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HomeMy WebLinkAboutIowa City City Council Work Session - Joint Meeting with Ad Hoc Truth & Reconciliation Commission[00:00:00] [00:00:20] Hello. It is now 7:00 p.m. I want to welcome everyone to the Joint Ad Hoc Truth and Reconciliation Commission Work Session. This is a city council work session that we're having a joint meeting with our Truth Reconciliation Commission. Very excited to be here tonight and welcome each of our commissioners, as well as our counselors. We want to start with item number 1 on our agenda which is welcoming and introductions. I thought what we might do is, [00:01:00] [00:01:01] we don't do roll call at work sessions, but I thought for it today, we might do a roll call just to have everyone wave so that we know who you are and you know who we are. I'll start with our city counselors. I want our Mayor Pro Tem. [00:01:25] Hi. [00:01:28] Yes. Then I want Councilor Mims. [00:01:33] Hello, everybody. [00:01:35] Councilor Thomas. [00:01:37] Hi, everyone. [00:01:39] Councilor Taylor. [00:01:41] Hello, everybody. [00:01:42] Councilor Bergus. [00:01:44] Hello, good evening. [00:01:46] Councilor Weiner. [00:01:48] Hello. [00:01:50] These are the city councilors and we are very excited to have the opportunity to talk to you all. Then I [00:02:00] will actually go and introduce all of the commissioners if that's okay unless the chair would like to do that. [00:02:18] Go ahead, Mayor. [00:02:19] Yeah. Go ahead, Mayor. [00:02:21] I'll do it. I'm going to start with our chair, Chair Traore, and then our vice-chair, Commissioner Ali. Then we have Eric Harris, Commissioner Harris. I don't see him yet. Let me know when he shows up, please. Then we have Commissioner Rivera. Great. Do we have Commissioner [00:03:00] Navarre- Jackson? [00:03:05] Hello? [00:03:07] Yes. Hello. I was trying to go with our current commissioners and then we have some new individuals. Did I miss any of our current commissioners? [00:03:23] Then we have some new commissioners joining us. Now, I'm going to probably butcher some of these names. We have Commissioner Wangui. [00:03:40] Hi, everyone. [00:03:42] Gathua? Yes, welcome. Then we have Commissioner Johnson. [00:03:51] Good evening, guys. How is it going? [00:03:53] Good evening. Commissioner Dillard. [00:03:57] Hi, everyone. [00:03:59] Hello. [00:04:00] Then we have Commissioner Nobiss. [00:04:09] I believe I got all of our commissioners. Did I forget anyone? Great. Well, welcome. Well, this is a very good opportunity that we have, very unique opportunity where the council connects with our commissioners. Again, I want to welcome all of you. Is someone trying to say something? Did I forget someone? Great. Welcome. I do want to just make note that we want to thank Commissioner Navarre- Jackson for her service here on the commission and acknowledge that soon you'll depart in [00:05:00] this commission, and then it will be welcoming a new individual to the commission, Commissioner Daniel. Thank you for your service. We're going to move on to item number 2, which is the TRC resolution review. The Truth and Reconciliation review, what I did was I thought that I would just give a few highlights from the resolution and maybe reserve some of the conversation within the resolution for later in our agenda, you'll note that we have bylaws and truth, TRC budget, and the facilitator, and some subcommittees a part of our agenda. Naturally, some of those conversations will take place. [00:06:00] But I didn't want to just start with the resolution that we did for the Truth and Reconciliation. It states that by October 1, 2020, we would create a ad hoc commission to bear to the truth of racial injustice in Iowa City and to carry out restorative justice through the collection of testimony and public hearings with such work to included recommendations at the council of a plan for dedicating and/or renaming public spaces and/or rights of way in honor of Black Lives Matter movement. I'm going to skip around and highlight some points. It says, whereas the city council committed to allocate city funds of one million dollars, which includes a variety of initiatives. Among them, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. City council also acknowledges the existence of painful, systemic, persistent, and varied [00:07:00] forms of racial injustice in Iowa City and acknowledges that such injustice persists despite past efforts to address. Then number 2 in the resolution states, "The TRC shall have nine members who are representative of the city's BIPOC community and organization." Thanks again for all of you that are part. Number 5 talks about the TRC is not required to seek approval from the city council, mayor, or city manager to set its own agenda and prioritize its own activities. We're going to come back to number 6 and 7 because number 6 is a part of the facilitator, and then number 7 as a part of what we'll call the orientation for new members or we'll talk about some open meetings and some public [00:08:00] records. We'll have our city attorney talk to us about some of that. Number 11 talks about the charges of the TRC, the work that we're asking of you. A is fact-finding, truth-telling as B, and C as reconciliation. Now, there's a lot in there because that is your charges, and so I won't go into that as of now. But there's a lot to unpack there. Then number 14 is there was a charge by May 1st, 2022, that TRC shall submit to counsel, and there's an array of things that are there. I wanted to just highlight a few things and then I believe if we can maybe go throughout the meeting a little bit, but I want to pause just to have any comments, of course, on these items. [00:09:00] But if we can go throughout the meeting and then a lot of these items will come up because they somewhat intertwine throughout. [00:09:15] If the commissioners, as well as the council, are in agreement, let us maybe move forward unless there are some comments now about the resolution. [00:09:37] Yes, go right ahead. [00:09:39] I'm sorry. I just wanted to note that since you introduce people, Commissioner Nobiss has just joined. [00:09:45] Welcome, Commissioner Nobiss. Welcome. Because there are some items here that I think that we do need to talk about, [00:10:00] but if we can maybe go through a little bit of the agenda because some of these will be addressed and then things that are not addressed throughout the agenda, when we get to items number 10, we can certainly bring those up. [00:10:25] Item number 3 on our current agenda is land acknowledgments. I want to invite Commissioner Rivera because I know that this is an item that you wanted to talk about. [00:10:39] Thank you. This is something that has been in the works for a long time and we have a space in the later agenda for the commission to discuss more about the land acknowledgment that I've proposed that are commission-adopt and that has been collaborated on with the Human Rights Commission. But [00:11:00] since the beginning of this work, it was notable that there wasn't any indigenous representation on the commission, and I'm very relieved [inaudible 00:11:08] the longer the case we do have Commissioner Nobiss representing, which is fantastic. