [46:18] Teal Vasquez: absolutely right, that is one, but I also think that as we're sending these out or we're getting these emails as community members reviewing them, and then we're seeing themes that because I might not see a theme that you may see or that Ben might see, and then sharing that so that it gets added [46:35] Carolyn Lear: to the agenda, I think that's how we address it, so there's not like an expected we have to have [46:41] Teal Vasquez: an individual response to each and everything. I don't think beautiful, I think it's well let's say [46:46] Bruce Hews: depending on volume, I mean I don't have no idea what the line is that you decided to shut like each of us get five emails, take a look at what's it's called [46:58] Teal Vasquez: Yeah, I mean we can, we can look at that. I mean I think once we understand the volume, keeping in mind that realistically early on we're going to have probably the largest volume, and in that instance I do actually think it would, and open to other suggestions, but I think if we're reviewing all of those and I know it's time consuming and we're all incredibly busy, But then again, everybody has a different perspective deal, you may pick up on a pattern that the rest of us are going to be able to say, Hey, can we add this to the agenda, so that not the next meeting, the following meeting. We have like that sort of making the basis of our agenda moving forward is okay, these are the things that we've gotten from public comment. Here's what we've seen from the data. Here's how we can start having meaningful conversations to address these things and the data. That sounds great, so is that something that we could just like self-direct if we had access to those archiving emails, we could pour over them, extract some themes, and if any of us felt passionately about a theme that we encountered in the wild, we would be like, okay, well, you know, let's bring it to the advisory and hear what Alton has to say. Well, and I think hear what the committee has to say, yeah, I think if I'm understanding correctly it will all have access [48:13] Carolyn Lear: to all the emails, it'll be part of the packet. I was planning to make it essentially every week [48:18] Teal Vasquez: I would, every email will be printed, well I'll include it in your PDF packet, you certainly [48:23] Carolyn Lear: Aren't obligated to print them out, but it will eventually become part of the public record of the work of this committee by being a attachment to this. [48:38] Teal Vasquez: Can we put something on the email social media that whatever is emailed to this address will become public because I just feel like that would be something that people [48:52] Carolyn Lear: might not be immediately aware of. You could also be aware that everything you email the city of [48:57] Teal Vasquez: been going before, but you're right, not everyone has that understanding, so that might be something [49:02] Carolyn Lear: language we want to make sure the response email we can put it into the automated response. [49:07] Carolyn Fish: Any other [49:12] Teal Vasquez: questions or comments on public comment? So next meeting will be public comment, following meeting we'll get into our regular routine. Do we want to talk about ongoing or do we want to handle that, you know, start with that one? Yeah, I really want to start getting to Robin. [49:36] Bruce Hews: No, seriously, let's look at it and once we get that we can pull from there. [49:40] Teal Vasquez: I'm in agreement. Awesome. All right, well then moving on to city staff info and data, which Dr. Tony, I'm just stuck on our asking it off, she could say Bruce would do it, I gave up my chair. [49:53] Carolyn Lear: Chair, we pulled another one over and the three staff people all tabled up and I can disappear. [50:00] Bruce Hews: Don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. Nothing would make me happy. [50:19] Robyn Stanicki: Mr. Chair, if it pleases you and this committee and my contemporary, I thought that what we might do is I could introduce the structure of the memo and talk about the data sources and then have David and Bruce talk about the data specifically if that sounds like a good approach. When I can come in and kind of build out whatever might be okay, so in your memo here we have compiled what we know from city sources and available sources that we are that we commonly interact with. We were not able to pull new raw data and analyze it in preparation for today's meeting, so I'll preface this by saying we understand that these are ongoing conversations, and we can drill down into anything that you see here at any time. So we organized this data into five domains to kind of create some buckets and give us a little bit of structure for your discussion. So we talk about the scope and characteristics of the homeless population, faces and places. We talk about the conditions leading to homelessness. We wanted to address some of your questions regarding population movement. And then there are two other domains that we felt were really, chunky. And we could give you an entire meeting just covering the homeless response system and then also the individual and community impacts. Impacts so at a later date we'll we'll build all of those things out for you but we felt like there was a lot here so to pull the different plans studies and reports I have listed them here and everybody has a link so you can go in and you can look at that source material we've given you the data in a very distilled format you can go back into all of these documents and look for some context if that is helpful and we'll also try to fill that out for you here if you reflect it some notes about data though and i and i don't want to assume that everyone is a data geek like me but if many of you are working in a field where you're touching social issues you might know that not every data point is measuring the same thing as the data point next to it and homeless data is really no different the geographic boundaries the populations the encounter types all of these things mean that one number is not always measuring the other number and a good example of this is a one night count of those that are sheltered or unsheltered homeless is not also the same number that you can port in any other count of how many homeless individuals we have in the city and for that same reason whoever is collecting the data also has their own geographic scope and aim for that data so they might be measuring it a little bit differently our con our continuum of care measures data in a hub which for our hub is three counties. Penobscot County also collects countywide data, the state collects statewide data. And so at times I'm giving you numbers that are not only describing the city specifically, but what we can offer is that potentially in some of these numbers, you could create some assumptions about to what degree that number does describe the people that come through here if you know if the city as a service center is providing services then maybe a county-wide number describes something related to the services that are provided in the city we also talk about a couple of different terms just to kind of make sure that everyone has a good foundation The point in time count, when we talk about the point in time count, it's a one January night that a bunch of volunteers and staff go out and make contact with the number of individuals that they are able to count on a single night. So it's not an estimate of that total. We also talk about service utilization. So these are encounters and visits, shelter beds. We're talking about capacity in a lot of those measures. We think about data in terms of unique people, but we understand that you might have a unique person that visits every service, and so they are counted multiple times, and so you're going to see numbers that might describe the same people. And then we talk about, you know, the definition of homelessness is different for many different sets of numbers. So for the school, their definition of homelessness is lacking a fixed regular nighttime residence. The HUD definition of homelessness is not having a suitable place for habitation. So in those ways, you have a number that describes a very different condition of homelessness than the other. And so then you might compound some of that to say, well, what about the data for those who are at risk of homelessness? Again, a number of data. So it's really important to just kind of look at what is the data attempting to describe and make sure that we ensure that we're not kind of dragging that same definition of the data to another data point because we could [57:06] Bruce Hews: Is the variation indefinite result whatever criteria you use based on their