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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTRC 20210610 auto captionsit is 707 pm now calling this meeting to order and stephanie can we please get a roll call sure uh commissioner ali president commissioner daniel president commissioner uh dillard is gone uh commissioner gathawa is not present yet uh commissioner harris yeah commissioner johnson here commissioner rivera here commissioner sakais here and commissioner treyore here thank you all right so we have the approval of the may 27 2021 meeting minutes for the second agenda item does anyone have anything they'd like to bring up for changes or any discrepancies prior to having the approval vote all right in that case uh stephanie oh can i first get on yeah i'm gonna move to approve the may 27th and do we have a second to that motion rivera second okay it's been properly moved and seconded to approve the meeting minutes from the may 27th meeting date uh commissioner ali yes commissioner um daniel yes commissioner harris yes commissioner johnson yes commissioner rivera yes uh commissioner sakawis yes and commissioner treyore yes motion passes 7-0 thank you thank you and we are now on to agenda item number three public comment of items not on the agenda do we have anyone from the public that would like to comment on any items not on tonight's agenda if so could you please raise your hand and we'll be sure to call on you and give you up to five minutes all right i'm not seeing any hands at this time okay so we will then move on to agenda item number four which is the review of the draft request for proposal for facilitator okay thank you chair treyarch so i know this is a lengthy document and most of it is kind of boilerplate in terms of what the city requires of anybody who is being considered um for serving as a vendor for the city but i did just want to point out that on this first page you'll see that considering any amendments that you may have for the rfp it is scheduled to be posted or released on june 15th which is tuesday and it will be advertised for 29 days or approximately four weeks the due date is july 14th at 2 30.the process for posting this rfp is it will go out to the city list serve for people who subscribe to the purchasing or who want to be vendors for the city it will also be part of the general city news release and if there's any commissioners who want it specifically advertised just let me know and we will make sure that we get it sent out um to where you want the rfp to to be advertised or posted i think for purposes of the group what i did was well i shouldn't say i i along with the purchasing department took um the information provided by commissioner ali and we kind of cut and pasted into the proper places on the standard or template for rfps i think the main things that the commission probably would look at are the project description which again was part of your packet at your last meeting and then also what we added is just this background information which gives the racial uh demographics of johnson county it also gives you know a brief background on the trc and why it was created and also um the city's commitment to address addressing racial inequity so that's pretty much what we added to the background information once the um proposals are received there will be a time for commission members to do interviews of uh submissions if you decide to have a quorum of commissioners participate in the interview process that would be a public meeting just like the one this evening if you choose to just have a subcommittee which would be less than a quorum then it would not be open to to the public i'm not sure at this point that's something the commission needs to decide as they're not due back until july 14th i also uh just wanted to mention that this template does require that any submission include uh three references and then it also on page 14. let's see if i can get there here um goes over kind of the evaluation criteria so how you would assign points based upon a particular and if anyone has any questions kind of about whether or not the submissions are public record they initially are not public records but once the trc decides on who they want to select as their facilitator then the submissions all the submissions do become public records but until that point where somebody selected and approved by the trc then it would not be considered a public record so i am available to answer any other questions that um you may have over this actual uh rfp or over the process stephanie i have a question um i'm more curious than than anything so in the um on page i think this is page three under background information um the demographics of the population of the ethnic groups the five largest ethnic groups in johnson county are broken down um and white hispanic is only 3.3 and is there a reason why we it was split up that way instead of just um like hispanic latinx latinae just just try to yeah um i i don't think there's any um reason other than the source that was used but if you prefer for us to cite a different source that doesn't break it down by white hispanic and looks at latino slash latinx we can certainly uh update that but that's easy enough to do yes that that would be awesome i think that would be more reflective of the community okay yep we can we'll get that taken care of tomorrow morning okay thank you and then there was something that was written about like how the contract was 18 months long um i know in the original resolution it had said that um i guess i don't know and this would change i guess when we do the contract writing up but um if two-thirds or more of the commission decide that we are not in need of this type of facilitator then we would be able to vote to replace or re hire someone else or whatever it may be that we would need at that point yeah i think that can be rewarded if we we probably would just put the approximate time just because i think there's an approximate timeline for when the council um assumed that you you would need someone but we can definitely just uh stake that out a little more explicitly and also note in there that the resolution allows for um the the contract or the facilitator relationship with the commission to expire if two-thirds of the trc decides so so that that's easy enough to also edit and we can take care of that tomorrow morning as well one thing i wanted to address is for that two-thirds vote aspect um so in terms of their pay and their payment so it's for the work as it's being done and but this is a contract being signed is there any type of like prorated like early termination fee that we're looking into or that the city has a concrete policy on it from on my review of the rfp it appears that the a person submits invoices um for payment and so they it's it's a little different um probably than the proposal that you've seen in the past for a potential facilitator for the trc i think this contracts contract is much more explicit in terms of payment and so i don't recall any um pro-rated notice in this but i can definitely comb through it tomorrow and if there is something in there are you wanting that to i guess what are you asking in terms of the contract if there is a pro-rated fee well essentially just since we're looking to get someone to commit i mean something on the order of 15 to 18 months whatever it ends up being that um that there is some kind of at least like severance pay in there because i feel like that might be a deterrent to people applying if they do know that at any time two-thirds of the commission can just say that they're not needed anymore so if they're to drop some other job or some other activity just want to make sure that they know that there's you know some kind of severance payer period that they'll get paid until they get some other job opportunity is that something that we would have to vote on and does that money that i can't remember um does the money that we're paying the facilitator is it city funded or is it a part of that million dollars that's allocated it would be a part of the million dollars that were allocated to to address racial inequity in terms of whether the commission would have to vote on that i think that's probably more question for legal to see if they can place that in there or not if legal says tomorrow morning that that is something that can be placed in the contract then it will be added if the legal department says that that's not something that they would enter into a contract to provide then ultimately um you know legal would probably have concerns with entering into a contract that provided for that i just um my only issue with giving the severance pay is that i think part of what i had originally put in as a part of um what they would present in their proposal was a timeline of what they thought they could offer and how long it took so if they say that what they're offering uh for their specialties is gonna take six to twelve months then um or if whoever you know uh if i'm just i'm assuming that these people uh who are applying for this position are gonna have their own timeline so i don't know that it's necessary to have this like severance um pay but i'm i'm open to hearing other people's thoughts on that well for me my idea on the severance pay basis just is that i mean let's say that their timeline is longer and they are accomplishing you know some amount of work but we do also have that strategic planner strategic project coordinator position that we were talking about and speaking about so if it came down to it and then we decided that position was needed more in the facilitator that while they could continue offering expertise that the strategic planner project coordinator could cover more of those things then you know we might just see that regardless of the proposal that they're cut early and for me i would just like to make sure that the person has the peace of mind because it could be someone from a lower income background that literally is giving up a lot to to join and to put in that application and to put in the time and effort and i just want to make sure whoever it is has that peace of mind regardless of their economic background or standing so i i don't mean like severance pay in terms of the entire length of the contract outstanding but rather on the order of four to six weeks so something that we need to consider is what if two-thirds of the commission votes to have this person to separate like terminate this person and it's because of their ineptitude that's a provision that could be added for it as well that if it's due to something such as ineptitude or lack of lack of effort or lack of accomplishment than severance pay not being included so basically if the person is to want the severance pay or is to want to continue to have the position they just have to be willing to actually commit that time and effort that they signed to in that actual contract i mean this again is just ideas being put out there still have to be something voted on so so would it essentially be a for cause termination so we would need to have a reason to separate like to to terminate the facilitator i mean that's there is a provision in there about not meeting the expectations of the contract um in terms of um given like severance pay i mean generally speaking if somebody is invoicing this city it's for work that they've completed it's not an invoice for perspective work um so my understanding of what you're suggesting is that somebody be paid for prospective work even if it's work they haven't completed if i'm understanding what you're suggesting yes that is what i'm suggesting but more so in the sense of if it's at any time that two-thirds of the commission can vote to say that that person is no longer needed then they could still have a lot of work that they could have accomplished or but we have not even written an rfp yet for that strategic planner or strategic coordinator so if we were to write an rfp for that person and they end up taking on some of those extra duties or things that person the original facilitator has already signed a contract and put in a proposal on their work but then someone else ends up coming in and taking over those things so in a way that kind of just it's a bit of a conflict for me that's a part of the like i would say the interview process would be figuring out if they have the qualities or you know like if someone um says you know they think that they can successfully do this this and this in 12 months and then on top of that they have experience in strategic planning what they could do beyond you know uh just the helping with the recommendations i think this severance and i know for a lack of a better term whatever you want to call it i think it's just getting into muddy kind of area um and i i don't know that i would feel comfortable adding that as a part of this um and i i i just don't want to pay someone for work that they haven't completed if that makes sense oh it completely does i just mean last thing i'll say on it is just that with the state laws that we have currently in this state uh just it just is reminiscent of me of to how an employer can terminate someone without cause essentially at any time and then that person isn't you know entitled to any type of pay afterwards so for me it's more about setting that precedent and expectation that you know not wanting to have those types of policies continuing in our state because we're one of you know it's not every state in the country that has that but the state of iowa does and for me you know that ability for an employer to just terminate someone at any time for whatever reason it could be something frivolous i just don't want that person applying to just have that idea in their mind because it may deter people yeah and chair treyori i should just point out that um the contract would have with the addition of what the commission discussed tonight uh a disclaimer in it that would say it's approximately 18 months but with the notice that two-thirds of the commission could change that at any time because this would be a contract it's a little different than at will employment so generally speaking for a contract it it usually is for cause it's not at will so it is a little different than at will employment where you're correct uh employer can terminate somebody for any reason as long as it's not a discriminatory reason so i think the contract has those provisions to um protect against what you're concerned about in terms of somebody just being uh terminated for for any reason so it would it would need to be for cause just because of the nature of the contrast okay thank you yeah thank you for the clarification that's all i have does anyone else on the commission have anything else on this or any motions they'd like to put forward or are we going to move on to the next item so would this this person be considered an independent contractor correct okay yeah um and then so if i'm understanding correctly since you're gonna put in that disclaimer uh stuff at the end then there's it's not necessary to put um in a severance pay or um i think that if we're gonna put in that there's a severance pay i really think that we should vote on what the amount is and stuff like that so i don't think that i think i don't think that we should put that specific verbiage in but um let me know if i'm misunderstanding yeah i mean i mean i think you're right on that end that if there were something to be done then it probably have to be done sooner rather than later by sooner rather than later i mean to be discussed tonight rather than pushing that to another meeting because this is also scheduled to go out on tuesday so it's up to the rest of you i mean i can't bring up motions myself so if anyone would like to do that you're more than welcome to bring up that motion if not then we can table that so i'm i'm not sure if um independent contractors traditionally have gotten severance packages or severance pay if the per if the company or whatever they're contracting with decides not to continue the contract yeah and i just want to stress again if if the commission decided to to sever their relationship with the facilitator for cause that would be different than the commission coming to a point where they decided that they no longer needed a facilitator those are two different things and so um you know i think you know the concerns i just want to make sure we're all on the same page i mean