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure that we were going to be talking about land acknowledgment as part of our reconciliation process for carrying out our mandate as the commission. We have not yet, as a commission, been able to discuss the land acknowledgment that I've drafted and it's gone through a bunch of revisions. But I was also very glad that members of the community were able to assist me in the work of creating the land acknowledgment that I proposed. I'm heavily in collaboration with the Native American Council at the University of Iowa as well as other community members. This was a topic that was also discussed at the most recent Human Rights Commission meeting. [00:12:00] We had developed somewhat of a small working group with members of the public to revise, and edit, and improve the statement that I had proposed. I'm looking forward to the commission later to review the draft with the land acknowledgment, as well as getting Commissioner Nobiss's input as well. The hope would be that not only our commission and the Human Rights Commission would adopt the use of land acknowledgment for our meetings, but that we would we would make a joint recommendation to council that you consider using one as well. [00:12:47] Great. Thank you for that information. I know that we'll expect something from this commission based on what you said and based on what has happened in the past about [00:13:00] the land acknowledgment. Thank you so much. We're going to move on to item number 4, which is the orientation for new members. This is where we have a few new members and I thought a part of our resolution addresses some of the orientation pieces such as the open meeting laws and the public record. I'm going to invite our city attorney, Eleanor Dilkes, to share at this time. [00:13:35] Thank you, Mayor. I'm Eleanor Dilkes, city attorney. [00:13:41] Iowa has, like most states do, what are called Sunshine Laws, which are aimed at having the sun shine on the workings of public bodies. Iowa has both an Open Meetings Act and a Public Records Act. [00:14:00] Generally, the goal is to make public business transparent to the community members. The Open Meetings Act essentially requires that meetings of a governmental body and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a governmental body, it is created by the city council and it is subject to the Open Meetings Law. The essence of that law is that when you meet, you must do so in public. A meeting is a gathering of five or more of you, a majority of you, by any means, electronic and person, etc, to have deliberation or take action on [00:15:00] something that is within the scope of the TRC's business. In terms of having your meetings, staff, Stephanie will take care of the logistics of that for you. But essentially, what happens is you have to give notice to the public about what you are going to talk about, and that comes in the form of an agenda. Tonight, everybody knows what the topics are because we have put out an agenda for this joint meeting as well as the year later meeting. So it's very important that on that agenda, you list what the plan is, what you plan to talk about. In terms of the specificity of that agenda, the way to think about that is just to make sure that your average person, if they read that agenda, would know that you are going [00:16:00] to talk about those things. If a person looking at your agenda could not know that you are going to talk about subject B, then you're not entitled to talk about item B, and that would be a violation of the Open Meetings Act. That agenda or that public notice of the meeting has to be given within at least 24 hours of the meeting unless you can establish an emergency and rarely happens. [00:16:42] At the meeting, the votes of every member must be recorded, and minutes must be kept of your meetings, and those then become a matter of public record. One of the issues when you think about public meetings and the need to give notice of those meetings, [00:17:00] what we're trying to avoid is a meeting that hasn't been properly noticed for which an agenda has not been sent out. Let's say if five of you get together at a coffee shop and are talking and you end up talking about TRC business, that's a violation of the Open Meetings Act. Another example is email communication. Email communication can be very tricky because it is so quick. The exchanges are so so quick that sometimes if you are having email communications, five or more of you may be communicating with each other simultaneously, and that will be considered a public meeting. For instance, when I communicate with the city council and when the city manager [00:18:00] communicates with the city council, we at the bottom of our emails say, this is for information only, do not reply-all to this email and contact me if you have a question individually. Essentially, what you want to do, except when you were at a public meeting, you want to route those communications through staff. [00:18:33] Any questions on public meetings so far? No? Okay. We'll talk about public records and then we'll just talk about some words of wisdom. [00:18:48] Public records is any information stored in any medium, again, electronic, emails, texts, anything [00:19:00] that relates to the business of the TRC. It does not matter where that communication or that document is. It doesn't matter if it's on your personal computer or if it's on a city computer, if it is about the business of the TRC, if someone requests documents relating to the TRC, we will help you. [LAUGHTER] Staff will help you do that, but we will be required to have you gather and provide to us all the documents you have, including all the emails you have, all the texts you have that relate to the businesses of the TRC. [00:19:50] Any person for any reason can ask to review public records. [00:20:00] [00:20:01] Just know that at anytime records can be requested. There are some confidential records. In terms of your work, I think it's very unlikely that there will be many of those. [00:20:20] If there are violations of the Public Records and the Open Meetings Act, there can be personal sanctions fines against the individual members, if they're found to be intentional. [00:20:39] Just a couple of things I always say when I'm advising people how to operate as a member of a public body is to assume that you will be asked for your emails and your texts, and so if you put something in writing in an email or a text, you should be okay with that being on the front page of the [00:21:00] paper. [NOISE] You want to be careful about talking about sensitive subjects in writing that are really not meant for anybody else to see. So if you need to have a sensitive conversation on a touching matter or anything that you really don't want to see the light of day, you need to do that on the phone and not by email or by text; or you need to find a way to do that at your public meetings that are properly noticed. Again, don't use email as a method of communicating among yourselves. Again, send it to Stephanie, Stephanie will distribute it to the rest of you or send it to that your email address, [00:22:00] trc@ay-city.org and then it will get distributed. If you do use personal email to communicate about the TRC, it would be very helpful if you could segregate those emails, so for instance, and it's likely that those requests will come through the city clerk or