funding requirements? Because for example, you would think, well, everybody probably uses definition because it's equalized as playing field, but I understand that some funding may say, well, this is what I'm paying you money for, but you have to look for how many people, and that's why they change quality data reflect that. So do you think that's the difference why [57:31] Robyn Stanicki: people are different in terms of what they're looking for? I think in some cases it can, like I said, it could be that the intended use of the data is different from who collects it, but another reason could be that the data that they're looking for is compounded or that approach to collecting that data occurs at different times in which your concept of what is an equitable measure is different. So that definition might have occurred many years down the line in, you know, a best practice, [58:08] Ben Treat: for example. Samson and Hunt are a good example of that. Hunt and Samson have different definitions of the two degree funding structures, but a lot of times you end up with overlapped requirements on the first method. [58:21] Bruce Hews: And you know, and not to be cynical, but I know sometimes with data you almost use the data to answer pre-existing conclusion. You have to say that, oh, see, the data shows like 100 of these people are all involved in crime, when 100 are, you know, the medical issues, 100 involvement to help, because you look for that data versus someone who basically have a neutral slate to see, okay, what is the difference, what is the variation. So I think that's something just Again, at the end of the day, it depends on who's asking for the data and how you tally it. [58:54] Carolyn Lear: Right. And questions. Yeah, what the question is. It's about why they're collecting that data. Right. [58:58] Robyn Stanicki: And in some cases, the data is due to, I need to go when it's time to answer the question. So I'm essentially creating an experiment, right? I'm doing a test and I'm getting the data. It and then you know to your point you know the definition of homelessness for youth lacking a fixed regular nighttime residence that definition takes into account education and grades and the things that you need right like a fixed regular nighttime residency so I would like to leave it there and I will come back in if you have questions but I know Bruce and David have some really good data here also and if you have any specific questions about some of the data that I hold go from there [59:55] Bruce Hews: Any sure do you want to start yeah so I know you're all busy so I did today I just printed out some of the data that I had just so you can look at what our Bangor Community Action Team has been collecting for data and I'll give a little bit of background on our BCAT just for those of you that aren't familiar with the program we found it to be tremendously beneficial at the city level and at the police department and if you've already seen this for you don't pay for it yeah so it's the acronym is Bangor Community Action Team okay so this was developed in 2023 It was more of a collaboration between public health and the police department. What we found at the police department was more and more of our officers were responding to calls for homelessness, mental health concerns, and things that people weren't particularly comfortable speaking with a law enforcement officer in their uniform. We developed this civilian response team. And it's essentially, it is the boots on the ground for the city. And you see numbers if you look for that first couple of pages, not to focus too much on the numbers, but you do see, and I'm sorry, to the left and right, it's developed to go month to month. So you do see an increase in new people typically in the summer months. And then the numbers tend to drop in the older months of the year, which I think makes sense. People are utilizing warming shelters, some people close to our area, and then returning in the weather. So just what you're looking at on this first couple pages is calls for RCAP. These are all non-emergent calls, and so if you need a police officer, typically at BCAT it's not being sent to these calls. That is the breakdown of the types of calls that they go on for all calls for the month. Diversions are for us. Somebody identifies, self-identifies as not being from Bangor, they do not want to be in Bangor, they have a place to go, they'd like to get home, and then we verify that they're welcome. So we do not complete a diversion unless the person has a place to go and is welcome there. How do you get all of those? Typically, we coordinate through public health. We'll set up a bus. A ride, we can provide a lot of rides as well if somebody has a place to go. So that's what the diversions are, and you will see those numbers tend to increase as the weather gets colder. Do you have a sense of how many of them are local, like a place in Pazalta or someone called Portland? Yeah. So then they started, if you go to the third page, I think, the pie chart, they do actually, this was a new addition. They weren't collecting this, I went back 12 months for the first set of data, and then the second set of data for the pie graphs, they only started collecting this back in December. But if you have a chance to look through that, you can see the breakdown of housed, unhoused, from Bangor, not from Bangor. And this is self reporting. So these people are identifying that it's not a determination made by the person. [1:03:46] Teal Vasquez: Are there limiting factors on supporting someone who is in this diversion category? I mean, if they're from California, do we finance a bus ticket for them to go to California? On air I [1:04:04] Bruce Hews: don't know if we've gone that far but we do go far yeah if hiding foods or something [1:04:18] Jason Goodrich: out keep them on the other side and they want out find them away [1:04:27] Bruce Hews: this pie chart looks like almost every month Dr. [1:04:34] Carolyn Lear: Can I just like, just because a lot of these folks I've also interacted with, like you said, it's self-reported demographic. So patients may not identify as being from Bangor. And then I talked to them and they spent 10 out of the 12 months for a long period. They're just like, well, I was born in Connecticut, but I've lived here for, I've lived here for like 10 years. [1:05:02] Teal Vasquez: I was in Portland, but now I'm back. [1:05:03] Carolyn Lear: So I think again, like when we were talking about data, I think it's always important for us to look at the way questions are asked, how folks are responding, how we're collecting [1:05:15] Melissa Ann Rhodes: it. Well, I got you. That's a good point. [1:05:19] Bruce Hews: So when you say not from Bengal, does it mean that I'm not talking about where you're born, but are you currently from Bangor? I mean, I hear that you may have been from Bangor because you were born here and then you'd stay here for 20, 30 years. To me, you're not from Bangor because you haven't been living here. [1:05:37] Carolyn Lear: Right. So I think that's the piece with this data. I've worked really closely with BCAT over the years, and it just depends how somebody interprets the question and how it's asked and understanding that BCAT's not collecting this information to publish it in a research. So like, the variable, you know, we're not like, making sure the questions are like, very specific, necessarily. So [1:06:00] Ben Treat: it's just this will ask you to be in the town 30 days before they're considered a resident. It's a good assistance from justice. [1:06:07] Robyn Stanicki: He does also ask you for your last stable housing address. So again, people are asking the question for the data point in a in a way that is helpful for them. [1:06:21] Bruce Hews: The last table could be here. Go ahead, we'll stay with it. OK. [1:06:27] Teal Vasquez: Can I ask you a question? It's not necessarily relevant to the data. What do you do for foreign nationals that are and do you encounter that population a lot? And what sort of protocol does that.. [1:06:42] Bruce Hews: I'll have to get back to the committee on if we have had it. [1:06:54] Carolyn Lear: I could just anecdotally. I have not run into many situations where folks are from, or national are trying to get back to their home country, but just because I haven't encountered it doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Not in Bangor anyway. That has happened in Boston. [1:07:12] Teal Vasquez: In DC, we usually work with the embassy. [1:07:14] Bruce Hews: So we identify someone truly, I mean, I remember one person was German and we work with embassy see transportation. Yes, that's it. And then sometimes state department. Oh, but again, that's