the the this rfp would let somebody know that it's not a guaranteed 18 months because of the resolution that states that at any time when two-thirds of the commission decides that um they no longer feel they need the facilitator that that would be um a part of the rfp and so it would be something that would be noticed to anybody who decided to apply for this and so there i guess to me generally speaking nobody who applies should be under the assumption that they would be compensated for 18 months when it clearly says that you know at any time where two-thirds of the commission fell they no longer need the services of a facilitator um you know it could be changed or the relationship could be severed which is different than getting rid of somebody say after three months because you don't feel like they're fulfilling um the expectations of the contract those are kind of two different things and i think the contract provides for remedies if it's for cause which is a little different than the two-thirds vote um so um and then will we um so on the hiring process i know that you had mentioned um that if we did it in you know our subcommittees or less than a quorum then we could do it privately and um all of that but when we're as far as the evaluation process is that how it's expected that we do it and how we make our decision the i don't know if you want to scroll down a little bit just so that we can see that um just because i'm not sure that um everyone has seen um you know pointing you know grading scale like this you know so um i just want to make sure that if this is how we're expected to interview this person then i want to make sure everyone's kind of on the same page about that i like it i have no problems with it um i can go um just say that's like what i think right now i have like i'm having a few internet issues so that's why i've been kind of switching in and out trying to get them figured out but i mean if a person is terminated for bad acts you know there's not going to be any type of severance pay for that but if a person anticipated working you know so hold on one second if a person um intended on working for a certain amount of time and maybe they have like and maybe they have projects coming up they want to work on but they did such a good job that we don't do them anymore that's what to me you know like if they did such a good job maybe they should have some type of severance that that we don't even know anymore about faith not doing you know not following things and it shouldn't be anything and commissioner harris if you are having trouble there's always the um option of calling in over the phone so if you want me to send you that information i can and you can dial in and that way you don't have to worry too much about your internet connection it's up to you i think i gotta figure it out now so does anyone have any comments or any other motions or anything that they'd like to say on this the only thing i wanted to ask uh for the interview is there a script for the interview part or presentation um generally speaking um you you could have a preset of questions which is always a good idea if you you know if you're interviewing multiple um firms or persons just so everybody gets asked the same questions and the same content so that's certainly something that you know can be decided as part of the interview process and then also even if it's not written here we shall be knowing when we are talking about experience with similar projects what what is similar meaning are we on the same page when we say similar projects that's those are my only curiosities i yield so one option is if we decide that six months down the line we no longer need a facilitator we can discuss a severance agreement at that time and offer a severance package at that time we can kind of plan for it in the budget but we don't necessarily have to promise a severance package or put it in the contract what is that is that possible stephanie and then also i imagine the city attorney is going to have to weigh in on this um so when do you think we could hear back about that i would imagine they would have a decision or an opinion by tomorrow morning when i called so you're correct i mean you're kind of talking about something that they may say the city doesn't do um um and so you know you can definitely take a vote on it tonight that's up to the commission but i just because you say yes doesn't mean that you know that's something that the city attorney feels the city should be entering into agreement with and and i just want to make it clear i there are plenty of reasons why um the city attorney may not disagree but one of the issues you run into when you offer severance package is your 1099 employee so that's our your 1099 independent contractor is not the same as a w-2 employee and so if you start kind of crossing that line you can easily find yourself with a i think it's miss cat cataract misclassification of the employee versus the independent contractor and and it's just a legal it can become a legal quagmire so i i think before we vote we should really find out if this is something the city will even consider because it won't look good if the commission votes on something and the city just says no yeah i would i would say that i agree um i would i would definitely be open to having you know steph asked and find out um but yeah i definitely don't think that it's something that we should vote on tonight um just as it is because we may not even be able to offer this even if we wanted to with every fiber of our being so um i think that if nobody has anything else to add or change to this we should move on to the next agenda item question rivera um do we need to vote to accept this so that i can get posted stuff i i think it would be good for transparency to show who was in support of it and who who maybe wasn't um so yes i think that's a a good idea for the commission to to just vote on um moving forward with the rfp process so i'd make a motion that we move forward with this draft and the amendments that we discussed except for the severance statement i second commissioner daniel sorry stephanie can you please get roll call sure uh commissioner ali yes commissioner daniel yes uh commissioner gathawa yes commissioner harris yes commissioner johnson yes commissioner rivera yes uh commissioner sakalis yes and commissioner treyori yes thank you all right we are now on to agenda item number five which is updates from commissioner triori on correspondence with city governments on the excluded workers fund so before i speak on this i want to make sure i give anyone from the public that would like to speak on this agenda item an opportunity if you would like to speak on this item please raise your hand if not then i will continue all right doesn't look like we have anyone oh nevermind you got joe all right joe you've got five minutes i am jill coulter a former member of the human rights commission and i think i may have mentioned this before but i want to encourage the trc to address five issues first is what is qualified immunity and what changes i just need to unfortunately stop you there this is just on the excluded workers fund is this uh related to that specifically no it's not uh i apologize i will cease chair clarification question can um we can go back to um like item number three on the agenda public comment is that correct yes we can i just wanted to ensure just for transparency sake and meeting minutes and everything i see just got that straight can i suggest that we complete um this current agenda item number five and then make sure that we open it back up to um item number three for public comment yeah that works for me all right and you might be able depending on what mr coulter's wanting to talk about talk about it under subcommittees because it sounds like he's gonna give five proposals for the trc in terms of what he feels the direction or leadership should be looking at and so it sounds like from his first few remarks that it could fit under subcommittees too so so you could keep moving forward on the agenda so would you guys rather after this current agenda item go back to the public comment or continue and then have joe give his comments during agenda item number eight which is subcommittee structure subcommittee leadership and positions i'm thinking on agenda number eight because from the little that you had started this is a commissioner for the record uh it's sounding as if it could tie in to specific committees or a commit subcommittee okay this looks like no objections to that so we'll take that path forward and joe we will be sure to come back to you on agenda item number eight all right so um so updates on the correspondence with city governments so um at the conclusion of the last meeting i sent a mass email to every uh city council official in johnson county as well as a board of supervisors and i was sure as well to keep them all on the exact same email and for the two line so that none of them had the impression that they got the emails separately and so they knew that all of them had the opportunity to see it so what i will say is that i yeah i tried to contact as many people from city council specifically for city of iowa city the city manager for iowa city as well as the johnson county board of supervisors when it comes to the other city governments it's just difficult as well in that so sent the emails and didn't really get very many responses back uh the only immediate response i got back was from rod sullivan of the johnson county board of supervisors so that was the first person i spoke with and from my understanding of the conversations is that there's going to be a joint meeting next month between uh local city governments between north liberty corville iowa city and the johnson county board of supervisors on how to spend american rescue plan act funds there is also a page on the johnson county board of supervisors website on information on the american rescue plan act and also a survey that people can take uh for um you know the funding priorities and what they think that the funds should be used for one thing that's been brought to my attention as well as from the iowa city catholic worker house is that they believe that this survey is not correctly representative of of their wishes and of the wishes of the coalition that had signed on to their plan so they would like that uh survey in itself to either be changed or for it to be put out in a different way or for more community input to be had the city governments told me that community input is welcome and they'd be sending setting up listening sessions for those my response to that was that next month is too late of a timeline because this saturday is the last day for people to apply for extended benefits for unemployment and this is an excluded workers fund in which many of these people were having issues receiving them in the first place and from what i understand of how the entire process has been going for unemployment is it not only takes a very long time in the state of iowa due to our terrible computer system but as well that you know so many people are having issues getting funds that it sounds like they're entitled to just because of our arbitrary rules on however you get awarded this money so that's one thing that's very disappointing to me um another thing is uh yeah our city manager said that he's you know basically talking to city council trying to coordinate these things and my suggestion to them was that instead of just speaking amongst themselves on this that they truly open this up to other people within the community that would like to help coordinate these things because one seems like many of the people in the city governments hold a lot of different positions and have a lot of different hats on so this by that factor this can't really be an utmost priority for them just because they're involved in so many different things so that's another thing that was very concerning to me i also talked to them about how the fact of talking about needing to get proper uh proper guidelines in place on how these funds go out was uh excuse my language [__]because when it comes to how the cares act funds were put about and how that was voted on i specifically remember the former president of the united states and steven mnuchin uh the treasury director at the time talking about how the money needs to go out as quickly as possible that the details were a moot point because at the end of the day people are going to suffer and the suffering is worse than a few people getting benefits that they weren't supposed to receive and that the legal system can figure it out in the meantime which is what ended up happening because in the meantime we have seen many people be taken to court or have charges brought against them for fraud so that was another thing i suggested to them was what about doing things such as having people bring their health records into an application process to show that hey i was affected by this literally couldn't work because we had that woman that spoke last week about how her lung capacity is literally affected by this also on june 30th the cdc's federal uh moratorium on evictions expires so for a lot of these people needing these funds they may get kicked out of their housing and that's a big issue because once you have an eviction on your record it's very very difficult to then rent another property because any landlord could then see your rental history see that you have an eviction and can use that as cause to not give you housing additionally i had a conversation with councilwoman weiner today that was more productive than many of the other conversations i got to have also and she had told me that one thing that they may possibly be able to do and that she would really like them to do is look at directing funds to non-profits within the within the city so that they can actually distribute these funds because that's something that they have the ability to do and it's a lot faster than going through the process of drawing up all these different documents et cetera et cetera uh pat hayden uh the chair of the board of supervisors as well from what i learned from her and many and a few other members of city council is that it seems that the collaborative process between the governments within this county are terrible also to say the least i don't understand why the city of iowa city corville and north liberty can be so intertwined in terms of where people live compared to where they work the fact that the university of iowa while it is based in iowa city has all these satellite offices all over coralville and north liberty and in other areas of county and also when it comes to football season we have all these hotels that pop up all over corville now that reap all of these economic benefits from football games that occur in iowa city and as well we have the corville city government whose bond status i think is rated just above being junk bonds which is not good especially if you're a city and this has been the case for quite some time for them because when the city was created city corvo was created was brought into a flood plain which is also not a very good idea the only reason corville is able to exist is because the corville dam sits there otherwise it would be entirely underwater nonetheless they did put all these businesses into the iowa river landing and one of the key ones that really started it was von maur so for me i watched as von marve was taken from the sycamore mall and the sycamore mall economic opportunities in the south district quickly deteriorated after that that plot of land was sold to von maur in the iowa river landing for i believe about a dollar um the justification for it was all the economic benefits that were going to come in because these economic impact statements and this and that blah blah blah blah blah anytime you hear that or at least any time i've heard that it doesn't really come to fruition because these are forecasts these are economic forecasts and again forecasts just like your weather man it's not always going to be true um so yeah for me with that if these cities can reap all the economic benefits from iowa city then i don't understand why it is that they are not actively working very hard to work alongside iowa city and the johnson county board of supervisors to look at supporting plans such as the excluded workers fund and how these funds are going to be dispersed it's to me it's