through Stephanie's office or through my office. They'll say, I want all emails between the members of the TRC or between a member of the TRC and anybody else about the TRC from X date to Y date. We're going to have to gather those, and if you have them segregated on your computer in the event you are doing personal emails like that, or text in the event you're doing texts, it will be [00:23:00] much easier for us to find those, review them, determine if there's anything confidential about them, and provide them to the member of the public who is asking rather than having to go through all your personal emails to find those documents, which you would prefer we don't do and we would prefer we don't do. [00:23:31] Again, if you get a request for records, you should talk to Stephanie about that and she will involve my office and we'll figure out how we need to respond to it. [00:23:48] When you were appointed, you should have gotten a brochure from the League of Cities, which has a much more detailed explanation of open meetings and open records. [00:24:00] Stephanie knows a lot about how the open meetings and the open records and she will be at your meeting and we'll be able to address those questions. She will contact me or another member of my office if she needs assistance and in answering those questions. That's all I have, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. [00:24:29] Can you see Commissioner Rivera has his hand up. [00:24:34] You can just jump right on in. [00:24:36] Thank you for the information. I just wanted to ask about records. If the records request comes, would we have to collect all received and sent messages or just sent? [00:24:55] It would be both. [00:25:00] I don't know if you all are planned to do this, but sometime it's helpful to put something on the bottom of your emails that are about TRC business that this may be if you communicate with me about the TRC in writing, that may be a public record that we'll have to disclose. A lot of time it's not unusual at all to get requests for emails from us. Electronic communication e-mails or texts from one to another point in time and that of course, would include sent and received. [00:25:51] Thank you, Eleanor. Any other questions for Eleanor? [00:25:58] We are moving on to item number 5, [00:26:00] which is bylaws. [00:26:08] In the resolution, this has recently been a point of controversy about the TRC and their bylaws. I know that I've spoken with various members of my counselors and we've done it publicly, talking about some of the bylaws that individuals felt was necessary. Mayor Pro Tem and I had the pleasure of speaking with vice-chair and chair of the TRC. Maybe I can invite our vice-chair, Ali, if she would like to talk about this because I know there was some interesting parts that you shared, just to open us up and engage in this conversation. [00:27:00] [00:27:02] Yeah. I'm going to open up my notes from that day. But pretty much what I did was, I met with Steph, and Steph sent me, this was a few weeks back, bylaw examples from other commissions. I have the Human Rights Commission, the Community Police Review Board, and then another commission that I pretty much just look through their bylaws and picked and chose the ones that would work for our commission and the same verbiage to put some things together for our TRC. You are going to present those bylaws to everyone throughout the next week and like the next meeting just so that we could really focus this [00:28:00] next meeting on getting to know one another and building that communication line. But we do have bylaws that we're working on. I went over examples of what has worked before in other commissions and what hasn't worked before. I took Mayor Teague's advice about public comments and just figured out some solid ideas. Speaking about the bylaws, I did want to say also, I want to give a shout out to Laura and Janice because they connected me with Ohio State University's Divided Community Project Director, Carl Smallwood. He has been the most incredible help. Him and his team have helped guide us in so many ways already [00:29:00] outside of this. [00:29:04] I just wanted to thank you guys publicly for the effort that you guys put in and setting that up, and taking notes, and everything, that meant a lot. In that connection now that we have with those five is something that I can't thank you guys enough for seriously. But yes. We made that connection with the Divided Community Project and they gave us some really great ideas about working with intention and how to work these bylaws in and not make it a place where we have to question things because a lot of us are new to this and we have to give ourselves grace for it, that not a lot of us have been these commission situations where we are using Robert's rules or Rusty's rules and stuff. [00:30:00] [00:30:02] Yeah, I don't know, is that what you are hoping I would say? I didn't want to waste you guys' time and go over every single bylaw we wrote and stuff like that. But that is something that the commission has been working on and we will be voting on at one of our meetings. Thanks, guys. Mayor, before you move on, I want to back up and just make one more comment about something I had forgotten which looks to the bylaws as well. In terms of public comment, the public is entitled by law to have access to your meetings. Whether that's in-person, if you're having in-person meetings, or electronically, if you're having electronic meetings. The public does not have a legal right to comment or participate in your meetings [00:31:00] unless you're holding a public hearing. You can certainly, as you know the council does, make opportunities for public comment however you choose to make it. But that is up to you to decide. [00:31:20] I think it's really important then for you to let the public know how you're going to do that, so you can have some orderly conversations that you all can get your work done without being interrupted by others, but you still give them an opportunity to comment when you're interested in their comments. Then the other thing I would say about bylaws is bylaws, as you've probably seen in some of the examples that Stephanie has given you, they need not be complicated. It's just some pretty simple [00:32:00] basic rules. If your bylaws are doing what they're supposed to do, you shouldn't need Robert's rules. Robert's rules, they can be a very cumbersome thing to use in the context of a body like the city council or the TRC. Hopefully, your bylaws will take care of those issues. Thanks, Mayor. [00:32:32] This is certainly open discussion, especially on these items. Please jump right on in and I'll patiently wait for people to make comments. [00:32:43] Mohamed Traore here. I just wanted to add that yeah in terms of bylaws, I do understand what you mean in terms of not feeling that Robert's rules should be necessary at the bylaws are robust enough. Well, yeah, we just wanted to give all the new members the opportunity first to read over what we have [00:33:00] so far because we want to make sure that anything and everything we do decide in this commission is a true democratic process and that it isn't just the chair and vice-chair just talking things over and deciding for everyone. This is our first opportunity meeting, everyone. We'd like to