New York City and DC where tons of those words here. You really, you know, this is the end of the line, so to speak, from rehab that people usually don't come up this way. So yeah, so I mean, this is just the data that was collected by bcat. I didn't want to because I just wanted to provide that. Thank you. Very. [1:07:55] Carolyn Fish: Much thank you. [1:07:57] Teal Vasquez: I have questions about the bcat structure. I might find it within a email you or is that someone? [1:08:02] Bruce Hews: Else selected you certainly can and you know I was going I was thinking when the committee was talking I can when I get back to the police station talk about members of the committee would be interested getting to know them. It's a four-person group they're great. I don't know really had some extensive experience with them but they really yeah I would have to think about it at this data. Do you have an idea how many people were released from incarceration that ends up being in the house released? From the car sure like you know you've done you just got released you got picked up and then now okay you're done because you know this is a dropped charge I presume they don't send you home only if you have a house they said you're done right you open the door and would you would have an idea how many people fits in that category. I know it would be anecdotal I don't have a percentage but I know what happens and as far as you know currently there's no system where the chair would call somebody. And say listen we have so-and-so here with lots of at least he has no place to go can you guys facilitate him going somewhere. [1:09:11] Speaker J (unidentified): We don't have that structure in place not yet yeah I am in the process of pushing out to those places like fresh shark the jail in those places so that when they know that someone may be going on the streets they can get a hold of me and I can help give them resources wherever. [1:09:28] Bruce Hews: They may have to go it'd be great if I find something you know I'm just curious because. [1:09:32] Carolyn Lear: I will say with when it comes to releases to you even with like any attempt at a system like often you don't know when the release is coming and you're going to get released at like 6 a.m. [1:09:44] Teal Vasquez: Unexpectedly it would just it would be great if they could get a packet with the local. [1:09:48] Speaker J (unidentified): Just even my card and then they call me the next day whatever it worked yeah it's probably like. [1:09:54] Bruce Hews: It's like in some cities I know, like, you know, people get dropped off at this bus stop and somewhere in Queens where we get a bus, Metro car, wherever it was affected, and then a couple bucks and that's it. So that's the point of drop off and I mean I have no place to go and then go on your own. So I don't, I think here probably okay, you're done, the door's open, you can go. I do think the jail could provide data if requested that would show, that would be interesting, based on inmate numbers incarcerated. Individuals who identify as transient, that's the code that they use in the name file, they use training again, it may be a not huge number of [1:10:35] Ben Treat: course I just don't know what that number is. I agree that it would probably provide [1:10:39] Teal Vasquez: inside the advisory I'll [1:10:43] Bruce Hews: try to reach out to the property kind of gym because my supposition is if they're not giving support they almost, you're setting that up for recidivism in the sense of like, you know, getting in trouble because you're forging for themselves and I'll also say like [1:10:59] Carolyn Lear: having worked pretty closely with a lot of the folks at the jails because a lot of folks I care for in and out of the PCJ, if that's not happening it's probably not because, I'm not saying they're saying that, but it's often not because it's a lack of desire on the jail side, it's again I think it's just terrible, yeah, system and structure. [1:11:21] Bruce Hews: One understanding like, you know, sure, but if it's not there you can't do anything. [1:11:26] Robyn Stanicki: I think also if we reached out to the main prisoner re-entry network to find out whether they are supporting or raising certain data that could highlight a trend that you might find helpful. We could see if they have anything available. I don't know what they do. Good point, Robin. [1:11:52] Bruce Hews: So there is a state program, supervised community confinement program, which is you're released into a community, I believe it's 90 days, I could be wrong. I believe it's 90 days with housing and then you're released after that and that does happen routinely in Bangalore through different programs. [1:12:19] Carolyn Lear: Is there like a different street name for that and I don't know how to describe it but like certainly I provide a lot of, prescribe a lot of Suboxone so as folks get released they'll walk in and I usually will say like are you on any release conditions and they'll be like I'm on a bed-to-bed and I understand that bed-to-bed means I was released to a residential treatment program and as long as I'm attending that residential treatment program I'm good, I don't have to be in jail, if I bounce I have To go back to jail, is there like a street name for supervised community confinement? Well, they might know what you think about the I've been. [1:13:01] Bruce Hews: And so if folks at Fresh Start might be part of, yes, that sounds like a group. [1:13:13] Teal Vasquez: Probably I want to solicit for feedback, honestly, this now it's down just a. [1:13:20] Jason Goodrich: Main prison re-entry number? You were just asking about that. Are they the ones supervising the [1:13:27] Bruce Hews: SCCP? I don't know the answer to that. Typically, we're notified if somebody is being accepted in the SCCP program. We are notified through the state probation officer. [1:13:51] Carolyn Lear: That could be a really valuable group of stakeholders is the POs, because a lot of our folks, certainly my on house folks that are on release conditions, whether I don't know it's like a CCP that are staying at Fresh Start or Leading the Way, there's only a few POs that like Chad Reynolds, yeah, Chad and people that's overseas Leading the Way, yes, because I've had a lot of folks that Leading the Way and often if they're gonna, you know, folks that have been previously unhoused are sometimes more motivated to do an SCCP option because it also gives them a space to be in early recovery in a more stable and supportive environment, because you can imagine if you're released from incarceration, you've had a period of sobriety and you're released back to being unhoused, it's really difficult to maintain sobriety or recovery or whatever term works for that individual while living outside, so many of our folks do opt for that and the PO's have been very supportive, I know, and really helpful for people and I'd be really curious, like anecdotally, what they've seen is helpful for folks that have been previously and how it has worked and what hasn't. [1:15:08] Bruce Hews: I do have his email address. I'll be glad to read that. [1:15:11] Carolyn Fish: There's one other one. Yeah, Rob. [1:15:17] Jason Goodrich: Rob works for DHS. [1:15:19] Carolyn Lear: Okay. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I can find it. But that would be great. Thank you. [1:15:24] Bruce Hews: And I think it's in the hyperlinks that Robin sent out, but I also brought in a printed copy of the city's homelessness crisis protocol. Call and so I don't know if the group had an opportunity to do that yet as well but [1:15:41] Robyn Stanicki: Somewhere it's a history but I'm not sure I don't see any possible so it's actually. [1:15:49] Bruce Hews: It's actually on the city's website as well. It's one of our public facing policies, so if you go to the city's website, which these departments will find it listed under the policies as well. And this was a mandated policy that was created by the attorney general in 2024, I believe, and it was mandated that all these departments in the state have a policy in place to address, you know, I think primarily what we were seeing was unhoused individuals plotting the jails and it was for low-level crimes. That it was just a real challenge for the individuals that were being incarcerated and then also for the jails that were being flooded with folks who were, you know, being held for low-level crimes that we were seeing on a regular basis. And so copy the protocol is on the city site briefly that there were the crimes that were identified as if a police officer interacts with an individual and that individual identifies as unhoused, using a definition that Robin had mentioned earlier as the definition in the