just laziness and it's also just showing how little they truly care about people and that they prefer businesses because if you can give banmar a deal for a dollar over economic benefits then you should be able to apportion you know these funds right here to actual people who are shopping at these places and who are bringing about the money to help support these businesses so that you have that tax base in the first place because i mean when you're the city corvo you ripped out your own tax base by giving away all of these tax breaks for these businesses so it might be good for you to try to get some of that back by giving money to people who actually can spend it and who can actually live in your city uh the city of iowa city as well has the highest rental rates in out of any metro area in the state of iowa and that is slowly spreading to corville because people now move out of iowa city to go to coralville and then coraville with how it's currently being gentrified in many areas now you have people moving out to north liberty and to tiffin as well townhouses in tiffin and north liberty are about the same amount as a single family home in iowa city on average and this is from data i myself have looked at and have actually been studying looking at for the last five six months so you can go to the fair housing association's website to look at this as well i also have a chart of this prepared um on my computer i can share that as well for people to look at but those are my updates thus far i have extended any support i can give to actually help get this to move along and to help get some more collaboration between them my plan over the next week is to continue pressing to speak to more of the city officials from more of these city governments and also to get the tune i believe it's two members of the board of supervisors who did not answer my email and who and one of them in particular who still has not messaged me back or texted me back or has not sent a single text back to me for months now which is just very sad to me if you're my elected official you should be able to speak to me uh and lastly it's also just sad that we have current members of the board of supervisors that won't reach out to constituents when they ask them to when we have someone who was just voted in john green on tuesday and i was able to get a call with him on wednesday that's all i have stephanie this is commissioner rivera i just have a question the way that this agenda item is worded does it allow for discussion from other commissioners or is it does it only allow for updates from commissioner treyori i think you can have discussion okay um i really think um chair for all of those updates you've done a lot of heavy lifting and it's really evident and and really carried the statement that we made at our last um meeting uh and carried that forward to make sure that the momentum didn't drop and i i just really appreciate your willingness to have those conversations and to to to keep knocking at virtual doors um even when it was disappointing that other people were not interested in talking to you i just had one thing to add in addition to the survey that you mentioned for johnson county there is also a survey that the city of iowa city is doing asking residents of the city for input on the what to do with the american rescue plan funds um as we um unanimously supported it as a commission um to support the excluded workers fund and their coalition i would highly encourage members of this commission to visit iowa iowacitycatholicworker.org and on their home page there is a link that takes you to the arp survey and their read on those surveys as well as their recommendations on how to best to complete them as they are to best support excluded workers and i also had a meeting with david goodner of catholic iowa city catholic worker house who is amazing um and um and again i i think that the group is really excellent and he floated the question about whether this commission wanted to kind of add our name as part of the fund excluded workers commission it would just kind of add our the name of this commission to the list of 15 um uh organizations and bodies that are already part of that coalition and i wanted to hear people's thoughts on whether or not that would be appropriate thanks um yeah i can go um i i've also talked with david goodman as well i had something with him last week um and he had some great ideas um he definitely expressed him well and he's he's definitely trying to do a lot so i agree with um with what like kevin said um he's a he's a real good guy so i had to meet with him with him as well so commissioner johnson i was under impression we were doing that anyway i thought we were all ready i thought we already pretty much had that set i think probably just for like formality's sake but i mean if you would all like to vote on it to either approve or disapprove having our name on there i'm open to having that vote if someone would like to put a motion forward and if someone would like to second i'll put a motion for us to put our name and formalize our support yeah stephanie can we please get roll call and that was commissioner johnson who second it okay thank you um commissioner ali yes commissioner daniel uh no uh commissioner gathua yes commissioner harris yes commissioner johnson yes commissioner rivera yes commissioner sakawis yes and commissioner treyare yes okay motion passes 7-1 thank you would anyone like to um volunteer to reach out to david uh to let him know yeah um like i got a meeting scheduled with him soon so i'm gonna talk to him soon so i can let him know all right thank you we have anything else on agenda item number five before we move on to agenda item number six yeah just before we move on uh this is commissioner for the record uh chair triore you are talking about uh is it winner talking about uh funds being channeled through organizations i hope this moves forward because it does make sense to me as somebody who coordinates nissa african family services where i coordinate services for survivors and victims of sexual violence domestic violence sexual assault stalking and trafficking and there are some of the people who are already modular marginalized by ratio inequity and then they've also been and this is documented and also experienced from my work impacted very negatively by the pandemic so that that would be uh if it moves forward if that moves forward it does make sense to get to those people who are already even threatened by affections evictions and also being affected by the law that was passed about uh landlords being able not to lend to people who are receiving assistance already so i i'm on the lookout to see how this moves forward and being part of or following up on it and supporting it and pushing for it and thank you i yield i'll be sure to express that concern to all other all other members of the city council city manager and also to the other mayors the other cities and the board of supervisors as well and in addition if anyone would like to express that to the board of supervisors in their i mean so their next meeting is a work session unfortunately but if you would like to forward any of that information to them i do have all their emails saved and i do have their phone numbers as well just one little piece uh this is commissioned to confirmation rivera thank you for sharing about the catholic workers website because now i know how to go there and with the organization that i coordinate to formalize support and also because we work with other allies in in the state and instant iowa i i am able to to let them know where to go to formalize their support thank you i yield okay and with that we can now move on to agenda item number six which is budget subcommittee updates overview um my piece i'll give this i guess kind of quick and then i'll add the rest of the budget subcommittee members to go ahead uh so we've looked into a few more of the line items and one thing we were really just expressing in terms of how we move forward is that it's just a bit difficult to for the subcommittees to do their work as well without you know having clarity exactly on how the budgets are going to work out so i've kind of subliminally asked this question to city council on multiple occasions now i guess i'll just be a little more direct and forceful about it going forward but one thing i just really need to know is when it comes to the operational budget that we put forward and also the fact that we're running into a timeline in which in july the next fiscal year's budget comes out does that limit us in any way for coming back to ask for funds for operations and does it limit us in any way for funds that we ask for the rest of the subcommittees and everything else going on because that is a limitation as well to passing the budget it's difficult to pass it if for whatever reason it's going to be very difficult to ask for more funds for operations going forward and i know we've been told that we can ask for them but once again with the next fiscal year's budget coming out in july i just don't know their exact intentions on how to use the excess of the million dollars that we don't put in the operational budget at this time and i yield um i think commissioner actually commissioner daniel asked this in one of like the first two or three meetings um and you can correct me stuff if i misunderstood um but it was that the fiscal budget or whatever fiscal year doesn't affect the budget in any way shape or form and um we with the operational budget um we can send it in with like the um already like written i don't know how to word this correctly but uh that with the knowledge that there probably will be amendments and will be changes to it yeah so i think um so if my calculation is correct um when the trc reconvened it was um thursday april 15th so 90 days from that date would be uh july 14th which is a wednesday so i i think the commission you know you you should submit your you know your budget by that deadline that would include all the needs or all the financial needs that you know you would have to date i think that you can um submit the budget with a cover letter that could you know state that you know you're still working through some of the needs of the subcommittees and it's possible that you may need to come back in the future and request more funding because those funding needs were unknown at the time when you submitted your you know original uh budget submission to to the city council so just letting them know in a memo that um the the budget that is being presented does not necessarily preclude the trc coming back and requesting additional funds from the city council so it sounds to me then essentially gives us two more public meetings if we continue on the two-week schedule for now uh that yeah we'd have a meeting june 24th and then once again on july 8th uh to get that operational budget finalized if we do that june 24th we do it june 24th we do it july 8th we do it july 8th but it just sounds that it's very important to get that done by july 8th so i think yeah from at this point from hearing that and also the ability to request more funds and the fiscal budget not affecting it that sounds doable and i should mention that if you feel you need more time to submit your budget outside of the 90 days i mean that's certainly something that rc could do as well but i'm just letting you know kind of what the 90-day marker is from that april 15th yeah might as only thing on is i just would rather have it done by then um because if we'd like to have the actual public meetings in person and things of that nature it'd just be very difficult to do that without an operational budget if people would need things like child care or transportation and we wanted to have that an operational budget or be able to provide that or you know anything such as advertising for the meetings then we would need an operational budget by that time otherwise we wouldn't really have funds to spend so are we on agenda item number seven right now because agenda item number seven is discussing the timeline so i just want to make sure that we don't skip to that one before we discuss what we're before we finish discussing number six thank you for that correction um yeah go ahead i just uh i think one of the things that we discussed uh in the subcommittee meeting was the idea of a stipend um we i think we've kind of vaguely like kind of had this conversation before we didn't want to make any decisions until we spoke to the rest of the commission um i am going to start and say i don't want to be compensated for any amount of work i do for this commission i think it's getting into a lot of kind of sticky i don't i don't want to deal with having to have the conversation about other commissions not getting um pay and us getting paid i understand the scope of our work is broad but um we also uh volunt i mean volunteered i guess we signed up for this uh commission i also um i think that it could be something that after we initially finished these first two years until when this ad hoc commission is supposed to be done i think that it's something that we could talk about putting into the recommendations but um in my heart i genuinely do not feel like uh that at this time um for this commission for right now while we're still ad hoc i i don't think that it's uh a good idea to take compensation but i'm i'm definitely open to hearing what other people think and i i don't i don't want to make other people you know feel like they have to agree with me so i'm open to hearing what others think um i can go um i respectfully disagree with like what you're saying um respectfully because like i disagree because my circumstances in my life are kind of different than other people um like i have children i have a family i have a home to take care of so sometimes these meetings last three and four hours out of the day um and these meetings happen during dinner time or after dinner time where i have children to go tend to that's why sometimes i go on mute and turn my camera off because one of my children are doing something they shouldn't be doing and i have to get up and go take care of that so um and like how the chairperson talked about you know how he's relentlessly tried to reach out to these people the supervisors and people not responding to him and he has a regular job as well you know and it takes a lot of time out of your day you know especially when it comes to who's one of the former subcommittees which we you know we still haven't got all set up you know because it's about time constraints you know you know sometimes i might have a meeting to do a zoom call to do but i should be outside more on my line or taking care of something at my house but you know i've been on some of these meetings until 11 p.m at times you know and that takes a lot away from my family so that's why i believe in that it should be some type of stipend and putting it off for you know until a later date you know i don't know what the difference is in that but um i just respectfully disagree with you know this work is work that needs to be done and other people just like well harmon talked about is a lot of people that wear a whole lot of different hats so you know i wear hats that i do a lot of things that i don't get you know compensated for so this is the thing that i spend most of my time you know dealing with even though you know i live in the south district and i deal with the south district but i spend most of my time you know with the trc and doing things with the trc so with that idea thank you for sharing that perspective um and i agree if i get my computer was glitching so i didn't hear you speaking no of course sicaos you can go right after me know i just wanted to thank eric for sharing that because i am not a mother and i don't know what it feels like i'm not a parent so i don't know what it feels like to have to sacrifice some time um away so thank you for just letting me know and giving me that perspective um i appreciate that quickly um i have six children to take care of my house so so i appreciate you you know i think regardless of whether we are youth without children or we have like many children um this is a truth uh and what i would like to call like a reparations committee not just reconciliation and we all all um bypoc folks here um who have struggled uh with oppression and uh and racism are all of our lives uh based upon how we were born um to be