present them in our formal meeting and then come back in the next meeting. Then from there, just really decide what set of everything that we want to pull forward. This time, personally, I do feel that public comment will be necessary. I'm pretty much every meeting outside of just the very beginning portion. We'll be working with each other on how exactly that will happen. We just figured that subcommittee meetings prior to the next meeting would probably just be the best way to really decide that so that there's less haggling publicly. Then once we finally come together this assessment process, but that's all I really have for now. Thank you. [00:34:00] [00:34:07] I think personally for myself and I want to talk about the future. [LAUGHTER] I want to talk about the future of the reinstituted, no longer suspended TRC. How do I believe there'll be great success? Personally, I believe that when you look at your agenda item, just like tonight, your agenda item you have just a few items on there and I think you have your public comment right up towards the front. I think as you're going through looking at other [00:35:00] commissions, I think there'll be some value into always making a point that before the commissioner speak, that the public is allowed to speak. Then once it's been identified that the public is finished speaking, then that's when the commissioner speak. I think you'll find great value and allowing for the opportunity for the public to share their thoughts on a item. Because sometimes, like Mayor Pro Tem has said in the past, sometimes we hear from the public and we get information that we didn't quite know and we might change our thought process about things we've learned from the public. It's critical for us to hear from the public and is also very critical that once the public has spoken, in my view, that the [00:36:00] commissioners at that point take the opportunity to just have a conversation. One of the things that I think in our resolution for the TRC, there are no bylaws. I think a part of the intention was for the TRC to have some guidance, some charges, as well as some things left up to creativity and items suggested by the public. When I do think about the TRC resolution, I find that there is a lot of things that really do require your conversation to happen before we even touch on some of these. When I think about [00:37:00] some of the power just like the fact-finding, the truth-telling and the reconciliation, there's some items under there that are very specific and spelled out for the commission. I really believe you got to go through each point and make some comments, and if there's some things that you need clarity for that you all can't quite figure it out, I think you can certainly reach out to the council to ask the entire council for some clarity. There are some things that we really clearly defined and then other things we didn't as much. Now, a part of the bylaws, if you want to consider it to be that we just had our city attorney talk about those chapter, I think it's 21 and Chapter 22, open meeting laws and the public records. Those are some structures that [00:38:00] guide your operations. I think what I would like to propose at least as the city council, is that we allow the TRC to certainly create some bylaws. Because I really believe that for myself, I would like to see your bylaws and I just want to see them and if I feel compelled to make comment, then I can bring it up amongst my fellow councilors and see if there's a support to make any comments in response to them. But I think from conversations that I've had with individuals on the commission, I feel quite confident that the bylaws that you all create will really work great moving forward, and so unless there's any more comments about the bylaws, I think I'll propose to our city councilors that we [00:39:00] ask that the commission submit us a report of your bylaws once you have voted on them, just for council, and we'll get those actually in your minutes. [00:39:20] Mayor, just a quick comment, that the council does have to approve the bylaws, that's a charter requirement. [00:39:27] Great. We'll have comment on your bylaws. It will be a requirement [LAUGHTER] for you all to submit those bylaws and we'll review them and have input. [00:39:46] We're going to move on to item number 6, which is the TRC budget. I may mention at the beginning when I read the resolution [00:40:00] that the city council committed to allocate city funds of one million dollars, which includes a variety of initiatives, among them, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Then I do know that [00:40:17] we've had some budgetary thoughts from the TRC commission as well, and so probably just want to open that up. I know that even our Chair Traore had previously submitted something to your fellow TRC members. [00:40:37] Thanks for recognizing me, Mayor. The initial budget I'd put out wasn't anything to be concrete but it is more just get some ideas on paper and just hear with the public thought about it. We did get a little bit of public feedback from that. From what I gathered from that and also from just the few subcommittee meetings we were able to have prior to the suspension. [00:41:00] Got a little more work in terms of portion the budget out by monthly and also by item. At this time, because we have new members coming in as well, we figured it would probably be best to have the budget subcommittee meeting after we reform that budget subcommittee and truly talk about the budget in detail. Ensure that the priorities of everyone in the budget subcommittee are truly represented. Then to bring that forward during the second meeting for everyone to then have true input and then to vote on those aspects of the budget. Then also in terms of the amount in the budget, my understanding is well that if whatever reason an amount was needed to be increased for whatever reason that we couldn't make that recommendation to the city. I don't know if that's needed at this time, but once again, the rest of the members will need [00:42:00] to chime in on that part. I just wanted to ask in terms of the entire thing, it's just the operational budget as well that we will be submitting to you, correct? [00:42:13] I want my councilors to jump in as well because as to what the understanding of the budget is for the TRC. [00:42:27] Yeah. I'll jump in Mayor. I think so in the resolution number 10, because I think we also should address the time frame for it just knowing that the TRC is not in a position to have gotten us the budget within the 90 days. I think the council should try and articulate if we have any expectations for what the time frame should be from this point forward. But number 10 in the resolution just says, "The TRC shall recommend to city council a preliminary budget for funds needed to carry [00:43:00] out the charges of the TRC beyond what existing city staff programs and services can provide." In my mind, that's talking with staff to see what activities that you can do that can be supported by current city services and activities that we're already doing in different departments. Then just trying to lay out on top of that, what do you need and how might that budget look. I really like what you said Chair Traore about going over time and having maybe considering month by month