policy as a person who is experiencing homelessness that lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate policy definition, and the crimes that were listed are criminal trespass, indecent conduct, urinating in public, possession of scheduled drugs or drinking in public when possible. And you know, there's obviously provisions that allow for different actions from discretion from the officers. When possible we try to refer somebody to resources, but I mean that's that's obviously something that I think affects law enforcement statewide, but the general's office has a mandated policy that does sort of play into what we're [1:17:55] Carolyn Lear: working with this committee. Oh sorry, I was just going to ask a question for specific to Bangor. When officers kind of come across the situation, do you know what resources get offered to folks? [1:18:08] Bruce Hews: So I brought three, you like set it up for me, sorry. You probably saw this in here, so these are the resource cards. If you haven't had one of them, I thought I'd bring them in just so everybody could take a look. Super, thank you. Yay, more. Yeah, I actually grabbed those. That was the new one. Oh, that's a new one. Yep, it just came in. Next job. So, I don't know. I can bring it over and do it. I feel you. I think I brought everything. Yeah, I'll get boarding in then, free to leave. [1:18:40] Carolyn Lear: That's all right. Yeah, this is so bad. I gotta update our new, our address. Bridge Clinic, that's the old one. Next time. [1:18:48] Bruce Hews: This is a great committee. For if there's changes or updates, let me know, we'll get those. I will. [1:18:52] Melissa Ann Rhodes: Do you ever utilize resources like out of state? So meaning if somebody's saying a detox or a bed somewhere, whatever, like, you know, so are there increases in here is full and can't get in, you know, out of state, New Hampshire or whatever may have that availability? I'm just curious. Or, you know, do we see, I mean, I've seen many situations where people need it right then and there, can't get it, and they're just put back out on the street, and then event, you know, people having to advocate to get them elsewhere, and ends up being out of state, but a lot of people don't have that support to get them there, you know what I mean? But I don't know, I just know of a lot of those places out of state that do, they're looking to pull and help. And sometimes to get that help, you can't be here. And then maybe you get it here, you leave here, you're out back where it all is. And so to get them out where they can really do the work, you know, I'm just curious on that resource. Let's give them some. There's a better one. Yeah, [1:20:06] Speaker J (unidentified): I mean, when we're working with people on the streets, if someone wants to be in recovery and wants to do something like that, and there's nowhere around here that we can get them in, BCAT has done this, and then Joe Hartel, Together Place also gets people really going in that direction too, and a ride and options, and we'll take them down to Saint Mary's. Yeah, so they'll go through the hospital there and then get into detox, kind of like [1:20:36] Carolyn Lear: realistically, obviously what we're saying is there are fewer detox beds in reality than what it appears to be in the state, and it is, there are surprisingly a large proportion of those are in Bangor, which is a beautiful thing. There's a lot, there's often a wait to get into detox. If you present to one of the hospitals, it is surprisingly hard to stay for detox, and similarly, so like Saint Mary's, we'll just use Saint Mary's as an example, often we can get folks a ride to Saint Mary's, but if they don't get admitted, there's no way for them to come back. [1:21:14] Bruce Hews: You can make a call down there. Yeah, I think the challenge is if you're sending someone for other program or family, right, we've seen this where we've actually done it where it's not picture, in fact it's a family in New York State, unless you have an intervention all the way, you can easily just basically look like you shipped important, well they're not dealing with it because they get lost in it. So I remember this patient we actually had was home police liaison, Dave Humble, was basically able to contact his counterpart in Portland who met him at the bus station. So he had like an hour to kill where he basically talked to him about treatment. So by the time he gets on the bus and by the time he got back to New York, he was ready to get treatment. Otherwise he would just- Stay in Portland. Yeah, in Portland. Yeah,. So I think it's a lot of labor intensive stuff. Yeah. And really, I mean ideally you'd like to have the time to do that, but not everyone has the time. [1:22:15] Teal Vasquez: I would just like to notice to those of us here who are providers or working in the services or in outreach, that's something to look out for as patient brokering. I know that during my sort of work at Together Place, that is one of the issues that we ran into were these sort of brokering agencies that come through, and their job is to recruit patients and farm them to an out-of-state recovery program. program and it doesn't take a lot of research into this practice to find out that hey a lot of states have outright banned it and be like the federal government has taken a good interest in trying to limit it and it you know obviously I can't outright declare that it's dangerous but I think if you talk to our stakeholders and our friends on the streets you'll realize that they think it is you realize that when they interacted with these patient brokers they did not feel safe and so you have to be careful when you're working with outside providers because you have no way to hold them to account if they're yeah usually you do that if you have [1:23:20] Bruce Hews: like a company plan that they will take the patient they have read everything the patients that i want to go to agency so and so that everything is discussed that will just facilitate that but i agree with you don't be like hey i got a great program out in the middle of nowhere [1:23:36] Teal Vasquez: that would like to get you into it and that's the format that a lot of these patient program structures use like i know that during my research of it when we were trying to investigate one you can see it was doing it here in van gogh by the way with that like some of their affiliates are widely reported to put people into treatment facilities with no running water so you know it's like that doesn't thrill me so that's one of the things that i worry about [1:24:04] Carolyn Lear: i don't want to go back to what you're saying about out of state like we used to have project told about Ellsworth. [1:24:11] Carolyn Fish: Did Bangor do that for a brief period of time? Did Bangor PD do that for [1:24:15] Carolyn Lear: like a teeny, like a really little bit of time? [1:24:20] Carolyn Fish: Are they still doing it, Ellsworth PD? I think it's the Wardo. It used to be Ellsworth. [1:24:29] Carolyn Lear: I don't think it's Wardo. [1:24:33] Bruce Hews: Does I know Bengal PD? Many of the costs is the it training crisis. Do they get any orientation training working on the homeless individual so that everyone has some confidence in some basic knowledge of what challenges they face? I [1:24:49] Robyn Stanicki: can answer that question because I paid for our Beacon staff from an informed training a couple months ago, so I know that they've received that. [1:24:59] Bruce Hews: I'm talking about officers in general. Our trainings are typically online now, so one hour. But you didn't even get it? I haven't seen the training, so I don't know what it involves. It was either the last year's or 2020. I'm just curious because the thing is, if they have a great response from a police officer, they're going to welcome a really bad interaction. It doesn't matter what program I have, they're going to say, I don't trust you because this is how it got suckered the last time. So I just want to see what programs the Plano PD has. And the second question is, do we know if other jurisdictions around us here have similar approach? Because if you guys take this humanistic way of looking at it, but other jurisdictions take a much more flat light approach, that means we're going to get hit, more people want to come here because this is how people are treated, right? I try to avoid police lingo, so I might have just done it a minute ago when I say mandatory training. So when I say mandatory training, that is statewide, so it's mandated by the criminal justice academy, and if it's a topic that's required for mandated, yeah. [1:26:20] Ben Treat: And the interesting thing about the CID training is a couple of things here. They're