born indigenous is a political act and so um i take a firm stance on what i'm willing to do um for um white folks in general because this is um like what 90 white this city um and we need to um be firm on like what we're willing to do for free and what kind of emotional labor we're going to give and how that's going to be compensated my life's work is dedicated to increasing funding uh and and work opportunities for indigenous peoples and as an indigenous woman um i've absolutely like just like i've decided i decided long ago uh that i won't do this work for free anymore um so i uh i think that if i'm putting all of this like time like i didn't know this was going to be two meetings a month uh when i signed up so i was surprised by that um and there is a significant amount of work that goes into this i calculate about 10 hours a month like easy um for some people um myself i'm pretty sure with the sustainability committee as that gets going there's going to be a lot more work because i'm very passionate about that and i'm trying to get indigenous youth involved and so i will be mentoring them and um this is almost you know at a level of a part-time job uh if not and so um yeah i just uh i don't think that bipoc folks should be um the purveyors are they the givers of you know what's happening in terms of like uh oppression uh and not uh be compensated for it any longer because we have the least amount of funding for any of this work in the country uh indigenous folks received point six percent of foundation funding um in a study done between 2006 and 2014 in the hall of united states and uh black folks are also you know facing these issues uh so on and so forth and so uh that's just my uh stance on this um and i feel very uh very strongly about it so i thank you for that um during the budget commission subcommittee meeting we had kind of a lively debate about this and really if if we're going to move forward we should move forward as a commission so we can't just have some commissioners get a stipend and some commissioners don't get a stipend um i think at i forgot who brought this up but um if you get the stipend and you really feel like i want to donate my time then you can get whatever you get in the stipend and donate that to an organization of your choice preferably an organization that kind of falls in line with the work that we do um but i i do think it's important to kind of think of others on this commission as far as what do they need what are they giving up how the opportunity cost of them being at these meetings and working in the subcommittees versus spending time with their families getting another job and so i i like to hear this debate but um i'd like to hear other people weigh in since it is going to take all of us i yield oh i just like to say that yeah that was my thing on that you can donate it if you'd like so i've been lucky enough to get to leave the job i'd been working when i started the commission with amazon logistics to come to the new company i'm at now and i'm now finally in a position in my life where i get to worry about money a little less so when it comes to the stipend for me i am i don't have intentions of pocketing it i have intentions of donating it to other organizations because one thing i'd really like to do is do things such as go to the university surplus store because they take these computers and other things that they get rid of after just two three years of use that honestly aren't that bad i mean i learned how to code on one i got from there and i just bought a few hardware things and installed installed in there but a lot of people don't have the money and funds to do these things uh so i can go to that store take that money and buy these things and donate it to south district neighborhood association donate it to other neighborhood associations in the area donate it to other nonprofits in the area uh there's this thing it's like a lot of kids and youth have a lot of issues with uh you know really finding ways to ground themselves there's this thing called the call map so you can use that to for like self-meditation and things of that nature and actually i stumbled upon this and walmart just randomly like a month ago they had these puzzles there from that company column that you can buy for literally seven dollars and it comes with the whole free month of the service and so i looked at it and i was like oh i could buy a hundred of these for like under 800 after tax and donate and donate that to all these people but it's one thing for me to just continue donating money that i have myself rather especially when it comes at a time where i put so much time in this like i also like to design websites as freelance but it's difficult to do that with the time putting into here and also my own job so what i was doing with a lot of those freelance funds i was either investing it or donating a portion of it i mean there's one non-profit i did one for where i just i told him like yeah don't even pay me the web hosting fees like i'll pay that for you but i can't continue to do that if i don't have the opportunity to actually make money from these websites like i can crank them out very quickly but the time limit drags on and on and on the more time is put into this so i'm not saying that i don't want to be on here because i definitely want to be on here i i don't have any intentions to quit but it's more so that if i were to get a stipend i can continue to do the things i want to do in the community such as donating this money or these gifts or you even have the aspect of for century link you can get home internet plans for 50 a month like could donate home internet to a family could pay utilities for them something like that it's like my whole thing is like i just want to live my life by my values and buy my ideals a man i really respect respect in my whole life so unfortunately he's passed away now always said user success wealth and influence to put them in the best position to realize their own dreams find their true purpose big piece of that as well so for me that's what i would like to use my stipend on if we are to pass one um and for me um i would like to lose i would like to use my stipend on the stuff that we do in the south district i know people heard about on saturday starting to have you know like like a pop-up shop and everybody's volunteering and anytime we've done things like that it ends up with us coming out of money out of our own pockets just to keep it going because that's stuff that we want to do you know it's going to be a pop-up shop where people come through they got different businesses that's owned by black people or people of color and they're going to have a lot of things this saturday you know if you come to south district it's going to be a large event and so i would use my stipend to help fund those things you know so with that idea so i am not going to stay here and say i'll donate all of it because if i we don't even know how much we're talking about i think the main thing is this is a truth and reconciliation commission the truth is this takes a lot of time the truth is there's a history of in this country of people who look like us with our backgrounds not being appreciated our labor and our contributions are not being appreciated so i i really i i think that's really the only argument we could we need to make we don't have to try to make ourselves feel better or try to make ourselves look good by saying well you know we're going to use the money for good it doesn't matter that's what i wanted to say just now i i don't need to make any excuse for what that money is used for that's money that um belongs to um a lot it belongs it belongs to us for the sake of the labor the love and the emotions that we're putting into this work and uh that's for up to us and how we decide to to use it in most cases anyway it goes back into our communities we all know how that works uh i commissioner gabriel for the record i thank you very much uh commissioner daniel and sukhois for kind of uh bringing me back to remember the history because i'm one person who is always wanting to remind people who have been enslaved oppressed or colonized by white people that there are a lot of the time we are always on the mindset that uh uh we don't it's kind of automatic just to [Music] to just do without compensation for the longest time so i appreciate you are bringing me back to what i champion for and i'm not going to repeat what you've all said i and also because i come from a culture where uh in europe and in africa kenya where we are more euro centered in doing our things by being colonized and oppressed by europe commissions and voluntary work it's recognized you use time so you get compensated for if it transport your will come back to physical meetings and even now zoom all of you are paying for your internet so it's really they are all those things yes you've already volunteered your time and all that but they are the physical things that are costing you so i've always been used to even if i volunteer my time that is recognized my mileage and my when i'm there there is a even a cup of tea if it's dinner time the the work that you're doing gives you something for that dinner so i'm not going to use so many words let me just say i thank you for reminding me of all those things and i am going to go with a stipend i yield the one thing is just to remind everyone we haven't decided on the amount but just to ensure that we just keep the meeting timely i just say that if anyone would like to discuss that over the phone um you feel free to reach out to anyone on the budget subcommittee it literally does not have to be me you can speak to any of the others on the budget subcommittee and then we can come together in our subcommittee meeting get that information together come to the next meeting with an amount or two or three different amounts and then make that concrete vote on it but before we do that i would just like to see if there's anything else anyone would like to say or any other emotions that people would like to pass or anything of that nature i i just would like to say uh i think we should just do the best we can and uh really try to make moves and we should be compensated for it i mean that there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing in this country that's free really so uh i feel like uh best thing we can do is just work hard and just whatever you want to do whatever you want to do do it that's fine i agree with that 110 so that's it and um since everyone's given their really amazing thoughts so will i um i really appreciate the discussion tonight um i was one of the individuals who was initially opposed to um stipends um and um we were having a lively discussion about it but i i did want to make sure that we were hearing from everyone on this commission about their thoughts and i'm really glad for that i'll say that through the discussion tonight i've really changed my mind on this and and i would be in support of a stipend and i hope that you all do give us feedback about what you think would be an appropriate amount for for the work that we're putting in to this commission thus far i i'll just mention one of the reasons that i was opposed initially was just the the public standing of this commission i think with the rocky start that we had there was certainly a lot of mistrust towards the activities of the members of this commission members of this commission especially those of us who were sort of on the previous makeup um and i i thought that it might be um kind of bad uh optics or pr if if we were coming forward and saying that we wanted to sort of personally benefit from that um what i'm really appreciating out of the discussion tonight is that there's there's there really isn't any reason to be ashamed of saying that we would benefit from compensation for the work that we're doing because there's sort of generational histories that we're making up for and that having some sort of stipend or compensation to the members of the this commission is is providing somewhat of a model um uh in which uh we're we're getting compensated for for trying to lift this community up and move it forward whereas you know traditional city governance it has not done an adequate job for that um that being said i do hope that the sub subcommittee members would consider um just thinking about maybe a press release that would come out with our budget explaining our rationale as a commission as to why we believe that we should be compensated because not everyone in the public has has heard this discussion um and i would like to make sure that we're kind of adequately explaining ourselves officially and in one voice when we do uh submit our our budget to the the city council and i yield my time so anyone else have anything else they'd like to say on stipends so i know we have the experts and trainings aspect on this as well and that's just one thing i just wanted to quickly ask about and just make sure we cover yeah i just was confused on like what we were wanting to cover on that part like are we deciding if we want experts in training are we going to talk about specific trainings that have been offered to us or is like i i just didn't confuse to what capacity um like what that meant um so i just added that on there because that was just one thing that we'd spoken about in the budget subcommittee but it was difficult to really discern like how much training did people feel like they needed like what type of experts do people feel like they needed so i'm not i don't think we necessarily need some like grand discussion on it but rather to just like get it out there today so that everyone is aware and that we can continue to just have those conversations with each other so that we're not just kind of like walking blind in the budget subcommittee and we don't just bring something to the table that everyone just feels like they're they're just being uh blindsided by yeah so i can provide just a quick summary of what we're even talking about just so everyone knows we do have that google drive folder um that has a bunch of documents and so if you ever want to see um the operational budget with a bunch of dummy numbers in it you can check that out um one thing that we were talking that chair was mentioning was um just in case we wanted as sub committees wanted to bring in um experts to educate us on on different things we wanted to be able to to pay them for their for their time um and so we i think it would be helpful for us to hear from you all in your different subcommittees um like just an estimate of uh like how much expert advice you'll be sort of pulling in um and the the types of experts that you'd want to pull into your subcommittee meetings and that would give us more of an idea of how much we should put aside in our budget um for this is that is that a good summary chair a thousand times better than what i did um yeah i just wanted to say something about that um the uh i was talking to my aunt the other day she was provided compensation by the canadian government when they did their truth and reconciliation commission um in canada for indigenous peoples that were forced into uh boarding schools recently they uncovered 215 children in an unmarked grave at one school in bc when i was speaking to her about this she told me not to be angry we had to learn how to get through it's been very upsetting and she said the one thing that does make me angry though is that the last time they did this the last time that they had experts come in and they had people come and help all of us with this issue is that um uh white uh professionals uh gained like a ridiculous amount of money from the canadian government and um like lawyers uh therapy uh offices uh you know generations in general and um when you said that just now about bringing experts in like that was my first thought like what is this money going to how much are these exports going to charge and like like are they like you understand what i'm saying right like this is money for truth and reconciliation if we're going to be like paying like um uh lawyers that charge uh ridiculous money that have like a long line of like uh you know not black and indigenous and poc folks like on their uh on their their docket or whatever like i don't think that's okay um so an expert to me um is an elder or somebody with cultural knowledge that i can come and have brought in to convince people that we don't need um to have