as well as different categories of items. That's just my thoughts. [00:43:44] Thank you very much. Yeah. In terms of the budget, currently I've broken out in an Excel format, month by month, and also visually as well. So the amount of the budget that's used each month can also be seen via the graph and so [00:44:00] just helps anyone and everyone who looks at it to truly understand what exactly we're aiming for. Also, have budgets broken out by subcommittee in terms of the priorities they may want to address. Also just looking for anyone that's part of the commission that would like to be a part of that budget subcommittee. We can have up to four people on that committee. I would also like to invite at least, at minimum, two members of city council to join into that subcommittee meeting so that we can directly ask questions or if there's anything in terms of current city programs that we may have accidentally covered as well so that we can get those removed so there's no wasteful spending whatsoever because want to ensure that we use all the dollars as well as possible. I would also like to invite anyone else in the community that may want to have any input to send us an email at adhoctruth@Iowa-city.org if [00:45:00] they would like to participate in the process as well in any subcommittee meeting or in any future meetings. Thank you. [00:45:08] Can I interrupt for a quick question on the budget? I apologize if this is already addressed, but I'm a little confused on what exactly our budget is. It's not the full one million dollars, what is the actual TRC budget? [00:45:27] That is a question that is often asked and so I'll ask one of our councilors to maybe share. [00:45:41] I'll give it a shot and maybe Councilor Bergus or someone else can correct me if I don't get it right. The one million dollars was what we as a council in June of last year, had the resolution [00:46:00] on a variety of different matters with respect to Black Lives Matter. The TRC is one of the aspects of that resolution, and it will draw its budget from that one million dollars as needed for operational expenses. Let's say, for example, you hire a facilitator, you will need money to pay the facilitator. If you have other expenses or you decide you need to bring in a couple of other fact-finders, or change facilitators, you'll need funds for that as well. I also see it as somewhat fluid. You may come up with an initial budget and then conclude that in fact, you need additional funds for something else, that will need to be approved. But as a portion of that million what you believe that you need to operate effectively as a commission, and that may change over time. [00:47:00] My last question, is there an expiration to these dollars? [00:47:10] Currently, the TRC is in session or is a commission until 2022. I believe it's June if I'm not mistaken, June 30th, 2022, and so as long as your budget is within that time frame. That would be the time frame. [00:47:34] Thank you. [00:47:40] I would probably make mention that potentially there could be some things that could go beyond that time frame. Remember, that's something that we'll be aware of. [00:47:51] I have a question and this might be something that could be answered in another agenda item. So just let me know if I need to hold off. [00:48:00] [00:48:03] Obviously, we're not going to be able to spend a dime until you guys approve of it, but how would we submit that to you, and if we are let's say submitting X amount for this, would it be something that you guys discuss in a public meeting or in a closed meeting, or how does that aspect of it work? [00:48:28] It'll be in a public meeting, where we receive your budget and it will be on our agenda. Then so yes, it will be in a public meeting, and then you'll receive a word back. [00:48:48] One last thing. In terms of the format, would you also like the broken out format month by month, item by item, or would you just like that in the format [00:49:00] of just a Word document where each line item is broken out in an explanation of what generally the funds would be looking to address? As we would just like to be as transparent as possible, not only with the council but also with the people of Iowa city, so they truly do understand what we're looking to do with all the dollars, instead of just like a vague explanation or a line item. [00:49:25] I'm going to actually ask and put on the spot our Councilor Mims, to maybe talk about best practices for things that are submitted for council approval when it comes to funds. [00:49:42] Did you say Chair Traore that you already have it in a spreadsheet by time frame and by category? [00:49:50] Yes, that's correct. Then there's also an attached graph that just shows how much of the budget money would be used, and I started with [00:50:00] the million-dollar amount and then just basically how much of the budget would eat into that, and as it currently stands, it doesn't use the entire amount by any means. [00:50:12] Yeah. I think if you present us with both documents with that spreadsheet, that shows what you expect to spend on a monthly basis, and the general topics for that, you'll need to work with staff because I think once we approve the budget, you'll probably be working more with Stephanie and/or other staff in terms of getting access to the funds. I do not expect that once we've improved the overall budget that the council's not going to have any direct oversight of the actual expenses that'll be working through staff on that. But I think your spreadsheet and then if you do have some narrative that goes with it, I think that would be fine. [00:50:55] Thank you very much. [00:50:58] All right. [00:51:00] Any other items on the TRC budget? [00:51:05] Number 7, facilitator. I know that a part of the budget, we just talked about the facilitator and such. Just wanted to open this up. I know that your experience as a facilitator and if there's any questions related to that, I don't know if Chair Traore if that's a part of your budget? [00:51:33] Yeah. In the current budget that's written out, that is a part of the budget, and the way it's also written out is that the original amount that the form facilitator asks for is the exact amount we would also like to offer at minimum to the next person to accept the position because we just want to ensure that we are offering at minimum the same term to the next person to come in as facilitator. But also, I [00:52:00] would like to not give them anything less regardless of the time frame, just because of the fact that we are asking them to do the same amount of work in a shorter time frame. They will more than likely have to work a little harder, and with that being said, I do have a line item in there for a co- facilitator. But this is another reason why I want to ensure that we speak about this in a subcommittee prior to bringing this forward for a vote because the opinions of everyone in the subcommittee and the commission are highly important before making any decisions on that, and also any suggestions anyone has in terms of a facilitator to bring in so that we have the best full of candidates possible and that we can get that out publicly so that we have a true application process and also true interview process. Thank you. [00:52:57] I know that one of the [00:53:00] things that came up when