mandated to have at least 20 of the force across the state, so Bangor has a little bit higher, a little of a number on that because they're forced to, you could take the time off, okay, but there are two actual trainings. There's an eight-hour training and there's a 40-hour training, yeah, and most of the most of the officers are taking [1:26:45] Bruce Hews: The eight-hour training, yeah, you were talking about training specific to dealing with homelessness, right, as opposed to, oh, you do the CITS exam again. I'm not saying they need to take a cit like course, but I'm just saying, like, what education do they have about some of the challenges homeless people, you know, support and encounter, the perception of police exceptional law enforcement, how does that, you know, how do we bridge that gap? I mean, things like that. [1:27:10] Teal Vasquez: Is that kind of some pcaps role as well, right, it is to kind of be that in between and have [1:27:18] Bruce Hews: a little bit more specialized experience. It's a really good point actually, and that was Because we did the level of trust with law enforcement, and I do understand that sometimes wearing a uniform does sort of pull that out, but more uncomfortable, I suppose, in interacting with us. DCAT really was... [1:27:39] Carolyn Lear: Katie, you guys also used to have that community liaison officer, Ash, and that was wildly helpful. She was... I think she moved on to a different opportunity, right? I don't think it was anything. [1:27:55] Bruce Hews: It's a military obligation, but in that position is something that I know Chief Hathaway. [1:28:06] Carolyn Lear: It made a huge difference with our folks that were on our own house and also just like community stakeholders like Officer Ash would call me all the time if there was like a theme with either a group or a human. [1:28:20] Bruce Hews: Do you like research at all, okay, so please also have some mental health aids on, yeah, hospital [1:28:26] Speaker J (unidentified): right, do you guys still have that, yeah, so they 're very helpful, right, and there's the five [1:28:32] Jason Goodrich: offices on our team on the options, yeah, the options without or at least exposed to a [1:28:37] Carolyn Lear: And i can tell you having worked in boston community perception of Boston PD of our unhoused folks was not great. Having worked on the street for so long, our unhoused population actually typically has great interactions with Bangor PD and BUCAT. And other towns that are surrounding Bangor, folks do not always have as good of an interaction as they do with Bangor PD. So you guys have done a lot of work to make that happen. It's very appreciated. [1:29:22] Teal Vasquez: What I would say is that, aside from our experts, it is very important to me that at some point in our 12-month scope here that we have an agenda item discussing what the police interactions actions look like with our unhoused and what the cultural competence competency levels are for law enforcement on the unhoused because I think that has a major impact and I think that what you said is very telling like you know unhoused people Mr Parker just like any other demographic of people I mean if anything they're more due to this because they have to be street smart on a daily basis to survive. So they have key interactions, even if they're tokenistic interactions, right, like one bad apple poisoned a bunch, it creates adversarial protection against all of the services in Bangor. And it pushes them deeper into addiction and deeper into isolation, deeper into mental distress. So that is something that I really want us to study at some point, because I think it [1:30:38] Bruce Hews: plays an outsized effect. I would often say like the interaction with law enforcement also first responder medics and stuff like that if it's a good spot my job is a whole lot easier because I'm not spending all my time fighting that emotional toll from a bad interaction with law enforcement or DMS so I think I mean really when they do a good job with you know and like I said we said I noticed that here also in a lot of places they it makes really makes my life awful [1:31:08] Teal Vasquez: In the interest of time I want to make sure Bruce has a chance to talk about those information that's you officer [1:31:18] Bruce Hews: Do you have yeah opportunity as well absolutely I mean I was just gonna go up I mean BCAT I work [1:31:27] Speaker J (unidentified): very closely with them and they're just a wonderful team too just to give you a little overview of what we're doing in community public health community services I'll start with community services is we have a city outreach worker which right now starts August 1st and that person will be going out on the streets working closely I think with PATH going to the places like the brick church and the well and these places and building relationships and starting to work on housing with people there's A full-time position at his full-time position, yeah, I think the last person that held that position, I think housed, I think it was between 10 and 14 people last year, so they're doing casework as well, yeah, so they'll take a person right up the streets and work with them right through until they get held in that and then trip, and then we have after that we also have a housing stabilization navigator for addiction prevention, so what, and I held that position before this person just took over in the year that I did that position I had over 170 referrals and I had I we forgot I think 100 of those referrals and I helped I think it was what that is going into building a relationship with the landlord right and building a relationship with the tenant and trying to come up with a solution where we're going to help these people a house I was in the group I was in the birth of that right so I would go in and build that relationship with a landlord see what I could do for his on his part talk to the tenants see what I could do with his part you get into some little ground save the housing or if we could or we would have to try to help that person move on to a safer place sometimes it was finding rehousing that person. [1:33:43] Teal Vasquez: I'm assuming that takes the format of also maybe some referrals to services like RAP and general assistance or is it completely independent of that? The grant [1:33:52] Speaker J (unidentified): that we worked under and I think is still working under that for the next year had its own money under that grant to be able to help people with back rent help them if they were in [1:34:06] Teal Vasquez: eviction so going forward will they have their own fund no and in that case will they be following [1:34:14] Speaker J (unidentified): on that program well I think we always looked into those programs too it wasn't just that we were where are the two shelters also have diversion funds so they help people also stay stabilized in their apartment along with GA right so depending on the city has a version company trouble Street has a divergent bond yep Janice works there and then Maria does it at the bank where a shelter I can say I've [1:34:41] Melissa Ann Rhodes: Been working more closely with the diversion program than typically for what I do. Yeah, you know, like usually it's GA and local churches and things trying to find that. Recent, most recently I've been working with the program keeping people housed, which is great. And so adding to, I mean, we worked together to avoid evictions and keep people out. I think the bigger, the bigger thing on that is it comes, you can only do so much, and then if people fire people, right, like you get them in and then they are trying to help them with their cleaning, trying to keep it, they're not helping the rest of the on house. That's the gap. And yeah, and then they say oh never mind, I'm in, I don't want you anymore, and then they're back out because they've, you know, they've made themselves well, they're smoking in the unit or they're actually, you know, things are happening, right. He's working hard to try to keep them, but then they fired their workers, and that's like our biggest gap as far as housing to keep them home, the most recent, like I'll use is the 10 we recently helped in a new project, and I have one unsuccessful enough because we've busted our tail and I've met, you know, meet with them and do all the things, but those services and people quit, right, so people walk away, they're working, they oh I'm done, I quit, and now we can't hire, can't hire to it in the meantime, trying to hang on to them, trying to personally work with them too, but you can only do so much, and then it's that service this. There's a gap there. [1:36:14] Speaker J (unidentified): I mean, in Portland, they just hired, I