so many so much grass in iowa city so that's one of the things that i'm going to be looking at in terms of sustainability like getting rid of grass you know um and so i want uh cultural knowledge and um traditional uh ecological knowledge to uh to prove that so my experts are different from like what somebody else might consider an expert thank you i just wanted to clarify oh oh so carlos i just uh um commissioner cicales i just want to confirm he said grass oh okay we should talk later i feel i yeah who said that um daphne oh definitely daniel okay yeah g-r-a-s-s yes i feel very strongly about that as well okay uh i yield okay i'll go i'll i'll also follow that up on the year ass and uh i want to pick it back on what this is commission agador i want to piggyback on what uh commissioner sarkaris was saying when we are talking of expats uh and i'm thinking of for example if each of us we belong to various cultural groups that are marginalized or have been oppressed whichever one you may decide to pick and a lot of times again and again they're always for with for those experiences you get professionals who a lot of the times are white to be the experts of your experiences i'll give the example of myself as an african so you get for example uh a lot of for example in our universities the people who do african studies or african american studies they will be white so eve when you're talking about such an expert so they're the professionals and even if they get it wrong and you try to get even award in when they are really talking about your experience so yeah as we go with the professionals let's go with the people who are proficient in their own culture and in their own truth and in their own experiences because sometimes we add to the pain when it's the oppressor who is coming to talk about your experience on oppression when they're the ones who are oppressing you their foot is still on you so i yield and with that no i'm back with that i'm thinking of when we are sharing our own experiences i hadn't even thought of those people it's painful it's their time they're using and they're paying to be naked to this commission yet because i'm so used to have been internalized always being misused and exploited again leading my people again to the slaughter and after we do that because we're going to document something in our recommendations uh somebody somewhere who is a white professional maybe may run with that like it has happened and yet even as this cultural group shares their pain we don't even think of them as professionals because they belong to the wrong skin color i yield i'd just like to say that to me yeah being an expert it doesn't matter if you got a degree or not doesn't matter if you dropped out of high school or not if you've been there you've been there that's what makes you an expert the experience so you can have all the knowledge in the world from whatever textbook but that doesn't mean you know what you're saying doesn't mean you know what you're doing us you know what i've seen is i have learned a lot more from people that aren't professors or people that aren't you know some nationally recognized person than the people that are because uh they're more likely to actually speak to you as you're an actual person speak to you on your level um you don't have that issue with someone that's some tenured professor coming at you like oh i mean i'm just at this university for research like i'm i'm not i don't really care about the teaching you know like things like that but i say all that just to say like just yeah i would definitely broaden my uh definition of experts it's the people that have really been there like when it comes to policing and things like that like we're talking about criminal justice like i don't want to hear from some scholars on it i want to hear from the people that have actually been in there because they're the ones that are going to tell you how to fix it how to change it because they've actually experienced it yep so um i would go next um definitely um some people are experts on paper um but some people that are experts by experience they live off experience that makes them expert i'm one of those people i'm an expert on a lot of terrible things but i'm an expert on how to transform out of those terrible things too so it might be a person that went you know that's what was mentioned earlier about the last two speakers that might have went and got all his degrees and stuff but he really doesn't know what goes on in those situations with incarceration racial injustice just getting picked out of the crowd because the color of your skin you know people who been abused by the police people who just went through so many injustices never had a chance to come up over the hill they always had to work low minimum wage jobs and try to find a way and then maybe they might get in trouble because they did other things that they shouldn't have been doing but they didn't have a chance in this type of economy and with that i'm gonna give i just want to clarify dr gotha i don't mean you for any of those says i mean clearly when it comes to being an expert like you've actually like been in the trenches so thank you no no no no commissioner this is commissioner i'll respond because uh uh commissioner triori i didn't even feel you know me you you know me personally other than just being a commissioner i know you are not talking about me or commissioner rivera because those who know my work i research on these things i teach at the university level but at the same time i tell my colleagues and even my right now my faculty colleagues in grand canyon right now where i'm very humbled and very privileged to to teach i tell them i am very very uncomfortable i've been teaching my whole life um very uncomfortable if i am just on in the ivory tower i could be i train school counselors and i just have to be involved in one way or the other in my communities and in my school district uh because i could be telling them to do this uh and not knowing what is going on right now uh so yeah commissioner trowery i am very aware of that and that is one of the reasons i'm sitting here to be really not just to teach racial injustice or all those things but also and also being part of the change yeah i yelled thank you and yeah yes same thing you kept up it's like yeah actually actually there same thing you daphne like when it comes to lawyers like actually being there every single one of you it's like actually putting in that time and effort got the utmost respect for every single one of you like i i know i say it a lot but i truly mean it i i was just going to add a staff that um i think the just to kind of focus on the agenda item it was whether to include stipends and experts in the budget line items but i think um commissioners in terms of the subcommittees that you serve on based upon the conversation that that it's probably a good idea when you meet um to to kind of have an idea of who you may want to have serve in these capacities um and get an idea of how often you think you may want to use them get a feel for the fees that that may be included so that you can then send that information back to the budget subcommittee so that when they're making that line item um they're taking into consideration all the subcommittees and the uh the expert they may use the the frequency and then kind of the cost so just kind of think about that when you meet here in the next few weeks thank you thanks steph i think that's a really good summary i appreciate everyone's thoughts so at this time it kind of sounds like we had also rolled into agenda item number seven so if anyone does have anything else on that or not like have the time to do so but i guess just the one thing on subcommittee structure is i just wanted to just address that really quickly it's like do we feel like we want to have like point people for subcommittees and when it comes to that like do we want like a official chair of each subcommittee or do we want to have it be kind of like a rotating position so it's not just one person feeling like they're taking everything on at all times like ever like each month like someone else in the subcommittee takes over that point-person role so just kind of wanted to have that discussion real quick and uh chair uh treyori just as a reminder the public discussion on mr culture oh thank you so much for reminding me uh so yeah before we get into that yes joe please i would love to give you the opportunity to speak because we definitely need to hear from you right now well this is joe coulter i i know some of you but uh not all of you i've formally served on the human rights commission uh i'm a member of the iowa commission on native american affairs the indian advisory council of the office of the state archaeologist the montana idea networks for biomedical research excellence the native research network for wisdom i'm a wisdom keeper i work for the musquaki historical commission and i'm on the native american council of the university of iowa and i've communicated with rebel about the land acknowledgement i'm enrolled member of the citizen potawatomi nation that's located down in oklahoma where i grew up what i wanted to say well with regard to all of the service things that i've done i have never been paid never i've been reimbursed for travel expenses but i have never received a stipend and i would never accept one that's not that's not what i do uh and you might think about that uh i had five points that i wanted to i would be very interested in seeing your your really good group here to address uh five points that i think are pretty crucial in in what you're doing one is a as a term that's a little ambiguous or weird called qualified immunity that is what police officers receive that protects them from civil law enforcement uh that's something that other communities other cities are looking at about you know um why why can't the police force be held responsible legally for what they do but that's what qualified immunity is a second point is housing we've recently lost because of our legislature the section 8 housing vouchers that's going to cause big problems especially with what's going on with the reimbursements from the federal government and so forth with respect to enabling uh people who run their housing to kick people out i think there's a the housing is a big issue and i think you all could uh and i'd like to see you all uh get involved in that and make some recommendations to the city council about that there are three other things that are going on right now within the city of iowa city's uh government that i think you should have more input into first is the oir and i don't know quite what that stands for but they made a number of recommendations when regard to their review of the the use of the the the uh uh stuff out on north dubuque street which is just north of my house uh in the last july about tear gas and other things that was initiated by the government by the city council or the office of the city manager to get a review of that and there is a number of recommendations that were made uh which the city council is going over i think you ought to be become knowledgeable about that and have some input on that uh a fourth point is the city manager's plan for developing a community based police force that is ongoing right now it's before the city council and you all should have some input on that you need to become familiar with that and see whether you agree with that or what kind of things should change don't let this go by and without your input finally the citizen police review board has made a number of substantial recommendations for changes in how they review the police department that's a very important function they're strengthening strengthening uh what they're doing and i think you should have some input on that these are ongoing things at the city council that you need to become aware of and i think you need to have some discussions about them and see where the trc stands on these things you have power there go for it and i want to again say i think you are an excellent group i think you're doing well and i hope you can start addressing these five areas that i've indicated here i would like to hear more discussions about that than discussions about who gets stipends or other things such as that thank you miguet thank you very much joe okay and with that we are now on to the uh so subcommittee structure if anyone wants to you know if you would like to have rotating point person positions each month or if we want to do it in a way of just one point person and it just stays that way until they want to switch or just want to kind of just decide that for yourselves in your in subcommittees i just kind of want to just have that kind of talked about and decided i will note that um in the document the original document um in our drive that talks about subcommittees it does have one of the points saying that uh you guys should assign someone in the subcommittee to be the um person who will uh address and or update the committee at some meetings so i don't know if steph you have that sheet but there that was a point on there along with um a couple of conversation questions yeah it does have it in the document but it wasn't like an official thing that was like voted on or decided so i just wanted to make sure we just like voted on that in official capacity rather than just having it on the document because otherwise you know we just have that gray area plus plus like you know it's like if people want to rotate that position want to just have that expectation known now so that way it's less of them just having to push other people on the subcommittee or something or them feeling like they have to keep the point person position just because they took it in the first place would it be helpful if i shared my screen with the list of the subcommittees [Music] i was just yeah i was just going to suggest that all right you should be able to i just switched you over you'll see that do you guys see that yes okay um so i i can start with the healthcare um subcommittee we have not met yet um is everyone listed under healthcare still willing to um be part of that subcommittee yes yes would anyone else like to join it we have one more spot i would like to join it myself uh our when it comes down to healthcare are we dealing with also uh mental health oh yeah all right just double checking he asks the psychiatrist definitely mental health is health right um and so you know um i'm happy um to see um i don't sorry i don't need to mean to like come in here this section or this um agenda item but i wonder if anyone wants to sort of be the coordinator to to organize for the first meeting if not i'm happy to uh commissioner rivera i will second and appreciate your volunteering i yeah just because for now i just want to concentrate on doing a proposal on collecting the african community's experiences yeah so um i will um for the healthcare subcommittee i'll plan to reach out to those members and see if there's a time that works for all of us in the next couple weeks i'll leave it to the people on the policing subcommittee for you to have that [Music] discussion yeah so we so with the policing um we have not met yet but when we do meet we have a lot of things to like talk about um i'm willing to figure out you know host the first meeting to talk about it we just got to get together and figure it out i got some space that we can be there so um so i actually i would actually um like to take my name off the policing subcommittee just because the budget subcommittee is more um there's more involved there than i initially thought and i believe we thought that the budget subcom subcommittee would only be around for a couple of weeks and that's not quite what it looks like so um i'd like to do that so i have more time to focus on budget and housing because i feel like housing is a really big one i just like to remind everyone as well that um we do still have the opportunity to go to other subcommittee meetings if you'd like just as long as there is no quorum at the time so just make sure it's four people or less so when it comes to budget health care and housing there aren't other people that can join those but when it comes to policing sustainability and education youth if there are people that would like to pop into those sometimes if you feel like you have something new that you need to add or some new information you'd like