we were having our council meeting was, when will there be another facilitator, and the importance of having a facilitator. At least what I would propose to our city council counselors is that we do know that they're going to be having conversations about what will be their facilitator style. I just heard the word co-facilitator and a facilitator. What I might suggest is that we just stay tuned to see how they're navigating to get in a facilitator. At least one of our personal concerns has been when there wasn't a facilitator, there were just some challenges, and then when there was a facilitator, we saw some great opportunities starting [00:54:00] to arise. [00:54:06] I don't know if what my suggestion would be as before you really get into any deep dives of anything, you wait for your facilitator to help you all navigate through that stuff. There'll be some researching. I'm not sure how you can start some of your initial conversations, but just keep in mind when the facilitator really was seen as a crucial part of helping the TRC accomplish some of its goals. [00:54:43] I will definitely have to agree, which is why personally, I would like to submit the budget in short order within the next 30 days maximum, and also to get a recommendation for facilitator candidates [00:55:00] no later than Memorial Day weekend so that all of that can be decided prior to the end of May as the Divided Community Project that the Vice-Chair Ali has been so gracious with that connecting us more with and working with in call Coal Smallwood. We have asked them if they can set up basically a formal training as well for not only the commission, but also, for whatever facilitator we bring in so that there is more of a concrete process and we asked them to set that up in June. In terms of the timeline, we're just working to make sure that we keep ourselves on a schedule. [00:55:42] I do want to just acknowledge [00:55:47] the resolution language which is item number 6, and it says, "The TRC shall be facilitated by an independent consultant funded by the city with expertise and [00:56:00] group facilitation and human rights and to the extent possible experience with diversity, implicit bias, mediation, and conflict resolution until such time as the TRC concludes the favorable vote of at least three-fourths of all the members of the TRC that facilitation is no longer needed." When you all are having that conversation, I would suggest you keep this at the forefront of the conversation as well. [00:56:35] I would just add that it may not be one person. I think, at least from my perspective, when we imagine the facilitator, it's that you all as Commissioners we appointed for your experience and not having the expectation that you would have to be carrying out yourselves all of this work of the three charges, but that you would have the opportunity to have [00:57:00] someone or someones who can be doing, as the Mayor said the research who can be pulling together events, who can be managing agreements with third parties if you're doing things like video or music or those types of things. There's certainly a wide variety of skill sets that we can imagine you would need to pull together for that. I think, at least in my opinion, if it's not just one person, but you approach it as, what do we need help with, and then hiring that. That's what would be one way to approach it. [00:57:41] Yes. Thank you. I'm very glad you said that as well. Actually, it's the Divided Community Projects Team was very gracious with letting us know that it is very important to delegate these tasks out so that we aren't all over the place and that we can truly focus on everything within our meetings that we need to. I [00:58:00] do also realize that while this commission is for the city of Iowa City, we also need a unique situation where we do have the Coalville and North Liberty communities basically intertwined with us in that our work in terms of restructuring in the police, I know that we do have police contracts intertwined with Coalville and North Liberty as well. We'll definitely need a facilitator or two that can really manage all of that. That's such a large stretch of people and also space and just a lot to really ask just one person to deal with. In the case of just one person getting sick or having to attend to something else, I just think it would be wise to just have a co-facilitator so that they have someone else to lean on in case anything were to ever go wrong or if they ever had anything else that they needed to get to. [00:58:59] I would [00:59:00] just add that as Councilor Bergus had said, I think you may end up with situations where you also need to bring someone else in for something specific for a certain period of time. That may well be something that's necessary for the commission over time. [NOISE] [00:59:17] I think there are some Commissioners that have some unique experience with facilitating. Some of them are like Dr. Wangui. She has some great ideas and knowledge and experience when it comes down to that. I think you all will have great conversations relating to that. [00:59:49] Yes. Unless there's nothing else, we'll move on to item number 8, which is subcommittee. I [01:00:00] just heard Chair Traore just talking about subcommittees. One thing that I said when the councilors met when we paused the TRC was I know that there were several subcommittees that were created by the TRC, housing and education and a variety of others. [01:00:25] I think is great for the TRC to want to talk about these. I think it's necessary if you're going to navigate the charge to really ensure that we have some end to systemic and persistent racism. One thing that I might suggest to the TRC is that we have some of the subcommittees that are already created. [01:01:00] [01:01:02] Affordable housing, that's been something that this council has been working on. I got to give it again to our Mayor Pro Tem for being our champion when it comes down to counsel, let's talk about affordable housing every meeting. [LAUGHTER] No. But it is important. She was very instrumental in getting the council to really clearly see that we need an affordable housing plan. The council has agreed to that and there's affordable housing group being formed. I think we've said it. I've heard different councilors say, "We're not affordable housing experts. We are champions, but we're not affordable housing experts." That's where I would suggest to the TRC to maybe [01:02:00] when you're talking about your subcommittees dependent on your angle, I don't know what your angle will be. But maybe trying to see if you can connect with some existing groups that are already created by the city. You may do that in addition to whatever you choose to do. That's what I might suggest is there are some experts out there talking about some other things, that you might really benefit from. That would be my comment there. [01:02:35] One hundred percent, I definitely have to agree. We're not looking to reinvent the wheel if something already exists. I think the main point of the subcommittees is just so we have direct outlets, so we have people on the commission focused on groups that they can continually reach out to and that these other groups within the area also have a direct contact point to relay information to and to set up meetings [01:03:00] with