think, three retention navigators. So those retention navigators would fill that gap a [1:36:22] Bruce Hews: little bit, right? Like where you would be able to the case [1:36:27] Speaker J (unidentified): worker work, they got housing work with them for a little bit, and then make that pass off to their retention navigator. But you're right. I mean, and it's [1:36:34] Melissa Ann Rhodes: nine people that are back out now have another problem. Right? Right,. So that makes us nine harder to house them anywhere right and I and I see people I do the hearings, they have denials. I'll do the hearings and say okay, give me all your least like things that are going to help you in the next few years and let's make a list like I want to help you but I feel like I'm putting you in the midst of the US. [1:36:57] Bruce Hews: Yeah, right. I mean people in your fighting and not fall into this still fighting people, you know, for some of the people that I saw some questions. for both of you from your work and observation are there certain characteristics of clients that you know like this is going to be easier to get this person services with keeping them house on house versus someone that you know you have to spend more resources because the thing is we you know we at the end of the day is going to be resources at the end of the day so there's one person i can keep amy up but i'm spending like 15 people around her trying to keep her house a little on two you know Four months at a time, yes, I kept a house, but I also missed the opportunity to hear someone who was now vulnerable, and I never got some because they were willing to get help and. [1:37:47] Speaker J (unidentified): Curious, yeah, combat, now you understand that we have a PATH team that does that out on our streets here in Bangor, right? We have the options team that is also on our street. We wanted to try to fill a gap of trying to make it so people weren't becoming almost simply because we, you know, I mean, that year that I worked there I saved over a hundred people's housing, yeah, right, which or found them new housing, so like that could have been another hundred people on the streets, and because I could see. People who are. [1:38:19] Bruce Hews: Somewhat receptive but just struggling with identifying resource, it'll be a good kind of a peer support, so basically a peer help them navigate, and versus someone who needs more intensive stuff, that's where these are, these are intensive people, a lot of them, yeah, and that's kind of what I do, okay, experience. [1:38:40] Carolyn Lear: A lot of the folks that I care for that have either been chronically unhoused or have like cycled through housed and unhoused, we know that these folks are disproportionately affected by severe persistent mental illness or struggling with substance use. Many of them have had fall into brain injury categories, whether it's because of overdose or assault or all the reasons that people can acquire brain injury. And when we house them in a new place, they're navigating, how do I stay connected to my recovery provider, my mental health provider? How do I get there? Typically, as people get housed, their housing navigators pull back. And even with peer supports, Bangor is, believe it or not, a really geographically tricky city to navigate if you don't have a vehicle. It costs money, it's very time consuming to take the bus, the walking routes are really tricky. So if you have someone that can't transport you to your appointments and you don't qualify for links because you live on a bus line, you start to fall away from all of the folks that were getting you stable to help you get housed. So I think looking at post-housing support, they're a great opportunity for us to be more creative with how we provide that support, and transportation is a huge piece of it. [1:39:55] Bruce Hews: One of the things that some research has looked at is for people who have been institutionalized all their lives, whether it's in jail, incarceration, home, hospital, they stand a higher risk of not knowing what to do outside because everyone has been taking care of them whether they want to or not. Suddenly they're being forced to fend for themselves. Some people actually want to go back to jail, want to go back to a hospital because of the fact that it's easier and not because they don't want to because it's so tough for them to navigate. You need a PhD to navigate some of the stuff and even then it's not that easy. So I think that's where you know if someone I mean I can almost guarantee if a patient comes to me and she said I've been in the hospital for like 40 years on my 50 years of life that person's gonna have a hard time and many of our folks we have [1:40:44] Carolyn Lear: great compassion for young people that have struggled with homelessness and we see generational homelessness and when people turn 18 or like you should have figured it out on your own even though nobody taught you how to do these things and I've worked with folks long term that get housed they don't know how to do their laundry because no one's ever taught them because they were on house since they were 14 again right and they're 25 now and they've lost housing 18 times because they can't keep their unit clean because no one's talking their unit or [1:41:18] Melissa Ann Rhodes: people that are out right 100 that you see the generations like they now because their kids are in housing right but they have these issues beforehand and now and you know we really try to work for them to say okay what you know yes this house is you know we don't want to make you on house like we need to keep you out this house is unsanitary what are we going to do how are we going to do it do I feel like because of certain lack microservices like we are now a little bit of everything right I'm not just the, you know, the property manager. I'm also similar to a caseworker, you know, a PSS worker, because I'm like, okay, you index that, I'll show you how to index this, right? I'll go in on booths on the ground and do the work with them, but it's not really the job, right? But we are all trying to work together to keep it. [1:42:09] Bruce Hews: And you know, it's, it's difficult, so I know some agencies each other do different things, like educate how to look at, you know, getting housing, get a system, you know, sister support, whatever it is, but there's no organized city efforts to say that we have a series, so you know, educational events that you know, purple street may want to tag into, and we can support them and things like that. So because it's really kind of people all whatever agency wants to do all day, is that correct? Well, I think every. agency has a different mission right you [1:42:43] Speaker J (unidentified): You know what I mean? Some are low barrier people, low barrier situations, and some are more high barrier. [1:42:52] Carolyn Lear: And layering all of that on is like staffing, funding, all the things for the agency. [1:42:58] Robyn Stanicki: I was gonna offer at a future meeting that we bring to you a ecosystem map of the current services. That would be cool. That you might be able to draw lines between the agency, the service, or the pathway that someone might navigate. Just to understand how the system currently functions for someone that is actively navigating through that to try to see if you can identify some weaknesses. [1:43:35] Bruce Hews: Is does the city bank currently have any like a forum where all the agencies provide homeless care can get together one, you know, just things typically that would be through the. [1:43:46] Speaker J (unidentified): Continuum of coordinator and it'd be weekly, there's running a meeting which would be the people on the literal side, and then we also meet for coordinated entry, so that's a meeting where anyone that has done an assessment for a coordinated interest system we'll go into that, and then we would talk to about them for vouchers that are available, but I'm talking about. [1:44:12] Bruce Hews: All the homeless agencies get together as a group to, you know, just have a discussion to say, okay, these are services we do, okay, so if you're doing that, I figure where to get my people help, you know, go to you and get services, so they can all coordinate services, because I get the feeling sometimes we have too many agencies providing just coordinated care, like someone's doing something without coordinating, and then we lose, I can see that from my insight. Yeah, in the recovery. [1:44:37] Teal Vasquez: Community though, we do keep a pretty close eye on each other. I mean, if anything, the patient brokering situation is a good example, because we were able to tap our network of other recovery agencies and shelters and say, hey, did