to give there is always that opportunity as well and i expect to do that for policing i just don't want to add my name to that as well because i one i don't feel i have the time to split between all these subcommittees and everything but two i don't want to be on all these different things because then to me personally it's like i'm having too much influence over the entire process and i'd like to just make sure all commissioners have more of an equal standing would anyone else like to formally be part of the policing subcommittee at this point all right um sustainability who wants to speak up um i have met actually already for this meeting and i've started the conversation with a few people um just the last time i don't know if it was a communication thing or what we just didn't have we weren't able to have muhammad and on the conversation which is totally fine uh because he and i had spoke about how it might be weird if both of us um are in the same committee if as if it's anything other than the budget but uh sacause and i have had a conversation um regarding the sustainability committee yeah on that end i had been on a computer that i had on uh was uh um pacific time that day so i was literally sitting there doing some work on my computer and i looked up i was on do not disturb as i usually am when i'm working on the computer had the timer on my watch it finally went off for what i thought was time and then all of a sudden i see all these texts and calls from about and so yeah my apologies on that i am yeah making sure to keep that computer on this time zone at all times from here on out um anyone else want to join sustainability so who's going to be the point person for the chief the subcommittee chair i don't know what we're calling it um right now i'm just thinking about it as the asterisk person and the asterisk person is just their role is to help establish the the next meeting um and then after that they can kind of decide leadership structure oh okay commissioner what did you call them i just had uh added the last syllable the the asterisk person so the asterisk person right now has has the responsibility of scheduling the first meeting and also that can be the first person that people reach out to in case they have thoughts that they want to add but they don't want to formally join so like mo is saying he would reach out to eric with his thoughts on policing and things like that if chastity and and commissioner johnson if they have no objection i'm going to be the historic person for education and youth yeah i have no problem with that at all yeah so i will get hold of you and uh and chastity and then and if we are lucky to get out all here with the fourth person hey can i i want to interrupt will you when gooey will you also contact me because i do have a bunch of stuff that i think would be really important to the education slash youth committee um just people that i've met with already and people who are conducting research within the iccsd already that i think that you guys would really be interested in hearing along with recordings of testimonies from the uh community school board meetings um so i don't know if you need to add my name on to that yeah that's what i and thank you very much i appreciate so just so that when i print when i yeah i know you're there so that i i was going to note on my notebook but it's best if it's there thank you i just want to say what i can do as well is uh just create like a sign up genius thing for you know each subcommittee for just to have for themselves for any week or something each person can put in their availability and from there kind of just makes it a little easier for you to contact each other for scheduling so it's less than just doing that back and forth texting thank you commissioner triori for putting the putting reminding me of yeah using the due to genius and also or a question i have when i am doing that i'm coming i'm communicating with the other commissioners do uh do we do that through stephanie i think that you can email anyone individually directly okay thank you so i'll do that with a due to genius yeah yeah you can call us yeah any commissioner can uh directly email up to three other commissioners without um any violations okay thank you and is that still it's still part of the public record that's right okay thank you um for sustainability um would i like to take the point because if if not then um i'm willing to do it but i'd rather just give you two the opportunity to have that choice first [Music] all right i'll grab that sustainability point person and housing oh yeah true um yeah so for housing i may not end up being on there for good because from my conversation with chastity before she had to go on her trip uh she may want to join the housing but i'm just staying on there for now just because you know currently not being here how's housing met no no um i'm okay with being the point person but um i don't know maybe chastity should kind of i'll be the point person for now unless anyone has objections and then i'll reach out to chastity and ask her if she wants to be um if she'd prefer to be the point person chair is there a particular timeline you would like the subcommittees to meet by uh just some time before the like midday uh the tuesday before we meet next which would be uh june 22nd by like by noon uh it doesn't have to be some like really long meeting or anything can be what like 30 minutes whatever you need uh just to at least you know kind of get together establish that baseline between yourselves and to discuss the the points of discussion you had sent out for this agenda packet yeah yeah just uh those two questions uh for your subcommittee just what does success for your subcommittee look like to you but also what are the things that the work of your subcommittee would you know make you happy um because to me those are just two different things success and and the happiness aspect when it comes to the working subcommittee because what ends up being a success to you may not also make everyone else happy yes i'll just note that on this document it's a little bit outdated in terms of first questions to discuss so please do refer to today's agenda about what um to discuss during the first subcommittee meetings [Music] any questions about um process from here i don't know whether this is where i should raise a question i have as i go into leading collecting information from the african communities i'm trying to think where that would fit in the in our subcommittees you could honestly fit in any of them so it just really depends on the topic they want to address oh okay so it's the same goes for anyone for anything you need so again that's the thing of if you want something to be addressed by some subcommittee you always have that opportunity to just reach out whether it's by phone or email you can do it by text as well if you'd like but um you know some of those ideas are just better expressed over over phone or just being able to read that out in an email but yeah feel free to reach out to each other um you know we're only as strong as you know we we are together so just gotta support each other in everything that we're doing and uh commissioner harris when you're communicating on policing please include me in case i'm able to come in because uh yeah okay yeah we'll definitely do yeah yeah seeing uh that there's still opening on policing as well whatever i can do as well i would like to join in on just uh i feel like that's important i kind of feel like all should be in on policing but i figured to a certain level and degree i mean i get how things are being split up but i feel like that's something that's really important in the light of everything that we've already dealt with yeah it's their foundation and it's very it it uh in a weird way i don't use the word protection because protection is good but it kind of protects all these other oppressions or inequities so yeah yeah we're just trying to try to get some type of emails getting started talking about it because you know there's some untold about events that happened in the past month or so so that's been happening so we need to be talked about so been different things happening in different areas around iowa city you know with violence and things like that and unnecessary for like unnecessary use of force and things like that so yeah so we do have the opportunity to discuss some of that tonight for agenda item 10 so i do want to make sure we do give that the proper time as well do we have anything else we want to do on subcommittees before we go to agenda item number nine okay um so timeline for future meetings and meeting frequency returning to meetings in person so for me uh with that budget being due july 14th i just personally feel that we will more than likely need bi-weekly until that july 8th date which would be just two more of the biweeklies but after that personally as well i would like to move to more the monthly structure so that gives us the opportunity to one be more active in the community with whatever you're doing two have more time to get subcommittee meetings in in three as well i mean we all currently see right now the high difficulty and seeing any of the people's trc meetings and i do feel that that's something hunting to have that time and opportunity for so i would like to be able to do that but again just depends on what you guys want to do so if you would like to move to that more monthly structure then we can go to that uh but yeah so just time for that discussion i am agreeing with you on bi-weekly until july 8th after that we can just what you've said and then if there is any need for more than one meeting in a month then i'm thinking we can definitely do that that's all that i have to add to that i yield yes we do always have the opportunity to call a special meeting if something major comes up and we feel like that needs to be addressed stephanie correct me if i'm wrong but it's like 48 to 72 hours notice for the public um it would need to be 24 hours to notify the public but depending on agenda items you know in terms of what the commission would need to get to staff i would need more than 24 hours just to meet the 24-hour deadline yeah okay yeah so definitely like if there's something major that happens in policing that we want to have a special meeting on after move into that monthly structure always have that opportunity so just be sure to say something and can get that done and that would kind of make it so those monthly meetings are a little more condensed just taking a special meeting here and there so uh i would just like to make sure that we have a formal vote on that as well that way we can actually like set the schedule for that is commissioner rivera i i agree with the proposals as made thus far i second that this is commissioner and stephanie can we please get roll call sorry i wasn't making a motion um i can uh but i was just i was just saying um that that was my addition to the discussion oh sorry for pre-empting uh it's commissioner johnson i i personally have i have uh reservations with just going with uh the monthly i was hoping i i figured the more we worked uh if just on a different time possibly maybe rather than a thursday evening maybe something on the weekend but i would go more than one i would go once a week i feel like uh just to do updates or small progress and anything else along those lines i feel like be a lot more helpful and and keeping on point with things that's all but uh that's just that's how i feel about it um i think one option would be if we were to move to monthly meetings for the entire commission that the other thursday the subcommittees try to meet or um the subcommittee's try to weak every meet bi-weekly and then the commission i'm sorry it is so late but like the commission's meet the subcommittees meet when the commission doesn't yeah that is i don't know whether that captures what commissioner johnson has said if for example if i were to keep this time for subcommittee meetings and then the others before the other meeting or whichever time people agree on in their committees you're working on yeah i didn't mean to interrupt oh um but i was thinking that but there are some people who are on three or four or two or three different subcommittees simultaneously yeah i was thinking that yeah yeah that's one thing i'm aware of as well it's like it's difficult to get into subcommittee meetings as well if we're doing like a weekly like meeting of everyone and not going to have as many updates over time especially if there's less going on and that also gives you less time to like get out in the community to like do something or like find something out or like sit down with people so i just want to make sure that like subcommittees are prioritizing more of those like niche things and like when it comes to that bigger meeting that can get those updates get those to the public and as well like we do have that opportunity to meet together do the phone calls anytime just as long as you're just not in that quorum setting yeah uh just we just need to feel free to just reach out to each other anytime like for me as well i have a pretty light bad time so uh don't hesitate to text me and say like do you have time to talk or something it's more than likely i will and just the one thing for weekend meetings is i'm just not sure just because we're a government body if we can have them on the weekend but that's just one thing i haven't gotten clarified yet stephanie do you know i i don't know if there's a prohibition against it but i would say that's it's it's not something that i've seen um with other boards and commissions but i can uh reach out and get more information uh from the city clerk tomorrow and get back to everyone perfect yeah thank you yeah it was yeah that'd be really helpful in that decision so um well at this point i guess since we just at least have two more bi-weekly meetings and can wait on the concrete vote to at least get that information on if we can have the weekend ones and let the subcommittees kind of discuss a little bit and but one quick thing for in-person meetings think about that as well uh your timeline for that if you'd like to start doing that you know on july 8th or after july 8th beginning july 1st from what i've learned from mayor and city manager and also what they've said publicly after july 1st public meetings for city government bodies are allowed to go forward so what day of the month were we thinking the first thursday last thursday yeah that's one thing that just depends as well it's like i just don't want to force people to just choose like now um it's like mighty timeless like look at calendars kind of see your summer schedule if you had things planned in the immediate term because especially if we do move to monthly that kind of is just something we want to make sure as many people on the commission or all of us can make it okay so so we don't need to vote on this tonight if you guys would like to we can but yeah i just realized after i'd said that that yeah we do have two more bi-weekly ones so i don't want to push people to vote on something that we might end up rescinding i i would just mention as you're considering you know what works best um if you if you're planning this transition to monthly after the july 8th date that's the second thursday of the month so being consistent with that the next one would be august 12th and just thinking kind of strategically you know city council meets the first and the third tuesdays of each week um and so if there is correspondence or something that you want to recommend to council then meeting on their off week may be more beneficial to get it on the next agenda item versus you know that first and third but maybe it all works out i don't know but just something to be mindful of so like second or fourth thursday pretty much okay does anyone else have anything they'd like to add on that um for agenda item number nine i i just to um mention that i i think from what i understand it is the city council's goal that boards and commissions that feel comfortable meeting back in person will probably start transitioning to that in july i'm not sure if it will be the july 8th meeting you know um it's possible if you decide to meet again in july it would be that meeting or the meeting that you decide to have in august uh tentatively the location for those meetings will probably be at the um the mercer aquatic and recreation