our subcommittees and to bring all this information together. We would also really like to leverage the fact that we have such a lively student population in the area as well. That we have a school of sociology. We have schools of social work and economics, statistics, and education, social justice. We have a lot around us that can really help inform us. Also, the College of Law in the area. None of us are no complete experts on anything, everything. We do have a doctor on the commission now, but other than that, yeah, I am just really looking forward to learning from all of these other groups in the area and bringing them into the fold. [01:03:47] Great. [01:03:53] Any other thoughts on subcommittees? I know that the TRC will have conversation, [01:04:00] and again, I'm going to pick one Dr. Huang Goya again because she has served on a past commission. When I read through your applications, you served on boards. That's great, you have some experience about meetings and trying to ensure that it's very productive. One thing that I have to say is that the most important thing that I think of no matter what you do is ensuring that the charge is fulfilled. [01:04:37] I think that the subcommittees and even the big groups and the small groups, I think you-all are going to do really well moving forward and looking forward to that. Item number nine is TRC electronic Zoom meetings. We're on a Zoom meeting right now. This [01:05:00] item is really related to what are the capabilities of electronic meetings? Currently, we are in a work session. [01:05:16] All council work sessions, we do not have the public apart of the work session. I know your meetings you will. Commission meetings do have to allow the public and you don't have the option not to, not on your routine meetings. [NOISE] I know that when we go into our formal meetings, there is an opportunity that we have where we really see someone hand raised and we acknowledge who that individual is, and call upon them to speak. One of the challenges that we saw with the [01:06:00] past meetings were members of the public, their voice is so important and they were just jumping in and jumping in even in the middle when a chair has closed the public opportunity and someone just wanted to chime in. I personally would like to suggest that you all use our form of meeting. We have that setup for the next meeting. You will still be able to call individuals, the public will still be present. You'll see their hand raised. [01:06:45] Your chair is responsible for acknowledging and calling out who would speak. That's what I would really suggest. Mayor Pro Tem. [01:06:59] I [01:07:00] guess who? What I will just add. [01:07:04] The chair, of course, will be responsible for calling people, but I will cut it; our Commissioner Ali to take time, because you are not going to give everybody. You be fair to everyone, just keep the time on. You have to decide this is three minute or five minute, and you will let him know. I always do that with the mayor. I text him, I say, "Hey, this person has five minutes, you should stop him." The mayor when he call on somebody, I'm the one who will make him do that. Because he focus on calling the people and I'm focusing on taking time. You not do that, so that your meeting will to be organized. [01:07:46] If I could just make a quick comment, I would encourage you to think carefully about how long your public comment is, and how long the individual comments are allowed [01:08:00] to be. I would suggest in my personal opinion that if somebody really give some thought to what they want to say and to be a little more direct and organized in their comments, giving people maybe three minutes maximum allows you to hear more voices within the same period of time. I will also encourage you to remember that even if you shorten it from five minutes to three minutes, you're not limiting public input no more than we would be at council members. People can always email you. If you make your phone numbers available, they can call, but they still have that opportunity for public input. But you have a lot of, I think, really important and hard work ahead of you, and so to maximize the time that you can really have to work uninterrupted is important [01:09:00] while balancing that need for that public input. I would just encourage you to think carefully and really have that conversation as a group as to how long is your public comment and how long will you allow each individual to talk so that you can get the most public input and still have time to do your work. Thanks. [01:09:24] One key thing that I haven't mastered yet, is at the top you'll see how many people. It will give you a number of how many hands are raised. I'm so used to going down and counting that I forget, that I can look up top and see how many hands are raised. Well, right there, it give you an idea of how many minutes that you need to allocate. Sometimes individuals, they want to now raise their hands to speak. If the numbers are increasing, you may have [01:10:00] to drop from five to three minutes. That's something, again, that I believe that the chair as the council has given me that authority to monitor that, so that we can definitely allow for the voices of the public to speak. [01:10:22] Yeah. Thank you. That's a great point, and most aware of the fact that there may be some situations where someone may say something in public comment, and then someone may say something else after that, and someone that replied earlier may want to speak again. I would just like to just say at this time that once again our emails are open, and that we do have the subcommittees as well for that reason. If there's something that directly relates to our subcommittee that someone would like to speak to us about at length, you are more than welcomed to ask to participate in those [01:11:00] meetings because personally I do want to make sure that we are respectful of everyone's opinion because this really is about the thoughts and feelings of everyone in the community and not just other people that are able to make it to meetings. [01:11:16] I'm not sure when Councilor Susan Mims said, keep an eye on your public comment. Did you all mention also about how long it's supposed to be? For example, the public comment is supposed to be from after we finish from our consent agenda until eight o'clock. That's supposed to be end of the public comment. Sometimes it's one hour, sometime maybe less than one hour. Unless we have really hot topic that everybody want to talk about it like last time, we'll give me a more than what we normally do, but [01:12:00] you also have to have links for the comments. Because you are not going to seat there for their time. It depend on how long your own meeting is. If you have a lot seeing on that, in that you want to accomplish, maybe your public comment will be for one hour 45 minutes. That's the total. [01:12:29] Great. Item number 10 is questions, comments by counsel and TRC members related to the TRC, I'm just in time for any final items. [01:12:47] I just want to welcome all of our new members in, and we welcome in the ''old'' members. Also to thank the City Council for having this [01:13:00] meeting with us. Just ensure that everyone can be on the same page and we can go into this new relaunch TRC with a renewed focus. But