someone strange come by and talk to your clients and say, we'll take you to California to have a VIP recovery experience? They're like, yeah, something like that. So we keep, we do math with each other about available recovery beds, and you're right that it is probably more of a free-for-all than it deserves to be. [1:45:06] Carolyn Lear: What I will say too is there's a lot of agencies that on paper offer a service that in reality is not accessible. So when you're looking at who the stakeholders are, the list looks this long. In reality, it's this long, and it's really difficult to coordinate in an efficient and effective way among multiple agencies. [1:45:34] Bruce Hews: It's like coordinating. I'm going to take my other disaster hat. We used to have this thing called a Voluntary Organization Active Disaster, where basically pull different agencies involved in human service work, and you have the focus on collaboration, corroboration, cooperation, and we basically meet regularly to say, okay, this is a service we can provide, blah,, blah,. And we actually call people out and say, okay, you said you have this list, but are you able to really do this? So people can discuss this as a group, not just say, well, this is an intake of words of faith that this is exactly what you do. Do so we can say, okay, how, I mean, you're saying you can provide this case management, how often are you doing that? Can you do all that? Can you like do reality, do you think this sustainable program? I mean, we put people on the spot as within that group, and then that way everyone knows, you know, you said the case management knows exactly what, you know, sometimes we call, but that's the informal network. You still need a formal composite to say everyone has a clearinghouse of stuff that you know exactly where folks can try to at least ask those questions. I think there's great [1:46:44] Carolyn Lear: opportunity to that and i also will say i've been in some of those we have like somewhat of that situation going on right now because of the hiv outbreak with regular meetings with stakeholders and even when you're on the ground and you know that 's not happening when you do call folks out you know they don't always acknowledge that what they're saying they're doing isn't But I think there is incredible opportunity for that as an intervention. [1:47:12] Teal Vasquez: And I would want to join Amy's point about how sometimes, mostly in complete good faith when it comes to like the bank agencies, people say one thing and then do the other. But when it comes to constructing like a food web of what services are available, I think there's sort of an informal question of available to who that is super important and super relevant to why we have so many people who are not over openly not seeking shelters who are openly not seeking services. One thing I learned from my outreach because I try to reach people who I feel are not being reached by others, so that's transgender gay queer individuals black and brown individuals and one thing that I heard particularly from transgender individuals in recent discourse was we're not going to stay at shelters because when we stay in shelters we're misgendered we're touched and violent things are said about us we're not allowed to use the women's facilities and so it's like I could role-playing as them cross off half of the food web right now if I looked at look at it because I was in their shoes I didn't want to go [1:48:27] Bruce Hews: And I think even for people without any specific issues to pick me or fire go to shelter I'd be taking advantage of I'd be bullying and all kind of makes me just I don't want to go so I mean we see that even folks nothing else going on in fact that is I'm a new kid on the block they know [1:48:43] Teal Vasquez: Something about me well that's a marginalized position too new homelessness not on your street smart develop yeah but Bruce whatever final points you can get across [1:48:58] Speaker J (unidentified): Yeah I mean we have general assistance today obviously in that they are seeing people from eight to four or whatever they come in I mean also keeping people housed and also helping people will that are looking to get into new places so we have obviously the quick and health [1:49:35] Bruce Hews: Now I know this data could be abstractable would have the data say we can extrapolate that how many people become homeless how many people leave homelessness because at the end of the day you want the net to be more people going home going into homes yeah so we can extrapolate [1:49:55] Robyn Stanicki: that data so we call that in hmis data inflow and outflow and let me see if i can find where we have that 's one occasion i might have added i might have added it to it i think i might have added it to the response system data so you might not have here but there is a way that they're tracking when you're putting someone into the system for the first time or when another hub is either no known to someone that would you know entered into like the beginning of and then you know when they're you know find housing, you know, then they are considered inactive and [1:50:49] Speaker J (unidentified): they can, you know, be people, so shelters, both shelters, we put people in the EMIS when they're, when they go into shelter, and then the PATH team would also do the same thing when they're working with people outside the team at the city. We don't put our data into HMAS yet, we're working on that, so that, I mean, it's only as good as what's being put in there as well, yeah. [1:51:16] Bruce Hews: I think that's how far, we don't know what the actual number is, it's like impossible, it's impossible, but I don't know, is it right, you're not going to get, and yeah, it is, because I heard [1:51:28] Speaker J (unidentified): heard you talking earlier, I mean, about the definition of homelessness, when a person's house surfing, they're not considered homeless, right, and or squatting, yeah, right, so like that's a whole different number of people that come in and out of the streets throughout the day. [1:51:44] Carolyn Lear: Yep, right, and that's very much by season, that's very much, we see a huge change in that by season, and talk about like in and out of Bangor, it's not uncommon, we have folks that are from Bangor that have been in Bangor, they have a relative in Lincoln that they can go to Lincoln for six months until they burn that bridge and they're back in Bangor, so it's, it's, it's [1:52:08] Bruce Hews: incarcerated, go to hospital, and they consider house even though they, yeah, you know, they never haven't done anything. Yeah,, yeah. Right. Chris, [1:52:20] Teal Vasquez: can I ask you a question? When we're interacting with the unhoused and we're collecting this data for HIMSS, are we apprising them of the fact that we are putting them into the database? [1:52:31] Speaker J (unidentified): So they are told when they're in shelters, I'm not sure what Pap does. But I know that they both shelters read a thing, letting them know what that they're being put into the [1:52:42] Teal Vasquez: is there a way that they can revoke their data if they would like to [1:52:49] Speaker J (unidentified): Jason wouldn't do it, yeah, he's more difficult. [1:52:52] Teal Vasquez: I should just come to you first when I first request out, the protections are there. [1:53:00] Ben Treat: Thank you, I feel [1:53:07] Amy West: Like you had this conversation, like I already knew, there's just tremendous work being done by all of these different agencies, and agencies that don't happen to be at this table tonight. I feel like there's a large population in the city that has no idea what's happening, and even listening to the conversation might say, that's all alphabet soup to me, I have no idea. So I think one of the benefits of this committee might be finding a way to think about the rhetoric of how we talk about this because Like this is a great conversation. I have just great respect for everyone around the table and what you do. But there's not necessarily as many people seeing it the way I see it, the way my co-worker Olivia sees it, working with all or many of you and not you, but... I don't know. Maybe she just will never get rid of it. [1:54:00] Teal Vasquez: Maybe some of them will, but yeah. [1:54:02] Amy West: But I just feel like it's heartbreaking that I get to see how much good work is done by each of the agencies you represent and many more. And I know there are many people who for whatever reason don't see that and don't understand the value. So I just, I hope that we can also think about bringing along the rest of the population with the way that we talk about this. And I'm not saying anyone's talked about it wrong tonight. I'm just