center next to southeast on bradford drive they have the um the space in the procter and gamble room to accommodate larger groups it's also uh in the community so to speak the parking is um accessible and it's also there's no cost for members of the public if they wish to come and they choose to drive they they don't have to go into a parking ramp or something or paid to to park to participate in the meeting um and the fact that it's a recreation center may offer you know activities or amenities that may be useful to the commission as you do outreach or as you expand your meetings if you know i heard mention of child care and things like that so being at a recreation center is going to have a a few more amenities than say being somewhere else that doesn't have a basketball court or you know pool tables or vending machines for people to you know get some food drinks stuff like that so but that's kind of the tentative plan um don't have all the details yet but we'll definitely share those with the commission as they become available and if anybody has any uh concern about meeting back in person just call me or shoot me an email and the plan is also for to continue this virtual format um and record meetings whether that will be video or audio um or just audio again that's kind of being rolled out by a different department so i'll just update the connection as i get the information that is it thank you thank you very much all right so agenda item number 10 community topics recent police enforcement crime and safety in johnson county all right so um i don't want to be the person speaking constantly so i just want to give all you the opportunity to say something first you might want to see if the community has anything to say first just so you don't have to go back do we have anyone um currently uh in the community listening i'd like to say anything on this agenda item all right so in terms of commission discussion so today's center topics are recent police enforcement and crime and safety in johnson county so this is not the same as commission announcements so there is discussion allowed right um in that case uh i'll start just with um so the last city council meeting there were a lot of public commenters a lot of them talking about recent issues with police enforcement and the mrap vehicle so had an opportunity to speak on that and just basically gave a textbook definition of what an mrap is and also the fact that a big reason that my family decided to move out of the south district was the fear my mom constantly had of something happening to me uh because of that vehicle how it rolled into that area of the city over the summer and the rampant police presence as well and also just the fact that i mean i do deal with mental health issues i have anxiety depression and like i've been in some situations that have just caused me so like when i hear tons of police sirens and this is just something just extending all the way back to to new york for me like it really freaks me out and something that's been happening in the south district a lot is i don't know if the some of these officers think it's a game or something but how they'll just turn on their sirens really loud late at night like 12 a.m 1 a.m 2 a.m speed speed off speed by next thing you know two three blocks later they're all off so there's one night for me back in may and yeah so there were three officers that did this going right by me within a span of like 15 minutes and i i dropped to the ground and i just i broke down i started crying because i i didn't know what was going on i i don't know i don't know what hit me but like i couldn't control it at all i was like shaking and everything and i don't i didn't hear anything about gunshots that went on that night i didn't see anything in the daily activity log that showed that that needed to happen but my thing is there are far more people in that area that experience things just like that or they may have worse experiences from it and so that's part of why i i had to get out of there i couldn't take i really could not so when those mraps come in as well that's something you got people's kids seeing that constantly and it is literally a war vehicle so it's a tank that was designed to resist mines and they created it specifically during the iraq war that's not something that should be rolling through our cities to deliver warrants it's just not required at all and for people's kids to be seeing that consistently you're just inflicting trauma on people you're making them feel like they're in a police state so i heard this good quote once that there's two types of freedom freedom two and freedom from one is like a negative freedom others like a positive that freedom from is that negative freedom where someone's got to constantly feel like they got to protect you from something is when they got to protect you from something you aren't truly free because that's that's restrictive where that freedom to is that true positive freedom where you can move freely without fear where you can go where you want to without fear so when you constantly have people coming in and giving you freedom from when they say this mrap is freedom from having to worry about some terrorist attack happening or some major event happening and us not having protection from it i don't remember the south district being a war zone that is experiencing terrorist attacks so i don't see why we got to have that coming around that's a very negative freedom that freedom from that they're trying to call that mrap and it needs to go something i also addressed with some of the county supervisors something i addressed in their meeting last week when i spoke in that too and also that city council meeting as at this point you know not about me but all those kids that are still there all those parents that are still there all those families that are still there still experiencing those things that's what i got to say about that yes sir um this is mrs harris so um i'm gonna tell you just a personal experience because i was there when it happened so i think the best thing i can do is just tell you how i personally saw it so like one of my children she had wanted to do something so that we'll go out there in the morning and move to the yard and you know then you can go do what you want to go do you need this you need that so he was one yard he came inside and he was like oh this is trucking it's outside hollering these loud commands and and so i went outside to look and i just see the police had the street blocked off you know because i live on sandusky so it was over on like sandusky and talent i live before taylor and so i i come inside get my shoes on go outside and look i see the police and i just see this big truck thing and it's like trying to maneuver it couldn't even fit down the street you know it was trying to maneuver down the street and by the time i got up there i was leaving but it was no need for it it can barely fit down the street um just like what was mentioned before it is a vehicle that i never seen in my life before um it it's a mind resistant vehicle and let's be honest about it who has who has minds in iowa city i mean i mean it's not impossible but it's not likely um and by that time when he left and went down the street all my children were outside doing yard work and i was like what is that you know why is that big truck driving through here and it was difficult for me to explain to them why the iowa city police department drove this big army truck that's using iraq and afghanistan down our residential block and i didn't have a way to like explain it so and then like my second point you know it's been a lot of shootings that's been going on already and we haven't really got into summertime yet officially summertime i mean it's nice and warm right now but at this point you know i'm a person that can feel tensions in the air i can know when things you know people been sat inside of the house for the past year almost year and a half people got money people got you know everything and stuff that they need and now they're ready to come back outside and the attention that i feel in the air it needs some it needs to be somebody to talk to these youths around here because i just don't want to see no bad encounters and you know i'm not you know trying to be a person that's going to think that you know negative things are going to happen but sometimes you have to face reality um and you know i think it was just this past week it was just this past weekend you know somebody got shot over here right on broadway right behind the cases or something so you know it's i just hope for the good and hope we can figure out some things so with that i hear does anyone know how much well thank you both of you for sharing um does anybody know how much this tank cost the city or the police department to purchase 200 000 that's part of a program from the federal government where you know when bringing troops to iraq it was oh well let's uh look for ways to you know recruit recruit some money off this so there's cities localities all over the nation that decided oh yeah let's just pick these up so i think there's uh sitting like at the like national guard it's like station or something like that like when you go down towards like colonial lanes bowling alley um but yeah it's just not not a real need for it i mean if police officers were actually talking to people in the community and actually knew them then they would quickly realize there's no need for me to grab a tank to serve a warrant because you would know the people in the area and they could tell you hey that guy does not have a mind but i mean should probably be common sense anyways but that's again just why people should actually be knowing the people in the community they're policing living there as well that's that's just the way i see it but you know and and then it costs money to keep maintenance on it you know so they have to keep it in the budget so that you know they they keep paying for it because you have to maintain those vehicles you know they have to have different maintenance to keep on operating you know at a level that they needed to operate at so that's another fact that people i don't know if they think about that or know about that but that's another fact that taxpayers still pay money to maintain you know and earlier i think it was last week i watched you know i got a message about um a response from one like from like one of the supervisors and his response was you know i talked to the sheriff about this vehicle but i have to maintain a good relationship with the sheriff to make everything run smooth so i guess you know at oxfords you know to make things you know run smooth between you and the sheriff you're going to draft military vehicles to this neighborhood when it's not needed which is also sad because that election election that sheriff got voted in for was over the pandemic and wasn't it's not like he really had competition so that's that's what that is but at the end of the day for me yeah i you hear a lot of that from the board of supervisors who literally control the sheriffs and i'm not going to mince words on this it's honestly hilarious that they say that because it's you get to decide what they do your relationship with them like to me that's political posturing like i'm i'm done hearing it i had no problem ripping in to all these other people this week i don't care what they think of me etc this that or whatever but maybe that just might be because i have no intention of having any political office anything like that after this well some of them do so if they want to keep posturing that's fine but you're just going to get more people that are actually going to find their voice come to you and let you know how they actually feel what are they saying they're actually using it for what is the actual use that they say they need it for that's what i'm curious about what do they say um so i can respond to that um so on the day that it happened i did an interview with the news channel and what their response was is they needed it because this place was a different structure it's over on davis you know on sandusky down by davis and they said that it was a different type of structure where they didn't have the right cover that they needed so they needed to bring this vehicle to make sure that they had the right cover but the people that they raided over there i know those guys i know them they're not going to shoot the police what do you need this vehicle for you just making up reasons to use this vehicle they said that they needed to use this vehicle to have enough coverage um if you want to go check out the news story it's on kwl i think it was last week or something that they posted and they explained where they needed this vehicle to cover their offices some for officer safety you know that's one of the excuses that they kind of use a lot you know but they never say what about the public safety and with that idea just want to note that um commissioner lee has her hand raised if if you go to attendees yeah yeah thank you okay hey can you guys hear me yes yes okay okay perfect um so i i'm really appreciative of all of this dialogue that's happening um about uh these machines being used in the south district because i think that it's important for people to know that this does have an effect on their residents in the district but i think it's also important to redirect ourselves to what our jobs are as commissioners and maybe how we can tie in our positions as members of this commission to let people know where we're coming from as members of this community and members of the community who are over police how we feel about that [Music] so i don't know what this uh if this makes sense but is there a way that we can amplify the voices of those who are affected by these you know tactics that the johnson county sheriff and the iowa city police department are using uh like eric could you did you think of like maybe a handful of people and and i don't want to put you on the spot and be like no you should have your daughter speak about this because i don't you know i don't know how old your kids are and i don't want to put them through something that they might not even be completely aware of but if there's people that you know in the south district who are affected by the use of these machines and all of this heavy machinery i think it's important to get those voices and amplify those voices as well because i think that's what our duty is as commissioners and being a part of the music reconciliation solution uh so yeah that's all i have to say uh if you could please meet me now i i'm in my car so i uh my sound thank you commissioner ali voicing that because you preempted my other question that i was going to add to what commissioner johnson said okay now i was at the council meeting where members of the community uh a lot of them uh expressed that this is wrong and they shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be led to happen again so commissioner lee you started as on okay and because commissioner treyore said what he had the legwork he has been doing on follow-up so you've kind of given us some suggestion on some direction we can take as commissioners because you've sort of started answering my question because i'm like now so what we're here now would we we can't just express all that and then leave it there i would be more than willing to provide each of you with the contact information for everyone on the board of supervisors since they ultimately have the control over the sheriff's department too they are having a work session on the american rescue plan act on this coming week on wednesday but there is also going to be a conversation during that time uh this this is what the chair of the supervisors told me that um brad kunkel the sheriff will also be part of that work session um i need to find the time um but i believe can you hear me sorry to interrupt i just want to say that uh the johnson county supervisors do have control of if the sheriff needs it or not but it is actually also really probably the iowa city council it's the i think that's it um i have corresponding messages that i could provide from um county supervisor rod sullivan explaining that they have no control whether that is perfect uh i just wanted to put that in there it might be worthwhile to ask them as well and specifically the city manager is another person asked and also our current police