I would also just like to take this time to just apologize to anyone that may still feel that they were disrespected by this commission in the past. If anyone does feel that way, I would like to personally apologize from the bottom my heart for that and say that we are still looking to speak to anyone and everyone that would like to work with this commission. It takes a little time for people to realize that fact, then that's okay. Just don't ever be afraid to reach out and always available by phone or email and also within a subcommittees. Thank you, everyone again. [01:13:49] Thank you, Commissioner Traore. This is Pauline. I'd like to thank you and the rest of the commissioners and welcome. Truly from the bottom of my heart, feels that this is such a important [01:14:00] task that you've been given. This is historical commission. We haven't had anything like this before. Closest thing would be the Human Rights Commission, but yours is even above and beyond that. I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes out of your commission. [01:14:19] Just as a suggestion for [NOISE] some of you council members. I have been reading a really phenomenal book. [NOISE] It's called We Do This 'Til We Free Us [NOISE] by Mariame Kaba. It's a really quick read there, a bunch of little stories and news articles and things like that. But this has just shed so much light and given me so much hope and helped reignite the fire when I felt extremely hopeless when the commission was paused. I [01:15:00] would really recommend if you ever have a time, just get this book and read it. It's got some really incredible life changing stuff in here, yeah. [01:15:15] I just like to say thank you to all the commissioners, both those of you who are original members and to the new ones. As Counselor Taylor said, this is really historic and important. You volunteered for some very important and very hard work. I think probably as vice chair, Ali, and maybe chair, Traore, if you've talked with the divided groups out of Ohio and it sounds I'm really glad that you've been able to connect with them. [NOISE] I've heard really good things about them and giving you some of their wisdom and guidance and helping you along this path. I would just say from my perspective as a council member, it was never my intent, nor do I believe it was ever the intent [01:16:00] of any council member to be controlling or punishing in any way in the suspension. We might view truly was we felt it was imperative that you have a full commission to really be able to work effectively together and move forward as a cohesive group. I'm glad it's over. I'm glad we've got a full group for you and just really excited to see you move forward. If there's anything that I can do to help and ensure the rest of the counselors feel the same way. We don't want to get in your way, but we're here to help if there's anything we can do, so best of luck. [01:16:43] Thank you all. Thank you very much. [01:16:45] [NOISE] When we first launched this, we're solving a situation of we don't know what we don't know. There's still an enormous amount that we don't know. [01:17:00] I'm glad you found some resources. I hope you will use them. I would also like to, at least for my part, personally apologize for not giving you everything you needed at the beginning and for anything that we did that contributed to difficulties during the first months of it. That was never my personal attempt. I don't think it was the intent of counsel. [NOISE] I really hope that we can all go that you are able to go into this knowing that there are always people you can reach out to whether in other groups or whether in the city. The divided community, the group at Mary Hope Center at George Mason University to as resources and wish this commission only success because I think we can only really learn and grow as a community from what you are undertaking. I'm grateful to all of you. [01:17:59] Commissioners [01:18:00] feel free to share. [01:18:08] Well, I would also just say that I don't hold any [LAUGHTER] of you just want to make sure that's clear. I do know that we're going to have disagreements over time and not everyone thinks the same and that is a good thing. Because if we are going to agree on anything and everything, then what really is the point of doing any of this? If any of you felt differently, I hope that's no longer the case. Yeah, if you'd ever like to sit in on a meeting to just hear what's going on or maybe just to hear what anyone from each of has to say, please do so and don't ever feel you just need to stay away completely. It's really is important that you do hear what everyone in the community has to say. [01:18:56] I think you know how much disagreement is really healthy, and [01:19:00] that the keeping is you have to respect each other. You can disagree as much as you want, but as a end of the day, all of you, you have to respect each other's opinions. When you are sitting there making a decision, yeah, you do it as individual as soon as you get out from there, all of you are guys and friend. Yes. You will be disagreeing but don't do it in a disrespectful way. That what I really think. Yeah. As everybody said, you guys are making history here. But Commissioner you should be proud of that. You're going to have that detail in your resume and everywhere that you will make history. people will say with this Commissioner in our commission that ever happen in Iowa though. [NOISE] There you go. [01:20:00] Well, I really want to thank all of you for your time tonight. Again, thank you to Commissioner Navarre-Jackson for your contributions. Thank you so much. For those that are continuing this work, whether you're on the commission or not. This is very, very meaningful. Work is hard work not hard, hard work. It's hard work. Thank you all so much and we are looking [NOISE] forward to seeing fantastic things that will bring us to those goals that we want to achieve within our city. Thank you so much for your dedication and your work that you're going to perform and the responds to really figure it out, how we can be better as a city and as an extended community. Thank you all, and with that, I will adjourn our meeting. [01:20:56] [OVERLAPPING] [01:21:00] Actually I just want to say since our meetings right after [OVERLAPPING] [01:21:04] Yes. We're going to have two Mayor Pro Tem and then the TRC has a meeting and after so I was going to talk about that. [01:21:13] Okay. [01:21:15] Mayor Pro Tem. [01:21:16] Yeah. I just want to say to Mohamed and Ali and Amal. I feel you guys, it's Ramadan. I use book after break my fast. [LAUGHTER] I don't know, good luck. [NOISE] You have another meeting because, got to eat something and come back. I use book after I break my fast. By the way, all of this time I was just listening until the time and they break my fasting point. Happy Ramadan. [01:21:47] Happy Ramadan. This meeting, we are adjourned from the Joint Commission Meeting with the TRC Commission and the City Council. There is another meeting happening [01:22:00] immediately following. You have to sign into a different Zoom for the TRC meeting to start that meeting, so sign back in. Thank you all. I wish you the best. [01:22:16] Thank you all. [01:22:17] Goodnight. [OVERLAPPING] [01:22:20] Goodnight. [01:22:21] Thank you, and goodnight. [MUSIC].