saying, as we think about it, like and that can be an element of public comment in a couple of weeks how do we hear what the person's saying and say how would it change someone's mind if they heard us talk about you know independent living in terms that relate to the very complaint so that 's just what comes to mind and you know i hear things that people are saying and i'm just like so excited because i know it's like a lot of work that goes into to it but i just that's the other Thing I want to think about is how do how do we as this [1:55:11] Teal Vasquez: Committee help the general public it's been right yeah so when I actually interviewed for this position that was my whole that was my whole platform I said that like one of the major focuses that I mean one of the questions was how would you address it I mean if you had three $3 million, what would you do? I said, well, I would focus on restoring trust and I would put advocacy out front of the issue. And I would try and pressure the city councilors to put this in layman's terms because this is a heavily pathologized issue. And in this room where we have providers who are experts in it, 's even more pathologized. And the layman has almost no access to the terminology we're using. They have no understanding. Understanding and they can do simple math and they can do great math but they look outside they see that the issue is growing every day and they see that all of these experts are speaking in these heavily pathologized siloed ways that don't make sense to them and don't make sense to the stakeholders and they're like I think that's contributing to the issue and it creates the adversarial angles in the city so I think that is something that I really hope that this committee can focus on as well Is just removing these barriers doing more direct advocacy and direct outreach and appealing to the layman and teaching our citizens and community members what it is we do why we do it why it's important and maybe there are other avenues that we can pursue it that simplify the process and make it more accessible I mean one of the sorry [1:56:53] Bruce Hews: One of the goals that you guys really want to advise for the end product of this is to figure a mechanism to continue to educate folks both professional and non-professional about homelessness and how it's evolved because I think you know your point is right I'm able to use sex we start stop talking the way we just used to talk because that's how we function but it changes even for us now versus three years from now so and I think a lot of the challenge of you know the population face this was Communities because no one gets it no one else stands it from whatever perspective so I think a goal for this committee as a CDG action 12 months is probably on how to have a system of ongoing education to just about services and also destigmatize the challenge [1:57:44] Ben Treat: To do what has to happen for the city councilors I mean they cycle through yeah so well that's [1:57:50] Teal Vasquez: Why you're hoping to build this in so if we could create a playbook for the city council for years [1:57:54] Bruce Hews: I think some historical knowledge I mean they change but the staff doesn't change as much so that's where they can do it and inviting a regional response I thought of when you were [1:58:06] Teal Vasquez: Were talking but I think that I actually wrote down in my notes here. I think it'd be interesting if one of our unhoused or recovery agencies would do something like an unhoused education or like welcome to homelessness where we could do sort of an open class for newcomers to homelessness because like I like I said earlier, that is a marginalized position, and say... [1:58:31] Ben Treat: It's to be naked and afraid in Bangor, which is not a zoo. It's a horrible experience. [1:58:38] Bruce Hews: The one challenge with that is when you do education like that, people already have an interest, they want to go and learn about it. You need to build in a way of education that how it ties into almost everything in our community. Even if you don't think about homelessness right off the bat, all these have implications of homelessness. If, let's say human security heating bills and all kinds of stuff so I think there's got to be just regular education but there's also others to build in that I'll say everyone's invested it's not just this person because he's homeless I know some jurisdiction for example I came in with jurisdiction with a the mental health budget was not by one instant but by everybody because education department police department everyone has been built in was it either they said all of you have a stake in it so you guys got to be part of this so it's the same thing in terms of education with everyone even if they have never seen homeless but they got what they need in [1:59:39] Teal Vasquez: The interest of time as we're getting close to wrapping up does anyone have any final questions or remarks for any staff that we have here today Melissa asked me to pass on her request for the next date and time of the meeting to be sent to her email or at least posted on the Pampas city site it's the 11th right yeah [2:00:04] Bruce Hews: 11 let's see that's the information right anybody else motion to adjourn [2:00:26] Teal Vasquez: Also what are we asking the staff to do for next week yeah so I think for the next meeting we really need to have that protocol for comment if you could have that sense yes I'll email the [2:00:39] Carolyn Lear: Policy if I don't turn on the mic it doesn't go through the TV I'll email the policy and we'll start doing public outreach to encourage folks to come to that to that session and then maybe because we probably won't have an opportunity to have a robust conversation about the next meeting, maybe folks could send their input to you, Alton, and then we can coordinate on an agenda. [2:01:06] Teal Vasquez: Yeah, I mean, I think it's likely going to be a unique agenda for the next, if I recall correctly, we were thinking 90 minutes of public comment and about 30 minutes for committee discussion of said public comment. Comment. And I mean, that essentially would be the agenda. However, if there are other items that anybody wants on the agenda for that conversation, please send it so that [2:01:29] Bruce Hews: we can make sure it's included. I think this is what you go give that map or something that until you were saying you don't. [2:01:36] Robyn Stanicki: So we, as technical advisors, thought to continue the conversation and the data by looking at the homeless response system building that eco map and then you had mentioned that you wanted to hear like other municipal examples specific things that the city is doing so perhaps if you maybe have ideas about what that should entail it would give us all that much more time to prepare for you so any lead time that you could give us with what you'd really like us to bring [2:02:12] Bruce Hews: ring would be helpful. Well, email should we send that to you? Can, but I think you're on the list. [2:02:18] Robyn Stanicki: yeah i'm on the i think that you 've responded i think i've seen it yeah i think was the [2:02:25] Carolyn Lear: election of a chair. It probably makes sense to work those asks through the chair. Does that make sense to everyone else? Okay. [2:02:34] Bruce Hews: I gotta be include both of us, right? Like you can cut out the middle [2:02:38] Teal Vasquez: man. Does that make sense? Oh, but then the numbers are going up, the solicitor numbers either way, it's fine. Okay, send it directly to me and I'm happy to coordinate. I'll probably cc both of you. I don't really understand how technology works, but I'm going to try and believe about [2:03:04] Carolyn Lear: about this out there and it will find me. Thank you so much for all the data. Thank you. Yes, a great place to start the conversation. I'm sure it took a lot of work to pull all of it together. [2:03:15] Teal Vasquez: I appreciate our experts here too who are working, not only working on the issue on a daily basis. [2:03:23] Ben Treat: You can acknowledge it. [2:03:35] Carolyn Lear: I would suggest that you either could sit at the counter or we could rearrange this table and then folks will step to the podium to give their comments. Minutes, see, like you're just worried about the power dynamic of that. I know, it's just like, yeah. [2:03:57] Robyn Stanicki: You know what, you're right, you're worried that it'll be like on your head and you're like [2:04:01] Carolyn Lear: when we did something similar for the opioid advisory committee, the committee did sit at this table facing the audience. Yes, that's perfect. Yeah. [2:04:17] Teal Vasquez: There's nothing else, our motion adjourned. I second. I do need a gavel.