chief but also the head of dispatch for uh for the police department but yeah for in terms of their their next work session if you'd like to attend it that's so there's no time for public discussion but you at least get to hear the meeting with the sheriff with brad kunkel to discuss the mrap vehicle specifically so that'll be wednesday of next week the 16th at 9am um so the agenda is available to the public 24 hours prior to the meeting and the meeting link is available there as well and there will be a phone number as well you can call if you'd like to just call in instead of just streaming it on your on your uh on your computer but i'll just be sure about by sunday to get any updates to you guys i have on that and then once again on tuesday to do the same and i'd suggest if you want to get in touch with people in the south district as well to hear more about it i got the diversity markets every saturday uh basically throughout the entire summer so i feel like that'd be a really good opportunity to really connect with the people in that section of town and also to support that section of town so for the sake of time is this something that the policing subcommittee can look into and then make recommendations to the rest of the commission yes okay so i think that's the way to move forward because this really this really is a policing subcommittee uh like yeah i have one more quick question if uh if if that's only if you guys know the answer to what do you know any other situations where this vehicle has been used as well um yes um actually it was used last summer as well for another raid at probably close to the same area probably at the same hills on taylor yeah it was used and it was used over there at the in the same area last summer so this vehicle is basically being used in one section of town on is that basically yeah the only other it's been used seven times in johnson county i think over the last five years or seven years but um two out of those times was not uh for anything that had to do with policing i think the article uh that uh i think travis reported actually maybe uh commissioner harris you might have been quoted in it um i think he stated how many times but i i know that two out of the seven times uh it wasn't necessary really it wasn't for like necessary reasons to have so i know they've used it seven times oh total mean we're talking about an mrap vehicle in iowa city so it's never necessary i come from um what people call a rough part of the city i grew up in and we've never seen this and we like we've never seen this so there's really no reason in little iowa city to have the mrap going down the street ever i'm gonna be honest um i i was a part of the committee that interviewed the police chief and uh we interviewed three different candidates and i i directly asked chief listen uh what he felt like the necessity for having these uh like militarized vehicles was and um he is going to speak strongly and passionately to the el paso shooting um and he's going to probably tell us how similarly um iowa city and el paso are and how you know it couldn't have happened there and things like that so i i wanted to be known that i i did ask chief within uh and this was before he was police chief while he was interviewing um why do you think that police departments need these kinds of machines and his experience with the walmart shooting el paso is the justification that he gave me for it i'm not saying it's correct i'm just saying that that prepare yourselves for that specific answer where um i guess in the mass shooting i i don't know we haven't had that happen here so i don't know what the direct response is or what that feels like but that was the justification for needing that militarization uh well i'm just gonna bring the like just state this the cedar rapids iowa city oh no the sea so iowa city has 75 000 people roughly 75 000 um i didn't really try to figure out if this is when students are here or not but i i don't think students are going to add another 74 000 but let's the population of el paso is over 600 it's 679 thousand growing so what growing quickly yes so whatever the sheriff like either the sheriff is not doing some comprehensive thinking or he's bullshitting us and we all know what this vehicle is so let's let's i'm not saying i disagree at all i i'm not saying i disagree at all um i'm just saying my experience because i did ask the now police chief that question when he was interviewing um very specifically why do we need this why are there this this announcement and he said you know in case i think and like you know the el paso shooting happens and we all think that it's not gonna happen to us and you know and i'm not saying this in like i'm um mocking him or anything because i don't know i'm just you know saying this is like factually i asked him and that is [Music] what so um like i'm gonna say something about it real quick i think it's um used as a tool of intimidation yeah that's what i believe that it's used as when little children see big army vehicles driving down the street they don't understand the negative effect that that that that has that takes down even if a kid wanted to trust a police officer a law enforcement officer now they just lost a whole level of trust because they see these guys guys ran down with a big army truck down the street yeah i mean as far as i know the fbi is the one that that was using that those vehicles in the el paso shooting and i i don't understand um if you're talking about mass shootings having an armored vehicle show up 10 minutes after the mass shooting has ended it's not going to help and that's the thing mass shootings they're unpredictable and you don't know how long they're going to be and sometimes they could just be a few minutes and your vehicle can't even go down the street without like taking out someone's mailbox so this is kind of ridiculous but i do i think for the sake of time maybe we should discuss this at the policing subcommittee and then as a commission maybe at our next meeting yeah and maybe it would be worthwhile to have peace listen come and talk to us because i'm telling you zappy i agree with you wholeheartedly i think that that makes sense i think it's justified but i think it would be worth um our time to have this conversation tell this to him have five pack individuals and things like that so uh i'm not saying we have to like sit there and accept everything i think that he deserves to be questioned about the tactics that he's using in a city that is actually smaller than el paso much smaller and i i think maybe it's worth getting his truth because we can't we're not going to understand it but we can get it yeah yeah i was gonna ask uh it would it be all right for us to all get a sit down and speak about it with the community and everything i mean wouldn't that make a lot of sense uh get people to tune in and then from there uh just discuss the reasoning and kind of just discuss in general what's the point and purpose of it it has to be a toxic thing if more than four of us are gonna show up we would have to notify um people the public and notify actually i think i believe it's a channel for you but [Music] one thing i'll try to do is uh reach out to people's trc and just see if just for once we can just get their next meeting just move to a different day and just make our next meeting just really easy center around this discussion in the hopes that we can get something bigger i don't know if they're gonna want to do it or abide by it or something but one thing we can try other than that this is part of the reason as well i'd like to do more of that monthly structure because if we can't get those synergies with them in any way then our main path is to have the opportunity to go to their meetings but if they're going to be continually scheduled on the same day and time is ours it just makes it very difficult and i know i know they won't go down so to one meeting a month so it's just kind of that game of chess [Music] all right but yeah and just in the interest of time i have noted that to have this on the next agenda i will try to reach out to just see if yeah get to coordinate that and let's be sure to talk about the policing subcommittee reach out to each other on a meeting for it do we have any commission announcements [Music] what did you ask commissioner treyore i was asking like if we have any commission announcements as well oh okay is this um item 11 and um i'm all can you please turn off your um sound [Music] thank you so much um is this item 11 yes yeah this would be item number 11 commission announcements and this is the one where uh commissioners not speaking to each other but yes cow said this is your time well we skipped item sorry i just want to interrupt to say we skipped item 10. uh item 10 was the one the one that we were on just now i think this oh sorry go on okay i think um i will wait till the next meeting to discuss this so we can actually have it within the agenda okay yeah yeah that's fine thank you um so i guess for me for commission announcements i just want to say as well at that diversity market south district 3 p.m 7 p.m saturday this is saturday next saturday saturday after that it's like five or six of them all throughout the summer every single saturday so they're trying to center uh black minority owned businesses by park businesses women-owned businesses in the area they don't want to just make this a one-summer thing they want to make this an annual thing so the most important piece to getting that to happen is people show up and people to show out so i've been trying to just keep posting it on social media and everything and i'd advise others to do the same they have the south district neighborhood association page on facebook post it on there talk to your friends if they're just kind of being answered about like i don't know if i want to go i don't know if i'm on time talk to him it's like i'll pick you up let's set up a time to go together whatever it is or if you want to volunteer at the event too there's a sign of genius as well you can use i can help you get in contact with them so i'll be volunteering there for like 2 45 to 5 on saturday so i know i can make at least three of them over the summer i unfortunately can't make all of them those are some times where i do have to be out of town for work and other things but um i'm going to make sure i make at least three of these and anytime i can't make it i'm going to keep promoting it hard because i want to make sure this remains a thing this is very very important so a lot of businesses that just come and go out of that area and a lot of the main businesses owned in the south district are owned by people that literally don't even live in the state and so when it comes to getting things like their smid plan pass for the economic redevelopment something that's very difficult to do because when you have business owners that literally don't live in the state what do they care about reinvesting in the community so that's a very important piece of getting things like the smith pass and supported and also just more attention on these businesses because it's one thing to say that more investment needs to happen for investments owned by minorities and women it's another thing to really show it by having that economic data and that backing from people saying that this is what we want this is where we want to spend our dollars so you got to just be willing to really show that i yield the floor this is commissioner dua i want to announce to the commission that [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this afternoon i released a very important interview about voting rights and it's on the vice news channel um people can go check it out um it's about um being incarcerated and trying to get out of being incarcerated and trying to go vote um it's a great thing go check it out um if anybody needs to share a link with them i can do that um it's a great thing you know like vice news is a international news company so it took me a few days to work on it um it was a pretty good interview you should go check it out because people can vote again but there's still restrictions being put on people especially like people of color um they're changing different things and it just doesn't make sense voting should be right for everybody in this country with that idea this is commissioner rivera i just want to wish everyone a happy pride month um as hopefully we all are aware um when when people who are bypoc are also lgbtq they sit with nested and layered stigma and this has been a particularly tough year for lgbtq iowans with a lot of anti-lgbtq bills that were attempted to be passed through the iowa legislature so i might ask for my fellow commissioners and for the public is just to you know keep holding space um and keep uplifting and supporting the the lgbtq folks in the communities in which you take apart thanks um i just want to this is commissioner daniel um i just want to wish everyone a happy juneteenth um since we won't meet before that um and june is also african-american music appreciation month so that's take advantage of that um and then finally something very close to my heart june is um national caribbean american heritage month and being the child of two haitian immigrants uh i'm i'm i feel more at home um in my american haitian skin uh knowing that our contributions and that we are recognized and that we're seen you i yield i would like to provide some education on something very devastating that's happened to the indigenous community um of turtle island uh a few weeks ago um a discovery was made of 215 children between the ages of 3 and 11 i believe uh in kamloops uh british columbia um at a boarding school there um and these uh this is not a very like deeply historical um finding uh this is something that you know these children were being murdered uh tortured and raped as of you know just um like maybe not too long ago uh and um the reason i'm making um this announcement is because uh boarding schools and residential schools uh are all over the us uh and and canada and um they were tools of genocide uh and iowa itself had three of them um and these were um perpetrated um they were organized uh by the uh the catholic church uh protestants all sorts of christian denominations um and so i implore uh the um iowa city community uh and folks on this commission to learn more about oh am i allowed to do that am i allowed to say that i don't know i will not do that i will ask iowa city to learn more about this issue um and um talk to your congregations or your communities of christian faith so you can learn more about what christianity with the governmental institutions have done to indigenous peoples um and understand that this is not the first grave that's been uncovered unmarked it's one of many and there will be many more and the indigenous community is in deep warning right now and uh so that's why i'm making this announcement so that you understand that uh many people are having a very very hard time myself included this is a very difficult time and so uh i that's this is what i want to tell the community of iowa city thank you um unfortunately you know this time we can't really respond to each other on this one but um does anyone have any other announcements before we move to staff announcements okay um last thing for me then in that case is just know that city of iowa city is having a juneteenth event in downtown iowa city so i'll be sure to for that to you guys if you're interested just page on facebook for it and everything but it's like three on three basketball tournament happening and yeah a bunch of other cool cool things occurring so kind of like a little block party thing in a sense so i think it'd be really cool to get some more people out there and show out for it uh but yeah that's last thing i have all right and then uh staff announcements do we have any today stephanie i have nothing thank you all right thank you everyone for you know bearing with the meeting tonight that was a little long but some just like important uh things to talk about and apologies for talking so much this time i just had a lot of my mind just need to get off my chest but uh just appreciate you all and if we can just get a motion to adjourn and another motion in a second then we can uh get out rivera moved commissioner i'll leave a second all right and with that we are adjourned thank you everyone and june 24th next meeting